WP Mainline Episode 19 - GoDaddy Acquires Pagely, Doing The Woo, and WordPress Contributor Churn

In this episode, Malcolm Peralty and I are joined by Bob Dunn of Do The Woo fame to discuss the news of the week. We started off by discussing the most surprising acquisition of the year with GoDaddy acquiring Pagely. We briefly touch on what’s new in WordPress 5.8.2 while trying to figure out how to pronounce Thijs de Valk’s name. Thijs de Valk is the new CEO for Yoast.

Bob explains what exactly his partnership with Post Status entails and what we can expect from it. Last but not least, we had a great discussion about Paul Lacey’s post and contributor churn in WordPress and whether or not WordPress could one day run out of free labor to keep the project going. If you tell me the correct number of times I say “Do The Woo” in this episode, contact me and I might have a surprise for you.

This Episode is Brought to You By GoDaddy Pro:

GoDaddy Pro

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Stories Discussed:

• GoDaddy Acquires Pagely
• One Hour Interview Between Cory Miller and Josh Strebel
• WordPress 5.8.2 Security and Maintenance Release
• Joost De Valk’s Brother Steps into CEO Role
• Announcing a Partnership with Post Status and Do the Woo
• AMP Has Irreparably Damaged Publishers’ Trust in Google-led Initiatives
• State of the Word 2021
• Blocks, Boards & Fishing Reels – How Gutenberg has Divided WordPress

Click to View Transcript:

Speaker 1 00:00:19 Welcome everybody to episode 19 of the WP mainline podcast for Friday, November 12th, 2021. I’m your host, Jeff Chandler joined by my favorite Canadian Malcolm Perotti and we have a third special guest, I mean, extra special, like do the woo type of special. We’ve got Bob Dunn on the show, Bob, thank you very much for joining us all the way from the west coast. Thank you, Jeff. I knew you just invited me for, you could say that again and again. Well, what can I say, man? I’m addicted to the woo. Yeah, every time I get he’s going to make you sick of your own brand. I’ve I’ve done a fairly good job of, uh, I’ve been trying. I mean, I, by the way, drinking game this episode, every time I say, do the Lou take a drink and we’re about three minutes in and people are already buzzing. So pretty good. We’re making progress.
Speaker 1 00:01:10 Well, anyways, Bob’s joined us here. He’s got a little bit of a news that he’s going to talk about. That’s specifically related to him and his brand. We’ll get to that in a while, but I want to start off the show with the bombshell that was dropped yesterday, and that is GoDaddy has acquired Pagely and, uh, um, no, this is not clickbait. Uh, a lot of people were wondering if, uh, gesture Abel, the co-founder Pagely will was trolling people. This is something he would do. This is up his alley, but it turns out he was naturally people and, uh, people were just blown away. I was blown away. This is shocking on nobody. Nobody saw this coming, unless you were part of the deal. This is a, we’ve had a lot of WordPress acquisitions this year. This one to me is the biggest and most surprising of them all.
Speaker 1 00:01:57 And mostly because of the way Jess started the company, what it’s all about? He’s been touting independence. He’s taken no VC money. It hasn’t been back. There’s no, uh, investor influence. He built it from the ground up, putting the employees and customers first. And he built something that has, uh, turned into, um, something that GoDaddy wants to go to Eddie has seen Paisley’s place in the market space and they want to, they wanted to bring Paisley. Actually. Why don’t I just read the quote? Cause that’s bull, uh, explains this, um, better than I could obviously, but he says, quote, we did things our way in at work. In fact, it works so well that one of the largest internet brands in the world GoDaddy wants us to help them to be more like us. They’ve put their cars and cash on the table and are serious about serving a wider segment of the market with better quality products and top class service to ultimately help more people succeed.
Speaker 1 00:02:57 Uh, so that’s, that’s great news all the way around. I mean, um, go, daddy has changed massively as a company. I don’t know how many times I’ve said that on the show. You know, they’re long gone from the days of Bob Parsons and bronchi, Superbowl ads and things of that nature they’ve completely changed their image and what they’re about and what they stand for in the company. That’s also, you can also, it’s evident in the GoDaddy pro and they’re in the, uh, the services that they offer and the investment they’ve made 11 investments, not only in the WordPress space, through conferences and whatnot, but also the people that are working on WordPress have made a lot of personal investments in the people. And so overall, this is just, it looks like a great deal. And because, uh, Paisley didn’t have any investors. It was, uh, Josh and Sally stable, his wife, uh, they both own a hundred percent of the stock.
Speaker 1 00:03:50 And so when they sold that stock to go daddy, they actually took those funds and distributed them back to all their employees within the company. Uh, even those who had tenure within just a few years, ended up getting, uh, some amount of funds from this. And, uh, what I, what I like most about this is as Josh in his interview, there’s a one hour long interview that Corey Miller did with, uh, Josh dribble right after it was like 15 minutes after he made the announcement. And, and it just says that he was very proud of the fact that not a single investor, not a single one of them got rich. It was all the people who showed up to do the work. And I thought that was fantastic. So great deal all the way around. And what they’re going to do is they’re going to be working closely.
Speaker 1 00:04:33 They’re going to remain, maintain, uh, be a separate entity within GoDaddy. And they’re going to work closely with these skivers team, which is focused on WooCommerce. And they were actually acquired by goatee GoDaddy back in 2020. And what Paisley is going to do is work with sky verge and try and create the best hosted WooCommerce solution in the world. And that’s what they’re going to be doing, uh, for the next few years. So w we’ll have to see how this turns out, but, uh, you know, congrats to the Josh and Sally wonderful people. And it’s, uh, it’s a pretty cool story all around node, the way they built it from the ground up, bootstrapped, it got all of these employees, long-term employees. And that’s just a, it’s a good story all the way around.
