Episode 225 Block Museum and WordPress 6.0

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Show Highlights

Rob Cairns sits down with Anne McCarthy of Automattic to talk about her Block Museum project and the road to WordPress 6.0 .

Show Highlights:

1. What is the block Museum?
2. How did the block Museum come about?
3. The road to WordPress 6.0
4. Features coming in WordPress 6.0
5. The amazing WordPress community.

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Show Notes

Hey everybody, Rob Cairns here.

They’ve got a special guest with me.

I have Anne McCarthy of Automattic..

How are you today and?

Hey thanks so much for having me.

I’m doing great and excited to be here.

Yeah, it’s such a pleasure to have you.

I was saying to you before the pre-show and I you know, Nathan Wrigley was kind of saying you’ve kind of been everywherey and there’s a little bit of truth to that.

You’ve been a busy lady the last six months.

Oh yeah, no.

There’s a lot going on.

I just feel like very lucky to be able to talk with so many different people and get invited to so many different things to talk about what’s happening.

’cause I know so many people in WordPress community care, so much so it’s just really an honor.

He isn’t.

To be able to talk about the cutting edge things that are coming.

Yeah, it’s you know it’s funny because we.

An amazing community and I say that quite a bit when I talk to people.

And people say what?

Makes working in WordPress different and I always come back to the community.

Same I I could not agree more.

Even this this week I’ve had multiple different people in multiple different ways really step up.

With running the release party with helping put together a social learning space for the full setting outreach program, the Block Museum, which we’ll talk about like there’s so many different examples, I have just the community repeatedly showing up.

And a really tough time for the world which.

Is very cool.

Yeah, it’s interesting, and as you know I I Co run a Co, manage a LinkedIn group with Courtney Robertson and you know even the people in that group are stepping up and it’s just.

Right?

It’s just an amazing place to be.

So I think we’re all grateful for that so.

Yeah, I definitely pinch myself most days.

Yeah, so I I haven’t.

Asked you a question I like to ask a lot of people, especially people at automatic.

Uhm, how did you get into WordPress and kind of.

What’s your origin story?

I love this question.

I was actually messaging with the guy who was responsible for all of it.

His name is Jeff.

I was a student at UNC Chapel Hill. I was my freshman year. I needed a work study job because school is expensive in the US.

And then there was a job that came through for an instructional technologist position, and it was basically, you know, helping write documentation, helping teach professors how to use professors and students, how to use this tool called word press, and I was a psychology major.

I had no experience, but I had been using Blogger for about.

Probably six or seven years.

At that point, a friend of mine and I set up private Blogger accounts so that we could talk to each.

Other yeah.

And so I was familiar with blogging I.

You know, light.

Understanding of HTML and I applied for this job.

I met up with this guy named Jeff.

It was only like maybe the three times I ever met with him and he hired me.

And he basically took a huge chance on me because he should have hired.

Probably someone in the computer science department and.

And he taught.

Me everything and I kind of grew from that job.

To leading a team of students to working directly for the university and their web services department, and then eventually found out that even see was a VIP client of automatic, and so a group.

Of my coworkers.

Went on a VIP meet up and they’re like automatic is so cool.

You know you should apply there.

You should work there and.

They were so supportive despite wanting me to stay at the university.

Uhm, my manager actually said he’s like I really want you to stay, but also this seems.

Like really unique chance for you to spread your wings and they supported me through my trial.

That’s how I landed it.

Automatic was basically the combination of that team going on a VIP meet up and having a blast, and then someone gave me the book a year without pants because I was working remotely and as a student, which was very unusual and so she was like you work remotely.

You might like this book and so.

It’s kind of.

A weird convergence where it was like all signs reporting to.

WordPress and the open source space and I never look back.

Yeah, I I.

What I would say is we’re really lucky as a community to have.

Yep it automatic because you’re you’re always in tune with what the community is doing.

You care about what the community is doing and and frankly, I, I think you’re really approachable and you know people will post stuff or ask you questions and you’ve always got time.

For people, so I think the community.

Is OK to have, yeah.

Thank you, that’s very kind of you to say and to me.

I’m just paying it forward, like my origin story is someone teaching me so to me it’s just all from there on.

I feel like I’m still catching up on how much other people have taught me, so I I appreciate that.

Have you ever thought that we’d get to 43% in the Internet like kissing and info?

No, what’s funny is I have a memory of two weeks into automatic. I was at Word Camp, San Francisco in 2014.

And I remember we were at like 23% I think.

And I brought up.

I was like we should market WordPress ’cause I.

I mean, I was 21 at the time and so none of my friends really knew what WordPress was.

It wasn’t big on the scene I was living in San Francisco and I’d say I work for automatic.

No one knew automatic.

No one.

You know, some people knew WordPress, some people didn’t and I remember.

Thinking at the time I was like if we want open source to to, you know when and be the default pathway, we need to start doing some sort of marketing or rather than just relying on word of mouth.

And there was zero interest at the time it’s.

Kind of like yeah yeah yeah.

Whatever, like we’re not, we’re.

Probably not going to do that.

So in my mind, I thought we.

Would slowly grow, but 43 percent is is really, really wild. I feel like it’s almost like I wasn’t paying attention to the numbers and then all of a sudden sprouted up. And then as I’ve been more involved directly in.

A role that’s.

Facing the community and involved with the community rather than internal to automatic, the.

Last couple years.

The responsibility of that and the weight of that is, is.

Very serious, I’ve been reading more books around ethics and technology and and you know how do we move ethically and sustainably forward when you are influencing that much of the Internet?

It’s it’s very.

It keeps me up at night.

Let’s put it that way.

I think it keeps a lot of us up, but I think.

You know, it’s interesting because I was having a conversation with somebody who does websites yesterday and he said to me, good friend who’s a trainer.

He trains WordPress and said this company wants the site done in Shopify and I said to him.

I said why?

Oh well, it starts cheap and I said really so have you bothered?

Has anybody looked into by the time you throw all the add in some ways it’s gonna cost you you.

You’re either gonna pay monthly.

You’re gonna pay upfront and I said to him, why aren’t you looking at woo commerce and outright?

And I said, why aren’t you looking at a host like a GoDaddy or?

A new fold that’s got managed hosting where they build plugins into the hosting and and we’re now starting to see some of that, and he said I never thought of it that way and I said, well, that’s what I’d be doing because the beauty the open source world is.

You can change the code.

You can do stuff.

You have control over where you put it.

You have control over your backups.

Uhm, you have control over a lot of things, and if you go to one of these closed platforms, you’re kind of pigeon did.

Yeah, and I think people don’t.

I describe it to friends as.

Uhm, what if your Instagram account was shut down?

You know, like I have friends who think, oh, I just need an Instagram.

I just need Tik T.O.K, right?

And I’m like, OK, but what happens if all of a sudden you’re violating the terms of service for whatever?

Reason or they just decide to shut you down.

Uhm, you know you have to think about the the long term longevity of the platform and like what can actually grow with you and where you actually can have control.

And it’s something that you know.

I think this ties into people becoming a bit more savvy around privacy and to me.

The more I.

Talk to friends.

I mean give me like 5 minutes.

With someone it’s like.

