As I said, we’re dropping all the human blocks. Community guidelines, directory guidelines, and such will need to be followed going forward, but whatever blocks were in place before are now cleared. It may take a few days, but any pre-existing blocks are considered bugs to be fixed.

Getting into a daily writing routine on the blog will never start out perfect.

Learn the effective strategies for conversion rate optimization, emphasizing clarity, trust, and user experience. Key insights include prioritizing persuasive copy over flashy design and removing friction from user interactions.

I would not be where I am today if I hadn't been flexible.

I’ve been blogging now for approximately 8,465 days since my first post on Movable Type. My colleague Dan Luu helped me compile some of the “greatest hits” from the archives of ma.tt, perhaps some posts will stir some memories for you as well:

Where Did WordCamps Come From? (2023)

A look back at how Foo Camp and Bar Camp inspired WordCamps.

Getting Real Feedback as a CEO (2018)

How do you make sure you get good information when you’re CEO? Something we’ve been trying that’s been working is having an anonymous internal forum. Like Blind, but internal to the company, and really anonymous, without anything linking a user ID to a comment.

Wix and the GPL (2016)

That time Wix built their closed-source mobile app on GPL code.

What I Miss and Don’t Miss About San Francisco (2015)

Self explanatory

Advice About Advice (2015)

Why you need to think things through from first principles and not just blindly follow advice.

Why the Web Still Matters (2014)

A guest post by Ben Thompson of Stratechery on why “the web is dead” comments were wrong in 2014. Still true today!

The Four Freedoms (2014)

A discussion of Stallman’s four open source freedoms. Our open source Bill of Rights, if you will.

The Intrinsic Value of Blogging (2014)

On ignoring vanity metrics and blogging for intrinsic reasons

What’s in My Bag 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2020, 2023, 2025

What I’ve been carrying in my travel bag 

Why Your Company Should Have a Creed (2011)

I’m really jazzed that dozens of companies have adopted this or similar ideas since then.

1.0 is the Loneliest Number (2010)

On the importance of releasing quickly and getting feedback.

The Twitter API (2010)

A discussion on the Twitter API missing the boat on, as Jack Dorsey put it, becoming a protocol.

I Miss School (2010)

Just like they say, youth is wasted on the young, I think I squandered school when I was in it.

What Startup Idea Would I suggest? Start a Bank (2009)

There’s been a lot of action in the payments space since 2009. For new companies, we have Square (2009), Stripe (2010), and Wealthsimple (2014), among others. Ally Bank (rebranded from GMAC in 2010) has also been trying to provide a modern customer-focused experience.

Six Steps to Kill Your Community (2009)

Platform and product anti-patterns.

In Defense of the GPL for Open Source Projects (2009)

This was a response to a popular post about how GPL open source projects would lose out to projects under licenses like MIT, BSD, and Apache. I didn’t agree then and I don’t agree now. 

The Way I Work (2009)

Self explanatory

Infrastructure as Competitive Advantage (2008)

On the importance of performance, reliability, and security. This was a core priority for us and it shows. We dominate the competition on third-party performance comparisons at the platform level and on the default user experience, and our security is top-notch.

The Price of Freedom and Open Source Licenses (2007)

A response to a user who wanted the ability to remove GPL freedoms from WordPress.

The PHP5 Transition (2007)

How PHP5 forced us to divert time and attention away from users to deal with migration costs.

Mitch Kapor vs. Mark Zuckerberg (2007)

At Startup School, Kapor advocated for having team diversity while Zuckerberg advocated for a “young and technical” because the best work comes from young people. Now that Facebook (Meta) has grown up, Zuckerberg is doing what Kapor said companies should do and not what Zuckerberg said companies should do! Zuckerberg’s trusted people aren’t young anymore and aren’t being replaced by the young.

Sun Isn’t Relevant to Startups (2007), and Followup (2007)

A discussion of Sun’s Startup Essentials program and Jonathan Schwartz’s (then CEO of Sun) reply.

The RSS Feed Validator is Dead to Me (2006)

The RSS 2.0 feed validator is old news today but the experience here is a good example of why people didn’t take any of these validators seriously and they’re all old news

There’s No Correlation Between Hours Worked and Work Done (2006)

Self explanatory

Should We Have Hidden Options? (2005)

A discussion of the hidden cost of hidden options.

We probably missed some, if there’s a post you think should be included leave it in the comments.

BobWP's short reflection on the resurgence of the term "vibes," expressing ambivalence, especially regarding its use in technology and media, and anticipating branded products.

Hi there,

In most European countries, Easter is a four-day weekend with two bank holidays, on Good Friday and Easter Monday. It’s a welcome occasion to unplug and enjoy the life right in front of you. For me, that’s organizing my home, celebrating Spring in the English Garden, friends coming over for a card game and lots of art. What are you doing to unplug?

A huge shoutout to Simon Kraft, Krautpress for inviting me to the WordPress Meetup in Konstanz this week! I had an awesome time and loved connecting with the German WordPress community. Plus, I’ve now got the German version of the slidedeck from my WordCamp Asia presentation!

This week, the final release of WordPress 6.8 came out “Cecil”, the last major WordPress version for 2025. We will see more minor releases for sure, the first one is scheduled tentatively for April 29, 2025.

And now, if you celebrate it or not, I wish you and yours a Happy Easter!

CU next week again,
Birgit

WordPress 6.8

WordPress 6.8 “Cecil” is out! It honors the legendary pianist and jazz pioneer Cecil Taylor. Congratulations to the release quad and the over 900 contributors from over 60 countries, 250 of them were first timers.

Jeff Paul wrote in the release post: “WordPress 6.8 polishes and refines the tools that you use every day, making your site faster, more secure, and easier to manage.  The Style Book now has a structured layout and works with Classic themes, giving you more control over global styles. Speculative loading speeds up navigation by preloading links before users navigate to them, bcrypt hashing strengthens password security automatically, and database optimizations improve performance.”

If you want to take a deep dive into all the updates, here are the couple of links, I shared before:

• The WordPress 6.8 Field Guide has all the cool updates that matter to developers.
• Don’t miss the Source of Truth (WordPress 6.8) for the latest on Block editor updates.

More articles covering 6.8 from different point of views:

• In WordPress 6.8: Feature Highlights and Improvements, Jonathan Bossenger compiled a comprehensive list of the user facing changes of the new version.
• Bud Kraus discovered 6 key changes in WordPress 6.8 for the Hostinger Blog.
• Justin Tadlock published The Developer’s Guide to WordPress 6.8
• Gianna Legate, HumanMade explained What WordPress 6.8 means for enterprise: Features and benefits
• Jeff Paul recounts how Fueled+10up Leads the Way in the Making of WordPress 6.8

Plugins and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners

Last week, I mentioned the new AI builder at WordPress.com. Matt Medeiros, WPMinute, took it out for a spin and in his video you will be right there with him, getting a first impression. I Tried the WordPress.com AI Builder.

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‪Troy Chaplin‬ continued his work on the Block Accessibility Checks plugin. For the new features he added to the existing image conditions a check for the alt text length and matches with captions, plus tools to help follow WP coding standards. Version 1.2.0 now is ready for download from the WordPress plugin repository.

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Jean-Baptist Audras, a core committer and engineer at the Whodunit agency, just dropped the Inline Quote Format Button for the Block Editor plugin in the WordPress repository. With this plugin activated, content creators can easily mark inline citations using the q HTML element right from the Format toolbar in the block editor. This way they make sure that assistive technologies get that the sentence is a citation, keeping things clear for everyone! Using this plugin keeps your site inline with one of the European Accessibility Act’s (EAA) criteria to properly indicate inline citations, according to Audras. To style the inline quote use the Editor > Styles > Additional CSS and add CSS for the element q, i.e., q {color:purple}.

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In his latest video, Jamie Marsland shows you how to create beautiful Stacking Cards in WordPress. “You’ll get a behind-the-scenes look at the process so you can understand how it works and tweak it for your own needs.” he wrote in the description.

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 “Keeping up with Gutenberg – Index 2025” 
A chronological list of the WordPress Make Blog posts from various teams involved in Gutenberg development: Design, Theme Review Team, Core Editor, Core JS, Core CSS, Test, and Meta team from Jan. 2024 on. Updated by yours truly. The previous years are also available: 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024

Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor

JuanMa Garrido, developer advocate at Automattic, takes you with him on A deep dive into a block’s “attributes”. He explores how attributes work within WordPress blocks, focusing on their role in storing and managing block data. Garrido explains the different types of attributes, such as string, number, array, and object, and demonstrates how to define them in a block’s code. The article also covers how attributes are sourced from HTML, how they persist in the block’s markup, and how developers can use them to control block behavior and appearance. Practical code examples illustrate best practices for defining, accessing, and updating attributes in custom Gutenberg blocks.

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Riad Benguella announced new features for Studio app. Add Custom Domains and HTTPS Support to Your Local WordPress Development. User can now make local WordPress development more closely mirror live production environments. Developers can now assign custom wp.local domains and enable SSL for their local sites. It helps developer with better testing of plugins and themes that require specific domains or secure connections. The process is streamlined, with Studio handling most technical details automatically, though macOS users must manually install the SSL certificate. These updates aim to enhance flexibility and realism in local development workflows, based on user feedback, as Studio continues to evolve. You can download open-source Studio for free.

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Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg’s master branch?
Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review.

Now also available via WordPress Playground. There is no need for a test site locally or on a server. Have you been using it? Email me with your experience

Questions? Suggestions? Ideas? Don’t hesitate to send them via email or
send me a message on WordPress Slack or Twitter @bph.

For questions to be answered on the Gutenberg Changelog, email to changelog@gutenbergtimes.com

Featured Image: Skyline Chicago by Birgit Pauli-Haack

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Type in your Email address to subscribe.

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In this episode of Woo ProductChat, James and Katie discuss user analytics with Derek Ashauer, emphasizing data-driven decisions for WordPress product owners, conversion tracking, and actionable insights for business growth.

Did you know that 88% of paper business cards are thrown away within a week? This staggering statistic highlights a common frustration for professionals – traditional business cards often fail to create lasting connections.

Digital business cards offer a smarter approach to networking. Unlike paper cards that get lost or discarded, these modern alternatives let you share contact details instantly through QR codes and track when recipients view your information. Plus, many digital cards integrate with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, transforming simple contact sharing into a powerful lead generation tool.

In this article, we’ll explore the best digital business card options available so you can decide on the tools that will enhance your personal brand, help you build stronger professional relationships, or generate more leads.

Why digital business cards are your new lead generation engine

Remember when business cards were just pieces of paper with your name and phone number? Those days are gone. Modern digital business cards work more like miniature marketing systems – they don’t just share your contact info; they help you build and nurture professional relationships.

The growth in digital business card adoption tells an interesting story. According to recent research, the worldwide demand for digital business cards is forecasted to surge at a rate of 9.5% during the forecast period (2023 to 2033). And it makes sense – who wouldn’t want a business card that automatically saves contacts and helps track potential leads?

Think of it like having a tiny personal assistant in your pocket. When you share your digital card via QR code, it transfers contact details and automatically logs the interaction in your CRM system. Some cards even notify you when someone views your profile or downloads your materials. 

This tracking capability transforms how you follow up with contacts. Instead of playing the guessing game of “Should I reach out now?”, you can actively see who’s actively engaged with your profile and time your follow-ups perfectly. Spot a potential client who just viewed your portfolio? That’s your cue to send a friendly check-in message.

These tools come at various price points and with different features. Some focus on simple contact sharing, while others offer full suites of lead generation and analytics tools. For example, a sales team might want advanced CRM integration and tracking, while a freelance designer might just need basic contact sharing with a portfolio link.

Let’s explore some specific options and find out which might work best for your needs.

Guide to the top digital business card platforms 

1. Gravatar

Gravatar is a versatile platform that can easily become your online business card that never runs out and updates itself everywhere at once. This free service from Automattic (the folks behind WordPress.com) turns your email address into a universal online identity that follows you across thousands of websites.

What makes Gravatar special? Unlike standalone digital business cards, your Gravatar profile automatically appears whenever you comment, contribute, or interact on supported platforms – from WordPress blogs to GitHub repositories. Update your information once at Gravatar.com, and those changes instantly sync everywhere your profile appears.

Going to a networking event and need to share your details in person? Gravatar has you covered. Add your profile to Apple or Google Wallet for quick QR code sharing at networking events. Getting started takes just minutes – visit Gravatar.com, create a profile, and you’ve got a powerful digital business card that works automatically across the web, completely free of charge.

2. HiHello

HiHello is a full-featured digital business card platform that combines contact sharing with lead-tracking capabilities. Users can share their cards through NFC tapping or QR codes, with the option to add cards directly to Apple or Google Wallet for quick access.

The platform includes several practical features: 

• CRM integration for automatic contact syncing.
• Analytics to track card views and engagement.
• An AI scanner that can digitize paper business cards.
• Consistent branding through customizable templates, colors, and QR code designs.

The pricing structure has four tiers: 

• Free tier for personal use and some basic features. 
• Professional plan ($6/month), which adds features like custom branding, advanced analytics, and unlimited card designs.
• Business tier ($5/user/month) that provides administrative controls, CRM integration, and team-wide templates. 
• Enterprise options with custom pricing, additional security features, and various deployment solutions.

Worth noting: While the free tier works well for individuals, many of the lead generation and tracking features require a paid subscription.

3. Popl

Popl is an AI-powered digital business card platform with a focus on lead capture and event networking. The platform’s standout feature is its versatile scanning capability – not just for traditional business cards but also for conference badges, LinkedIn QR codes, and even digital cards from other platforms.

The platform includes several conference-focused features:

• AI-powered contact enrichment to automatically fill in missing information.
• Offline scanning capabilities for poor Wi-Fi environments.
• Direct CRM synchronization.
• Event-specific lead qualifiers and tagging.
• Detailed marketing attribution tracking.

The pricing structure is tiered:

• Free tier for basic individual digital cards.
• Professional plan ($11.99/month), unlocking advanced CRM features, lead capture, and analytics.
• Team plans with custom pricing, offering additional features like shared templates and administrative controls.

Worth noting: While Popl provides free digital business cards, its core strength lies in its lead capture and event management capabilities, which are only available in paid tiers.

4. Wave

Wave combines digital business card functionality with lead generation tools. The platform offers automatic synchronization – when users update their contact details, the changes reflect instantly across all shared cards and integrations.

The platform includes several networking-focused features:

• Deep customization options for fonts, colors, and design elements.
• Quick-capture lead forms for events and conferences.
• Integration with major CRMs, including HubSpot.
• PDF and video file hosting capabilities.
• Real-time analytics and engagement tracking.

The pricing structure follows a simple model:

• Free tier offering basic digital business cards and contact sharing.
• Professional plan ($4.99/month) that adds features like video uploads, file hosting, and advanced analytics.
• Business tier with custom pricing for team management and enterprise features.

Worth noting: While Wave provides comprehensive free features, some of its more advanced networking capabilities require a paid subscription.

5. Mobilo 

Mobilo positions itself as a business card solution designed specifically for professional teams, with an emphasis on personal branding and event networking. The platform treats each digital card as a mini landing page, allowing extensive customization.

The platform includes several team-focused features:

• Customizable headers, video embeds, and downloadable content hosting.
• Event-focused lead capture with automated follow-ups.
• Integration with email systems for automated presentation sharing.
• Built-in calendar linking capabilities.
• Detailed ROI tracking for events and networking activities.

The pricing structure is flexible and based on several factors:

• Card material choice (recyclable plastic, wood, or stainless steel).
• Number of team members.
• Required features and integrations.
• Physical NFC card requirements.

Worth noting: For specific pricing details and customized team solutions, interested users should visit Mobilo’s pricing page, as costs vary based on organizational needs and setup requirements.

Gravatar: Your universal digital identity solution

Gravatar takes a unique double approach to digital business cards – it integrates them automatically into the platforms professionals use daily and can serve offline networking with a dynamic QR code. 

Simply add your Gravatar profile to Apple or Google Wallet for instant QR code sharing at events and meetings.

Unlike standalone solutions that mostly require manual sharing, your Gravatar profile appears naturally wherever you engage online – from WordPress blogs to GitHub repositories, Slack channels, and Atlassian products.

Think of it as a self-maintaining digital business card. Update your Gravatar profile once, and those changes ripple across every platform where your email address appears. No more checking multiple profiles or worrying about outdated information. This works great for offline networking as well. When someone scans your QR code, they will be led to your profile, which is always up-to-date, unlike normal business cards. 

For professionals managing multiple identities, Gravatar’s email-based system lets you maintain separate profiles – use one email for work-related platforms and another for personal projects. This separation ensures you present the right image in each context.

However, the true power of Gravatar lies in its organic reach. Rather than only actively exchanging contact information, potential connections discover your profile naturally as they interact with your comments, contributions, or collaborations across the web. 