Speaker 2 00:05:17 Yeah. My first thought was I thought they were joking, um, at first as well. And then when I dug into it, I was like, holy smokes. This is actually happening. This is pretty crazy. Um, one interesting thing from, uh, Tofor who I work with at Canberra. Uh, he said like, what the heck is automatic doing? Letting go daddy kind of own the WooCommerce hosting space, um, because that’s basically what this deal is going to potentially allow them to do. I mean, GoDaddy probably spent a fair bit of money to make this happen. And like automatic is right now hiring a product marketing manager for commerce solutions for WordPress, VIP. Um, so like, you know, that’s a little more like a drop in the bucket versus this, uh, you know, fire hose that, that GoDaddy just basically purchased out. Right? So, um,
Speaker 1 00:06:04 I mean, automatic doesn’t need to own Paisley or whatever they own who commerce,
Speaker 2 00:06:10 But in terms of like your first choice for hosting for your e-commerce solution, I think, I think this is going to give GoDaddy a huge edge over, uh, automatic slash WordPress, VIP. Um, it’s bringing in a lot of great talent. It’s a deep understanding of how to host it. Um, so they might not necessarily be the company that is developing the software, but I don’t think you’re going to find a, uh, you know, a better, better slash bigger team of experts on that platform.
Speaker 1 00:06:37 And I, I gotta tell you if I’m thinking about hosted WooCommerce, I’m thinking about like the, uh, liquid web, they have a managed WooCommerce, uh, solution. Um, in fact, geez, you know, you know, who has one media temple, I was just looking at them today. You remember media temple GoDaddy acquired media temple like eight years ago or something like that back in 2013. And if you go there that you wouldn’t even know that they’re under the GoDaddy umbrella, but they have managed who commerce hosting. I found that out and actually it’s tied in a GoDaddy pro they’ve got a manageable commerce, but, but I’m not thinking initially WordPress, VIP, that’s not my go-to, I’m not even that doesn’t even cross my mind that that’s where I would go. But I, but I think, you know, that also I’m just an everyday average user. I’m not a maybe fortune 100 fortune 500, 1000 type of company looking for that type of that level of service.
Speaker 2 00:07:34 Yeah. I mean, Bob, what did you think when you saw this?
Speaker 3 00:07:37 You know, initially, and I actually didn’t take it as a joke from Josh because,
Speaker 1 00:07:43 Well, you’re the only one.
Speaker 3 00:07:45 It was, it was too much to be a joke, you know, it was like, okay, this is, I mean, I know Josh. I mean, we all know Josh and this was like pushing the envelope. I thought, oh, I don’t know if he quite come out and say it this way. So initially it was like most, whenever there’s an acquisition, I have two reactions. One is like, oh, I get it right away. This one I had to pause for a minute because yeah. I mean, it’s always that I’m thinking hosting, hosting, you know, I’m thinking of the bigger picture, but then I’ve been in communication a lot with GoDaddy and especially around GoDaddy Pearl. And I know that they have a lot planned for the next year in e-commerce and no specifics, just a generalized statement from them, um, in our different talks. And I, so there was this tickle in my throat, I thought, okay, is this something to do with that?
Speaker 3 00:08:40 Because I just thought of what Paisley’s bringing in as far as hosting. So when I read it that, you know, sky verge, I saw the word sky verge in there. It was like, it clicked for me right away. Okay. I see there’s something going on there because I’ve also talked to the sky verge team. And I know they, you know, obviously they, weren’t going to tell me any details about this, but there was some really big plans for the next year or so that didn’t surprise me in the sense that I’m a little bit different than most people in the WordPress space, because I kind of take acquisitions with a, um, you know, I can take them or leave them because I don’t know. I, I just come in from outside of WordPress and I used to see them all the time in the, you know, other business world outside of the bubble.
Speaker 3 00:09:31 So it’s never a real, nothing ever really surprises me. But I do agree that the conversation I did listen to that this morning with Corey and Josh and boy, a lot of it resonated. I w I was like, this is, this is incredible. I mean, it was really, really good. And yeah, it’s, it, it makes so much sense and I’ve known sky verge team for years and what they, I thought they got to be something bubbling in the back because, you know, you bring in an older extension to GoDaddy, but, you know, and they offer those through the, I think there will commerce manage hosting plan already, but there was so much more, and I knew it wouldn’t just be okay, we’re just going to keep adding extensions here and there. So there’s, there’s a lot bubbling in the background that this all made sense and became very cohesive when I saw it happen.
Speaker 1 00:10:30 And I was listening to that interview and I was listening earlier today. There is a Twitter spaces conversation with members of the other WordPress community that anybody could join. And, uh, uh, David showed up who was a, the marketing director, marketing manager for Pagely. And, uh, one of the reasons, you know, as a company, Pagely reached this point where they wanted to scale, they wanted to do these awesome things, but in order to do them, they needed to really right. They wanted, they needed to hire all these engineers and hire all these people and scale upwards. And they just, they were successful as a company. You know, they, they were profitable, but they just didn’t have the kind of the kind of reach and the ability to, uh, uh, to do what they wanted to do. And also because they were bootstrapped and didn’t have any investor money, uh, they, they didn’t really have a parachute.
Speaker 1 00:11:23 And so they couldn’t really make a decision. And I think Chris Lama, might’ve mentioned this, where if you’re bootstrapped, you, you can’t take on a risk where if it doesn’t pan out, the company fails, it just goes away a disappeared sheet. You can’t, you can’t do that. So by having sort of an entrance plan now, by being part of GoDaddy, now they’re able to make these rapid changes and be able to scale as much as they need to hire as much as they need to and do the things that they, that they really want to do now in the WooCommerce space.
Speaker 2 00:11:55 That all sounds fair to me,
Speaker 1 00:11:57 For sure. And I’ve, I’ve always seen, uh, you know, congrats to Paisley. You know, that he’s always, uh, Josh always had this, the stick of, you know, we’re independent. We’re over here by ourselves. Look, look what I’ve created, investors, you can’t give me any of your money. Cause I don’t want it. I don’t need it. We’re independent. We’re going to stay independent. And, uh, you know, um, now that Paisley has gone to part of their subsidiary of GoDaddy, I can’t think, can you guys think of any other independent WordPress specific kind of hosts that’s out there? I can’t think of any,
Speaker 2 00:12:33 Uh, of a reasonable size. Probably not. I mean, they’re all getting gobbled up by bigger entities. I think, um, all the midsize players. So then you’re left with like the boutique smaller players and then the giants and that’s it, but eventually something else will fill that mid-market but
Speaker 1 00:12:48 So, so, so something like this happens and obviously what’s the next question. When these acquisitions and consolidation, you know, what’s going on in the WordPress world is now, are we turning? Is everything going corporate? What are we supposed to do about this?