And you explain it to them and all of a sudden something clicks and I still think that’s a huge challenge that we have is explaining why open source.

It’s a better way, even if it might be, and this is something that I I think is really funny, is you?

You’re not going to have necessarily those magic moments where you know you’re walking up to the airport and your phone pulls up on your wallet be boarding ticket.

You know, like ’cause?

We’re not tracking you in that way, and that’s one of the things I try and explain.

This was like those creepy moments we’re like, is my phone listening to me?

Which it doesn’t need to, because that’s how good our tracking is.

You know, that’s not going to happen with WordPress, and that’s actually can be seen as a benefit and.

It might be.

A little bit harder in some ways right now, and I think a lot of us are working very.

Very hard to ensure it gets easier and easier so that you know open source becomes the easier way than even.

Proprietary private software is, but we do need to kind of explain that I think to folks because we are getting an undated with these what I’ll call you know magical sneaky moments with tech and I’m curious what like the open source.

Version of that looks like too.

Yeah, it’s it’s so true.

Like the UM, there’s a lot of.

Tech going on problems with privacy.

Right now we’ve got issues on Facebook.

People are getting more ticked off with the platform, me included.

By the way, I’ve had an ongoing issue where I can’t post anything from my agency domain on Facebook for two years.

Oh my gosh.

I haven’t done anything so.

You know, and you know, Instagram for me.

Is a bit of a.

A cesspool, to say the least, so I just avoid it like the plague and.

Yeah, you know, we’ve all got those concerns and then you throw in laws like laws in California laws in Canada, which are pretty stringent GDPR.

In Europe it it’s it’s a tough place to be right now to be honest.

With him, yeah.

No, it really is and I I think there might be a return towards.

I don’t know like between like sub stack and what’s going on with sub stack and different newsletter platforms.

That’s like another area that I’d love to see word press continue to to champion.

But yeah, it’s.

It’s a very tough time to figure out where to where to host your stuff, how to find others.

I think that’s the magical piece that a lot.

Of these social media accounts.

Of is the amplification and connection with others where?

Uhm, you.

Spinning up your own site, it’s a bit harder to start building your audience without those social media platforms, so it’s like what can we do?

Without them I I don’t know, it’s a very it’s.

A very interesting problem to.

Kind of resolve, but.

It it it is.

And and you mentioned spinning up your own site.

That’s the cool thing with WordPress.

It used to be and you and I bill.

It’s been long enough around long enough where you actually had to do the famous 5 minute install and and just kind of spin up, you know, move the files around and do all of that and now.

Most websites in C panel you go to and you push a button and there’s your install and you’re done.

Is it?

That’s pretty empowering when you think about it.

100%. It’s funny though. ’cause if I’m with a friend who doesn’t know anything about websites, it’s the most intimidating thing in the world.

It’s like it’s almost like we need to have like a party celebration animation that happens when you do that.

So it like lightens.

The experience ’cause I I do think people were just getting more and more spoiled with other types of tech.

Uhm, providing these slick things that you know, spinning up a WordPress site to me is still magical, but.

You know, especially compared to the five min install, but compared to other platform.

There’s a lot there.

I also think, quite frankly, the other part that I’m very.

Excited about in the future is engagement.

Isn’t everything like if I had five friends who really just like read my blog and super engaged with it, I’d be thrilled.

And if they had their own blogs and I could read their stuff like that’s what I want, I want in depth connection.

I’m not, you know, engagement at all costs or amplification at all costs.

And I think we might see it return to that where it’s.

You know, I remember for a while.

On Facebook it was so cool.

If you had, you know over 1000 friends.

And it’s like we.

I don’t even.

Know that many people like.

I like so I deactivate my Facebook account.

It’s permanently deactivated basically and from time to time I’ll log back in just to check like friends birthdays or you know, just help people.

I still respond to on their pull photos.

And every time I log in, I’m like who are these people?

It’s like I played soccer growing up, and I probably played with that person in a tournament at some point.

Or like met them at a hotel, but like I don’t recognize most of the people on there and it’s such a strange time capsule of of my life and like a way of approaching the Internet and it’s just frozen in time so.

I just I just shake my head every time I log back.

In I’m like wow, that was a weird time.

On the Internet.

So true, and I think you know Twitters a lot the same way. I mean, I I was looking at Twitter numbers just for fun this morning and I’m sitting around, oh, about 17,000 followers. And I was thinking and how many of these people do I really?

Talk to like yeah, yeah.

And and there’s probably a core 20 regularly and then a core 50 or 60 on top of that you you know where that conversation goes and it’s just yeah.

And I don’t know about you, but I also I’ve been around a long now if I remember days released to dial in the services like CompuServe and Genie and stuff like that.

I don’t.

I wasn’t around for that, that’s interesting.

No, no back it back in the days before the Internet, so been there done that too so.

What is tell me more about that?

And kinda understand that a little bit.

Uhm, let’s jump into the wonder things on talk about was you created a community block Art Museum?

How did that come about him?

Why did you create?

Oh man, so I love a side project.

I just I like to do different things.

I like to push the edges of things, it’s just how my brain is set up and and so you know there’s a bunch of design tools that were coming too.

The WordPress experience I was, you know, getting lots of feedback around them and I I spearhead the full setting outreach program which is all about getting feedback about full setting features and we were on a whole I hang out which is just a fun.

You know when the pandemic started.

It’s like how do we keep connecting with folks in a cab.

Federal Way, specifically, contributors to the WordPress space or even end users like never really wants to join, and so I was running one of those about something totally random.

And Tammie Lister, who I worked with at automatic and now is an excerpt.

Fantastic designer and Fantastic Human she was on and she was showing off some.

Patterns she made.

She was doing like a 30 minute challenge every day for a month.

She just created a different pattern and saw what she could do, and some of them.

I mean, I was so inspired by what she was doing and I just kind of was like Tammy.

This is art like you are making art like.

These are not patterns.

This is art and something.

Clicked where as these design tools were coming up and.

And you know, just like things like duotone or having control of even simple things like borders and padding and and being able to layer group blocks in each other like there were just so many options that were.

Coming up.

It was like, I wonder if we could create an Art Museum like Tammy is doing it, but Tammy is very cutting edge.

She’s very creative so.

I was like I don’t know how feasible it’ll be.

For everyone to do.

Maybe, maybe there’s a chance, and so I just kind of wrote the idea down as like block Art Museum and I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

I love I love museums too.

That was one of the biggest things.

It’s one of the biggest things I miss right now with the state of the world is just being able to go and browse art.

And you know, walk away where you see it and you want to make your own.

And I kind of.

Started messaging people throughout the community.

Just being like hey if I did.

This would you submit anything so people.

Like rich table or or Brian Gardner, Joe Simpson.

I reached out to like there’s just a lot of folks in the community where I was like.

You know, if you if I did.

This would you come along some folks.

Were slammed, you know 5.9 was coming out.

People were really gearing up and this was October of last year, so part of it is like probably.

Less than half the people I reached out to actually contributed because of how you know. There’s just so much new coming to WordPress and so originally I wanted it to launch with 5.9 because a lot of the tooling was coming.

Then, but they’re just people kept being like I want to contribute, but I need more time, so I kind of pump the brakes on it and launched it in early March.