Tip: Add your Gravatar URL to your social media bio links to further expand this passive networking effect.

Create your digital business card with Gravatar today

Platforms like HiHello, Popl, Wave, and Mobilo offer solid digital business card features, but Gravatar stands apart with its unique integration-first approach. Unlike these services that require manual sharing or paid subscriptions for advanced features, Gravatar provides comprehensive functionality completely free of charge.

What makes Gravatar different? While other platforms focus on lead generation through active networking, Gravatar also creates opportunities passively through automatic integration into the tools professionals already use. Your profile appears organically across WordPress, GitHub, Slack, and other major platforms – no subscription fees or manual updates are required.

Think of Gravatar as your central command center for online identity. Update it once, and your information automatically syncs everywhere your email appears. No juggling multiple profiles or paying for team features. Plus, you get the same QR code sharing for offline meetings and social media integration capabilities as paid services, along with the flexibility to maintain separate professional and personal identities.

Ready to get started? Visit Gravatar.com and click “Get Started Now.” Simply enter your email address, customize your profile with a photo and details, and add verified links to your social media accounts and portfolio. 

Don’t wait! Create your Gravatar profile and experience the ease of a universally recognized digital business card that requires no active sharing – once set up, it works automatically across platforms where professionals already engage.

Curated content from the Woo, WordPress, and Open Web community is compiled in this comprehensive list for easy access and exploration.

In the 80's I learned Basic, COBOL, Assembly Language, Fortran and Pascal, and a lot of it on a TRS-80 computer.

I took a webinar recently on decluttering and stopping the re-cluttering. And although this seminar was about physical clutter, it got me thinking about job searching and my résumé. I’m not gonna lie – although I help other people all the time with their CVs and résumés – my CV is a cluttered mess. And it needs desperate attention.

So as I work on mine, I’m going to share some tips that might help others as they hone their résumés, too.

Decide between a résumé and a CV (curriculum vitae)

A resume focuses on your job history and skills, whereas a CV emphasizes your personal accomplishments. Both documents are essential, but they serve different purposes. Your resume is designed to get you noticed for a specific type of position where you can apply your skills as an entry-level sales job. In contrast, a CV shows employers and recruiters details about your life outside of work, such as previous volunteer activities and sports teams.
from TheHRDigest.com

Most of us in tech will want to use a résumé rather than a CV, although a hybrid may be considered.

For example, I still want to include a list of professional speaking engagements where I have been on stage. For a marketing and community position this is important, although not usually included in a traditional résumé.

Functional résumé vs. chronological résumé

A functional résumé and a chronological résumé serve different purposes depending on you background and career goals. A functional résumé emphasizes skills and competencies rather than work history, making it ideal for individuals with gaps in employment, career changers, or those with diverse but non-linear experiences. It groups qualifications under skill categories, helping highlight what you, the candidate, can do.

In contrast, a chronological résumé lists work experience in reverse chronological order, showcasing a clear employment timeline and career progression. This format is usually favored by most employers and is best suited for candidates with a steady, relevant work history in the same field. While the functional résumé focuses on what you can do, the chronological résumé highlights where and when you’ve done it.

You might choose a functional résumé over a chronological one if you want to shift the focus away from your work history and emphasize your skills and achievements instead. By organizing your résumé around what you can do rather than when and where you did it, a functional format allows you to present yourself in a stronger light if your job history doesn’t tell the full story of your qualifications.

To show your age or not to?

Typically, you should not include your age on a résumé. Age is considered personal information and isn’t relevant to your qualifications or ability to perform a job. Including it can unintentionally open the door to age discrimination, whether you’re younger or older. Instead, focus on your skills, experience, and accomplishments.

This means you should avoid including graduation dates if you’re concerned about age bias—what matters most to employers is what you bring to the table, not how old you are.

Should you list out hobbies?

Listing hobbies on a résumé is optional and depends on the job you’re applying for. In general, you should only include hobbies if they are relevant to the position or help show skills that are transferable or desirable in the workplace—like leadership, creativity, teamwork, or dedication. For example, if you’re applying for a job in marketing, a hobby like managing a personal blog or creating social media content could be a plus. On the other hand, if your hobbies aren’t related to the job or don’t add value to your application, it’s best to leave them off and use the space for more impactful content like achievements or skills.

Listing some hobbies can share more information that you may want to. For example, listing something like being a scout leader might share that you have parenting responsibilities, which may make you seem less desirable (especially for women), as unconscious biases expect mothers to spend more time with family than at work.

What should you show in your tech stack?

Many times I have seen people list tech that is too basic to include on their résumé for the job they’re seeking. Including things like email, Google sheets, and Slack in today’s market are already expected of applicants and appear as résumé padding. When you list your tech stack on your résumé, take a careful look at each on your list to evaluate if it needs to be there. When in doubt, ask a friend in the industry.

How about a portfolio?

For someone in the technology industry, a strong portfolio should showcase both technical skills and the impact of your work. Here’s what to include:

1. Projects – Highlight 3–5 of your best or most relevant projects. Include brief descriptions, your role, the technologies used, and outcomes or results (e.g., improved performance, user growth, bug fixes, etc.).
2. For developers, include Code Samples – Share links to GitHub or similar platforms where employers can see clean, well-documented code. Make sure it’s organized and shows your understanding of best practices.
3. Case Studies – For more complex projects, write short case studies that outline the problem, your approach, tools used, and the result.
4. Technical Skills – For developers, clearly list programming languages, frameworks, tools, and platforms you’re proficient in. For marketers, list the technology skills you have in media production and scheduling.
5. Live Demos or Screenshots – If possible, provide links to live demos or include screenshots to make your work tangible—especially helpful for front-end or UX/UI roles and marketing.
6. Resume & Contact Info – Include a downloadable résumé and a clear way for potential employers to contact you.
7. Certifications or Awards – Optional, but helpful if they’re relevant to the job (like AWS certification, hackathon wins, etc.).

The key is to show not just what you can build, but how you think, collaborate, and solve problems—that’s what really stands out. Want help building or reviewing a portfolio?

Should you include a photo on your résumé?

While your photo is included in your social channels (including LinkedIn), it’s not necessary to include on a résumé, and may actually count against you if the reviewer has any conscious or unconscious biases.

When in doubt, hire help for your résumé

Finding your next job is important, so if you’re not confident in your résumé-building skills, spending some money up front to stand out in a sea of applicants is money well-spent.

Best wishes

Most of all, best wishes in your pursuit of your next great position. Wishing you an easy time and a great fit for the best salary. Your happiness and health deserve it.

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Find jobs to apply for on our Job Board.

This article, Decluttering Your Résumé, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

It’s Official – Only One Major WordPress Release for 2025

• WordPress 6.8 will be the only major core release this year following a meeting of Core Committers on April 4.
• The stated reason for the decision was a reduction in weekly core contribution hours by companies like Automattic (from 4000 to 16) and Newfold Digital (from 329 to 20).
• The Repository’s story on this topic brings excellent insight to some of the people and opinions associated with this decision. As usual, it’s a great read.
• What does this decision mean for those of us who run agencies or do client work?
• From a technical perspective, maybe not much unless you’re all in on the Site Editor (as I wrote on March 17 when the changes to the release schedule were first being discussed).
• I’m particularly interested in the focus on canonical plugins to deliver new features rather than core development.
• As an agency owner, my biggest concern is perceived stagnation of the project in the tech world, which is a big deal as WordPress struggles to compete with platforms like Wix, Squarespace, and Shopify.
• It used to be easy to demonstrate how WordPress was a superior solution when clients had questions. Now that might be a harder sell, especially to those who hear tech industry chatter.

Seeing More Form Spam Lately? This AI Bot May Be to Blame

• An AI-powered spam bot called AkiraBot has been targeting hundreds of thousands of websites with convincing spam messages generated by OpenAI technology.
• The Python-based bot uses GPT-4 model to create genuine-looking form entries that are based on the website’s content.
• The messages promote questionable SEO services under names like Akira and ServicewrapGO.
• Akirabot has also demonstrated an ability to defeat popular CAPTCHA systems, including Turnstile, hCAPTCHA, and reCAPTCHA.
• OpenAI has taken action by disabling the API key and associated assets used in this operation (at least for now).

If You Target Quebec Customers, Make Sure You Know About Bill 96

• By June 1, 2025, websites that target Quebec residents must be available in French at no disadvantage compared to other languages.
• Quebec’s Bill 96 is a sweeping law that expands the use of French across business, education, and public services.
• For businesses, the bill introduces strict requirements around offering French-language services, signage, contracts, and digital content (including websites and mobile apps) when doing business in the province.
• Companies located outside Quebec (or even outside Canada), must still comply if they target Quebec customers.
• Non-compliance with the bill can result in significant fines ranging from $3,000 to $30,000 per day, and company officers can being held personally liable. 
• If you or your clients target customers in Quebec, this is weighty legislation that needs attention.

• The Admin Bar’s 2025 Web Professionals Survey results are in. Interesting stats here from more that 1200 respondents.
• The WordPress Foundation has secured trademarks for “Managed WordPress” and “Hosted WordPress” in the EU (along with UK and Australia). How this could impact your agency.
• Corey Maass has released the PauseTab Chrome Extension – pause a tab now and bring it back exactly when you need it. Super cool.
• WordPress.com has released an AI Website Builder that will create a WordPress site on their platform based on your prompts. Here’s Matt Medeiros’ take.

This article, Agency News Weekly, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

Howard Spaeth launched his new WAAS project, Built for Service.

Rodolfo Melogli promoted his upcoming Business Bloomer classes on WooCommerce, including topics like syncing with Google Sheets, auditing conversion rates, and optimizing sales emails. Explore the sessions

Syed Balkhi shared new feature updates to the Charitable plugin.

Adam Weeks released a video conversation with Marc Benzakein, discussing authenticity and their shared WordPress experiences.

Joost de Valk introduced a new Progress Planner integration with Yoast SEO, offering tailored improvement tips based on your SEO setup.

Corey Maass launched PauseTab, his first Chrome extension, which lets users snooze browser tabs until needed.

Mitch Canter unveiled a retro-styled WordPress website for a popular Fallout content creator, designed as a throwback to early internet aesthetics.

Dan Knauss shared a PublishPress podcast interview with Kyle Van Deusen about his community-building work at The Admin Bar.

Topher DeRosia published a new HeroPress essay by Caio Ferreira, also available in Brazilian Portuguese with audio.

Bob Dunn shared a Do the Woo episode focused on accessibility, featuring real stories and insights from Bud Kraus.

Jessica Lyschik appeared on the Greyd Conversations podcast with Mike McAlister to discuss product development using the WordPress site editor.

Tom Whitaker shared a video on AI prompt enhancement, encouraging better communication with AI for more accurate results.

Matt Medeiros released a review of WordPress.com’s new AI builder, offering initial thoughts on its capabilities and usefulness.

Michelle Frechette published the latest WP Wonder Women newsletter, featuring Stacy Carlson and updates from many women in the WordPress ecosystem.

Juan Hernando wrote about his role as Program Manager for the WordPress Community team and how Weglot supports his work.

Brian Henry announced a major update to Strauss, his PHP namespacing tool, including a dry-run feature, config feedback, and compatibility with Composer workflows.

Jonathan Bossenger hosted a live session comparing GitHub Copilot agent mode to Cursor in VS Code for AI-assisted development.

Topher DeRosia mentioned his daughter’s creative work on Patreon, encouraging the community to join the free level to support her.

Bud Kraus published a feature on Stephanie Hudson, spotlighting her journey and the people who influenced her life.

Daniel Post explained how he migrated from DeployHQ to GitHub Actions for smoother deployment workflows.

Bob Dunn relaunched BobWP Unplugged, including a new newsletter and daily WooCommerce posts.

Topher DeRosia published a new photo on WPPhotos showing sand and rock harvesting in Bangladesh.

Hudson Atwell shared an MCP server boilerplate article, explaining how to use MCP servers on the Windsurf IDE along with setup and debugging tools.

Ronni K. Gothard Christiansen announced AesirX CMP for WordPress v1.5.0, introducing consent logging, editable modal text, improved UI, and support for eight new languages.

This article, The Latest from Post Status Members, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

Transcript ↓

In this episode of the Post Status Happiness Hour, host Michelle Frechette interviews Tim Bouchard, and Ron Brennan discuss the upcoming Color Code event, a conference focused on design, technology, and marketing. Unlike traditional WordCamps, Color Code aims to be more inclusive, welcoming participants from various platforms and technologies. The event will feature a diverse lineup of speakers, interactive elements like a live graffiti art competition, and networking opportunities. Set to take place in Buffalo, New York, the conference emphasizes accessibility and community involvement, promising a dynamic and engaging experience for all attendees.

Top Takeaways:

• Networking and Collaboration Opportunities: The Color Code event emphasizes the power of in-person connections. With a focus on creative professionals, marketers, and developers, the event is designed to facilitate collaboration through both formal presentations and informal networking (the “hallway track”). Attendees can expect meaningful conversations and potential partnerships that might not happen in a purely virtual setting.
• Diverse and Relevant Topics: The event will cover a range of cutting-edge topics, such as AI, content strategies, and the challenges of decoupling from major tech players like Google. These presentations, led by volunteer speakers, aim to provide valuable insights and practical knowledge, making the event a great opportunity for professionals to stay informed on industry trends.
• Affordability and Accessibility: With an affordable ticket price ($40), including lunch and the after-party, Color Code positions itself as an accessible event for professionals of all backgrounds. The organizers also plan to record sessions and make them available online, ensuring that those who can’t attend in person still have access to the valuable content.

Mentioned In The Show:

• Color Code
• Press Conf
• WP Engine
• Meetup
• Seneca One Tower
• Douglas Development
• Luminous 
• Gene McCarthy’s

You can follow Post Status and our guests on Social Media:

• Tim Bouchard (Owner/CEO, LuminusAgency)
• Ron Brennan (Managing Partner, CANI Marketing Group)
• Michelle Frechette (Director of Community Relations, Post Status)
• Olivia Bisset (Intern, Post Status)

The Post Status podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis.

Browse our archives, and don’t forget to subscribe via iTunes, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, Simplecast, or RSS.

Transcript

Michelle Frechette 00:00:02  And welcome to our next Post Status Happiness Hour. Today I’m joined by two thirds of the organizing team for Color Code Events, Tim Bouchard and Ron Brennan, my neighbors to the west in Buffalo, New York. How are you guys doing? 

TIm Bouchard: Good.

Ron Brennan 00:00:18  Good. How are you?

Michelle Frechette 00:00:20  I’m good. Thanks. Ron, I don’t remember when you and I met. It’s been a really long time because we’ve been doing Buffalo, and it’s probably 2015 or 16. If I’m 14? I don’t know, being honest. We go way back.

Ron Brennan 00:00:31  14 or 15 Yep. Somewhere.

Michelle Frechette 00:00:33  Yeah.

Ron Brennan 00:00:33  Your first WordCamp event.

Michelle Frechette 00:00:36  It was. I joke about I joke, I laugh about the fact that I posted on my only social channel at the time, which was, Facebook, and I called it. I said I was at my first WordPress Camp because I didn’t even remember. They were called word camps back then, but and Tim, you and I go back probably almost as far.

Time Bouchard: Almost yeah.  I met you back in 16 maybe? 

Michelle Frechette 00:00:55  So nice to see you both here today, but we’re here to talk about Color Code, which I am fortunate to be a speaker at. I’m excited to bring my, my story there, my talk about doing personal branding and how you can increase your personal branding, and there’s some basic steps to doing that and get started. It can feel overwhelming, but it doesn’t need to. So I’ll save that for the actual event. I won’t give it all the way today, but I wanted to talk to you guys about what you’re doing because it’s it’s WordPress adjacent. It’s not a WordCamp. You’re doing something on your own. Similar to Press Conf that’s going on at the end of this month, but you have managed to keep the costs down. So it’s still a fairly low investment for people to attend. And it’s not an official WordPress event, which also was a choice for you. And it’s in person as well. So it’s not an online event.  So tell me all the thought processes that went into getting this up and going off the ground. Also, I think the venue is supposed to be pretty sensational from what I’ve heard. 

Tim Bouchard 00:02:03  Yeah. For sure.Yeah. Ron, do you want to start with this? I mean, you have the bigger history, so you can go for it.

Ron Brennan 00:02:08  Yeah. So as you know, like, Ben and myself and then Andy and then Tim, you know, we kind of ran the WordPress community here in Buffalo, New York. Ran the WordCamps we started this year. You know, Michelle, you know how we do it. We’re last minute. It drives you crazy. But, you know, we kind of pull together. We decide three weeks before the event. Hey, let’s do a WordCamp. And then, you know, our handlers and everything are going crazy. This year Tim really got involved, and he’s like, you know what, guys? We’re going to do this right this year.  It’s going to be a real, you know, event that people look forward to going to. But we got to start. I mean we started last year after the event. It was crazy.