Speaker 2 00:13:01 I’m not too concerned about it. There’s always going to be other people out there to try new things. My, my actual next question was how long until he goes and starts another company like how, you know, those things are pretty common too, right? And entrepreneur entrepreneurs and entrepreneur for life. They can’t stop being an entrepreneur just because they go work for a company and the bigger the company, sometimes the faster they feel it. So I think that’ll be an interesting process.
Speaker 1 00:13:26 Um, deed indeed. And, uh, his wife, Sally who co-founded the company, but they, you know, they were talking about this, they got married and three months after they got married, boom, they incorporated the company and they worked on it for 18 years. So Sally is actually stepping back from the company and she’s going to take a long, much needed dessert, a break while Josh is just cranking it. And as he says, going in hot with the Paisley team at GoDaddy, and he’s going to be cranking away and doing things. But, uh, um, and the other thing too, is he mentioned that, you know, there are a million, you know, they’re millionaires and there’s other people in a Paisley company who are well to do now, uh, thanks to the acquisition. But he also mentioned the importance of his, his community, his local community, and the, in the philanthropic opportunities that are not available to him.
Speaker 1 00:14:13 And if you don’t know, Sally’s stable, she’s, she’s very much into giving and, and being part of the community, in fact, PressNomics, which is their, uh, flight ship conference, which is going to be coming back by the way, um, go to GoDaddy actually saw PressNomics as a part of the Paisley brand and who they are and what they stand for suppress Pressonomics will be coming back in some form or fashion. Sally says that she’s already got like a theme for it, but I remember a portion of the ticket sales used to go to like St Jude’s children’s hospital or a charity of her choosing, which was just, uh, which was just awesome, you know? So it’ll be interesting to see, um, if they create like a foundation or what they do philanthropically with the, with the funds that are now available to them. I’m also looking at that, uh, see what happens there.
Speaker 3 00:15:01 Yeah. I think that’d be pretty cool because I could tell just from Josh talking about it, how that could, you know, and who knows, even with Josh, how big of a part tech had played for them down the road and, uh, yeah, it’s, I, I mean, I’ve, you know, in my previous business that I had, we worked with nonprofits for a years and years and I have a deep down love for them. And I, I, I can, that was one part I really could relate to when they said that, that they’re at this position in place now where maybe they can put some of their energies towards that. And I thought that was really cool.
Speaker 1 00:15:39 Yeah. Maybe that’ll scratch the itch for them too, so that they don’t feel the need to kind of run away from the GoDaddy mothership, so to speak. So let’s see, in other news, if you can believe there’s other news after that a WordPress 5.8 0.2 was released earlier this week, this is just a, uh, uh, a bug fix has two bug fixes and one security fix. And that has to do with the, uh, there was an expired certificate that was involved with the code. So they fixed that. Uh, so that’s no longer an issue. My site automatically updated. I’m sure a lot of others out there as well. So if you haven’t updated to 5.8 0.2 yet, definitely put that on your to-do list. And speaking of, uh, families, husband, wife, teams, family, run businesses, there is a new CEO over at Yoast Yoast brother. Uh, boy, you know, should I, should I, should I try to do that
Speaker 3 00:16:39 And how to say his name? Because I know you said it really well, you said I’m not going to screw it up because I haven’t said it verbally forever. So I’m going to let you do it again.
Speaker 1 00:16:52 I got to say the J writers adjacent, they, but I don’t think, I
Speaker 3 00:16:56 Think it’s silent, man. I wish I could remember
Speaker 1 00:16:59 That this dice DevOp boy, this is, um, I’m sorry, man. If I’m butchering, it
Speaker 3 00:17:04 Might be ties
Speaker 1 00:17:05 To just tie ties to fall. Maybe ties, ties to balk. We’ll go with that. He’s going to be Yoast new CEO. And he actually turns out he’s actually Yost to Vaux brother. He was actually employee number four of the company. Um, he stepped away from the company at some point, uh, uh, back in 2012, worked at various other companies for a while. Then he came back and, uh, uh, Yost, a wife who was the, who he’s taken over for her. She’s stepping down and going to be more in a creative role and write about content marketing and SEO and the creative side of things. She’s going to be stepping back working, I think about three days a week and, uh, congrats to her. Cause it, cause this is more of a scaling back thing for her after the, of the company that Goulston her and others have sold to new, full digital. So new CEO over there, uh, congrats to Yoast, uh, things are changing. And, uh, also it’s nice to see someone of, uh, of the family thinking of, I don’t know of any other, not off the top of my head, uh, an announcement like this, where the CEO, uh, position changes amongst relatives, you know, the same family. Usually it’s different people.
Speaker 2 00:18:17 It’s funny, we’ve talked about this before, right? Like if FI’s had been, um, you know, son, then we’d be talking about that like dynastic approach that we were thinking about in previous episodes where we wondered if this kind of thing would happen. And now here it is, except it’s a brother instead of a son. And so I think that’s super cool.
Speaker 3 00:18:36 Yeah. And he’s been really, you know, pretty heavily involved in the background. He’s like one of those people you don’t hear about, but he’s doing a lot. I met him first time I met him was at a WordCamp us and I’m not, I can’t even say which word camp us it was, but I just gotten into the hotel and I’d come down. And I was looking for some familiar faces in the lobby was pretty much MP. And he was sitting over by the bar when these tables and can smile at me. And so we walked over and I could, you know, I didn’t know who he was. And he was a pure joy to get to know this guy. I mean, we were laughing within minutes. People started gal, you know, other people are coming by joining the conversation and I’m real excited to see what he does because he’s, he’s a really smart guy. I’ve, I’ve talked to him many times over the past few, few years and yeah, he’s just, he’s got incredible personality and I think he’s gonna, um, be awesome at it.
Speaker 1 00:19:36 So you know what time it is? Oh, go ahead.
Speaker 2 00:19:39 Oh, I was just going to say one other thing about thighs is, uh, you know, he basically has a background in psychology and I think that’s a really good set of skills for a CEO to have.