And it’s just meant to be a a.

You know you can see a word like there’s a whole I don’t know.

I think if it’s a joke I’ve heard.

This log it’s like you can see a WordPress site a mile away whenever you.

Or deep in WordPress.

It’s one of my favorite like party tricks with friends like I legit people at a party that in the past have been like an WordPress site or not and how schools they won’t be able to tell.

Pretty quick.

And I wanted people to look.

At this art.

And not believe it was made with the block editor.

I wanted them to be.

Surprised by it and inspired by it.

And also I wanted them to kind of open up their own editor and see what they could make like.

That was the whole intent was hey, these new tools are coming and like this is the extreme edge of what you can do with them.

And then all sorts of ideas around.

What if we printed the art out and had physical?

You know what if?

I made like a swag.

Store people could order postcards and like I don’t know, it was kind of a or put up posters on like you know word camp US or word camp Europe of some.

Of the art there.

There’s a lot of ideas I have spinning there or like maybe each word press release like with 6.0. Maybe we’ll do another series of pieces of art with some of the tooling that’s coming out.

There, but he’s just a side project, so I think it’s I.

I didn’t expect it quite honestly to get as much fanfare as it did I.

I think it landed quite well at the community and people got it and and I hope it was kind of just like a gift back to the community during a time where it’s really hard to find inspiration and to.

I don’t know just to have something beautiful.

I think there’s something really wonderful about beauty and people coming together and it that truly is what what made me so excited about the project was those two things I could talk about this for forever.

Yeah, did.

As you can tell.

Again down, yeah some some of the art is just like amazing inspirational and that’s how you get inspiration.

You look at what other people done like one of my favorite pieces is the Mario Block.

In the middle of it, unless I.

Yes, yeah. Nick nanze.

Yeah, I love.

I’m an old time Mario fan.

Video game fan back to the days of Donkey Kong, where he first appeared, so I loved that piece, yeah?

I think you’ve done really.

So create it too.

Are you done a really good job now?

Are you gonna be taking submissions or have you decided where you’re where you’re moving forward with this?

Yeah, so right now I basically check.

Social media for people using the WP Block art hashtag and then I contact people or I try to contact them.

I’m not on Twitter so sometimes I have to go do some roundabout ways of trying to track people down, but I just reach out and say hey I noticed you made some block art I’d.

Love to have you.

Contribute on this site.

There’s three different people right now.

Who are.

I’m like lightly in the process of getting them to add.

Some some art to the site, but of course they’re also doing it on the side, but I actually I’m thinking about just spinning up a submission form that could be very simple.

Could basically just be a contact form where I then just.

Kind of go back and forth.

With the you know making sure they have the requirements in place.

Because I do think it would be neat and pretty low effort.

Since WordPress is so easy to use.

To just, you know, add content to the site and add new art to the site.

There is a sense of like do we need someone curating this?

You know, like and.

I don’t have time to bring together a team around this like this truly is, you know, a side project and I’d rather community resources.

Go to curating the pattern directory for example or the WordPress folder directory.

Uhm, but yeah, we’ll see I there’s a couple that were added after it launched, so that was kind of cool, so stay tuned there.

I’m I’m toying with the idea.

I I really appreciate you doing it and it’s it’s great for the community and it’s it’s such a pleasure to look at so.

Thanks for taking that on.

Right, thank you.

Yeah, yeah, so we’re headed to six. Oh, which is gonna be a major release. We just had a a sub release of 593.

Which, interesting enough was more a bug fix released? It wasn’t. I don’t believe there was any security in 593 for a change.

Which is a good thing.

First question is, do you think we’re going to see another 594 release before 60 comes? And are we on schedule for six oh?

Great Questions 594 is not planned as of now, so I think that was brought up a week ago in a core meeting and from what I remember it basically was like 0 plans for 5/9.

Four, of course, if things come up, that might happen, but right now it’s not in the works and we are on track for 6.0, so I am one of the Co release.

Orders, so that’s another thing that keeps me up at night. Is making sure 6.0 is on time with my.

Co release coordinator Hector we talk basically every day, checking in and making sure things are moving and things look great.

Right now I I don’t anticipate any delays. I know 5.9 that was a big decision to delay.

I do not think that’s going to happen.

I think the features that are coming rather than being new and potentially disruptive.

They are new, but they’re not brand new. It’s more building on the foundation that 5.9 set up.

So I think in many ways it’s more bells and whistles.

It’s improvements to the writing flow, it’s improvements to tools like listview.

It should be a really nice, easier release to adapt to and more more goodies rather than.

Oh my gosh what?

Is coming.

I think 5.

.9 was the.

You know you have to get ready and get prepared. I think 6.0 will be kind of.

Like a pleasant smile for people, hopefully.

I’m not.

I’m actually really excited.

It’s such a fun time.

Time to be in WordPress with all these changes.

Now there’s a lot of people that are still in the we don’t like FC we don’t like.

Uhm, we don’t like blocks and you and I were chatting before.

As you know, I’ve moved my whole site from the page builder to blocks.

I am out of the page builder ecosystem even for clients amount right now so.

And it was some interesting enough.

I did a poll in the LinkedIn group Ichor Ichor I comanage sorry, and one of the things around FC was people wanted to learn more about FC, so I don’t think the community.

Is as against FC or full site editing this or that?

People think.

I just think the people that are against false identity and they’re very vocal.

I think that’s true, and I I also here’s one of the things.

That gets me is it’s like.

I am not.

I think so many people expect me to get upset or defensive when someone is not prophecy.

And I’m like, yeah no, that’s fine.

It’s not gonna make sense for people, right?

Now, like it’s not.

Gonna make sense for everyone like eventually in time it might, but you might be waiting for a certain feature.

Like 6.0 is going to have block locking in in the editing interface, so you can actually lock. You know, say don’t move this block. Don’t edit this block then remove access from the.

But you know what?

It’s not tide to user roles, so you can’t necessarily control that from the interface.

So say only admins can do locking it.

You have to do it programmatically, so maybe that’s like you’re waiting for, right? Like I think even like responsiveness, that was a big thing that was originally saved for 6.0 is to add in more intrusive web design principles and add in.

More responsive controls and that didn’t happen as much.

As we wanted.

And so some people might be waiting for those things, and to me I’m I’m like, yeah, that makes sense.

And also please tell us what you’re waiting for.

What will make full siding useful for you, because that’s where we need to know.

And that’s where we need to go.

And so it’s.

Like and I’d love to talk.

I love talking to people.

There was someone recina community who I saw like a nice long Twitter thread just ripping apart FC and I was like this is exactly like this is gold to me when.

People share like that.

Uhm, I see it as criticizing because they care and because they want to use it.

And the fact that someone takes the time to, you know, we have so many things that we could be doing otherwise.

It takes a time to to.

Go explore and then report back and say here all the things they’re suffering from using it.

I wish more people did that because that is ultimately the best thing the Community can do right now.

Is say, you know, I’m really waiting on this feature and making sure it’s, uh, logged in GitHub.

Making sure there are very specific use cases that the folks building these features can think about.

All of that goes such a long way to keeping the WordPress community vital and relevant because you know, we’re talking more like 43%.