Tim Bouchard 00:02:51  Yeah. July and August. We started planning meeting for this year.

Michelle Frechette 00:02:53  Tim, you accomplished what I was unable to do for years.

Tim Bouchard: I’m very persuasive. 

Michelle Frechette 00:02:57 Light that fire under those guys and get them started earlier.

Ron Brennan 00:03:02  Yeah. He, you know, he got us motivated by always suggesting meeting places that had, like, beer and chicken wings. So.

Michelle Frechette 00:03:09  I mean, with Buffalo. You got it. Where’s your favorite wings from?

Ron Brennan 00:03:15  Favorite wings. Mine are probably Bar Bill, but I like Gene McCarthy’s a lot, too. And that’s where this kind of all originated.

Tim Bouchard 00:03:23  I like Gene McCarthy’s too, but my my secret is the Tonawanda Golf Dome.

Ron Brennan 00:03:28  Oh, those are good, too.

Michelle Frechette 00:03:30  And you guys introduced me to Elmo’s, and I really liked Elmo’s.

Tim Bouchard 00:03:33  Yeah. So Elmo’s great.

Tim Bouchard 00:03:35  Yeah.

Ron Brennan 00:03:35  Okay.

Michelle Frechette 00:03:35  We got sidetracked.

Ron Brennan 00:03:37  Sorry. Yeah.

Tim Bouchard 00:03:38  That’s alright.

Ron Brennan 00:03:38  Do we have a time limit?

Michelle Frechette 00:03:40  I mean, we try to keep it to an hour, so.

Ron Brennan 00:03:42  Okay. So, anyway, we so we got started. We got going with our, our handler, sponsor, whoever, you know, our organizing friend. And then we got into it, and all the stuff happened with WordPress, you know, and it was really around that time with like Check Box Gate. Remember that? Like, I don’t even know if that’s still a thing where you got to certify that you’re not affiliated with WP engine.

Tim Bouchard 00:04:06  It’s like pineapple now or something. Yeah. Yeah. It’s not a thing anymore.

Ron Brennan 00:04:10  And we, you know, Tim and I both run our agencies and use those, those services. So we’re like, we don’t even know if we can log into this thing. And then, you know, are we going to be hindered by people that utilize this, that won’t you can’t buy tickets unless you check that box and log in to the WordPress back end.

Ron Brennan 00:04:30  So there were a lot of unknowns. But beside all of that, we we kind of started having conversations adjacent to this anyway, and thinking it would be cool to have a conference that wasn’t so platform specific and that didn’t, you know, like, WordPress is cool and designers come, but they have to be familiar with WordPress. This thing allows any platform, any technology, any designer, marketing agencies, you know, whatever. We’ve got so many different various people that would never probably come to a WordCamp, because maybe they don’t build on. We got a guy that’s building a CMS, I think, in one of the talks. I believe so. So nothing against WordCamp, you know, we we hope to keep that going here in the Buffalo community. But we, you know, we still have our WordCamp Meetup group that that goes once a month. But this is an exciting opportunity to do something different. And we didn’t know how it was going to be received. But, you know, Tim, again, got the, you know, just started like, emailing everybody and, and it’s like, okay, well, I guess we’re doing this thing. So, you know, formed a, an organization and started putting it together. And it’s going to be a great event. So Tim can talk about, like, the venue and all of that fun stuff that’s happening.

Michelle Frechette 00:05:54  I also want to know where the name came from. So I want you to dive into that at some point.

Ron Brennan 00:05:58  To sort of the real story.

Tim Bouchard 00:05:59  Yeah, yeah. Color Code itself is. I think the idea was we wanted to lean into both sides of the equation. And you know how it goes when you brainstorm like this. We had a ton of terrible ideas. We had some that other people already taken. We had some that were just straight up silly, but the Color Code, color art design, code tech, and it just kind of it’s, you know, alliteration, it all kind of works. So.

Michelle Frechette 00:06:25  It sounds like a Dunkle thing.

Ron Brennan 00:06:29  He was part of it.

Tim Bouchard 00:06:30  Yeah. He’s part. Yeah, we all definitely thought it’s one of those things where, like, the Slack channel and the Google Drive doc just goes crazy for like, two weeks, and then ultimately, you end up, okay. There’s a domain we could use for that. Let’s go for it.

Ron Brennan 00:06:42  That’s what it came down to the domain.

Tim Bouchard 00:06:44  Yeah, I think this is what everything comes down to when you name stuff. Now it’s is there a domain that you can register for it and then get an LLC or whatever. So Color Code was really meant to one have like a fun sound and really specifically just plainly say this is design and tech. And when you think about like the marketing world, that kind of factors into everything that we do for marketing too. So it’s all encompassing. And to John’s point or sorry, Ron’s point. It really allows us to branch out topic wise and technology wise. And we were talking about the venue, the Seneca One Tower in Buffalo is the most impressive building in the city from a size standpoint that stands over the city at like 33 floors or something like that. I’d say that City Hall is still probably the most impressive building, but the tower is amazing, but it’s also home to 43 North, which is one of the largest startup incubators in the country and runs one of the largest competitions in the country.

Tim Bouchard 00:07:41  So there’s lots of startups there, and they all have marketing, tech, advanced, you know, promotion. So it really kind of fits the vibe of what that tower has tried to become under Douglas Development, which is sort of like a tech hub and an incubator hub. And MIT has invested in it for. Their, their tech department. So it it has a a great auditorium large breakout rooms for. And we planned on maybe having one good track, but we got so many speakers submissions and there were a lot of good talks. And we really did want to have a variety of topics, from design to development to marketing. And it ultimately ended up that we we had enough, to whittle it down, to whittle it down to three tracks, which was 20 speakers and 19 talks. We have one. The headline talk, is actually a two person talk in the auditorium at the end of the day, but, it really worked out. Well, we do have we have speakers coming from all over the East Coast.

Tim Bouchard 00:08:43  We got sponsors at the national level. And to to Ron’s point, by making the event a little bit more inclusive to marketing and creative. We were able to pull a lot of local agency support to you on the sponsor side, because one of the goals was, we don’t need this to be a conference that makes money. We all have jobs. We all have agencies or freelance gigs. We wanted to create something that was still accessible for students and startup people, or just hobbyists even. So by getting the sponsorship, it allowed us to keep down the ticket costs. So the tickets are around what a typical WordCamp would be as well.

Michelle Frechette 00:09:25  Nice. That makes it much, much more accessible for people, for sure. Especially when you do have people flying in from all over to attend and to speak there. I think.

Tim Bouchard 00:09:35  Yeah. And it is still volunteer speaking at this point too. I mean, there’s a few sponsors that have speaking spots because it’s part of their sponsor level. But, the challenge to having a low ticket event is it has to be very community driven. So in that aspect, it is a lot like WordCamp. It’s just that the speakers are coming from such more diverse backgrounds now, and diverse topics, that it’s just interesting to see that there are other people in these industries that are willing to do volunteer speaking, too. So yeah, that’s that’s one. The other way, to their credit, to the speaker’s credit of being able to keep tickets, down in cost.

Michelle Frechette 00:10:13  Yeah. I’m going to pull up the, the site so we can kind of talk a little bit through, first of all, who is the Bauhaus lover? Because the whole design seems very much in the Bauhaus arena.

Tim Bouchard 00:10:27  Yeah. Which that’s my my art director at Luminous, John English. This is his brainchild.

Michelle Frechette 00:10:32  I love it. It looks great. And, there’s downtown Buffalo, I recognize that.

Tim Bouchard 00:10:37  Yep. That that view right there is up main Street from the level that the event is going to be on at Seneca Tower.

Michelle Frechette 00:10:44  Oh, nice. My daughter used to live right on Main Street there. So, Let’s see. So you have right now we are in the standard, so it’s only $40 to attend. And if you sign up after the 20th, it’s only $50. And you can do that with or without a t shirt for that extra $10. I see wings, of course. You gotta have wings. The venue looks phenomenal.

Tim Bouchard 00:11:08  Yep that the tower.

Michelle Frechette 00:11:08  And then there’s the schedule, which is, you know what everybody is always interested in seeing, like, who’s going to be here? Coffee in the lobby. Happy about that, for sure. You know, opening remarks as we call the event greeting here. And then you’ve got some, Tim, you and I are speaking at the same time. How did that happen?

Tim Bouchard 00:11:25  Yeah, yeah, it’s the way the schedule works out when you have tracks like this, you have to balance and make sure that you don’t have any overlapping.

Michelle Frechette 00:11:33  Topics. Absolutely.

Tim Bouchard 00:11:35  Yeah. So there’s, there’s definitely like in the flex track, which is green when it’s heavily marketing or design related.

Tim Bouchard 00:11:40  The other talks are more content and dev. Yeah. So, it was a hard balance when you have this many speakers. It’s like doing a wedding reception table seating.  Figure out who has to be next to each other and who can’t.

Michelle Frechette 00:11:55  So you know, it is nice to go first thing though, because then you’ve ripped off the band aid and like the rest of the day, is your own, right?

Tim Bouchard 00:12:01  So yeah. And set the tone for the day too, right. So a lot of strong people leading off each track and then go from there.

Michelle Frechette 00:12:09  And you’ve got Jen Witkowski, you’ve got Lucas Manuel Alvarado, Kaitlin Bolling, Jim Brandt, Femi Lewis. Oh, I love Femi. She’s awesome.

Tim Bouchard 00:12:17  Christian Taylor’s coming too.

Michelle Frechette 00:12:20  Yeah. Christian from Craylor Media. Yep, I know Christian. He and I, met for the first time in person over at WordCamp Asia. Phenomenal. Doing so much work, in WordPress as far as news and sharing that kind of stuff. David Jackson. 

Tim Bouchard 00:12:33  Yeah, I’ll point out my buddy Jordan from Orlando, who no one’s ever probably heard of in this community, but, for the sports fans or even general marketing fans, he’s behind the viral campaigns for the Pop Tarts College Bowl Game that have happened the last couple of years with the crazy Pop Tart stuff that’s happened, and he’s doing a talk on, kind of how that idea went from a bar. The typical bar napkin story to actually, like, winning the business and being like, oh, we have to actually do something now and then. It turned out to be amazing. And it went viral, like for a week, two years in a row, two different campaings.

Michelle Frechette 00:13:09  That’s very cool. I’m looking forward to hearing that.

Tim Bouchard 00:13:12  Yeah.

Ron Brennan 00:13:12  It’s just super meta just because Color Code happened on a bar napkin, it kind of. Yeah, as well.

Michelle Frechette 00:13:17  I’m not surprised.

Tim Bouchard 00:13:18  At Gene McCarthy’s over wings.

Michelle Frechette 00:13:21  We got Coriano Harris. Hue Got This, I like that. And then, Aaron Reimann, who is down in Atlanta area, Robert DeVore, Levi Neuland, Tamara Zantell, and then the, I guess keynote?

Tim Bouchard 00:13:39  Yeah kinda of. We wanted to bring everyone together at the end of the day in one room.

Michelle Frechette 00:13:43  And Natalie Munger, with Utilizing Heuristics to Improve Design, I love that. And then you do have an after party, I think, too, right?

Tim Bouchard 00:13:49  Yeah. Yeah. Ron, you want to talk about that? It’s in the works, but there’s it’s.

Ron Brennan 00:13:53  Yeah, we just kind of locked it down. Earlier today. So it’s going to be at, Pearl Street Brewery, which is a short walk away. You know, so, like, that’s kind of the cool thing about having it in downtown Buffalo, you know, the hotels that you’re going to stay at. You know, in our past, our WordCamps, you know, we had them in smaller communities and there weren’t really hotels. So you’re always just driving to the event or getting an Airbnb somewhere. Here like we’re in the heart of the city. Like our speaker networking event, you’re going to hop on on the train and take it right up Main Street, you know? So everything’s like, right right there, very accessible from.

Michelle Frechette 00:14:35  Yeah, yeah. Here, I’ll give you a chance to thank your, your sponsors now too. So you’ve got WP Engine. 

Tim Bouchard 00:14:42  Yup WP Engine came in big and then you’ll see a bunch of the, the agencies and local colleges and stuff. And GoDaddy came in pretty big too.

Michelle Frechette 00:14:49  What’s FTN?

Tim Bouchard 00:14:51  Oh that’s Agency Fifteen. That’s a local agency. Creative agency.

Michelle Frechette 00:14:54  Nice. Luminous. Cani, and Douglas Development are collaborative.

Tim Bouchard 00:15:00  So props to Douglas. That tower. We are using the venue at no cost.

Michelle Frechette:  That’s amazing.

Tim Bouchard: I mean, when you see, when you see the venue and you see what they’re offering us to be able to do at no cost. Another reason why the tickets are low.

Michelle Frechette 00:15:15  I was going to say that’s definitely contributes to that low ticket price.

Tim Bouchard 00:15:18  It’s insane. It’s such a good location and it will really facilitate like an amazing experience.

Michelle Frechette 00:15:24  You got Mr. Smith, Parkway, Martin, Canisius University, Kinsta, and then Black Space Creative, Ninteen, Breakdance and Lighthouse Marketing. And if people are interested, they can absolutely subscribe to the newsletter.

Michelle Frechette 00:15:36  Now you have I’m going to stop sharing because I think I’ve shown almost everything. You have listed it says Buffalo. But it looks like there’s room for more events, since the Buffalo is kind of like the subset of the site. Do you have plans at this point? Is it kind of leaving it open for future ideas?

Tim Bouchard 00:15:57  It’s it’s leaving it open right now. There is a plan, but there are no plans.

Michelle Frechette 00:16:05  We the concept of a concept of a plan.

Ron Brennan 00:16:08  We have concepts of a plan.

Tim Bouchard 00:16:09  Definitely concepts of a plan. We have had interest expressed by various sponsors that they would sponsor further events, too. So this is one of those things where if we have a formula to build an event like this that operates in the same way that people are used to with WordCamps, and we can spice up the national circuit a little bit with a handful of events each year. We can build out our organizer network. And, you know, it doesn’t have to be a big project for us. We don’t have to take over the world at this point. It’s about variety. Even locally Michelle, you’re, you know, in Rochester, you’re very active in WordPress and have done WordCamp Rochester too. Do we really need two WordCamps 70 miles apart from each other?

Michelle Frechette 00:16:56  Right. And we’ve talked about having we’ve talked about having WordCamp Western New York.

Tim Bouchard 00:17:00  Or doing work on Western New York and combining efforts. Right. So, you know, like Ron said, it’s a very good opportunity to expand our horizons and take what we learned for ten years off of the WordCamp and then make something else that we can inject into potentially some different cities, too, but definitely in Western New York. And it’s something that complements WordCamp very well.

Michelle Frechette 00:17:20  Yeah, absolutely. So tickets are still on sale, which is great. So if people are interested, finding tickets, do you have. I didn’t look because I live local enough. Do you have information about hotel stays and things like that? Venue information on the site recommended hotels, anything like that? or should they just go.

Tim Bouchard 00:17:38  To those specifically there? But to Ron’s point. The venue is downtown and if you do a Google map search, you’re going to find hotels within one train stop or walking distance. And it’s buffalo. So, they aren’t super expensive. Although there is a Shane Gillis comedy act at the arena that night, so you never know who’s coming into town buying up these hotel rooms.

Michelle Frechette 00:17:58  I’ve never heard of that person, so maybe it’s not as big as I don’t know. So whenever we have an event here in Rochester, the question is, the question from outside is, will you have garbage plates? The question from inside is we’re not going to have garbage plates, are we? So the question in Buffalo is, will there be wings at the after party or what can people expect?

Ron Brennan 00:18:22  Yeah I, I believe so. We’re going to have food, you know, like food is always a part of these things. We haven’t finalized the menu yet, but you know, I generally like to provide some Buffalo staples, especially when I know we have people coming in from out of town.

Michelle Frechette 00:18:40  I’m the same way as long as it’s mild, I. I love buffalo flavor. Not so much the. Not so much the spice. So to get back to something you said very early on, which was about pineapple on pizza. The pineapple on pizza question across the world is very similar to the Buffalo Western New York question of would you ever dip a wing in ranch?

Tim Bouchard00:19:05  No.

 Ron Brennan: No.

Michelle Frechette 00:19:06  You lose your buffalo card if you do that.

Tim Bouchard 00:19:09  No, it’s always blue cheese.

Michelle Frechette 00:19:10  Yeah. Blue cheese.

Tim Bouchard 00:19:11  And if it’s done right, it’s either homemade blue cheese by the restaurant or if you have to, it’s Rudy’s blue cheese.

Ron Brennan: Yep.

Michelle Frechette 00:19:17  There you go. I’m sure Rochester doesn’t have either of those. So we take what we can get, but I think most of the time it’s Marie’s blue cheese? But, it will do. 

Ron Brennan 00:19:26  That’s another one. People use that.