Speaker 1 00:19:53 So do you know what time it is? It’s time to pay the bills and you know how we’re going to pay the bills. We’re going to tell this audience just how awesome GoDaddy pro is. Should I do I, should Bob, do I think Bob is experiencing this, but it’s my show. He’s here as a guest, sit back five, relax. Let me handle this. Are you looking to increase your productivity, Bob? One of the tools that helps thousands of what developers and designers do more every day is go to any pro combining site client and project management. GoDaddy pro is an all-in-one solution made by and for web professionals, whether you’re new to web design or looking to grow your business, you’ll find three tools, products, guidance, and support to help you deliver results for your clients. Pay attention, Bob, manage and monitor all your client’s WordPress sites from a single place, no matter where they’re hosted with a single click perform bulk updates, backups, security checks, and more to save time and free up your day by if you’re a busy man, you do a lot. This can help you free up some in your day for more information, visit godaddy.com forward slash pro. Of course we’ll have links to that in the show notes and the GoDaddy pro, and they’re doing all kinds of cool stuff. In fact, I just learned that, um, their manage work, uh, well, commerce hosting, if you get it, you get access to $6,000 worth of WooCommerce extensions available.
Speaker 3 00:21:08 Yeah. SkyBridge SkyBridge has a lot of extensions. I mean, they have a lot that they’ve had out in the marketplace and very popular ones and yeah, you get, you get access to all of their extensions and um, yeah, I, I should have actually brought my ad roll daddy pro too, because they’re, they’re a sponsor my S my site as well. We could have, you know, I could have read mine at the same time and gave them double Levine.
Speaker 1 00:21:34 Uh, man, it would’ve been awesome. No, no. Yeah. That would’ve been awesome. Both of us paying the bills mutual respect go, daddy would have liked it. I’m sure we put this past go to, they would have loved it. Also, speaking of partnerships, not so much acquisitions, a user heavy partnership with post status. And instead of me talking about it, geez, why don’t I have Mr. Do the woo take your drink? Why don’t you explain to us, uh, what’s going on here? Well,
Speaker 3 00:22:06 It was interesting. Cause when I announced it, of course everybody had questions cause it was pretty generalized because it’s kind of just starting out. So it is generalized. It’s not a, you know,
Speaker 1 00:22:17 Did anyone have a status something? Well, you
Speaker 3 00:22:20 Know, I had a couple of questions that people said, well, does this mean they, you own a part of them? They own a part of you. Is this? I said, Nope, this is purely just a support partnership of each other and a, uh, a natural, you know, um, partnership that is obvious. And the reason how it kind of came about is I’ve been referring post status for quite some time through do the whoop because I talked to a lot of people that are either in this space and looking to grow and connect with people or they’re coming from outside of this space and they want to get into the WordPress ecosystem and ultimately we’ll commerce. So I send them a lot of times I say, Hey, you know, go check out post status. You got to listen to the conversation going on there. You get to hear kind of behind the scenes, what businesses are talking about.
Speaker 3 00:23:12 Sometimes it’s a crazy step, but you know, sometimes it’s very insightful stuff too. So it, it seemed to be a natural for us to pull together some kind of resources and Corey and Jonathan, both there said, you know, why should we reinvent the wheel? Why should we cover a WooCommerce and try to cover it? Because it is a Beamer, you know, it’s a, it’s a big part of the ecosystem. Why don’t we have Bob do this? So I, the partnership I’d like to say is organic because I’m not sure, just like I, you know, Jeff knows me and knows how I work. Who knows what will come out of it right now. We’re just looking at ways to share content, to, you know, promote each other cross memberships. Uh, there’s a few other things in place, but you know, as far as there could be possibility of events, there could be all sorts of things that come out of it. And I think it’s just a matter of, you know, I was talking to Corey and I said, Corey, you know, this is really exciting. You’re, you know, I’m able to cover WooCommerce for you. And you’re bringing me into a larger audience where I can be even, you know, seen a bit more than I would just do my site, my community. And he said that, you know, it’s yeah, it was like this, this is going to be the perfect partnership. I mean, it just makes sense.
Speaker 1 00:24:45 Tell you about, I’m proud of you, you know, that I’m real proud of you because you’ve, you’ve done, you’ve been working at this for a long time. I mean, how long have you been covering this niche known as commerce, which is not really initiating,
Speaker 3 00:25:00 So let’s see how so I started in 2007 with WordPress 2010. Bob WP started, I actually was playing around with woo commerce when it came out in 2011 and I started talking more and more about it, I would say around 2014 or so. And I just grew that niche even more. It was like, you know, I saw the, saw the value there. I saw the, you know, I, I’m not some visionary, but I saw where things were possibly going and yeah, just grew it out. And it, you know, this recent change with do the Wu, putting that focus on, it was a point in my life for, I needed to get back more into the community side of things and connect with people because I know a lot of people in this space I’ve have a lot of friendships, partnerships, um, colleagues I’ve worked with.
Speaker 3 00:25:56 And I thought, you know, I w I want to get in there and I want to be able to connect people. And I also want to bring an elevate the Wu builders because there was really, it was a bit fragmented, the WooCommerce developer, that whole bit of that ecosystem. And I thought, well, you know, Hey, I’m going to give it a try. I’m going to try to pull it together and just start introducing and letting people know who’s, who’s doing all this cool stuff. And it doesn’t always have to be the big names, you know, just all these developers that are working hard on, but now products and services. So it’s, it’s, uh, it’s, it’s one of those things in my life, you know, it’s, I’m, I’m, uh, quite a bit older than most people in this space, but oh, come on. You’re not a day over. Yeah. That’s a good spot. Yeah. I’m not a day over 80, you know,
Speaker 1 00:26:46 I can only say that because mob and I are good friends and we make each other laugh. So,
Speaker 3 00:26:51 You know, I, I tell I got a
Speaker 1 00:26:53 Free,
Speaker 3 00:26:54 Yeah, I was gonna say, I got, I tell Jeff to get off my lawn all the time, you know,
Speaker 1 00:26:58 So I’m covered in sand,
Speaker 3 00:27:03 But I’m really excited about this partnership because it’s just going to be, I believe, you know, they’re building a, they’re looking at creating some networks with some, you know, partners that will fill some voids and also bring a more collaborative effort. And we’re, you know, we each own our own thing, but there’s, there’s a lot of stuff we can do to support each other and cross promote and cross share content because we’re, you know, doing so many different kinds of mediums.