The Internet like that is a huge burden and the only way we continue to meet all those needs is if we continue to.

Pathways for people to feel hurt.

Burden, you know.

Whatever I can do, I’m at Enzo Amore for crossover slack.

I’ve a site Nomad dot blog, like a contact form.

They’re like, please, like, I want to hear from folks and make sure there are pathways being created because we do need everyone’s help to kind of get where we need to go, but it’s not going to, you know, for some people it it’s easy. Makes perfect sense.

There’s a person on wordpress.com actually who found my YouTube videos and contacted me and is using full siding on wordpress.com.

And he absolutely.

Loves it like he’ll just send me messages from time to time talking about like look at this cool thing I did.

I made a new template and I did this and this is so cool and.

You know, and then other people are like I don’t think I’ll ever use this and it’s and it’s, you know, there’s a huge spectrum of needs in the WordPress space, and the task is to accommodate.

All of them.

Yeah, and one of the things.

Them so it’s so is it.

One of the things she said was please open a ticket and and I I gotta, I gotta bring this up because.

You know, I I I sit with a number of developer advocates so I have a a weekly conversation with Courtney Robertson and we talk about that quite a bit.

Can we just get people to open tickets?

I’ve had this conversation with.

Both Brian Gardner Nick Diego over at WP engine.

They say the same thing Nick.

He’s gonna hate me, he’s gone so far as to say if somebody doesn’t know how to open the ticket, contact him so you know that that’s on that’s on you my friend.

Yeah, I would say this name.

And you’ve basically just said the same thing, and I know Burger Poly Hack has said the same thing.

So like guys, if you’re having problems out there, open a ticket please.

And if you don’t know how reach out to one of these people, don’t help you like you know, like let’s just help each other, because if we don’t get these problems logged in these.

Yeah, yeah.

Concerns logged, we don’t move forward.

Yeah, and I think, especially without meetups where we’re not able to meet in person, there’s a huge amount of insight that’s lost that I part of doing the hallway Hangouts and part of trying to be so approachable and and, you know, trying to do these YouTube videos.

It’s because I recognize that we don’t have that time where we can just like.

Chit chat in the hallway you know, and when you find and you hear about these use cases like I I remember going to word camps and my phone would be filled with notes like as people were talking to me I’d say like hey can I take notes of what you’re talking about so I can make sure to follow up ’cause I my brain cannot remember.

Everything and the amount of just rich insights and feedback that I feel like we got it.

Work camps I’m.

I’m keen to get back and to find ways to continue so I know it might feel like we’re so disconnected.

Or maybe you’ve never talked to me and to be.

Weird to ping me like.

It’s not weird.

Please sing me up.

I think I.

I know Nick is the same way in Brian.

So maybe it’s the same way we all very much want to help, and we also get it.

We all were, you know, outsiders of the WordPress committee at some point and had to make our way in.

And now we have the the honor to to help others find their way in and to give feedback.

And I think one of the things I hear from folks a lot is.

Uhm, Oh well, I figured this was already found or I figured this was obvious and sometimes it’s not.

There was a bug.

Just a couple weeks ago that someone almost didn’t report like he straight up told me he’s like I almost didn’t report this, ’cause I figured this was this was either an intentional or was known and and if he hadn’t reported it, it would be a pretty gnarly.

Dog, and luckily it’s already fixed, but it’s one of those things where.

It all it.

All helps for people to speak up.

And define things so. And while we’re talking about this, I do want to encourage people to help test 6.0 since beta one is.

Out so if you are someone respectful reporting things and this doesn’t speak to you, I also encourage you to use that superpower of comfort to help text text test 6.0 early because we need it and there’s a lot of cool things coming.

I actually have beta one running on a dev site.

That’s an exact copy of my production site right now, so.

I love it.

And that’s the way I test and.

You know, I’m just there’s no point in testing with what I consider test code.

I don’t think you see all the scenarios.

And, uh, I’m going to see some interesting stuff because in my ecosystem I’m also all in with Cadence and Cadence walks.

So that’s my theme of choice, so I’m gonna know pretty quick if I start breaking stuff and and and it, it seems pretty stable, but I’m not finished looking through it, but that’s how you learn.

And that’s and then when we get to the release candidate stages.

I suspect they’ll probably, and you probably don’t know.

They’ll probably be 3 or 4 betas I would think, and then we’ll go to three or four release candidates, and then we’ll go to a release party.

And for those who don’t know, the release party is what goes on on site today.

The release comes out, and if you’ve never watched.

Even if you don’t want to say a word, I suggest you get their room, watch one on release date, ’cause they’re quite interesting to say the least.

Yeah, I find it to be really fun.

I’ve thought about.

Recording myself.

Talking through a release party, I just did my very first one for the beta one.

Yesterday I was like.

I feel like demystifying this song would be kind of cool, even if it’s just almost like documentation because I had no idea how this was done and I had to have Antonia who was the release coordinator for 5.9 was very kind to.

Help train up myself and Hector.

It’s very, it’s just it’s magical.

Like it was actually.

It is.

I actually had a lot of fun.

I was very nervous, but yeah, there’s something at the very beginning of the release party.

I asked folks to.

If you know if your game react to this message with like the flag where where you’re you’re coming from, your your, you know, typing in from and it was so neat to see people from all over the world who were.

They’re in present to help test and to celebrate.

You know these different milestones, so it’s it’s very special.

Yeah, I know when 5.9 came out I was in a Roy’s party and testing upgrades and packages and and that’s that’s really important because people say, well, that should have all been done. And I’ve seen slips.

In software packages on go live date, I’ve seen this happen and that’s what we’re trying to avoid is.

Right?

Let’s not put a package out that’s going to cause our user base incredible amounts of frustration.

It’s just not worth it.

You know?

So that’s that dumb moving forward.

Is there a feature at six?

Oh that you’re really excited about it.

Like it really stands out and kind.

Of what’s that?

Oh man, I mean I will say what?

What feature I’m most looking forward to but it’s it’s gonna sound minor compared to what’s actually coming.

One of the features that I.

And I know Justin Tadlock on Davie Tavern is also stoked about this.

You can use.

You can basically use a cover block and set it to use your featured image of a post.

So if you’re creating a template, and let’s say you have a template for, you know the single.

Post view.

Which you can do with full siding.

All of this is done with block themes and full siding.

You can basically add a cover block and say OK cover block please.

Use my featured image and then you can you know put inside the cover block your post title.

So you can.

Have your post title on the backdrop of your featured image and then you could even add you know a duotone filter.

To the featured image or you can change the dimensions of the featured image however you want, and I so I’m using a block theme right now on my personal site and I have been waiting for this feature and it just allows you to do some cool layouts and to take advantage of the card block, but for whatever reason that one is just really.

Singing to me right now.

I’m very excited about it.

Oh man, there’s so many different ones, but I think the top one that I think will really unlock some cool stuff has to be the style.

Switching and having style variations, it really kind of steps us forward and to kind of take.

A step back though.

The style system is basically a part of full citing a big powerful setting.

That unifies the different.

Uhm, you know if you have core styles that set certain colors and and what have you then you have theme styles and you have user set styles.

It kind of unifies and controls and manages all of those for you and also allows you to tweak things so with.