Michelle Frechette 00:19:29  In a pinch. Right? So what else? What else do you want to talk about with the event? What can people look forward to? What are you most excited about? And, is the stress levels hitting yet?

Tim Bouchard 00:19:40  it’s not super stressful. I mean, like, Fortunately, because we got started early, at this point, it’s just about making sure people know tickets are there, making sure they know the event exists. You know, we’ve been doing as much daily, almost, posting about speakers and sponsors and things on, on, you know, like X, Facebook, LinkedIn, all that good stuff. But one thing we haven’t talked about yet is the, Live graffiti art competition that will happen throughout the day in the lobby. Ben, who’s not here to talk about it. So we’ll do our best to do it for him. Is running essentially a large, sticky, note easel competition where we’ll have markers and things set up out in the lobby in a certain area and people throughout the day, if they want to either skip a session or between sessions. I don’t know what the official plan is for what will be done in terms of the art that’s done, but, do something and put it up on. Yes. Art battle. Art battle. 100%. 

Michelle Frechette 00:20:39  This is answering June’s question.

Tim Bouchard 00:20:41  And it kind of. it kind of, vibes with, sticker that we have that we’re giving all the attendees and also the t-shirt option that we have, which is the Responsive by Design –  Naughty by Nature reference. Yeah, I love that. there’s a little bit of this weird subtheme that we just decided to inject in that’s kind of like urban hip hop 80s. I don’t know, it just it seemed fun, so we just went for it. But there will be art battle stuff. There actually will be some interactive voting towards the second half of the day, and there will be three winners of gift gift cards at the end of the day, too.

Michelle Frechette 00:21:17  So can I make a suggestion for next year’s t-shirt?

Speaker 4 00:21:20  Sure.

Michelle Frechette 00:21:21  It’s black. It’s just black lettering on a white shirt, but it’s open lettering and it comes with Sharpie markers. So while you’re going through the day, you can color in your own Color Code shirt.

Ron Brennan 00:21:32  I like that.

Tim Bouchard 00:21:33  Interactive.

Michelle Frechette 00:21:35  Swag.

Tim Bouchard 00:21:36  Yeah. Yeah.

Tim Bouchard 00:21:36  Interactive swag.

Michelle Frechette 00:21:37  Somebody write that down.

Tim Bouchard 00:21:39  We are. We’re getting a lot of good support from the sponsors too. So there will actually be things like swag bags when you check in. I mean, it’s just like we’ve gotten so much support from the people, that not only have done financial support, but they’re trying to make it so that the attendees have like a very top notch one day conference experience. So that’s I’m looking forward to that, to you and being able to provide that.

Ron Brennan 00:22:03  I think it’s going to be cool to have, like we’re going to have and then really never happens here. I mean, occasionally we’ll see other other marketing agency people at networking events or whatever. And, you know, some of us talk or whatever on, on online. But to have this group of people that are there in the same room together. Like I’m excited about that. You know, just what kind of collaborations and what kind of ideas can spark from just those side conversations that, you know, we’re never really in all in the same room like this.

Michelle Frechette 00:22:38  Yeah. So does that mean the hallway track is going to be exciting too?

Ron Brennan 00:22:42  Hallway tracks are always exciting.

Michelle Frechette 00:22:43  Haha! Opportunities to meet new people for sure.

Tim Bouchard 00:22:48  There’s there’s a lot of decent topics. I mean, we were scrolling through the the speaker list in the schedule. I mean, there will be AI topics and, you know, there’s the typical like content topics and there’s a few hot button topics. You know, the the new a new CMS someone is building is pretty cool. I’m going to be talking about decoupling yourself from Google because I personally am starting to hate Google. But like, you know, you have to live with it.

Ron Brennan:  How can it be done? 

Tim Bouchard: How do you play the game? I don’t know, right? Or I do know and I’m going to talk about it. But there’s a lot of decent like hot button topics that are coming up too. So I think even from a professional level, it’s not these aren’t like throwaway speaker presentations, even though they’re volunteer speakers. There’s going to be a lot of meat to this.

Michelle Frechette 00:23:31  Yeah, I realize that it’ll be hard for people to see necessarily, but the schedule is very concise. It’s also very colorful. I like that. but yeah, there’s a lot of amazing topics. I’m. I’m also glad that my talk is done early, because otherwise I have a tendency to, like, obsess about it and sit in the green room and work on it too much. And this way it’ll be done and I can go listen to other topics as well, which is a good thing.

Ron Brennan 00:23:52  Yeah, and there’s so many cool stories there, like Tamara, from The Foundry. she’s like second last talk in the in the second track there. The Future of Entrepreneurship. Like, she literally like her whole thing. And her whole career now has been to support her daughter, who was a young entrepreneur and had this product that she created and blew up into a company. And so she had to, you know, build out the support system to help her daughter turn this idea into a company. And now she’s teaching and, you know, kind of mentors young entrepreneurs. So this should be a really interesting, interesting talk there too.

Michelle Frechette 00:24:35  Yeah, for sure. There’s a lot of really, really cool stuff on the schedule. If people want to learn more here, let me change things up here a little bit. I do have a banner. I have a banner for this. Just go to colorcode.events in your browser and you will be able to see the whole schedule. Read up about the speakers and the topics, see more of what’s being planned for the day and for what’s up to the minute stuff. Go ahead on go on X. I still call it Twitter. Guys, I’m sorry, but.

Tim Bouchard 00:25:04  It’s Twitter. It’s both. 

Michelle Frechette 00:25:05  Yeah @colorCodeEvents. it’s nice that you have the, you name something that had the URL available. That’s not always easy.

Tim Bouchard 00:25:17  Not for Instagram though. Instagram. It was taken by some unused account. So it’s like I think it’s hellocolorcode on Instagram.

Michelle Frechette 00:25:24  But yeah, there’s ways around things.

Tim Bouchard 00:25:26  But there’s always something.

Michelle Frechette 00:25:28  Exactly. But yeah. And you can get your tickets right on the website as well. Colorcode.events right now they are. What did we say, $40 for a ticket? To attend for the full day. And that includes lunch?

Ron Brennan 00:25:39  Yep. 

Michelle Frechette 00:25:41  And the after party as well. So make sure that you sign up for that, especially if you’re in the area. But honestly, why wouldn’t you want to come anyway? And plus make a whole weekend of it? It’s just a hop, skip and a jump away from Niagara Falls. So you could actually, on Sunday, go and check out the falls or even Saturday night or Friday night or whatever. And, I love.

Ron Brennan 00:25:59  That we have our friends from, you know, Niagara Falls, Canada coming.

Michelle Frechette 00:26:03  Yep. Exactly. It’ll be good. I’m really looking forward to it. Yeah. Anything else you’d like to mention about it other than sign up? Come, join.

Ron Brennan 00:26:13  I think we’re going to be. We’re going to try. we’re not streaming it, but we are going to try and record every track and then, you know, get it up on a on a YouTube or make it available through the website in some way, shape or form or some combination of Tim’s cameras and our mics and whatever.

Michelle Frechette 00:26:31  Yeah, excellent. That’ll be great.

Tim Bouchard 00:26:33  Because we love torture. So we’re going to do that to ourselves. 

Ron Brennan 00:26:36  That’s right. You know how that goes with with WordCamps. You know, then the footage will be there as well. Anybody edit it and actually upload it or will it sit on a.

Tim Bouchard 00:26:47  It’s important though. It’s you know, we’ve run an event like this for ten years, but this is the first event. And we want to make sure that people can see what it was, what it was about, what types of quality topics we had and speakers. So, you know, we think that there’s something here. And if we can make sure that we’re always pushing out the quality of this, then, you know, it makes it more possible for us to potentially do another city at some point. And it’s not just in Buffalo in the northeast. It could be in the southeast, it could be Midwest, it could be whatever. You know, there’s creatives, marketers and devs all over the country. Could be in Canada, could be in Europe, I don’t know.

Ron Brennan 00:27:28  Europe, yeah, it could be Europe. Color Code Europe/

Tim Bouchard 00:27:30  It’s only a concept of a plan.

Michelle Frechette 00:27:33  Exactly.

Tim Bouchard 00:27:34  That’s it.

Michelle Frechette 00:27:35  The concept of a plan. We have a couple people watching. If you have questions. Now is your time to put them in the comments before we wrap up for the day. I guess I have. I’m out of questions, I don’t know, are you still looking for sponsors or are you still in need of sponsors? And not so much?

Tim Bouchard 00:27:51 Well, always. We’re the high, ticket sponsors are all taken up there. We’re always open to someone doing a low level if they want to grab a ticket and a low level sponsorship just to support it. We’ll always welcome that. So there’s still time to do that, but will it? It’s not critical for the event. It’s all set up, ready to go. We’re just get people on the tickets, get people the event. We’re going to have a great time, listen to some quality talks, meet some cool people, then do it again.

Michelle Frechette 00:28:20  Sounds good. I’m looking forward to it. I will be there bright and early. So are you coming.

Ron Brennan 00:28:25  Your coming  the night before right?

Michelle Frechette 00:28:28  I was planning to. I don’t have anybody in the area to help me with my scooter at the hotel. That’s what’s stopping me from coming out the night early the night before, so I was going to drive in super early on Saturday.

Ron Brennan 00:28:38  Okay.

Michelle Frechette 00:28:40  But we can always talk later. If you know somebody that is in, is around and can help. But otherwise.

Ron Brennan 00:28:45 That’s crazy we are here. I say that we’re we’re here like, you know, we were talking a little bit earlier on about your first WordCamp in Buffalo. Yeah. And, so that was the back in the good old days when Ben used to sneak, like, 150 people into the Canisius cafeteria, and that’s where we had the WordCamp. So that was.

Michelle Frechette 00:29:08  We’ve come a long way, baby.

Ron Brennan 00:29:09  That’s right. That’s where your first one was. Right at Canisius?

Michelle Frechette  00:29:13  Yeah.

Ron Brennan 00:29:14  I’m pretty sure that’s where I met you at Canisius. Yeah. And. Yeah. And then I found out after I didn’t know this, but I was like, I thought we had permission. And Ben’s like, no, nobody. I’m like, you just had 150 people show up here. And nobody questioned?

Michelle Frechette 00:29:27  Nobody blinked.

Tim Bouchard 00:29:29  Yeah, everybody knew about it but Canisius. But it was cool. It was a good event.

Michelle Frechette 00:29:33  It was like a it was a good event.

Tim Bouchard 00:29:35  I met my first developer, Tommy, who is now our current developer, again at that event at Canisius. He was just graduating from school, actually, through one of Ben’s programs. And that’s the type of thing you can do. It’s a good recruiting place, good networking place. It’s a good learning place. And genuinely, like, we know when this community gets together, whether it’s WordPress or marketing or creative or just that side of it, it’s it’s always good people. So yeah, we look forward to bringing those people together.

Michelle Frechette 00:30:01  Will you have a job board people can write openings on, and people who are looking for jobs like we do some events?

Tim Bouchard 00:30:06  You know, I thought about that and we haven’t set anything up. we do have a Slack channel, or property, whatever it’s called workspace that we have set up that we’re going to invite all the attendees into, probably after that 4/19 deadline so we can ramp up for two weeks and people can start chats in there and stuff.

Michelle Frechette 00:30:26  Sounds good.

Tim Bouchard 00:30:26  Because we want to just bring people together as much as possible.

Michelle Frechette 00:30:30  Yeah, I think that’s awesome. I want to thank.

Ron Brennan 00:30:33  Designers, developers, just any anybody that’s interested in, you know, learning more about some of the cool things that are being done or can be done, like this event, you know, it’s it’s it’s a great opportunity to network whether you’re looking to expand your career. You know, if I was in school as a computer science or developer or a, you know, a graphic designer or something right now, like this is an event, I would probably you’re going to have a bunch of the top marketing agencies in Buffalo on hand at this event, and it’s a great opportunity to expand that network and and just get out there.

Michelle Frechette 00:31:16  Absolutely, and if you even are thinking about it like I’ve been asking women like, you know, advice for people who are thinking, women who are thinking about joining WordPress and joining tech. So, I mean, if you have an inkling or want to learn a little bit more about it and the kinds of people involved, it’s a really inexpensive ticket to spend the day networking with folks and learning as much as you can.

Tim Bouchard 00:31:37  Yeah, and hopefully the weather cooperates with us. It’ll be May. May can be very nice in Buffalo. It could also be not nice. Who knows?

Michelle Frechette 00:31:45  I mean, we had snow yesterday.

Tim Bouchard 00:31:47  I’m hoping we can show off the city because it, you know, when the weather breaks in the city, it’s one of the best ones to to visit in the summertime. But there’s good people here, and we’re in a good spot downtown, so.

Michelle Frechette 00:32:01  Absolutely. Well, guys, don’t go anywhere. I’m going to go ahead and end this. But I want to talk to you for just a couple of minutes before we go. Thank you so much for being here. Really appreciate learning more and and being able to share this event with people through Post Status. if you are listening, go to colorcode.events for more information. And I don’t know who’s going to be here next week, but I will have another Post Status Happiness Hour live next week and we’ll be here to chat with everybody.

Tim Bouchard 00:32:28  Thanks. Yeah. Thanks, Michelle.

Ron Brennan 00:32:30  Yeah.

This article, Post Status Happiness Hour Session Twenty Five, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

Since being laid off in February, I’ve had a lot of conversations with others on both sides of layoffs.

It’s really hard to be in the tech job market (or any job market in this economy) right now, with so many recent layoffs. As someone in the mix of it right now (and I haven’t been looking that earnestly yet, as I’ve been taking some time to regroup, heal from feelings through the process, and decide what my next steps are) I understand the mental burden, the anxiety, and the fear that comes with being on the job market.

I am privileged to be in a place financially that has afforded me some time off as I strategize. Others are not as fortunate and need to find work immediately to keep paying bills and putting food on the table for their families. It’s not easy, for sure.

But it’s also not easy for those at the companies doing layoffs who are still employed there. There are so many feelings that come with being a “layoff survivor.” Yet to talk about those feelings seems so insensitive to those who are job searching like crazy, right?

The thing is, it’s hard on both sides of the issue.

While on the one hand, clearly, it’s difficult to be in a place where you’re suddenly looking for new employment, desperately trying to make sure you spend wisely to get you through to your next job, the truth is that it’s mentally difficult to be a survivor, too.

Sitting where I am at the moment, polishing my résumé, reading through job posts, it could (or should) be difficult to have sympathy for those working, but I’ve been in both places. I’ve been the person still in the company watching friends and colleagues suddenly wondering what to do next, and I’ve been where I am now.

Survivor’s Guilt is Real. So is Dread.

It really doesn’t feel good when your employer has to do layoffs – even when you are one of the people still employed.

• You may feel guilty when you see others being laid off and you’re still holding your job. This is a normal response in this situation. It’s difficult to see coworkers and friends lose their roles. Feeling bad for them is normal. It’s also normal to feel a sort of survivor’s guilt that you still have your role.
• You may also feel the dread of “waiting for the other shoe to drop.” Feeling like it could be you next causes anxiety. This is also a normal feeling. Anything that disrupts the status quo of your working environment – real or virtual – can make you feel off-kilter at best, and dread at worst.

Layoffs usually happen when there is a surplus of workers for the demand, mostly based on sales. So feeling the dread of wondering if you will be included in the next wave of layoffs (or wondering if there will be a next wave) is very normal. And while there aren’t any words anyone can give you to make you feel 100% secure, you should know that a wave of layoffs isn’t a whim, and is planned well in advance to combat issues that have been rising over time, so if your job is still in place following layoffs, you should be fairly confident that you will continue to be employed.

It’s also common after layoffs to have workloads redistributed, so you may feel some dread or anxiety if your workload is increased. Be sure to communicate with your supervisor what is actually doable, and what is too much to expect one person to accomplish. A company’s decision to do layoffs shouldn’t mean that those still working are taxed with more work than they can handle.

How to Talk to Someone Who Has Been Laid Off

First, please do talk to those you want to remain friends (or friendly) with after they have been removed from their roles. Being laid off can feel like you’ve just been evicted from a home. You’ve often lost access to either a physical space you’re used to, or a digital one, or both.

Not being in Slack channels with people you worked with, losing access to email and calendars, and watching access to work spaces disappear feels like you’ve been excommunicated from a community, when it’s really just a business protecting its own assets and following protocols. Reaching out to folks after the fact can help bridge the gap they feel between themselves and people they were used to working with.