Speaker 1 00:27:33 Well, I mean, I mean, look at what post status is. It’s a, I mean, that’s the hangout, that’s the group where you go to that’s the, uh, the business owners, the builders, the agency, people, the WooCommerce people. I mean, you, this is a perfect match for you. And you’re, I think you’re acutely aware of what you’ve been able to carve out for yourself in the WordPress space with this WooCommerce. And, uh, based on what we’ve seen, WooCommerce has nothing to do, but grow and become even more of an influence of e-commerce across the web. And if I’m in post statuses position, and I want to introduce ways of, of Brene w WooCommerce content and connections into my established community, it makes perfect sense to bring somebody in. Who’s already been doing that for years. Hey, Bob been doing this, he knows what’s going on. He’s got connections. Why don’t we just partner up with them? Bam. You know, it’s a, it’s like peanut butter and jelly, man.
Speaker 3 00:28:28 I think I did say that, right. I said, peanut butter, jelly, P and J sandwich and milk. You know, I, that was one of my analogies in the little post I wrote. I think it was, that sounds good. Yeah. And then I said, pineapple on pizza and I thought, well, I’ve taken it too far. I’m going to freak out a lot of people that, so,
Speaker 1 00:28:46 Because that is not doing the Wu right there, although I like on apple and pizza, speaking of doing the womb, I’ll come with Kimber creative or in your experience with press Titan. I know we’ve talked about like Shopify and some experience over with e-commerce. Um, uh, well, what are your thoughts so far on woo commerce? And maybe it may be its future, you know, uh, do you do the woo
Speaker 2 00:29:09 Uh, here and there. I mean, we’ll come versus, you know, I like to stay informed on what’s happening and it makes it easy when someone’s already kind of curating all that information for me. So I definitely appreciate that. Um, but, uh, a lot of what we do in terms of e-commerce stuff has been relatively simplistic. Um, you know, it’s a store with a couple of products, maybe some coupons and things like that. I think the biggest store that I manage and WooCommerce has maybe like 200 products, um, and it’s all like downloadable products. And then a lot of the stores that I work with are all, uh, you know, connected to like print on demand services or things like that. Um, but overall, I mean, you know what, commerce is fine, but you know, as soon as you get into the woo commerce world, it’s not even really WordPress anymore. I mean, it has its own set of like plugins that extend the features of it. Like, you know, you use some of the features of WordPress, but WooCommerce is really its own beast with its own kind of community, its own kind of everything. So, um, I, I, you know, I don’t think about them necessarily being the same, even though we’ll commerce is supposed to just be a plugin for WordPress.
Speaker 1 00:30:18 Oh, it’s so much more.
Speaker 3 00:30:20 Yeah. And I, you know what I’ve done with the sh um, podcasts more and more, and even with the site is I put myself in the shoes of the developer, anybody building stuff. And I said, you know, I have to help them understand that they need to keep on top of WordPress. So you can, like, you were just saying, they can’t just stay in the Wu bubble, you know, be over there and think everything’s going good if they don’t, you know, ride the wave of everything that’s going on with WordPress. So I try to bring in people from WordPress core and people talking more, Hey, some of our shows, we don’t even hardly talk about WooCommerce, but it’s important for them to understand because heck you know, um, moose sits on top of WordPress. So there’s that I don’t want to say disconnect, but I’m hoping with some of them it’s like, you know, pay attention to both because both of these, you know, WordPress is moving at a fast pace right now. And you know, if you’re going to be doing commerce or doing the Wu or, or whatever, you know, you, you need to make sure that’s just as much of a priority as your, your focus on WooCommerce.
Speaker 1 00:31:37 Is there anybody else out there? You know, somebody recently told me, they said, I can’t think of WordPress without thinking of Jeff Rowe. And I took, that’s a compliment. I, I was very honored by that. And I think you absolutely could be the guy who I can’t think of who commerce without thinking about Bob Dunn and do the will, but mostly for the, do the work. I mean, it’s so memorable. I’m a champion of that. Um, that’s like one of the best things you could have ever created, but is there anybody else like you out there too, who covers, who commerce, like you do E commerce specific people,
Speaker 3 00:32:11 You know, there’s people that everybody touches on BU and some touch on. Yeah. And I think it’s, I don’t want to phrase it in this way, but it’s kind of like, you know, over the last couple of years, everybody’s jumping more on the bandwagon, boxcar and yeah. And you know, they’re, they’re really, I mean, it’s like, Hey, you know, we got to start talking about this, cause this is the future. And everybody’s feeling like, you know, I mean, people are suddenly having to start to build sites with WooCommerce because our clients are on need to move online or they, you know, they may find another option. But yeah, there’s not anybody that, except for the builders, a lot of the people that are, you know, really niched down, either in move products or building moves sites, there’s not a lot of anyone that’s just as focused and you know, some people, I mean, people thought I was crazy when I branded myself Bob WP, it’s like, are you, do you really want to do that? And I’m like, Hey, you know, it, it works for me. And it’s been a godsend for me for, you know, over a decade. And the same thing with this, I had some people questioned me. Do you really want to just focus on this? And I said, well, you know where I’m at in my life. I don’t think it’s going away anytime soon. And I’m one to kind of ride the wave and change with whatever changes, you know, I’m not
Speaker 1 00:33:44 Going to change log, change, log a mile long if ever.
Speaker 3 00:33:48 And I don’t, you know, I mean, I, I feel for any changes with WordPress core, anything for that affects Wu builders because they got these products, these services that directly affects I’m fortunate because I can change with whatever it needs to be changed. You know, I’m, I’m just putting the word out and helping people get them selves noticed in the community. And, you know, no matter what twist or turn move commerce takes, I just, I bred right along with it.
Speaker 1 00:34:19 Uh, speaking of changes, did you happen to catch the article written by Justin tail equity pretty much gave an update on the status of WooCommerce and blacks and black themes and full site editing and stuff like that.
Speaker 3 00:34:29 You know, I didn’t, that’s weird. I am surprised I didn’t see that.