Full siding you can.

Use the styles interface to change things like the background color, the link color set up, the block of the button block, exactly how you want, including any individual block.

You can set up exactly as you want and it impacts everything across the site, so it’s really a neat, powerful feature, and what these style variations in style switching does is allows you to use.

Ummh style variations and presets given to you by the theme author that they have packaged to make look really good with the theme and with the patterns that they have.

To just easily switch between them so you can have as many as you’d like.

Let’s say there’s three or four.

You can switch between the different ones and will impact your whole site.

So you can basically have you know.

As many different theme options as you want within one theme and there’s a protein from Anna in the community, I think it’s the block C premium block theme that’s that’s pitched that way, using style variations and and rich Tabor also has a theme that uses style variations and I expect to see this more and more, but it basically just unlocks creative potential.

Very rapidly so, rather than having to tweak things and you know, customize the block thing to your liking, you can just switch through very different looking fields of your site very easily, and it also sets the groundwork for things like a randomizer.

So let’s say you have celebrations given to you by.

A block theme author that you can switch between, but then let’s say also you just want to see what it would look like to use some random different colors that are intelligently given.

So like we know that these color palettes are good together and you can just switch through them.

And then when you combine that with the Web fonts API to allow you to have different font faces load, it becomes pretty magical.

It is.

And I’m really excited about it because.

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I’m like, ah, I’m over this.

I want to switch up my my website, but I don’t.

Want to spend a ton of time on it?

This would be a super easy way to do that.

Uhm, to just completely switch things on the fly without needing to switch themes without needing to dig into any code or any CSS and it’ll update everywhere pretty quickly.

So I’m I’m super excited about that feature.

I think it’s a big key one, especially for those who are using full siding, but there’s a ton of stuff for those who are not as well.

I know the.

Multi select acrossed.

Basically if you can select text across blocks, that’s a huge feature that’s been worked on.

That impacts the whole writing experience rather than like you’re trying to drag your cursor and select text across multiple blocks rather than it just selecting all of them, you can actually pinpoint exactly what you want it to select.

Cut Copy, paste, delete, whatever you want to do.

Which is super exciting and actually strangely hard to do programmatically, so that’s also coming to 6.0, so there’s some little things there to talk about, but also some big features.

It’s funny you look at the features.

One of the things I’m looking forward to, and you’ve already touched on is block clocking.

I want that yesterday.

Yes, yeah.

And and I think where that’s gonna extend in a future release is to use the rules.

I really think it will, so that’s one of the features I like.

The other thing that I’m really excited about, which isn’t so much in release, but something that automatics been working on, is the pattern directory.

I am, I think.

So what?

People do not understand the power of block patterns.

I’ve used them on my sites.

I’ve used them.

I have a link tree type site that I built with Frost which is Brian Gardner seem that WP engine owns and he’s given you the pandaren.

No frost, it’s great, yeah?

The pattern to build a link tree and by the way, thanks Brian for the content upgrade idea for clients, it’s wonderful.

I’ve actually content upgraded a couple of clients and so why are you paying linktree X dollars a month?

I can build it for you for X dollars and be done with.

And and Brian, actually, in Frost giving you the pattern to do only tree type site.

You don’t have to do anything.

You drop the pattern you, you change the icons, you’re done and.

And that’s the power of patterns like and.

One of the things that I use all the time is reusable blocks.

On on my site I’ve got a podcast share, subscribe to buttons, and I’ve used that as a reusable block on all my posts because it just.

You you should since you like block locking you should check it out because for 6.0 test this sometime this week there for six point.

Oh, they’re actually adding block locking 2 reusable blocks as an example of of actually applying that principle because one of the big pieces of feedback I think was started with 5.7 WordPress 5.7, where it changed.

Some of the flow for usable blocks.

People were accidentally editing series will block directly rather than converting blocks and then editing it.

Right?

Great, that’s great.

So now there’s.

Some new functionality there.

Yeah, Oh yeah, I think a lot of people started to and this this is where block locking can be applied within the system itself, which is really cool and and I I totally patterns you’re so right to call that out.

And with this release.

People will see.

Patterns integrated in more places.

So right when you need it, you’ll see it.

So let’s say you’re creating a new template and you’re at the root level.

Of the template.

When you use the quick inserter, it’ll prioritize patterns so that it’ll be easier.

If you’re gonna find example about you, sometimes I’m building a new site and I forget.

Patterns exist, and it’s like.

Oh my gosh, I should be using.

Patterns this whole time.

And that’s one of the things that we’re trying to solve for is to.

Actually, you know, especially take advantage of the ease that patterns allow you.

Don’t worry about layout or getting a container block right or anything like that.

You can have beautiful designs very quickly and so I I definitely expect patterns to continue to play a huge role going forward and the pattern directory.

Is open for sufficient, so if you create something that you really like, you want to share it with the community.

You can actually add it to the.

Pattern directory, which is very very excite.

Yeah, and the.

Other thing I think we’re gonna see coming down the road is some more connection between the media library and open verse and in terms of photos, I think that’s coming.

I think it’s really important and and if you got photos you want to share like.

OK.

Like please share them with the community.

I think it’s really important.

I’ve got something I I need to get around to this weekend or next weekend actually submitting, so I’ve got a few.

I’m gonna submit and I would encourage anybody else to get involved in that project as well because.

Has there been any discussion and and the media I have to come back to the media library?

It seems to be maybe I’m wrong, but it seems to be the most neglected part of the whole WordPress ecosystem in my opinion.

Is there any interest?

I I would probably.

Probably agree with you.

There’s been a lot of.

Discussion around it.

I actually with the outreach program, ran UM.

We have calls for testing and then we have what I call like.

Explorations, so it’s very UM.

Less practical in terms of like this is a feature actively in development and more future thinking, so more long term like let’s go explore this, pave a pathway for those who are eventually going to go build something around this.

Let’s go explore it early.

It’s the reason I say that is because it was around actually open verse and just I called it.

Like all things media.

So everything from.

You know, open verse to where do you go get?

Photos how do you do?

What’s the word?

Uh, what’s that when you have?

To I can’t think of the word where you’re saying this is who did the photo like you’re giving credit camera the name for the exact technology through that?

But attribute there we go.

This is my pandemic brain.

Yeah attribution.

So it’s like how do you properly show attributions?

How do you actually want to organize?

Your photos, you know.

How do you want to see up reverse photos from there?

And what was one of the biggest things?

Was the media library just in general?

How do we improve?

You know, searching?

How do we have folders?

Just how do we intelligently show things from open verse?

How do we encourage good accessibility practices with the content that you have?

There’s a ton of stuff there and I I’m very excited that in my mind I think open verse can be a vehicle for re examining on the media library and kind of reimagining some.

Aspects of it.

Since it does provide so much free content for folks to to use.

And maybe it.

Will get people excited about the media library.

I think part of the problem is.

Truthfully, I don’t think the media library in an open source open source world is a sexy project per say.

It’s and.

Right?

And I, I think if we add something like open verse to it then people get excited about it.

I think that’s part of the big issue there personally.

Yeah, I also think patterns will help with this so you know having things where it’s easy to switch out media I I think all these things kind of work together, but you’re right, there is like a baseline.