Do’s and Don’ts

• Do ask friends how they are doing and if they need to chat. Reaching out to check in, to say you enjoyed working together, or just to say you miss someone is a lovely way to stay connected.
• Don’t ask them “have you found a job yet” or “how is the job search going.” This often feels like pressure, and having to say “no, I haven’t” feels bad. There is so much self doubt at this point in a person’s life, that added pressure by others about the job just feels oppressive and embarrassing.
• Do offer to take them to coffee (or a coffee zoom) and be a listening ear.
• Don’t badmouth the company or allow them to make you feel uncomfortable if they do.
• Do offer to help if you can: review a résumé, make a call, serve as a reference, etc.
• Don’t take anything they’ve shared with you back to the office to repeat to others. Don’t betray their trust.
• Do offer reassurance, without sounding trite. Saying things like “I know you’ll land something soon,” or “you’ll be fine” aren’t helpful.
• Nice, but not necessary, you can always gift someone a gift card for coffee, a meal, or something they enjoy as a hobby. (When I received a few of these, they made me feel valued, seen, and supported.)

Protect Your Mental Health

Regardless of who was laid off in your company, none of their current situation is based on anything that you did or didn’t do.

Leaning into guilt, anxiety, and dread doesn’t help someone else, and only hurts yourself, your mental wellbeing, and, potentially, your work performance.

If you are struggling with your mental response to layoffs at your company, please find a trusted person, therapist, or doctor to talk to.

If You Have Been Laid Off…

There are resources to help you. You can refer to our post about layoff resources for many areas of help, including job boards, résumé ideas, networking groups and more.

Remember that you aren’t alone. You have value. You deserve to work.

There are people and resources to help you navigate to your next role.

This article, Layoffs: Survivor’s Guilt and Fear of Being Next, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

Google Wants to Subscribe to Your Email List

• Your email newsletter can now influence how brands appear across Google’s search platforms.
• A new addition to the Google Merchant Center expands Googles index by including marketing emails in its crawled data.
• Google will examine your emails and extract sales and promotions, new products, social media content and links, brand voice, images, and videos.
• To include Google as a recipient, add marketingemailtogoog@gmail.com to your list, or Google may sign up for these communications automatically.
• If you’d rather not have Google indexing your marketing communications, you can opt-out in the General Account Options area of the Google Merchant Center
• Read more about this interesting development in this post from Joost de Valk.

Hackers Are Hiding Malicious Code in MU Plugins

• Sucuri researchers have noticed a new trend of malicious code hidden in the WordPress mu-plugins directory.
• A Must-Use (MU) plugin is a special type of WordPress plugin that automatically executes on every page load without requiring activation like other plugins in the dashboard.
• In order to create an MU plugin, an attacker must gain access to the site by exploiting compromised themes, plugins, or credentials.
• Sucuri researchers have found 3 specific payloads being added to MU plugins:
  • Redirect.php: redirects visitors (other than bots and logged-in admins) to page that attempts to trick them into downloading malware.
  • Index.php: a particularly dangerous webshell UI that allows execution of PHP code from a GitHub repository.
    Custom-js-loader.php: replaces all images on the site with adult content and redirects all links to dangerous websites.
• While many agencies already have a good process for protecting against compromised themes, plugins, and credentials, adding file change notices and/or regular audits of the mu-plugins directory is something to consider.

Do Exact Match Domains Matter in Today’s SEO?

• Back in the day, if you owned the domain name that was an exact match for a search keyword, it was almost a guarantee you’d be at the top of the search results.
• While exact match domains no longer guarantee SEO success like they used to, they can still provide value as part of a marketing strategy that prioritizes memorability and trust.
• Local businesses in particular can benefit from geo-specific exact match domains, especially in competitive service industries (think chicagoplumber.com or dallaselectrician.com).
• Plus, voice search and AI assistants have made memorable, easily pronounced domain names more valuable than ever.
• “If your domain sounds like a real brand, people will treat it like one – and so will search engines.”
• Learn more about exact match domains and the importance of brand-building in SEO in these 2 helpful articles from SearchEngineLand.
  
  

Worth a Look

• Automattic has announced a 16% workforce reduction “to protect Automattic’s long-term future,” according to Matt Mullenweg.
• ICYMI, Skype will be shutting down for good on May 5. If you’re still using a Skype phone number for VoIP and SMS, Google Voice seems to be the most logical replacement. Skype also supports data export if you want to save old messages.
• SlimSEO has released a new Pro version combining its previous Schema and Link Manager add-ons into a single new premium plugin.
• Adobe Premiere Pro has a new generative AI tool that can extend 4K clips by up to 2 seconds and audio by 10 seconds.
• Learn how to optimize your agency’s Google Knowledge Panel with this helpful guide.
• Microsoft has unveiled an AI-generated version of Quake II you can play in a browser.

This article, Agency News Weekly, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

Ronni K. Gothard Christiansen shared a LinkedIn post highlighting recognition for business technology achievements and the MyData Global Award. See the post.

Seth Goldstein had a busy week of appearances and publications: he interviewed Anthony Franco on Entrepreneur’s Enigma, discussed branding from scratch on Digital Marketing Dive, and was a guest on Podcasting Amplified to talk podcasting. Entrepreneur’s Enigma • Digital Marketing Dive • Podcasting Amplified

Chris Reynolds posted a quick video recap of DrupalCon Atlanta. Watch it here

Rae Morey shared her excitement about attending PressConf in Arizona as an official media partner and wrote about why she’s heading to the event. Read the article

Amadeu Arderiu announced the beta launch of Joinchat AI, a new WordPress chatbot that uses only your site content to power AI conversations, with flexible post type selection.

Seth Goldstein published the latest edition of the Marketing Junto newsletter, featuring a discussion on Perplexity and TikTok. Read it here

Adrian Tobey live-streamed a roast of old versions of his Groundhogg plugin. Watch the stream

Matt Medeiros shared a video showing how AI can handle phone calls for WordPress freelancers and agencies. Watch here

Derek Ashauer released Conversion Bridge 1.7, now supporting 16 analytics platforms, 6 ad platforms, and 55 plugin integrations for enhanced tracking and segmentation. View the update

Ronni K. Gothard Christiansen posted about new U.S. cross-border data sharing rules and their potential impact. Read more

Taco Verdonschot addressed the ban of Joost de Valk and Progress Planner from WordCamp Asia and all future events in a personal blog post. Read his perspective

Alex Standiford is seeking a new WordPress client and shared a portfolio of complex projects he’s worked on. View portfolio

Ryan Welcher hosted a live Twitch session focused on adding user profiles to the Block Developer Cookbook. Watch the stream

Chris published a blog post recounting his experience at DrupalCon Atlanta from a WordPress perspective. Read it here

Benjamin Intal shared a new project idea exploring how AI might help with article writing, especially when struggling to organize thoughts. View the tweet

Jonathan Bossenger returned to livestreaming and focused on fixing issues in his WP to MD exporter plugin. Watch the session

Joost de Valk published a post discussing how Google is targeting marketing emails. Read the article

Topher DeRosia announced the launch of the HeroPress swag store, with $5 from each sale supporting the HeroPress mission. Visit the store

Tom Whitaker showcased a Canadian-flavored demo of voice-driven AI form building with GravityBuilder.ai, which works as an add-on to Gravity Forms. Learn more

Carl Alexander shared a livestream session where he tested North Commerce with Ymir, evaluating compatibility between the two platforms. Watch here

Bob Dunn announced that Michelle Frechette has joined the Do the Woo hosting team to focus on WordPress event discussions. The announcement is available on the Do the Woo website.

Jamie Marsland highlighted research showing that 90% of B2B buyers create a shortlist before formal research begins, emphasizing the importance of brand trust and visibility for WordPress businesses. More details are in his post on Pootlepress.

This article, The Latest from Post Status Members, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

Transcript ↓

In this episode of the Post Status Happiness Hour, host Michelle Frechette interviews Roger Williams from Kinsta. Who serves as the Partnerships and Community Manager for North America. They discuss various topics including the WordPress community, Kinsta’s new affiliate program, and their global sponsorship of WordCamps. The episode also highlights the creation of collaborative music playlists within the Post Status Slack community and the importance of concise, engaging content. Additionally, the guest shares insights on supporting WordPress contributors and the launch of Kinsta’s new automatic updates feature for themes and plugins.

Top Takeaways:

• The Importance of Thorough Testing in Software Development and Releases: Michelle emphasized the critical role of testing and feedback during the release cycle of WordPress 6.8, particularly as they approach its official launch. Despite having a dedicated testing community, the need for more testers is constant to ensure compatibility with a wide range of plugins and themes. The takeaway is that comprehensive testing is vital for minimizing issues at launch, and encouraging more community involvement can help ensure smoother releases.
• The Value of Consistent Community Contribution and Support for Open Source Projects: Roger highlighted the importance of documentation in open-source projects like WordPress, noting that it’s often underappreciated until something goes wrong. He also spoke about Kinsta’s involvement in supporting the community through contributions, such as sponsoring WordCamp and supporting documentation initiatives. The takeaway is that consistent, behind-the-scenes contributions, like documentation and community support, are crucial for the sustainability and success of open-source projects, even though they are often taken for granted.
• Kinsta’s Automatic Updates Feature Enhances Site Reliability: Roger introduced Kinsta’s new Automatic Updates feature, which ensures WordPress sites remain updated while minimizing risks. The system takes a before-and-after screenshot during updates and automatically reverts changes if visual differences are detected, helping prevent website issues that could impact business operations.

Mentioned In The Show:

• Kinsta
• Linux container project  
• LinkedIn
• WordCamp US
• Sevalla
• Cloudflare Enterprise
• StackOverflow
• Meetup.com
• WordPress Foundation
• EsoTerra Cidery
• Kinsta Automatic Updates

You can follow Post Status and our guests on Social Media:

• Roger Williams (Community Manager, Kinsta)
• Michelle Frechette (Director of Community Relations, Post Status)
• Olivia Bisset (Intern, Post Status)

The Post Status podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis.

Browse our archives, and don’t forget to subscribe via iTunes, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, Simplecast, or RSS.

Transcript

Michelle Frechette 00:00:02  We’re live. We’re live here on the Post Status Happiness Hour. Okay. First questions first. What’s on your head?

Roger Williams 00:00:11  Oh.

Michelle Frechette 00:00:12  I see, I see rainbows.

Roger Williams 00:00:14  Yeah. So, I was just at a conference last week, and there were a lot of podcasters there, and they told me to stop using Bluetooth headphones when I’m podcasting. and so. So I switched back to my old school wired in headphones, and all I’ve got are these really old sennheiser’s that I had to tape with, rainbow duct tape years ago.

Michelle Frechette 00:00:39  It looks like you have a pretty little bow in your hair.

Roger Williams 00:00:43  Perfect, perfect. That’s what that’s that’s what I’m hoping. That’s what I’m going for. 

Michelle Frechette 00:00:47  I mean, but you know what, Roger? On you it works.

Roger Williams 00:00:51  Well, thank you, I appreciate that. Thank you so much.

Michelle Frechette 00:00:54  And thanks for joining me today on the Happiness Hour. I it’s it’s always a pleasure to talk to you for multiple reasons, chief, of course, is that you’re a wonderful person to talk to. But also, I get to see those pictures of your dog in the background and like, who wouldn’t love those pictures? The dogs, I think one, two dogs, right? Yeah.

Roger Williams 00:01:13  Two dogs. Yeah. So, Daisy. Well, Daisy over here and then Enzo’s over here.

Michelle Frechette 00:01:17  Yeah, yeah. Just adorable. Adorable. I would love to claim all of the wildlife as my own and my pictures, but alas, they do not live with me.

Roger Williams 00:01:27  Well, that’s that’s a lot cheaper. You don’t have to maintain as much.

Michelle Frechette 00:01:29  True, true. I do have a cat that lives behind my monitor because she has a little bed back there. She likes it back there because I can’t reach her and she can stay out of it. Like I can’t make her accept my hugs and kisses, basically. But she comes up and stretches every once in a while and, you know, let’s me pet her for a second. But anyway.

Roger Williams 00:01:48  So she represents cats very well.

Michelle Frechette 00:01:50  Yeah she does. She’s got it down pat. She realizes I’m the staff. I’m not the owner. So it’s all good. 

Roger Williams: Nice. 

Michelle Frechette: So first let me say welcome not only to the show, but Kinsta we got everything in the works right now. Any moment we should be able to. I’m going to officially announce the soft launch of the sponsorship of Post Status. So welcome. As a sponsor, we created our own little sponsorship channel with you all today, and I’m open for those conversations. It’s really great.

Roger Williams 00:02:21  I mean once there’s a sponsor channel in Slack that makes it official, right?

Michelle Frechette 00:02:25  It does, it does. It’s just the the just. And we signed the contract. It’s just that little payment thing. And I know that you guys are good for it. So we’re gonna announce it anyway. So so welcome.

Roger Williams 00:02:36  Absolutely. Thank you.  Yeah. Excited to be part of the community and and help. you know, I know it’s $50 a year now. Like, what, a smoking deal. 

Michelle Frechette: Yeah, right.

Roger Williams 00:02:47  I am encouraging everybody to join. I actually just had a great conversation with Joost, and we talked about, you know, his kind of goal and mission with, you know, making Post Status into a nonprofit and really making it that community that can have all of the conversations, you know, and have the spicy conversations, right. And, and still manage to be a group of people that get along. And so that’s really encouraging.

Michelle Frechette 00:03:17  And we do fun stuff, too. I don’t know if you saw it, but we started a new channel today called The Music Channel. 

Roger Williams: Okay. 

Michelle Frechette: And I got an official like, I paid for an official Spotify account today called Post Status, and I have two playlists in there that are open to collaboration amongst our community. So if you’re in Post Status Slack and you go to the music channel, you will see you can add to those playlists. One is for folks who like mellow music when they work, and the other is for people who like upbeat music when they work. So you can just add to that playlist or building playlists two playlists together as a community for for fun, right? Because you can do that. We can do those fun things there. And I really enjoy that too. So it’s pretty cool stuff.

Roger Williams 00:04:04  That’s really awesome. I love the initiative there. It’s always interesting to hear what other people listen to. When their getting work done. 

Michelle Frechette 00:04:13  Yeah. Can I tell you my biggest fear was that because I had to seed it with something, right. So I put like two songs in each one and I thought, I’m going to be judged so hard by these four songs.

Roger Williams 00:04:24  Okay. What were the songs?

Speaker 3 00:04:26  Oh, now I gotta go back and look.

Michelle Frechette 00:04:27  Okay, hold on a second. I put in You Don’t Know Me, which is a Ray Charles  & Diana Krall song. This is the mellow one. Yeah. which I think nobody but I’m a huge Josh Groban fan. So the other one was When You Say You Love Me by Josh Groban. 

Roger Williams: Okay.

Michelle Frechette 00:04:42  And then the upbeat songs. I actually did a little research. See, I listened to 70s music all the time, like 70s and 80s. That’s what I was doing. So I did a little research. I’m like, what are upbeat songs that people like to listen to? And even though Coldplay gets a bad rap sometimes. Viva la Vida was the number one song on multiple lists. So that and On Top of the World by Imagine Dragons. Were the four that I seeded. Two each, you know two each into those things. And I thought nobody so far has said, Michelle, your taste in music is awful. So we’re gonna let it ride. We’re gonna let it ride. If I need to, I can always delete them.

Roger Williams 00:05:16  I feel like you went with some pretty safe choices there.

Michelle Frechette 00:05:19  I mean, I tried.

Roger Williams 00:05:20  Good songs, good bands, so. And. And now it’s up to people to, proliferate the lists with their ideas. And I’m looking forward to see what people start sharing.

Michelle Frechette 00:05:33  Yeah. Well, on the upbeat songs, I will say Corey Maass went to work on it because we got we’re up to 18 songs on that playlist and we have five on the other playlist. So yeah. So if you are not a member of Post Status and you want to be, it’s only $50 a year, you can influence these playlists. Us. I mean, I’m going to start listening to him tomorrow and see, you know, how much work I get done. We’ll see.

Roger Williams 00:05:54  I’ll tell you what. I feel like we’re in a telethon type situation.

Michelle Frechette 00:05:57  I know right?

Roger Williams 00:06:00  You’re standing by to take your call. Let’s let’s see what you let’s get joining up here, people.

Michelle Frechette 00:06:05  Oh, my goodness. I’m old enough to have grown up on the Jerry Lewis telethons where he’s like, let’s see that tote board. Right. As the numbers flip over and like, the old alarm clocks did. It was so.

Roger Williams 00:06:16  Funny. Absolutely. No, I used to remember they would always come on, like, PBS and stuff when I was one to watch the new Star Trek series or something. And I’m like, you guys are killing me. I’ve got no money. I’m just a kid.

Michelle Frechette 00:06:28  Yeah, and all of the people they would bring on were like the old Love Boat type people. Like, it’s like, I don’t want to see Charo. I know she does good flamenco. Show me somebody I care about. Like. Yeah. But, you know, I mean, it was what it was. Donald O’Connor dancing at 78 years old. No, I don’t need to see that. But anyway. James says hello to both of us. Hey, James. Good to have you here.

Roger Williams 00:06:53  I haven’t seen James in a while.

Michelle Frechette 00:06:55  He’s a pretty awesome dude.

Roger Williams 00:06:56  Yeah.