Speaker 1 00:34:33 Uh, geez, I’m sorry to put you on the spotlight that you, now, this is the guy who covers everything wound. How well
Speaker 3 00:34:41 Know I probably saw it. It’s maybe if I look at my bookmarks, you know, it’s, I got it
Speaker 1 00:34:47 Too many of them, the gist of the article. And it was a great article by the way, um, is that Justin talked with some folks behind WooCommerce and pretty much got a status update on what they were working on in terms of blacks and black themes. And they were talking about how, you know, will commerce. They can’t just go in Willy nilly that basically there about a year, year and a half away from actually having, let’s say a full site editing theme, or really implementing blocks or doing things with w with themes and WooCommerce, because there’s a lot of things that they have to take care of or change or implement into eCommerce for everything to work so well. So while a lot of the WordPress side of things, WordPress 5.9 December, there’s already about 27 themes on the directory that could take advantage of full site editing when it comes to woo commerce. Uh, there’s not going to be any full editing, specific themes out of the gate. Uh, at least not officially from WooCommerce. And if I remember, I think they also said some sort of news, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, but if, you know, did they mention that they’re going to officially retire the storefront theme, which I think is the default theme and will commerce,
Speaker 3 00:35:54 You know, I don’t remember hearing that, but yeah, you could be, maybe you dream it, you’d say, do the Wu too many times during the day, you know, you’re off in another world.
Speaker 3 00:36:07 Yeah. You know, it’s interesting because we’ve been one of the parts of the podcasts that I’m kind of proud of is we’ve been at least once a month bringing in somebody from core talking. And sometimes it’s a marketplace person. We’ve had, um, a couple of people come in and talk about blocks because when I was first thinking of this idea, one of the things that people were telling me all the time is, Hey, you know, who are the people behind WooCommerce? They’re never out there talking about anything. You know, I don’t know if that’s true or not, but they just felt like they weren’t, you know, we’d like to hear from them directly. So I bring in these every month I bring somebody in that really opens up and very honest, and they have, uh, uh, you know, we have a couple of co-hosts or a panel that asks them questions and drill them on things. And, uh, it’s, it’s quite educational. So they’ve, we’ve had a lot of talk around the blocks. We’ve had a lot of talk around the marketplace, LA you know, stuff, and we’re going to be having Paul this month, come in. It does CEO. Woo commerce. He’s going to come in and talk a little bit about looking at this past year and kind of what’s coming up in the next year.
Speaker 1 00:37:18 No, it’s fun about doing interviews like that with those types of people, is that someone like you monitors the space and you’re probably reading comments, you’re probably reading reviews and you can kind of, you know, on Twitter, you can get a pulse for what people were feeling and what people were thinking. And being able to take that information as maybe a casual user or a developer or a builder, and be able to, to ask the people directly who may be, may be in charge of those things, or have a means of getting those things, those concerns that you have noticed to the right people that that’s like one of the funnest part of doing those types of interviews.
Speaker 3 00:37:53 Exactly. Yep.
Speaker 1 00:37:56 Um, so before you get to this last topic, which is, uh, kind of a random thing I wanted to talk about, cause there’s time you, you recently underwent a big rebranding. I mean, you really you’re really doing the wheel now. I mean, it is ramped up and, uh, for people check it out, it’s do the woo IO for the domain. And you worked with, uh, was it maintained? What the studios.
Speaker 3 00:38:19 Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That’s the first time I’ve ever hired a, um, anybody to ever design one of my websites ever. Wow. Yeah. So it was a learning experience for me. It was a great experience, but it was, you know, I, and I, I don’t need to, you know, there’s, I wrote a couple of posts on it, so people can go read those. But when I had the opportunity to do this, I, I was frozen because I thought, man, I know a lot of agencies, how do I choose one? You know, I was just, I, I didn’t even know where to start, because again, I’ve been doing my own sites, you know, putting them together my needs, but I, I needed somebody to come in and bring in a fresh perspective because this really wasn’t the brand of Bob WP anymore. This is a brand to do the boot and, and that is one of the reasons and it turned out, um, I couldn’t have wished for anything better.
Speaker 1 00:39:18 No, it’s awesome. This is the dude that will batch car
Speaker 3 00:39:20 On Adobe pay mainland. One of those things about your rebrand. It’s like a man who has a box car. You know, I, I bought a lot of advertising in over 30 years of running a business and I’ve never had my own box car. So this is like, this is like one of those, um, how, what is this? This is my bucket list. You know, car knocked off there, you know, it’s yours, man.
Speaker 1 00:39:46 You could use it for whatever you want anyway. So what would you, uh, what would you judge you a grade yourself in terms of being a client for maintain? Were you a good client where you’re
Speaker 3 00:39:57 No, it was really funny because they, you know, of course they had to say, cause I paid them a lot of money that I was an excellent client, but I was, I was probably, you know, if I stepped back, I was a good client because I left, I gave them enough information, but I left a lot of decisions up to them. You know, when they would put something by me, I’d look at it and say, you know, okay, maybe this is why I don’t like it, or I like it, but you know what, I’m building, you know, the audience, your developers, you tell me what you think is best. So there was a lot of instances like that. I let them run with a lot of the logo design. I had no idea the color palette. I had no idea. I said, you know, I said, I’m hiring you because you’re the experts.
Speaker 3 00:40:46 I mean, I used to do logo design back in the day, but my logo design that part of my brain has evaporated. So I’m not quite there as much as I used to be. So I felt like I was, you know, a good customer, except the funny thing was, and I, I just talked to Vito with, um, a terror that used to be WP feedback. That’s the system they use. And what was really interesting about that is I started there’s when you go in and you do go through the proofing thing, they will, you know, you go back and forth and then they will close out each comment that you’ve made on the site. Well, I started closing them out because I thought, well, I’m done with this. Why don’t I just close this one out? So they, me ticking away at all these, and they didn’t get freaked out or anything, but they normally do it for the customer, for the ease, you know, with their client. And for me it was like, it just, wasn’t an assumption. Well, you did a good job. I like what this looks like. I’m closing it out. So they suddenly started seeing a mall closing out and thinking, oh, I guess Bob’s kind of taken over that part of it.
Speaker 1 00:41:55 Favorite clients.
Speaker 2 00:41:57 Yeah. My favorite clients in the agency space are the ones that jump in and are willing to kind of be really engaged. So I’m sure they appreciated that. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:42:05 Yeah. And I, you know, and it, it was, it was sometimes I’d tell them, well, you know, you gave me a lot. They said, well, you gave us the right information we needed. It just was, I left a lot of the creative end of things, up to them.
Speaker 1 00:42:20 Yeah. But you know, I think a lot of agencies out there are a lot of people listening to build sites out there listening to this are like, Bob, I need more clients like you, man.