Foundational element of the actual media library experience that I definitely think needs to be improved and that we’re as we talked about earlier with different platforms.

You know we’re used to being on Facebook or Google Drive or wherever, where it’s much easier to manage media.

Yeah, so true.

Have to throw this one out there ’cause I got it in a discussion yesterday and somebody said to me why would they do a website in WordPress?

Because there’s always plugin vulnerabilities and I spend a lot at a time in my business in that space.

Updating sites for clients that.

Uhm, they don’t want to do the the back end work themselves.

Some of them probably haven’t logged into our website in two years.

You know that problem and how would you answer that criticism and?

I would say one of the things.

That I think.

Is I actually talked to a friend?

About this recently and I’m.

Going to gear off and I promise I’ll bring it back.

Imagine you’re trying to find a restaurant, you’re.

In a city you know pretty well how to like.

Look at reviews, how to look on Google Maps and be like.

Uh, this this place is 2 star reviews or I don’t know.

It looks like it might.

Be shut down.

It might be closed or or.

I can’t even find them on Google or I can’t even find any reviews for them.

We all have built within us at this point some level of literacy in terms of looking at reviews, systems and understanding some some good best practices.

Around things that we might purchase or go experi.

Food wise or even you know, going to a concert you know, like there’s so many different things that we can use when if you apply the same knowledge to adding a plugin.

So looking at when it was last updated looking at how many reviews it has looking at the scale, you know how many sites is it used on looking at who it’s done by and seeing if you use.

Another plugin by them, there’s kind of some basics that once you get the hang.

Of it, it’s pretty easy to make good decisions and to actually.

You know, not install something that might be a vulnerability to your site, and I also of course encourage having backups and having security scanning when you need it.

But I also will say just for folks in German, like why would I create a WordPress site?

I think this is where there’s the trade off of.

You can see every line of code and with many eyes there are shallow bugs and quick fixes and and.

I think that that’s in my mind.

I would much rather deal with the potential security vulnerability than, UM.

Be shut down forever like it’s fixable.

Let’s put it that way.

It’s a.

Fixable problem, whereas on other platforms it’s not.

It’s not always fixable.

Like I I just was talking to a friend of mine Dad this past weekend and he his Facebook account got hacked and they are so difficult to get anything back from and he cannot get he’s sending his drivers license, he’s done.

Everything and he’s completely lost.

All his photos, including some like photos that he purposely uploaded to Facebook because he wanted to.

No great.

He threw them away.

They were, there were prints of things and he can’t get access to them.

They’re gone and I’m I’m trying to.

I just found this out, so I’m I’m going to.

Try and do what I.

Can to help?

I don’t know if there’s anything I can do, but.

It makes me really sad because you know you can always restore a hacked.

Site, but a lot of these locked in systems you might never get your content back.

So yeah, I I, I agree with him and dumb.

You know, even in the Microsoft world you know it’s funny.

A lot of people in business use Windows as an operating system and they patch vulnerabilities every week every month and we we just gotta accept that where I get concerned is.

Davao Parade ignores security vulnerability and doesn’t do anything.

Then my red flag antenna goes up and there’s other ways to learn to.

I mean, there’s a number of players in the WordPress space like patched WP scan, which automatic owns and so on and I themes.

You can read their blogs and you can read what’s going on in this space, and frankly, if you don’t want to do it, the best advice is get somebody to do it for you, because you gotta do it and.

You don’t have to.

I’m not the biggest fan of turning automatic updates on because I’ve seen plugin conflicts cause grief, so I don’t like that approach.

It’s yeah no.

Approach personally I was about to say automatic updates can be good.

I do it for some, but actually one of the things I’m very minimalistic so one of the things I often encourage folks to do is like set up your site and then add a calendar reminder six months from now, maybe three months from now.

Whatever timeframe feels good to you that asks you very specific questions.

And like it might be as simple as you know.

Have you gotten specific feedback about your site that you need to update, but one of the things I often encourage people to do is to say.

Are there any plugins or themes that I am not using that I can get rid of off my site?

And to just have an immediate check in because it’s pretty quick.

You know what you’re not going to use, and it’s just like anything else.

I mean, this is again.

I’m very minimalistic.

In so it’s very easy for me like I have.

I’ve read this book.

I need your debit or I’m.

Not wearing these shoes anymore, I’m.

Going to donate them.

Do that with your site.

Do a little bit of just clean up, kind of like you would around the house.

Spring clean up.

Do the same thing with your website and that’s one of the best things you can do to keep your site secure is just get rid and get rid of unused code or unused things that you’re not you’re not needing on your site.

And I looked at this site last week for a client that was running so nowhere to hide. There was 77 plugins installed in the dashboard.

And there was only nine of them that were actively being used.

Used wow.

And what people don’t understand is that’s just code, so.

Even though you’re not using them, code is a potential for an issue.

A conflict of vulnerability.

Speed issues calls.

I mean it just goes on and I looked at this one and said really now, Needless to say that’s I just now running 10 plugins.

Yeah, and this is where there’s some level.

Of education that needs to happen, right?

So I it’s funny ’cause I I totally.

Yeah, this is where it’s like.

I want to spend 5 minutes with people and just give them.

Like the highlights of stuff.

And this is where we’re still lucky to be in a community with so many folks who take the time to educate.

People and to.

Train people, yeah, it’s a real.

It’s a real thing that we have to kind of encourage best practices around.

The other two, the other two things I’d throw out there.

Just ’cause we’re talking about it one and I almost wonder if it should be baked in the core is 2 factor authentication.

I almost think it’s time to bake that option in the core, not make it mandatory, and just say here it is.

I’m here.

That’s my opinion.

And then the other is, uhm, if it were me.

Besides, that is just to kind of keep teaching people.

I think I I agree with you.

I think we’ve got a people and saying here it is and this is what you do and and just be careful like.

Don’t rely on your webhost for backups.

’cause I know of at least three major hosts in the last five years.

They’ve had backup servers hacked as well, so be careful.

Remember if this is your business, treat it like a business.

Don’t don’t get into that road, yeah.

There was a push.

I think in.

Like many years ago, like over the last, I think there was a two factor plug in that was a feature project.

Meaning like some rooms feature projects or things alongside the core software that are being experimented with, so it’s like can this make it into core?

Let’s make it a a feature project, and oftentimes it’s a plug in, like there’s a performance plug in right now, and there was a two factor plug.

But I’m not sure what happened with it.

I’ll have to do some like research to follow up on it, but this is something that has come up around.

Like should this go in core and if So what would what would it look like?

And and I agree this is where having like really good defaults and encouraging good user behavior and having you know these things set up and baked in.

I think could be really interesting to.

So explore.

Yeah, and I know there’s countless security plugins that add two FA or two.

Factors like Ithemes does, Wordfence does.

I think patch.

Stock does they all do pretty well?

It’s pretty well a given at this point in time, so there are ways to get around that, but I think that’s one one of the biggest and and and by the way, just to mention if you’re doing 2 factor, don’t do texting.

Please get a given, get an app for your phone.

Use an authenticator app.

I use a new book, A Yubikey purpose, and if you’re gonna get a Yubikey or an external device, get two or three of.

Them like they get lost.