Michelle Frechette 00:06:57  He really is. So tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do at Kinsta.

Roger Williams 00:07:03  Oh, boy. Okay, so, so at Kinsta. I’ll just start there. I recently actually got, kind of a title change, so now I was Community Manager. Now I’m Partnerships and Community Manager for North America. And so what does that mean? So I get to go to a lot of events, and kind of try and engage the community, get feedback as far as, hey, you know, on the hosting product, get feedback about how what people are thinking about WordPress in general. And then I take that information back to the home base and share it with the powers that be and my coworkers to help improve the product and then also see how we can help. the WordPress project overall. And so one initiative that we’ve got going relatively recently is we’ve started sponsoring contributors to WordPress. And so that has been just a lot of fun, reaching out to different contributors and seeing, you know, how we can help them, help their work, and really improve WordPress. Because if WordPress doesn’t keep improving, there’s not a whole lot for Kinsta to do. So that’s kind of a new initiative. Other things. So with the partnership side, I talk with different companies that are adjacent to Kinsta.

Roger Williams 00:08:30  So agencies are a big one. We have a lot of agency customers. And we also have a lot of customers that use agencies. And so it’s very important that we have a dialogue with agencies as far as what works for them. What we could improve with the product and how we can help them grow their business as well.. And then also with like plugin makers and theme designers and, you know, the whole ecosystem of WordPress companies kind of works in there. And then also just going one step further is open source in general. So at Kinsta one thing that we’ve utilized for many years is Linux containers for each of the sites, isolates them, gives them a lot of resources. And so we help support the maintainer of the Linux container project, which is changing into Incus and getting a little in the weeds here. But so that’s really exciting too, is being able to reach out to the people who make the tools that allow us to make WordPress and allow us to host websites and help them get their work. Continued and supported. Jeez. And, you know, it’s a pretty nebulous position. So there’s there’s a lot of things going on. I do a lot of videos. I make videos on LinkedIn where I interview people in the WordPress ecosystem as well as.

Michelle Frechette 00:09:57  Those are compelling, by the way, because you keep them concise, right? They’re not they don’t go on for hours. They also are fun. You have topics that you put right there and and they just show up in your newsfeed. So you’re like, oh, what’s this all about? Those are awesome. I mean, even if I’m speaking from having been on the other side of your microphone.

Roger Williams 00:10:16  Well, thank you so much. I appreciate the feedback and the encouragement. It it started as just a fun way to get to know presenters before WordCamp US last year. And then I went to WordCamp US and everybody, not everybody, but a lot of people wanted to ask me if they could be on my podcast. And I was like, well, first of all, it’s not really technically a podcast. But, Yeah. No, I wanted to interview more people, and I like, you know, LinkedIn imposes the 15 minute time rule that I have, which is kind of nice because it allows me. I’m only interrupting somebody’s day for 15 minutes, to do the interview. And then I’m only interrupting your day for 15 minutes if you want to watch the interview. So I feel like it’s very courteous of me in some ways.

Michelle Frechette 00:11:06  Yeah, absolutely.

Roger Williams 00:11:07  But. And then there’s just a lot of fun. It’s an opportunity to get to know people in the industry, people that I maybe have known for a while and learn more about them and then meet new people and hear their stories and then help share their stories. So, that, like, that was like kind of an afterthought activity. And it’s really turned into a pretty considerable amount of my job. And, again, I get a lot of encouragement from my bosses to keep doing those.

Michelle Frechette 00:11:36  Yeah. It’s great, I love it. You’ve talked to some pretty awesome people. You’ve talked to a lot of people that I’ve never heard of or met before, too, which I love because you’re introducing people to the WordPress community that we want to know because they’re doing cool stuff. So I love that component of it as well, for sure.

Roger Williams 00:11:54  That’s great to hear. And I’d like to say that that is all by design. A lot of it is just because I don’t know the big names in WordPress, and so.

Michelle Frechette 00:12:04  That’s okay too.

Roger Williams 00:12:05  I haven’t connected with them yet. But then also there is has been a little bit of a conscious decision to seek out people who are not getting as much exposure and maybe aren’t as well known, but who I’ve met one way or another. And I know that they’re very interesting people. And I mean, everybody’s got a story to tell. And I and I think the nice thing about 15 minutes is it makes it easy for people to tell their story and not run out of things to talk about. And so we, can we can put something together that’s pretty interesting.

Michelle Frechette 00:12:37  Well, I will tell you that you did inspire something I’ve been working on, which is starting, last month. It is April now. Yep. Starting last month. Last month was Women’s History Month, and so I got it in my head on like the fourth or fifth day of the month. Oh, it’s women’s history. We should interview women in WordPress. I thought I would get maybe ten people, right? I have over 50 interviews now that I’ve recorded. 

Roger Williams: Wow. 

Michelle Frechette: They average about five minutes. Some go as long as 12, some as short as like four. Which I guess is not really an average of five, but there’s about five minutes. Six maybe. And, they take out the outliers, but then, it’s been really awesome. And because there’s so many of them, I’m continuing it for months and it might just be a regular feature we have. We have a YouTube playlist. Now that’s these, women’s interviews within WordPress.  And I am so proud to say that we have interviewed somebody on every inhabitable continent of the world. So I’ve got women from literally everywhere, which is so cool. But it’s because I saw your shorter, you know, concise interviews that I thought I could do, like Roger does.

Roger Williams 00:13:44  That’s awesome. I and I, I’m sure you’re blowing it out of the water. you’re way more composed.

Michelle Frechette 00:13:49  I’m having fun.I don’t know about that.

Roger Williams 00:13:53  And I you know, I’m excited to hear that. And I think that, you know, in the age of these two and three and four hour podcasts, I really like seeing the shift back towards the shorter. You know, it’s the same way with like, streaming media, right? Like my wife and I, we really get excited when there’s an episode that’s only 25 minutes long. Right? Because, like, I just I got to go to bed at some point, people. You know.

Michelle Frechette 00:14:18  It’s it’s I call it consumable, right? It’s like you don’t feel overwhelmed. You could actually consume it on social media as opposed to having to go someplace and download or look longer or pop popcorn first, you know?

Roger Williams 00:14:31  Exactly, Exactly. No. Yeah, yeah. Having these little bite sized nuggets. And, you know, there’s also the whole concept of, you know, do you need two hours to really say what you’re trying to say? Can you can you sum it up for me? And and I, you know, one of the approaches that I’m kind of doing with my show is once I have somebody on and I get to know, like, who they are and how we interact, then, you know, maybe I invite you back and we do a longer show if there’s something more for us to dig into. So, yeah, there’s just a lot of variability. I, I really I talked with Matt Medeiros, I think, last fall about my philosophy on doing the show, and there’s a lot of a salesman’s mentality to it. So in sales, to be successful at sales, you just have to deal with rejection and no’s.

Michelle Frechette 00:15:25  Absolutely.

Roger Williams 00:15:26  And so one of the things I learned early in my sales career was to collect 50 no’s a day. And then I would get to a yes. Right? And and you know, the math sometimes worked and sometimes it didn’t, depending on what I was selling. Right? But I think with doing episodes, doing a show like this, especially when you’re starting out and you’re not sure what you want to talk about or how good your interviewing skills are, then go for numbers like just start. Do a lot of interviews, talk to a lot of people and figure it out as you’re going. And yeah, just getting the repetitions in and and seeing if you enjoy it too.

Michelle Frechette 00:16:05  Yeah, absolutely. But I do have to say it as a podcast, if you call it a show. So you’ve, you’ve officially tipped over to that territory. 

Roger WIlliams: Okay. I thought. 

Michelle Frechette: I don’t make the rules. I don’t make the rules. Roger.

Roger Williams 00:16:19  Okay. I thought that in order for it to be a podcast, it had to have an RSS feed.

Michelle Frechette 00:16:25  I don’t think so. I think it has to be called a show and put out an in regular format somewhere. I make my own decisions here, so maybe I do make the rules, I don’t know. But,

Roger Williams 00:16:35  You know, in your defense, you know, people are calling these shows on YouTube podcasts now, even though there’s no RSS feeds. So. All right, we’ll go with it. We’ll go.

Michelle Frechette 00:16:43   Okay. Absolutely. So much fun. So if anybody doesn’t know what Kinsta is, what is Kinsta?

Roger Williams 00:16:51  Oh wow. Okay. So if you don’t know what Kinsta is then what what’s going on?

Michelle Frechette:  I know right. 

Roger WIlliams: Seriously, so Kinsta we’re a managed hosting company and we focus on WordPress. And then we’ve actually got a new product for application hosting and database hosting called Sevalla. And if people are interested, they can look that up. But I’ll really talk more about the WordPress side. That’s the majority of our business. We’ve been in business for over 12 years now. We’ve got hundreds of thousands of sites under management that were, helping people deliver to the world. And, you know, to back up for a second, what do I mean by managed hosting? So with managed hosting, we’re handling all of the infrastructure outside of WordPress. So the nginx server, the MySQL database, Linux. And then we’re also integrating with Cloudflare Enterprise. So every site on Kinsta has Cloudflare Enterprise protecting it from DDoS attacks. But also we’re utilizing their CDN and edge caching and image optimization services to really help speed up your site and make sure that anybody in the world that wants to view it can see it really quickly.

Michelle Frechette 00:18:08  Excellent, excellent. And you have an affiliate program, I noticed I’m actually going to put this banner up on the screen here. I’ve been digging into, it’s like I know what I’m doing sometimes, I don’t know, I surprise myself. I’ve been looking into doing more affiliate sales. Right? And I’ve signed up. I think I signed up for Kinsta. I did a whole bunch in one day. As you know, I was laid off from my last job, and I was like, where can I find some passive income? So I’m building a website, I’m doing reviews, I’m doing all the things.

Roger Williams: Excellent.

Michelle Frechette: And so, yeah. So here’s a way to do that. What does your affiliate program look like for people who might want to, you know, get involved with that?

Roger Williams 00:18:43  Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, and I at at risk of making this sound like a whole sales pitch all, all day. I apologize to everybody. You’re asking the questions.

Michelle Frechette 00:18:53 I am of course, we didn’t talk about this and we didn’t talk about this beforehand either. These are just my curiosity.

Roger Williams 00:18:59  No, I’m I’m enjoying it. So, our affiliate program is quite generous. You just go to the link that you see on the screen. kinsta.com/affiliates get signed up and we have our amazing affiliate team will review your application. And, once you’re signed up, you it’s pretty standard from an affiliate program. You get a link that has a specific code in it. So when somebody clicks that link and then signs up, you get credit for the sale. So that’s pretty standard affiliate program stuff. The way that you make money is pretty straightforward. We pay you on signup so it’s anywhere from $50 to $500 depending on which plan somebody signs up for. And then you get 10% of whatever is billed for each month for the life of that account.

Michelle Frechette 00:19:52  There you go.

Roger Williams 00:19:53  So our cheapest plan is $35 a month.

Michelle Frechette 00:19:57  Least expensive marketing. Least expensive.

Roger Williams 00:20:01  Sorry. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Michelle Frechette 00:20:03  That’s what I’m here for.

Roger Williams 00:20:04  Our least expensive plan is $35 a month. So 10% of that’s $3.50 a month for the life of the account. And, you know, we don’t put any limits on when that’s going to end. We just keep paying you, as you know, you brought the business to us. So we’re going to pay you for that. So and thank you for it. You know, other than that, it’s it’s really straightforward.

Roger Williams 00:20:26  We have, like I mentioned, a dedicated, an affiliate management team. So if you know, as you’re an affiliate, there’s ever any concerns or questions about a sign up, all you have to do is reach out and we’ll take a look at it and work with you. The, you know, one key time frame to put in there is about a two week limit. So if somebody signs up and they should have gotten credited to you, you need to reach out to us, you know, within two weeks, which isn’t an unreasonable amount of time to ask you to reach out.

Michelle Frechette 00:20:58  Not at all.

Roger Williams 00:20:59  And and we’ll work with you to figure all that out.

Michelle Frechette 00:21:02  yeah.

Roger Williams 00:21:03  And then we’ve built, the, the affiliate dashboard in-house. So it’s very snappy and. 

Michelle Frechette 00:21:08  Nice. 

Roger Williams 00:21:09 You know, and if you have feedback on, you know, in the improvements or suggestions, you know, our developers can take a look at those and choose to implement them. If, if it sounds like a good plan.

Michelle Frechette 00:21:20  Nice. I have pulled up on the screen, as I’m sure you saw. Not only do you have the affiliate, you know, information on the affiliate page, but you have 17 pages that talk about doing affiliate sales and doing affiliate marketing. So it looks like a very well supported plan as well. 198 results when I just search affiliate on your blog.

Roger Williams 00:21:38  So yeah. So backing up a second, so who is Kinsta big component of who Kinsta is, is our blog. The way that I first learned about Kinsta was when I was working for one of our competitors, and I was in tech support and in tech support. You get these issues that you haven’t seen before a lot. Right? And so you Google, hey, here’s the error code that just got thrown at me. And you start looking through stuff. And a lot of times you go to StackOverflow and these types of sites. Now you go to AI, but back about like 6 or 7 years ago Any time I would google a WordPress issue, this one blog would keep coming up with these amazing blog posts that would not only, like, explain the issue, but walk you through how to resolve it, usually in multiple different ways. And that blog was Kinsta.com.

Speaker 5 00:22:37  Nice.

Roger Williams 00:22:37  And. And so that got me. I mean again and again the same blog kept coming up with different answers for all these issues. And so eventually I was like, well, I should just go work for these guys. They seem to have it all figured out. And so I applied and I started off in the migrations team, worked my way to client experience, then to sales, and then we created this community position. But yeah, it really is amazing how much we work to give information back to, you know, the community, to the industry as a whole. Yes. It drives a lot of sales, but I mean, there’s still a ton of people I know that get value out of the blog who are not our customers. Not yet. Not yet. But your affiliate program is going to work on that for us.

Michelle Frechette 00:23:29  That’s right, that’s right. Absolutely. Now, I believe this is fairly new announcement as well.

Roger Williams 00:23:36  Yes.

Michelle Frechette 00:23:37  Kinsta is now a global WordCamp sponsor.

Roger Williams 00:23:40  Yes. So this is pretty exciting. This just came out yesterday, April 1st.

Michelle Frechette 00:23:45  And it was not a joke.

Roger Williams 00:23:47  No. And it was not a joke. It was funny. We were talking about how the you know, it started April 1st, and all these reasons. And I was like, oh, do we want to hold off on doing a press release on April 1st? Probably. So it does get dismissed, but no, just really excited to again find a way to support the community through this. For those that aren’t aware, the the global WordCamp sponsors, what that means is we’re now a gold level sponsor for all of the local WordCamps around the globe. Everything except for the flagship three. And, and so that helps immediately get funding to all of those WordCamps and helps them put on those shows. It’s one less phone call that they need to make to get a sponsor signed up, and all the paperwork and rigmarole that goes through that.

Roger Williams 00:24:40  So now carte blanche, we’re just all Word Camps that aren’t flagships we’re a sponsor of and so help helping get those Word Camps to happen. And then we’re also helping the Meetups happen. So there’s I don’t know the exact number at this point. It’s it’s in the thousands, if not more of Meetups around the globe. And I think these are where the the real magic happens with WordPress, right? I help run a small Meetup here in Durango once a month. We have like anywhere from 4 to 9 people show up. But every time we have great conversations and we talk about WordPress, we talk about digital marketing, we talk about how our lives are going, where we’re going to go on vacation, and we really connect. And so Meetups are just a really exciting way to really get that super local connection happening. And as a global sponsor, we help with the fees responsible for Meetup.com, which love it or hate it. you know, I’m not going to tell you my judgment right now, but it is a useful site for organizing things.

Roger Williams 00:25:51  As an organizer, it makes it really easy for me to quickly get stuff posted up and then get people to come to the event. And then there’s another aspect of the Meetups that a little bit less known, apparently, because I keep on having people asking if we can help them with their venue costs. And I always ask, hey, did you reach out to WordPress Foundation yet? Because as global sponsors, we also help with the funding to help get some venue costs covered. and so that’s just really exciting to help promote both of those programs, WordCamps and Meetups.

Michelle Frechette 00:26:35  Absolutely. That’s awesome. and it’s really nice that there are organizations like Kinsta that, you know, are so all in on the WordPress community that you’re sponsoring, contributors. You’re sponsoring the community at large as well. I, I, I’m signing the paperwork today as one of your most recent contributors that you’re sponsoring. And I want to thank you for sponsoring my time in the WordPress community. So, yeah, I had a little snafu with signing the paperwork, as we talked about before, but it will be signed as soon as we’re done here today. So it will be official very shortly, and I’ll be able to post it on social and say how wonderful it is to have organizations like Kinsta sponsoring the work that I do in WordPress. So thank you for that.