Speaker 3 00:42:30 Well, I’m not going to be building. Hopefully won’t be going through this anytime soon again. But,
Speaker 1 00:42:36 Uh, so well they did a great job. It looks great. The colors are nice to do the wheel. It’s flat. It’s everything looks great. You did a good job. They did a good job. Yeah. They did a, so we had a bit of breaking news. I didn’t see this, uh, uh, Malcolm, uh, share with us what you found.
Speaker 2 00:42:54 Yeah. So what we’re doing the podcast, uh, I noticed on Twitter that the WordPress Twitter account just posted about five minutes ago, that’s the state of the word 20, 21 has been announced. So, um, on
Speaker 1 00:43:06 December, there’s a lot of questions on whether that was going to happen or
Speaker 2 00:43:10 Yeah. Yeah. December 14th, between 10:00 AM and 12:00 PM. Uh, Eastern.
Speaker 1 00:43:16 Yeah. It’s going to take place in New York city, which is poly. I know Matt has a place in New York city, so it’s probably going to be right within his home. He’s going to do it.
Speaker 2 00:43:25 Yeah. So he’s going to do a retrospective of 20, 21 discuss the latest trends he’s seeing celebrate community’s amazing wins and explore the future.
Speaker 1 00:43:34 Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Mentioned the topics mentioned that three and non fungible tokens.
Speaker 2 00:43:42 I cannot believe that that is part of the list. So the topics are like WordPress five dot nine and open verse to web three and non NFTE. So NFTs and web three are going to be part of this, uh, state of the word. I, I mean, wow. I didn’t think it was going to be something that we would focus on this early. I thought it would maybe be next year or the year after that we would see something like that. So I’m kind of, that gets me really excited about, but listening in on this.
Speaker 1 00:44:06 So if anybody actually out there has a question that you would like to ask Matt with the potential of having them answer it, uh, during the state of the word, there is a domain ask hyphen mat@workcamp.org, or you can ask during the live stream chat on YouTube, which I imagine is meant to be quite busy. So it’s probably better to get your email in ahead of time, at least doing questions this way means we won’t have people adding on and adding on and adding on to their comment was turns into an essay which turns into a life story, which turns into a documentary, which by the time it’s over, they’re the only ones left in the room talking. So hopefully this, this goes over well, and I’m looking forward to it again, it’s December 14th at 10:00 AM, 10:00 AM and noon. Wow. Two hours. Yeah. I was going to be allowed to talk about, uh, and that’s uh, uh, did WooCommerce already do their, uh don’t they do a state of Lu. Did they already do that earlier this year?
Speaker 3 00:45:07 You know, they didn’t, they, um, yeah,
Speaker 1 00:45:10 Yeah,
Speaker 3 00:45:13 Yeah. It was. And they decided they weren’t quite, as, I don’t know why they decided not to do it in a blue sash. I think they, you know, did a few presentations and kind of pulled back on that. And I’m not sure if they’re going to be pulling something together that I thought I heard murmurings of it earlier. And then I haven’t heard anything else since then. So, um, yeah, I’m not sure.
Speaker 1 00:45:36 I always enjoyed the state of the, we was kind of a, an overview of what’s going on and what they’re working on. I remember when they did the, uh, the state of the Wolf few years ago and they announced the, uh, the blue commerce admin UI experiment. It was like, so that’s been like three or four years now where, where they were experimenting with the backend and changing everything to react and JavaScript based. And it looked nice. I haven’t used it. Uh, have they actually implemented that UI and commerce? Have you noticed, or is this still experimental?
Speaker 3 00:46:04 They’ve been, they actually have it in there and they’re constantly, I mean, it’s part of it now, but it’s, I’m constantly, um, changing. Yeah. It’s like they, they’re doing updates on it all the time.
Speaker 1 00:46:17 So one of the things I wanted to talk about at the end of the show here, and this is, uh, just something that kind of candid, this is something I think about from time to time. Um, I, I read an article today. That’s pretty lengthy as by Paul Lacey. And he talks about his feelings of WordPress. What has gone on over the years and basically why he’s ending up having to take a break and step away from WordPress. It’s a very detailed, very well thought out essay, definitely worth your time to read. I will link linked to it in the show notes, but he also mentioned within the article, Morton ran Hendrickson. And that kind of brought me back to thinking about his activity. And I really enjoy following Morton Ren Hendrickson, who by the way, and Malcolm will enjoy this news. He is now officially a Canadian.
Speaker 3 00:47:09 I saw
Speaker 1 00:47:09 That you have just pretty cool. Congratulations, Morton and Morton to me is a highly intelligent individual who makes me think he always comes up with these thought provoking ways of perspectives that just, you know, get my imagination and my creativity flowing. And he was a big th th the articles and the things he saying back when Gutenberg was getting ready to be merged into WordPress on things to consider and, and what have you. They’re all very good things, but he hasn’t really been involved in the WordPress scene. I wanted to get his take on on four years later after he had published an article about the measures of success for Gutenberg. And he basically said, look, I’m not involved in the space anymore. So what I had to say does that matter. So I asked him, I said, well, why, why don’t you participate in the WordPress scene anymore?
Speaker 1 00:48:00 And he says, quote, I played my part. I did what I could and decided to move on to other things and quote, and that made me sad. I, I really enjoyed his, he had such a passion and he was big on accessibility. He had a lot of good ideas, but I think, I think him and so many other people like him and the WordPress scene that they’re, they’re so passionate and want to do what they can to contribute into further WordPress to make it go. But they just end up encountering roadblock after roadblock for whatever reason, this, that, and the other, whether it’s a meetings or people are getting buy-in or what have you. And I was just thinking, man, it would be so cool if somehow, during these periods of time of WordPress, WordPress is existence where a Morton shows up and they’re very passionate about these certain things.
Speaker 1 00:48:48 If just somehow there could be pathways to translate those, those passion projects, those passion things into, um, things that roll WordPress along that, uh, could be part, could create rapid improvement for the project, whether inside or outside or around coral, what have you. And I was thinking about, you know, churn, well, we ever reach a point of, of churn or, you know, the, the, there’s not enough people coming in to the WordPress community that are coming into the space because they’re just running into roadblock after roadblock. And they ended up just leaving a project because Hey, instead of wasting their time and their energy, they could be out contributing somewhere else or doing something that they can control that they can actually contribute to, or that they have a say or a purpose in, um, in, in, in talking about this, uh, it was also brought up that, well, this is probably a non-issue because if you need somebody or a group of people to get things moving along within a specific section of WordPress, automatic could just place people from their payroll and say, Hey, work here.