We’ve all been there.

It’s just.

We’ve all been there, yeah?

It’s it’s just frustration.

So I’m, you know.

Like that?

Uhm, where do you see WordPress going after six?

Oh, and since we’re talking about that, why think of it?

What about the beta label discussion on the FC?

I’m so glad you brought.

That up full site.

Uh, adding is still marked in beta.

I tend to agree with it.

Personally, I think it should be in beta.

I know there’s been all kinds of discussion on the Tavern on numerous podcasts all over the place.

How do you?

Feel about that.

Yeah, so it’s funny ’cause I actually opened the issue up because I was getting asked it.

People were like and when he’s.

Available being moved and I was like I don’t know.

I have no idea.

Like let me open up an issue ’cause this.

Would be really good to track and it got some traction ’cause I think.

For whatever reason, UM.

I listed as like a discussion for 6.0 just like hey, we should talk about this and I think people thought I was saying no, no, no this should happen for six.

You know, and?

And so I clarified on the thread and but some really good discussion happened as a result of it.

That I’m quite happy ended up happening.

Like sometimes it’s it’s strange to me what what gets traction.

And what doesn’t?

Sometimes I’m like begging for people to engage or something.

And then other times things I would never expect suddenly get you know, a lot of dialogue and.

Essentially right now, in terms of the beta label.

It’s not ready like I. I think it’s and I think someone said it really well. It might have been Nick Diego like there’s no harm or maybe George from GoDaddy.

It’s like there’s no harm in keeping.

It on there.

Right?

Now, and I think there needs to be quite frankly, if 6.0 had included some of the more features that were planned for the road map and this ties into like what’s going to come for the.

Teacher, I think we could be further along there, but I think there are just some things that didn’t make it in and a big piece of it is the information architecture and the connection points between full citing and the post editor and the template editor.

Like there’s a lot there that still needs to be refined from a purely how do we make it more intuitive?

How do we make sure it makes sense?

When you’re editing something that’s global versus something that’s maybe just in a post, there are some key things from the design perspective that need to be.

Resolved, that that is all in progress, but until I think that those things in particular are addressed, I think it makes sense to keep the beta label on there, and I think no matter what, when the beta label is removed.

It’s going to be intense and possibly controversial, but I hope.

There’s some really.

Good feedback that comes from it and that we can continue to have a discussion about it and I think.

There are always gonna be some people who are going to want to hold off and be very conservative.

There’s always gonna be some people who want to be cutting edge.

I quite honestly fall kind of more to the conservative side, so I’m kind of in the middle.

But leaning towards the conservative of like let’s.

Keep it up.

So I imagine that I don’t know if it’ll happen for 6.0, but what I imagine to happen is that each release.

Will be evaluated.

Yeah, I think.

So we’ll have moments.

We’ll check against the things and then kind of make a decision.

I think that’s the right approach, and honestly if anybody remembers this product called Gmail, Google had Gmail in beta for over three years, so I mean I I wouldn’t be concerned about that.

The other thing we have to remember is in software.

And you know, there’s a lot of screaming all the time because people don’t understand how software is developed, and they say.

Well, wiser an issue and I always say if you waited for software to be 100%, you never really said anything.

Yeah you would.

You would sit on it forever and you probably build the wrong.

Thing ’cause you wouldn’t get feedback.

Yeah, like honestly, that’s one of the biggest things that I’ve learned in being so involved.

And you know, these word press releases is it is crucial to get feedback early and often.

No, it’s true and and that shows you’re listening and engaging with the community, which is something we’ve talked about a couple times in this podcast.

And Sir, just said, you know, we we gotta keep that going and that’s that’s what makes our community special.

So I think we we just gotta keep at it kind.

Of thing so.

Do you mind?

If I touch a bit more on just what’s coming after six point 6.0 ’cause I feel like I I really.

Sure I do.

I’d love you.

Love you to come.

OK great, I was like I feel.

Like I blew by.

That by accident ’cause I was so caught on.

It’s so cool.

The beta thing, yeah?

It’s it’s interesting ’cause I I would encourage people to find.

There’s a post.

Called a preliminary road map for 6.0 from Matthias, and I think what is listed there is also going to apply for 6.1 and probably 6.2. There is it’s very detailed on the.

There and I’ll just call out some areas that I will say I think will constantly be under active iteration and to me I’m actually my brain works, so I have to like.

Write it down, but I wrote down a couple things where it’s like the style engine.

So a bunch of stuff with styles, kind of like we were talking about earlier, with like the randomizer and also for block theme authors.

I think more and more.

There’s gonna be things built into a new mechanism called theme Jason to allow you to create more with less CSS and less reliance on CSS.

So I continue to see that being a trend.

Uhm, I think a lot of the.

Information architecture that I mentioned kind of reconfiguring things, making sure there’s a very strong sense of what’s global global versus what’s local, as well as just having very solid entry points into different things.

So let’s say.

You have a classic theme, but you want the.

Classic theme to.

Be able to edit the headers and footers so.

We have a simple part focus mode.

What could that look like?

How could we open up that pathway as a way to gradually adopt things so rather than editing the whole template you’re just editing?

Pieces of it.

I also think patterns are going to continue to be a huge thing, especially like integrated into the experience so.

One of the things coming to 6.0 that’s under consideration and and is in beta is like when you’re creating a new page, a patterns modal will pop up that pulls in patterns from the theme so that you can select a pattern to make it easier to start creating a page like what does that look like for template creation? So you’re creating a new template? What if that’s the same flow?

As we talked about earlier too, I think block locking is going to continue to be a huge thing along with expanding responsive controls.

That’s a big one.

I keep hearing from folks is responsiveness.

I had a very wonderful email exchange with some.

After I did a recent call for questions and he wasn’t happy with my answer that I posted and gave me feedback on it and gave me the chance to kind of provide more information and I do want to make it clear to folks like responsiveness is a huge thing.

There is just only so much time in the day, and there’s a huge maintenance load once we implement something.

So there are.

Numerous issues there that I could link to, but responsiveness is a big one and it’s something that’s being moved a bit slowly intentionally because it’s it’s very, very convoluted and it needs to be done intelligently.

Also, tide to this just design tools in general, so adding more supports to more.

Box and making them a bit more intuitive. So 6.0 actually has a new color panel that takes up less space.

That’s a bit easier to use.

There’s also a new border control panel that’s also easier to use and a bit clearer, so there’s some upgrades.

It’s it’s interesting.

We’re like adding functionality and then also from a design perspective.

It’s like OK, we add this functionality.

How do we make it even easier to use and more understandable?

And I think we’ll continue to see that happen as more things are added.

I’ll, I’ll also finally note the navigation block.

I think Justin Tadlock said this in a post recently.

He’s like it’s the most frustrating thing.

For me to.

Use and we haven’t yet.

I agree with him.

Yeah yeah I would.

Love to hear what you find frustrating because that’s also a huge area that needs to be iterated on.

So like, how do you manage the different menus?

How do we create mega menus?

How do we add more supports for it?

How do we help theme Jason and control what’s in there?

Uhm, you know there’s so many things to figure out.

How can we allow customization of the mobile icon?

Can you add your own?