Roger Williams 00:27:21  Well, you’re welcome. And, you know, and we’re proud to sponsor you and the other contributors because we know it’s an all volunteer project. Right? And, and it’s open source and it’s this is how open source works is the companies that are benefiting off of the projects. You know, you don’t have to write it’s open source software. So there’s no obligation to support the software. But I mean, it just makes sense that you you do realize, hey, our income is based off of these volunteer led projects. We really should be reaching out and helping to contribute in some way. And the thing I really enjoy about sponsoring contributors like yourselves Is its immediate impact, right? You’re not it. We could turn to a bunch of employees at Kinsta who have never used WordPress, let alone worked to make WordPress Slack and tried to contribute.

Roger Williams 00:28:24  And you know that that could be very helpful for those individuals to learn more about WordPress and how to contribute to it. But as far as the project’s impact, it’s just not going to be as impactful as sponsoring people who have already been contributing, who know the ins and outs of the project, and then who can even, you know, in a force multiplier effect, help that many more people become part of the project. You know, we help a lot of people. We sponsor a lot of people that that do a lot of documentation work. And, you know, as somebody who kind of ran the documentation program at Kinsta for a little while. I mean, it’s it’s the most important work and it’s the most thankless work that can happen, right?

Michelle Frechette 00:29:10  And it can be tedious. Right. So to have some incentive to have some to nobody does it because they’re expecting anything back. But to have a company like Kinsta to say, I see you and I want to support that as well. It’s just a wonderful thing.

Roger Williams 00:29:23  Agreed, agreed. 100%. And I mean, it is tedious, right? I mean, because you’ve spent all this time putting some sort of documentation together and you miss, like, one step and that’s the first thing somebody points out to you. And so like, there’s a gut punch there. But but it’s important work. Right? And documentation is one of those things that it gets taken for granted. Right? When it’s there. You don’t think anything of the fact that somebody had to put a lot of work into creating this, but the fact that it’s there is literally allowing you to use some aspect of the tool. And so it’s so important. So important.

Michelle Frechette 00:30:02  Right. We’re coming up on a new release soon. We are less than two weeks away from 6.8 being released. We’re in release candidate two right now, one more week after this to work on it. And then it’s like out for for being updated. And and we do know that people find more bugs once it’s been released, but we’re in that bug squashing right now. So, and the work and, and that’s part of the work I’m doing is on that release squad. And so our others. So that’s the work that you’re supporting, not just the work that I do in the community, not just the work that I do with the photo directory, for example. But, but every release as well. So, yeah. Thank you. I really appreciate it.

Roger Williams 00:30:40  You’re welcome. And thank you again for that work that you’re doing there, because it is really critical. And again, it’s like the documentation, WordPress can get taken for granted so easily. Because it’s something that’s just there. Right. It’s been there for we’re at like 22 years now. You just go to WordPress.org and you download the software and you can get to work on it. But there’s a lot of time and effort and people involved with making that happen. As far as 6.8  is going. How are you feeling about it? I know that there’s been like some, you know, Matt has put out some ideas that maybe we’re going to do one release a year or something. Do you think that there’s enough people helping with testing out and and checking for bugs at this point?

Michelle Frechette 00:31:29  I mean, there are right there. There’s always people who are in there testing. We have, you know, quite a few people who are doing that kind of thing. You can always use more because we can’t test every scenario. We can’t test it against, you know, you we don’t know how it interacts with every single plugin in the world because we can’t test it on all those things. So the more people test it with those things now never, ever, ever updated on your live site please. I mean, take our word for it. That is not the right way to do it, but open it in a test environment. Use the playground to do that. Use the there’s a plugin you can use for testing. It’s all in the guidelines on the 6.8. If you go to WordPress.org /news you will see it there. the most recent release, candidate two, has all of the information to do that.

Michelle Frechette 00:32:12  so the more people I mean, I’m never going to say we have enough testers, never. So get out there and test it. If you haven’t tested it yet, we want to hear your feedback. Good, bad, ugly. We want to know because we want to make sure that what gets released on April 15th, it just happens to coincide with Tax day here in the US. What gets released on April 15th? We want it to be the best it can possibly be. And although you can never foresee everything, the more that we can take care of prior to that day, the better. Everybody will have it on release day, so.

Roger Williams 00:32:44  No. Absolutely. And I, you know, I know one of the things that encourages me Kinsta we include staging environments with all of our sites. So people like, go ahead, create a staging environment.

Michelle Frechette 00:32:56  Test it out.

Roger Williams 00:32:57  Install the beta plugin and just like. Look at the site like and test it out. Are your forms working? If you have a calendar or something like that? Test everything that’s really critical for your business and make sure that it works. You know, make sure that when you fill out a form, you get the email because.

Michelle Frechette 00:33:17  Test it against your themes, all of those things. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And so yeah. So that’s the work that we’re doing right now. It’s it’s always something. Right? We just onboarded new a whole bunch of new photo moderators. And the queue has been sitting at zero at the end of every day. We have so many people moderating photos. We have over 20,000 photos now in the photo directory. And yeah, it used to be sometimes I would log in and be like, oh, there’s 300 to moderate. Well, let me see how many I can do in 15 or 20 minutes. Now I log in. I’m like the only ones I have to look at are the ones that are held in moderate or held as flagged. Because other people in the United States or outside of the United States can’t see those. It’s something to do with laws and things. And so usually it’s a picture of an animal. Not always. sometimes it’s things that cannot be released. Of course. for any number of reasons. But, I would say and all of the photos I have not allowed through out of the hundreds that get flagged only two. So it it’s AI driven. What gets put there versus other and AI is very conservative and so but other than that you know we just have people just getting in there and it’s all volunteer, as you said, moderating the photos under the photo directory. All of that is voluntary. So it’s a great program. Open source is great as long as people are contributing to it. And companies like Kinsta to make that a lot easier to do. So thanks for all that you do in the community. So you’re sponsoring Post Status, you’re sponsoring, globally. You’re sponsoring contributors. Goodness gracious. That’s awesome. I’d love to hear that.

Roger Williams 00:34:56  Oh, well. Yeah. No, it’s it’s really exciting. It’s something that a lot of us have been pushing for, for, you know, some time and then, Yeah. No, we we realized, hey, this is a good decision to make. not just for Kinsta, but for the community. So, yeah, it’s we’re happy to help.

Michelle Frechette 00:35:14  So any questions? I know we’ve had a couple of comments, but if you have questions, we have just a few more minutes before I let Roger go back to petting his dogs and doing his work. I will say, WordCamp Canada says “Kinsta docs and tutorials are among the best. Super useful.” I don’t know who is logged in today as WordCamp Canada, but those are lovely words that they’ve had to share with you, which is awesome.

Roger Williams 00:35:37  Know that. Thank you. And I’ll make sure that that gets passed on to the team. We’ve got a team of we’ve got multiple full time writers on staff. Then we also do, contract people to help with writing as well. But, It’s a very full time project for us. We have in Slack. We have a content feedback channel that’s internal. But any time, like a customer lets us know and support. Hey, you know, this documentation or something is. Seems a little off. All of us at Kinsta can go into the content feedback channel and share that feedback. You know, and do our best to kind of try and help make suggestions that are helpful for the writers. But the turnaround on those is really quick, and we want to make sure that the documentation is is up to date and useful.

Michelle Frechette 00:36:29  Sounds like a great team. 

Roger Williams: Oh, absolutely. 

Michelle Frechette: My my last comment is that I think only the best podcasters also have lava lamps in the background, because I have one and I see yours.

Roger Williams 00:36:42  Yes. No. The lava lamp was an absolutely critical piece for the set. It’s just fun to have. It always reminds me, though, I think it was Cloudflare. Who, I don’t know if it was an April Fool’s joke post, but I remember years ago they had released something that the way that they do their random number generator is they have a series of lava lamps, and they use that for actually they scan those and then that’s how they come up with their random number generation.

Michelle Frechette  00:37:12  That’s funny. Claudia says “that the lava lamp is also a critical piece of equipment in her office” So. Absolutely. I don’t know if you can tell, but right in front of my lava lamp is a chicken lamp.

Roger Williams 00:37:23  Okay. Just barely. 

Michelle Frechette 00:37:24  And the egg behind, like the egg coming out of the chicken. Is the light bulb.

Roger Williams 00:37:31  Perfect, perfect.

Michelle Frechette 00:37:35  Yeah. There’s always something you can focus on in my background to talk about, that’s for sure. Anyway, anything else, go ahead. 

Roger Williams 00:37:41  You have a great diversity background there. I’m just I’m really happy that it’s not a bookshelf of books, that that you’re trying to project that you read.

Michelle Frechette 00:37:52  I never read. No, of course I do. and I did, once upon a time play the guitar. But, those belong to my father. And I joke that when I put them on the wall, I suddenly became a developer because every developer has guitars in their background.

Roger Williams 00:38:10  Okay. All right. I didn’t know about that theory, but it does. It does seem.

Michelle Frechette 00:38:14  Now you’ll now you’ll notice. Now you’ll notice. I’ve we’ve also been asked here “how’s your Durango WordPress meetup going” since you are an organizer out there.

Roger Williams 00:38:23  Yeah. Thank you for asking. You know, it’s going well. I think we’re now I think we’ve done eight, in a row, so consecutively, I almost dropped the ball, on this month on April’s, but, we have it. It’s happening on Friday. It’s going good. You know, organizing events for any event organizers out there, is challenging, And I feel you and you know, the Meetups are a much more simplified, simplified version of an event than like a WordCamp or something. But it does still take work, right? You need to find the venue. You need to get people to show up. You need to try and have something worthwhile to talk about while you’re there. And so, and so it’s a lot of fun. It’s also a challenge. And, I think one of the best pieces of advice somebody told me was to get co-organizers as soon as possible.

Michelle Frechette00:39:19  Yes.

Roger Williams 00:39:20  And I say it’s the best advice. I still don’t know if it is because I haven’t gotten any co-organizers yet, but I feel like, wow, that would probably help a lot.

Michelle Frechette 00:39:30  So it does, I promise.

Roger Williams 00:39:31  Okay. All right.

Michelle Frechette 00:39:32  Absolutely.

Roger Williams 00:39:33  If anybody has any tips or tricks or advice, please feel free to reach out. Kinsta buys the lunch. So that’s a pretty cool little perk for coming. And we’ve got a really cool venue. It’s EsoTerra Cidery. They have a taproom in downtown Durango, and it’s a really wonderful venue. Lots of nice seats. They have a nice little lunch menu and they give us the space for free to use. They’re very happy to host us. So big shout out to Eso Terra. Thank you so much. They make really good cider. if that’s your jam. But no alcoholic drinks purchased for people during the lunch, by the way.

Michelle Frechette 00:40:18  Makes sense.

Roger Williams 00:40:19  But, yeah, I think, you know, one of the challenges is coming up with topics that apply to the group as a whole, right? And so we’ll have a variety of people, from beginners to advanced WordPress users. How do we come up with topics that attract all of those people and engages all of them?

Michelle Frechette 00:40:41  That is the challenge.

Roger Williams 00:40:43  Yeah. Any advice, any tips you figured out?

Michelle Frechette 00:40:47 Um,  mostly I figured out to just aim for the middle, basically. And the people, you know, the people that are overqualified for that will tend to either just not come. Which is sad, but they tend to contribute to the conversation. And people who have not reached that level are still learning it. So that’s basically the best advice I could offer. Or to split, you know, and have a couple of discussions, per conversation, you know, per, per event. So.

Roger Williams 00:41:19  Okay, okay. No, I like that. And I’ve kind of tracked towards that. The other thing I’ve done is I’ve, I’ve brought in some people from outside of WordPress a little bit to talk about like marketing and branding strategy. And really helped to expand the group and the topics a little bit. So it’s.

Michelle Frechette 00:41:38  I even had somebody come once and talk about business insurance.

Michelle Frechette 00:41:43  Okay. And errors and omissions. Which is a big thing for website developers. So.

Roger Williams 00:41:48  Excellent, excellent. Yeah. No I and I think getting more people from the business community involved is great. Durango and I’m outside of Durango. I’m in a little town called Minkus. We’re very rural. I think Durango’s got 17,000 people. Minkus got 1200 people. And one thing that still just drives me crazy is how few local businesses have a website. even, like, even a Wix website, they don’t even have that. They’ll have a Facebook page. And, and so that it breaks my heart a little bit. You know, I want to at some point be like, hey, I’ll build your website for you, but I’m, I’m kind of not in this stage of building websites right now.

Michelle Frechette 00:42:29  Same.

Roger Williams 00:42:31  Yeah, maybe I’ll help. Maybe I’ll help.

Michelle Frechette 00:42:34  Probably. and we do have, what do you call it? Justification? Vindicate. I don’t the right word. But anyway, “right about the developers having guitars in their walls. Roger could confirm he doesn’t have any on his office wall but four on another wall.” So there you go. I mean, there’s just something about it. And it’s interesting because development and ma and music go hand in hand because of the mathematical equalities to both of those. So it makes sense that somebody who is, you know, mathematically inclined, would be interested in both of those things. Chords are very math, mathematical.

Roger Williams 00:43:10  So absolutely. And maybe this explains why I’m not a good developer because I do not know how to play any music.

Michelle Frechette 00:43:17 That’s okay. You can go to our Spotify and add some songs that you know and, and contribute musically that way.

Roger Williams 00:43:24  Absolutely. Yeah. No, I love listening to music, but yeah. No, just I tried learning piano a bunch of years ago. I want to say like 12 years ago, had an instructor come to the house, got full weighted keys and everything. And, Yeah, I just couldn’t get past, like, Tinker, tinkle, tinkle a little bell or something like that. Oh, man. Yeah.

Michelle Frechette 00:43:45  No, I have an upright grand in my other room that I. It was my grandfather’s from the 20s, 1920s. Not not 2020. So it’s a oh, gosh, it’s over 100 years old now. My piano. But yeah. And I learned when I was little. So I don’t play very often. I live in a condo. And my neighbors would not be happy if I was banging on that piano at night, but, but it is nice to have around. So, any last any last words? Anything last things you’d like to share with us Roger?

Roger Williams 00:44:12  you know, I it would I’d be remiss without mentioning that, we just rolled out a new product called Kinsta Automatic Updates. This is an add on feature to your website at Kinsta, and this does automatic updates of your themes and plugins, with the caveat that it does visual regression testing. So we take a screenshot before the update. We update it and then we take a screenshot afterwards if there’s a difference that means something went wrong. We revert the update and then we notify you of of which plugin caused the issue so you can start troubleshooting it. 

Michelle Frechette: Oh nice. 

Roger Williams: I’m really excited about that. You know, I was really excited about WordPress 6.5 when we came out with the auto rollback feature. that only catches PHP errors, which is I mean, it’s still massive. You should at least have that automatically on, I think. but with this feature, it just adds a little bit more to it. So it’ll catch, you know, maybe a plugin breaks a CSS, feature or something. And, and so the site’s not necessarily throwing up PHP error. It’s still running, but it’s broken. And if you’re spending a lot of money on your marketing and advertising, having a landing page broken is really annoying. So this helps wit that.Yeah. So if you have questions about it, come to kinsts.com and take a look to automatic updates. That’s pretty exciting. The team did a really great job.

Michelle Frechette 00:45:34  And if people want to follow up with you, what’s the best place to get in touch with you Roger?

Roger Williams 00:45:38  LinkedIn. I’ll be honest with you. So I’m in the Post Status group. You can DM me there. Thank you for giving me more time in Slack. But honestly, like LinkedIn, I love getting contacted there. I enjoy spending time in LinkedIn. So yeah, reach out to me there. And if you want to be on a Kinsta talk, reach out and we’ll work something out.

Michelle Frechette 00:45:59  Awesome. Thank you so much for your time today. Again, if people are interested, they can go to Kinsta.com and if they’re interested in the affiliate program it’s Kinsta.com/affiliates. So thank you for all your sponsorships, all that you’re doing and all that you do to highlight some pretty amazing people in WordPress. I appreciate your time today and all that you do.

Roger Williams 00:46:19  Thank you very much, Michelle, and I appreciate you and all the work that you’ve done. And thank you for having me on the show.

Michelle Frechette 00:46:25  My pleasure. Thank you. We’ll see everybody else next week.

Roger Williams 00:46:29  Bye 

Michelle Frechette: Bye.

This article, Post Status Happiness Hour Session Twenty Four, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

Transcript ↓

In this episode of the Post Status Happiness Hour, host Michelle Frechette interviews Cami MacNamara a seasoned web designer and solopreneur. Cami shares insights into her business, Web Cam LLC, and her new initiative, “Web Designer Habits,” which aims to help web designers develop productive habits. They discuss the importance of accountability, time management techniques like time blocking and the Pomodoro technique, and the benefits of joining online and local networking groups. The episode also teases a collaborative project between Michelle and Cammy involving a planner designed to support web designers in maintaining their habits.