Speaker 1 00:49:55 And this is your five for the future contribution. Uh, and there’s already concerns about this going on. And some of the members, well, some of the members of the contributor teams where, you know, each, each one of these teams are, is vying for and working as hard as they can to recruit, to educate and to keep up with churn and just get people involved with their section of WordPress. And if they can’t get those people, uh, there are any not getting, uh, volunteers or contributors from automatic. Uh, and that’s not a bad thing per, uh, but obviously we’d like to see more of a, uh, a spread out distribution of contributions and who’s involved in these teams and whatnot. But anyways, I just wanted to throw that out there and maybe I’ll get your thoughts on that Malcolm about the churn of contributors and, you know, the w are we ever gonna see WordPress run out of free labor? And everything’s going to be sponsored by one company or another mainly probably automatic.
Speaker 2 00:50:52 I mean, thankfully because of plug-ins and because of themes, I don’t think that that’s ever going to be a huge issue. I think people will always be able to find a way to contribute in some meaningful way. Um, there are lots of drives for, you know, documentation and videos and training and all those things that are not necessarily programmer centric as well. So, um, I, when you brought this up, though, I immediately thought of like, you know, um, Michael Heilman, who was binary Bonzai slash the, the guy who like developed the Kubrick theme. He now works at Squarespace as a designer, right? So like, even though he’s not in the WordPress space anymore, he’s still focused on like helping CMSs be the best they can be. And eventually I think there will be a CMS that comes out, um, that knocks everyone’s socks off and people flock to it.
Speaker 2 00:51:37 And I mean, you know, just like, you know, moveable type before WordPress and all these other CMSs that existed before WordPress, there will be something that comes after WordPress that will draw people away. Um, but I think that it’ll, it’ll always have a place in the market. I mean, people still run movable type people still run Modex people still run like all of these Joomla for some reason. I don’t know why, but they do. So, um, I, you know, I think it will always continue to be around and do its thing. And, um, you know, I think that the hard part though, is, you know, these new people as they come in, they don’t, they don’t know, um, you know, the, the, the well-worn paths that have been kind of carved for them to be able to use this software and the people that did that hard work. Um, we lose that history so easily, even though the internet exists and all of this stuff is out there somewhere. Um, that information just kind of dies a little bit or fades away. And, uh, that’s always hard because, uh, you know, those people did do something amazing and, uh, you know, they should be remembered for the effort because it has built the careers of so many people. And now I’m just waxing poetic. But so,
Speaker 1 00:52:46 I mean, Bob, Bob has been, he said he was saving, saving up for me, and I want, I want him to unload.
Speaker 3 00:52:51 Um, you know, uh, this is a interesting thing for me because, um, you know, I was in the outside of WordPress for, you know, two to three decades doing freelancing and stuff like that. And then I got into WordPress. And when I first got into WordPress, I mean, I loved it. I loved the community. And I thought there was this impression. I got that. My God, you know, is this all puppy dogs and, you know, licorice or something? Is it almost like everybody was so sensitive to everything, you know, and what, um, you know, it was like a perfect little world and a lot of little things would come along and disrupt and the roadblocks up. And I came in looking at it as somebody from the outside and thinking, okay, this is community. Community is going to change. Software is going to change, especially if you run a community on top of software, I mean, it’s an evitable, no matter what, you know, I mean that, that’s a common sense.
Speaker 3 00:53:50 Uh, I, you know, I, it’s strange because I was this morning, I was thinking about it. I was thinking, you know, I think the community has versions of WordPress and I thought of three versions. I thought of, you know, WordPress community 1.0 was when it started. And then there was 2.0, that was around 2007 to 2010. And that’s when a lot of the people that you’re talking about came into the space and started businesses. I talked to a lot of people, um, that we’ve been around a while and we’re all saying, yeah, it was around that same time that we got into it. Now I think we’re at 3.0, where, you know, with the acquisitions, with all this stuff changing it’s yeah. It’s a dramatic change. And I think it’s it, you know, and, and it does come at a bit of a sacrifice to the community, especially for people that have hit those roadblocks and I, but on the other hand, as many times, and as many things I’ve been involved with over my life it’s, and, and I’ll take Paul, for example, what, um, the article that you were talking about Jeff is I am glad when I see people reach a point and, you know, whatever, and I sad to see them go and I hate to see the frustration they have, but I love it when they’re smart enough to make that shift instead of wallowing and, you know, continuing to be frustrated and complaining.
Speaker 3 00:55:23 Cause some people he basically said in there that he on the podcast that he was on, he was a buzzkill. Yeah. You know, and it was, yeah, it’s this moment that you realize that this no longer is for me. And it’s, you know, there could be reasons you, you know, whatever the reasons are you shift you. And I love that what he said about I, and I shouldn’t say lover, that’s kind of a strong word, but WordPress, as a tool, I remember when I was doing workshops back in 2009, 2010, those were my first WordPress workshops. And I’d go to, you know, all the I’d have these local workshops and everybody there, nobody there gave a whatever about the community. They were there because WordPress was a tool. They didn’t really care about getting involved with the community. Contributing WordPress was simply that, you know, they use it for their business and they wanted to learn it and they want to do, you know, gives as much help as they could.
Speaker 3 00:56:23 But that community part just didn’t play into it for them. And I think that’s the thing is, you know, sometimes we separate, I mean, they’re one in the same, I mean, essentially one can’t do without the other, but you know, there, there is this software, there’s this tool and there’s this community. And I was telling Jeff and I said it earlier and he actually said something on Twitter about it is that I think we just get stuck in this WordPress and bubble. And we feel that, you know, we get very intense over things and we get intense over the community and what’s happening. And we think the community’s defragmenting and it’s imploding and everything. But I talked to, I talked to people day after day that are just stepping into the WordPress space and all they say every time is, wow. You know, we, um, we’re used to doing it this way.
Speaker 3 00:57:16 This is how we do advertise shop products. And they say, but that community is so unique. I’ve learned that you’ve got to really build that trust in that community. I mean, the community is still incredibly strong and I don’t think it’s, we’re losing. I mean, we’re losing a lot of good people, but I I’m a very optimistic person. And I think that, and what you were saying, Malcolm, I feel li