I just got feedback there day where someone like I want to have two different menus in the header, but on mobile I want it to collapse into one.

And I’m in the process right now of finding if there’s.

An issue open for that.

So this is like one of the items in my To Do List today for example, so there’s so much there and I’m curious to know like what about the navigation?

Block is is so frustrated.

I just I just.

Over the years, recently I just find it so hard to maneuver around IE.

The more I play with it, and having done this long time I I just don’t find it as intuitive as it should be.

It’s just an overall comment and I just I just know every time I start playing with it I said do I need to do this?

Can I avoid doing this and and that’s really, you know, my biggest frustration will blocks.

I don’t have many frustrations with box but that one.

It just kills me every time I have to touch a navigation block.

I said do I have two hours?

That is really good feedback, yeah?

And then no.

It’s something I’m.

Thinking a lot about.

My pleasure, uhm?

I have to ask the question ’cause there’s been controversy over this one too.

Multi site.

Let’s go there.

Uhm, it’s multi site dying is is it past its time?

Do we even wanna go there anymore?

Or what’s your thought on that?

That’s such a good.

I know post artist did a deep dive into multisite and.

What’s funny is I actually started out.

On WordPress, on a multisite like I thought WordPress was multisite, I did not understand.

Like when I joined automatic I.

Was like, oh.

Rufus.com is like web.unc.edu, which is what the multisite they were done like. I didn’t understand the concept of it.

’cause to me that was all WordPress was.

Was this like you know, larger infrastructure I I don’t know I.

I think there are some very legitimate use cases.

I’ve seen a lot around translations.

So having different multisite’s for translations, and I think that’s a huge thing, and obviously that’s part of.

The road map for WordPress is eventually helping with.

Different languages and having translations more intuitively in place, so I’m curious to see when.

That happens what happens with multisite?

Uh, my also have had.

Some I’ve some friends who’ve created, uh.

A multi site she runs like a magazine and so she wants different multi sites in place for different cities basically so that she can have kind of lock down controls and can add people just to one specific.

You know, like Los Angeles or whatever where it’s like they don’t have access to the full site, so to me.

I think multi site makes a lot of sense.

If you’re deeply concerned about.

Things like permissions or if you’re a university and you want you know students to have sites and you want control over the architecture.

I think there’s actually a lot of validity.

There still.

I am very biased because I came from that background.

So to me, I see lots of use cases for it.

I also at.

The same time have.

Dissuaded people.

From doing it, one of my friends called me up and wanted to kind of do a summer.

Set up as like different cities or whatever.

And and I I started asking her some questions about how much effort she wanted to put into.

Uhm, basically having production versus development environments and actually talking to her about like what are your needs with permissions.

Because you probably can just use a plugin if you need more granular control and you’re worried about that, like how many people are you really adding onto the site, because you can always you know if you need to, you can always move into a multisite direction, but once your multisite.

It’s really hard to go back on and then a nerdy point that I always like to to mention is.

Backups are really complicated, and restoring is really complicated with multisite.

Uhm, I know this from experience.

I worked on Vaultpress for many years and that was one of the biggest you know hurdles we had was around multi site and eventually if I remember correctly, we actually stopped supporting multisite because it was like this is a.

Mess this is.

It’s very hard to restore it’s it’s easy to back up.

But to actually restore a multisite network is very, very difficult and I don’t think people think about kind of those nerdier aspects of the management of.

So I don’t know.

I kind of go back and forth.

There have been times where I’ve talked people into it and there are times where I’ve talked people out of it.

As always with WordPress, I love optionality and so I think we’ll continue.

To see it.

Because it is all about optionality and and I think there’s some still some cool use cases, particularly in like higher Ed environments or.

In in situations where you might want to have you know translations or a very specific niche.

I think that it gets better project uses a multisite to set up their different country.

Uh, locales, so I think that’s like also a good use case.

Yeah I would.

I would agree with you.

I I know for myself, every time I look at for a client I talked to klining myself out of it very quickly and part of it is the management side the backup side.

Huh, huh?

What happens is you have to restore one portion of the multi site and not the whole thing.

It just gets it gets.

Ugly yeah, and and it doesn’t matter.

Here, whether you’re using a C panel based backup or you’re using a backup tool like after after backup Buddy 2 prominent tools, it’s the same mess all over the time, and that’s kind of why I try to avoid a now.

Some people like it because then they don’t have to spin up five sites.

I’d rather spend up five sites.

Just personal.

I just

Personally, I’m I’m probably the same.

Yeah, that’s.

Yeah, is there anything else that we should touch on that with six oh, or anything else going on that automatic that we should touch on that we have?

Man, I don’t know.

I don’t think so right now.

I think if anything, I’ll just note that there are a lot of writing improvements coming to six point.

Oh that I’m really excited about and I think I think folks, one of the things with 5.9 that we had to kind of like walk align with is like promoting full siding stuff while also.

Making sure it’s clear that it’s beta.

I think we kind of did.

An OK.

Job thinking you know it’s it’s difficult.

It’s really hard to explain to folks like this is new.

And this is, you know.

But also still early, so don’t expect the world but like help us get it, get it there, I think.

6.0 has something for everyone and so I think 5.9 somewhat full citing overshadowed’s and the stuff that did impact everyone.

I think 6.0 is a really balanced release if you’re using the cutting edge stuff there suffer you there. If you were using.

The tried and true.

Mutual WordPress experience.

There is stuff for you, so I I think that’s the main message that I’d love to get across because it is very much.

Yeah, there’s something for everyone in this in this release for sure, and I I don’t want folks thinking that.

You know, if I don’t adopt this new thing, I’m not going to get some goodies.

I think that there is very much in this release, something that folks will be excited by.

Yeah, I would agree with you and I think it’s really an exciting time to be.

Probably the most exciting diamond has 10 years to be in WordPress really with what’s going on.

On and what Automattic doing and the feedback from the community?

There’s a lot of plus is going on if somebody wants to reach out to you with a question and an issue with submitting a ticket, I’ll throw that in or anything else going on.

How’s the best way?

On WordPress slack – @annezazu

If you post anything in there, you’ll probably hear from me or honestly the community.

There is also really cool people always out like some messages will come into people.

Chime in before.

I see it and then I also have a site https://nomad.blog/  and there’s a contact form there.

I don’t recommend people follow that blog because I I thought some work.

WordPress people follow me there and I’m like I ramble about my whole life on there.

So if you want to hear random things.

About like travels or friends or books, I’ve read, sure, but it’s definitely not like a WordPress resource site from time to time I’ll post stuff about WordPress, but the easiest way is just the contact form and then if you want to comment.

I love when people ask things publicly because other folks are likely thinking the same thing.

So if you’re.

Comfortable with that.

I really do encourage.

Folks to ask in, like the FCC outreach experiment, or there’s like a YouTube channel that you can find in my.

And asking in the comments below, ’cause I think it helps everyone learn.

So yeah, please reach out if you want to talk about all things WordPress or you know really anything.

If you just are curious about full sighting, don’t know where to start.

I’m I’m happy to kind of share some resources and invite you along for the journey.

Yeah, thanks and for your time today.

Have an amazing day.

Yeah, thank you so much.

This is wonderful.

You’re welcome my pleasure.

 

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