Top Takeaways:

• Small Changes Lead to Big Improvements – Cami emphasized the power of incremental progress, whether in business, design, or personal productivity. Tackling tasks in small steps can make overwhelming projects more manageable and sustainable.
• Be Prepared for the Unexpected – Michelle shared practical travel and everyday preparedness tips, from keeping essential items in the car to ensuring that your luggage complies with airline regulations. Thinking ahead can save time, stress, and even money.
• Documenting Processes is Key – The discussion touched on the importance of writing down systems and workflows, especially for solopreneurs. Whether through standard operating procedures (SOPs) or simple notes, having a record helps maintain efficiency and organization.
• Community and Support Matter – Both Michelle and Cami highlighted the value of connection in professional spaces, particularly within the WordPress and web design communities. Engaging with peers through newsletters, Facebook groups, and live discussions fosters learning, growth, and mutual encouragement.

Mentioned In The Show:

• Web Cami, LLC
• webdesignerhabits.com
• StreamYard
• WebCamiCafe
• GoDaddy
• Shein
• Pomodoro Technique
• WordPress TV
• Managed WP
• Admin Bar
• Beaver Builder
• Calendly
• WPCoffeeTalk

You can follow Post Status and our guests on Social Media:

• Cami MacNamara (Owner & Designer, WebCami LLC)
• Michelle Frechette (Director of Community Relations, Post Status)
• Olivia Bisset (Intern, Post Status)

The Post Status podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis.

Browse our archives, and don’t forget to subscribe via iTunes, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, Simplecast, or RSS.

Transcript

Michelle Frechette 00:00:01  And we’re alive with this week’s Post Status Happiness Hour with my good friend Cami McNamara and Cami does a lot. Hi Cami, I know you do a lot of different things. You have your agency and all these, you know, other things, podcasting and all the things you’re doing now. But today we’re really going to talk about your web designer habits, how you came up with that, what some of them might look like, how people can get in on that, and maybe some things that we’re going to tease about what you and I are working on together too. So.

Cami MacNamara 00:00:30  Well, that sounds great. Thank you. 

Michelle Frechette 00:00:33  Yeah. Welcome to the Happiness Hour. It’s good to have you here.

Cami MacNamara 00:00:36  Yeah, it’s great to be here. I’m so. I’m always happy to talk to you, Michelle. Like, anytime we get to spend time together, it makes my day.

Michelle Frechette 00:00:44  Absolutely. I feel exactly the same way for. For people who haven’t met you, who don’t, you know, as equated with who you are. Can you just give us a little bit about where you’re located, what you do with WordPress, maybe you know anything that you want to mention about your life? I know you got a really cool dog like all those. Just fill us in on the details for a minute.

Cami MacNamara 00:01:03  Sure. Well, I am located. My name is Cami McNamara and otherwise known as Web Cami. So my business is Web Cam, LLC and I have been building websites since 2000 and started my business in 2002. So I just had my 23rd anniversary in business. Oh I’m a solopreneur. I build websites for small businesses and nonprofits all over the United States, but I’d say the majority of my clients are here in the Seattle area. So I live in Seattle, in a neighborhood called Alki Beach, and I often on social media and posting pictures of my neighborhood because, well, I just love it.

Michelle Frechette 00:01:48  Because it’s beautiful.

Cami MacNamara 00:01:49  Thank you. I mean, it’s like I live at a California beach in a big city. So it’s kind of nice. Much smaller scale. Not not, you know, nobody’s hanging tenning out in the water.

Michelle Frechette 00:02:03  It’s a little chilly up there for that. Probably.

Cami MacNamara 00:02:05  Little chilly. There’s a lot of cold plungers that, You know, I do. I did it this year on New Year’s Eve, but. Or New Year’s Day. But I’m not planning to do that again. So that’s it. I have a husband. I’ve been married for 35 years, and I have a dog who’s a ten year old Labrador named Tank. I also share a lot of pictures of him, and I have a 28 year old son.

Michelle Frechette 00:02:32  Awesome. And everybody comments on the, the parking meter behind you, so. 

Cami MacNamara: Oh yeah.

Michelle Frechette: Because I know everybody’s like, what’s the parking meter about?

Cami MacNamara 00:02:45  Okay so yes. Yeah. So my parking meter back here, my aunt, worked for Rockwell Industries back in the 70s. And when I was a little kid, she gave me that parking meter. Now, my grandmother had this parking meter, the same kind, but she made it into a lamp. And you’d have to put your you’d have to put coins in it to turn the lamp on. And as a as a kid, I was obsessed with that. So my aunt gave me that. You can see the faded number eight. I put like a sticker on there for my eighth birthday, and it’s there to remind me to keep my time top of mind all day long.

Michelle Frechette 00:03:27  Which is one of the web habits designer habits. But you have. So one of the things that I was just, like, enamored with when you came out with that last year, I think you called it WP Habits to begin with.

Cami MacNamara 00:03:40  Yeah, I called it Habits WP. I had, I had WP Habits, I still have all those domains.

Michelle Frechette 00:03:47  So yes, they can all point to the new one. Right. And now it’s web designer habits.com Correct?

Cami MacNamara 00:03:54  Yes. Yes because I’m really sharing habits that aren’t just for a WordPress designer. They’re really for anybody who’s doing web design and and how it came to be was, you know, I’ve been blogging about running my business for quite a while, and I wrote, I did a blog post about habits, but my friend Anne Marie and I went on a women’s business retreat with Kim Doyle in Costa Rica a couple of years ago, and I told her I want to figure out some way to share what I know and what I do, but I am not going to have time to develop big, long courses. I have a hard time taking big, long courses. What can I put? How can I put this in little tidbits for people and also for myself to work on each week? And that’s kind of how it was born.

Michelle Frechette 00:04:45  That makes sense. I loved when you first came out with that. I signed up right away. I get the emails every week. And then I don’t you keep giving me credit for it. I don’t know if that’s really true or not, but I was like, wow, you really have to have a whole website for this where there’s an art and archive. So like if somebody’s starting now, they can still go back and see the ones they missed. And, I kind of have a little bit more to.

Cami MacNamara 00:05:10  Well, it was, it was kind of always on my to do list. But you’re the person who lit the fire underneath me to go ahead and do that. And now, in addition to my website, I am building a circle community for this. So I’m hoping to have that launch in the next few weeks.

Michelle Frechette 00:05:29  Very cool. So there’ll be a whole community about it.

Cami MacNamara 00:05:32  Yes. Because you know what? You know, what helps you get your habits in order is having accountability with others.

Michelle Frechette 00:05:39  Yeah, that’s very true. That is very true. Do you want to bring the site up on and to share your screen? And we’ll take a look at it.

Cami MacNamara 00:05:45  Yeah, sure. How I’m not sure how to do that, but that’s okay. Do you what do you want to do it on your end? It’s if if that’s easier for you, is it? I just haven’t been in StreamYard and.

Michelle Frechette 00:05:59  Yeah. That’s okay.

Cami MacNamara 00:05:59  In a long time.

Michelle Frechette 00:06:01  Okay, so I’ve got it up. I can no longer see you, so I’m going to scroll and let you explain what we’re looking at then okay.

Cami MacNamara 00:06:06  Well basically this is just where you sign up. and I, I like big fonts and I cannot lie. Okay. I’ll just say that right off the bat.  So when I designed this, I really wanted it to be bold and impactful. But basically this is where you sign up. There’s just a little bit of a story about me and where, how I came to be here. I have a podcast which I have been doing, off and on for a couple of years. I share the habit each week, and then I also report on how I did adopting the habit, and that’s under the blog section. So that’s kind of new. And I’m building out resources. And as I said before, I’m going to start a circle community for this, because I just kind of feel like there’s a need for it.

Michelle Frechette 00:06:58  And you have, you have your, WebCamiCafe over on Facebook.

Cami MacNamara 00:07:02  Yes I do I started a Facebook group basically for friends that I was making as I became a GoDaddy Pro ambassador. This is back in 2018. And you know, I kept going to WOrdCamps and kept meeting people and friends of friends or adding folks, and it’s just really a nice small networking group and a good place just to meet other web designers.

Michelle Frechette 00:07:32  Yeah, for sure. And I mean, people are posting really cool things in there all the time and asking for feedback and having great conversations about some of those things.

Cami MacNamara 00:07:40  Yeah, it’s it because the numbers are small, it’s kind of more intimate and I really like that part of it.

Michelle Frechette 00:07:48  I did too, and I will say, like, I’m not really doing a lot of web design anymore. If I do, it’s mostly my own things that I’m, that I’m doing, you know, that kind of thing. But, I think we take this off. There we go. but I still, even though I’m not, like, web designer habit girl, finding so many of the things that you share to still be relevant, even if you aren’t a designer or a small business owner. So there are constantly reminders in there of things that I need to be doing, even if I don’t have clientele. I’m not designing for others.

Cami MacNamara 00:08:22  Well, and and you have contributed to those things. So when I listen to you speak at WordCamp US and you instructed me to stop saying I’m sorry all the time, I felt like you were just talking to me, and I, I came back and made that a habit that everyone should adopt, because so many times we’re replying to our clients and emails and saying, oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. And really, we’re not necessarily the ones that are sorry. It’s just comes out of your mouth.

Michelle Frechette 00:08:55  Yeah.

Cami MacNamara 00:08:56  As a habit..

Michelle Frechette 00:08:57  Right. There’s there’s much better language, more empowering language, stronger language you can do to help move things forward rather than just saying, I’m sorry, especially if we weren’t the ones to make the mistake or have an error kind of thing. Yeah. For sure. I also say don’t say thank you as often and and I don’t mean that as like don’t be grateful. Because certainly gratitude is something that I use all the time. But when you normally would say thank you just because that’s not a good use of thank you.

Michelle Frechette 00:09:26  Right. There’s other, more empowering language you can use, especially like when somebody buys your software and their automated emails says, thank you for purchasing XYZ. Yeah. But of course we’re grateful that they purchased it. But do they care that we’re grateful for the purchase? No. They want to know what can I do with this and how can I make my life better because of it? And so, you know, I just talk about some of those different things. So those are the things I talked about that I think you really liked at WordCamp US. .

Cami MacNamara 00:09:50  Yeah. No, it was fantastic. It really made a strong impression on me. And yeah, I’m always listening for things that I’m learning from other people that I know are habits I need to adopt. And selfishly, you know, creating this group is a way to keep me accountable to myself. And yeah.

Michelle Frechette 00:10:11  Yeah, for sure, I have, I actually hired an accountability coach this year. Not because I’m, you know, don’t want things to move forward, but because of ADHD brain and out of sight, out of mindedness and things like that.  I’m writing a novel, and I want to make sure that I keep moving forward on the things that I want to keep moving forward on. And so she and I meet every other week on Zoom, and she helps me keep moving forward because I’ve only accountable to other people for their things. I’m never accountable to myself for my own things because in my brain, everybody else comes first, right? So when I have to now be accountable to her. It means I’m not. I’m being accountable to me through her as a proxy, and I keep moving things forward, if that makes any sense.

Cami MacNamara 00:10:56  Right. Yeah, it’s so true. Because, you know, we all start off our day with the best intentions, right? And we start off strong every day. And, you know, a lot of these habits that I’ve been nurturing myself. You know, the dream is to be on autopilot. Right? With some of them. And so whatever can help you, whether it’s you hiring a coach to help you, it just it just strength strengthens your resolve with you for sure thing.

Michelle Frechette 00:11:29  It really does. And I think that it’s just a way of helping you move forward on your own projects as well, because I think, I mean, everybody does, but I, I can only speak from the women I know who talk about these kinds of things. I think as women, we always put ourselves last and we never prioritize those things. And so to have somebody help me stay accountable to listening to myself and moving myself forward, I think, became an important thing for me.

Cami MacNamara 00:11:54  Yeah, I agree. I mean, my, my friend Anne Marie and I, we sing to each other in Marco Polo, during the week when we go on walks, just to be accountable, accountable and say, hey, it’s really cold out here, but I’m walking anyway, so I yeah, I have accountability buddies, including you all the time. 

Michelle Frechette 00:12:15  Yep. And and now we’ve got a third person helping us actually stay accountable to our project.

Cami MacNamara 00:12:21  That’s right. Because you can only imagine that it’s a little difficult for us to stay on topic when we’re meeting.

Michelle Frechette 00:12:29  Yeah.

Cami MacNamara 00:12:30  Sometimes. Yeah.

Michelle Frechette 00:12:32  For sure. So, so about that project, do you want to tease that out a little bit?

Cami MacNamara 00:12:37  Right. So, Michelle reached out to me and said, hey, have you thought about doing a some sort of planner for the habits that you’re working on and and of course I it had entered my mind. But you know, I’m a solopreneur. I manage like 200 websites in my care plan. There’s just so much on my plate. And Michelle said, I have this wonderful photography and I could work in tips, and I was all in the minute she said that. So we’ve been meeting every Friday for quite a while, talking about plans, and then we brought in a friend to help us get things rolling, and we actually have a date to come up with.

Michelle Frechette 00:13:17  We set our first deadline.

Cami MacNamara 00:13:19  Right after. But we we have a date to come up with ideas for our layout. And both Michelle and I love planners. We already had a plethora of planners, but we both ordered a bunch to play around with and see what we liked.

Michelle Frechette 00:13:36  Yeah, exactly. And I made the mistake of just buying a bunch, whereas you were really strategic and went to the went to the store and took pictures of a bunch, which was yeah.

Cami MacNamara 00:13:45  I did that too, but I also I did order to you. I ordered a few like habit trackers and you know everybody. There’s also online options and notion and you know just using a Google Sheets or something like that. But I, I do think it’s it would be a fun to come up with something to accompany this material.

Michelle Frechette 00:14:09  Yeah, absolutely. Now, I think it was last week I received a, the Anti Planner in the mail and I posted it online saying, I don’t know where this came from if you sent this to me. Thank you so much. Did I tell you my confession about it? No.

Cami MacNamara 00:14:25  No. Did you order it and forget?

Michelle Frechette 00:14:28  Yes.

Michelle Frechette 00:14:31  It was part of my Shein order. But it came separately. It didn’t say Shein. And I was like, where did this come from? And I just went over my purchase history, that I was like, well, I’ll be darned. I bought that for myself.

Cami MacNamara 00:14:43  Oh my gosh, that’s so funny. I would do that. I would do that 100%.

Michelle Frechette 00:14:49  Anne Marie says I love the Web Designer Habits website Cami, me too.

Cami MacNamara 00:14:54  Aw thank you Ann Marie.

Michelle Frechette 00:14:55  For sure. And Daveden said he watched my WordCamp US talk and needs to improve the way he overused to thank you. So yeah, I think we all kind of do.

Cami MacNamara 00:15:04  Yes, 100%. I’ve probably been doing that my entire life, right?

Michelle Frechette 00:15:10  Yeah. Now I know, like I see tips all the time. I’ve written tips. I used to, you know, blog for the local newspaper, business tips, things like that. What are some of your favorite habits that either you’ve incorporated into your life or that you just think are so cool that other people should do them too? Like, do you have like 2 or 3 that you would go? I think that’s one of my favorites.

Cami MacNamara 00:15:32  Yeah. Time blocking there. I’ve heard a lot of people be very resistant to time blocking.  And every habit doesn’t work for everyone. Right. But for me, I needed time blocking. Time blocking has been something that really shapes my day every single day. It helps me when clients send me incoming requests to say, I’m going to work on this on Wednesday at 4:00, because that’s when I have maintenance on my schedule. So I absolutely love time blocking, and that has been a huge part of me being productive as a single solopreneur. The next one is the Pomodoro technique. So I am not sitting for hours at a time because, you know, we can all get in the flow and not want to leave a project. And, I remember in the early days having all kinds of neck pain, and eye strain and everything else. It just is so important to take care of your back and everything else. And you can use the Pomodoro Technique in concert with your time blocking, and make sure that you’re stepping away and getting up every 25 minutes. So working 25 minutes with a five minute break. Yeah, works well for me.

Michelle Frechette 00:16:58  Yeah. Now I do calendar blocking, but I, I use it to, to like, block my calendar from other people being able to schedule on my calendar just to get and not assign particular tasks, but just so I can work through my list of things that I need to do, or honestly like to sleep in a little bit on that morning if I need to. Before I was doing that, I would just say I give people my calendar links and I would wake up in the morning and I felt 15.

Cami MacNamara 00:17:26  Yeah, you have no time. You have no time to work because.

Michelle Frechette 00:17:28  Yeah, I was like, what? Am I going to run to the bathroom or have lunch at that point, you know. So yeah, for sure. Oh look. Yeah, we have it’s very karmic that, Crystals got in at, the first thing he heard was the Pomodoro technique. Not the best was dealing with his ADHD most times. Trust me, we know. We know we are. We are right there with you. You are not alone.

Cami MacNamara 00:17:51  Right? I if somebody wants to see how I time block, if you go to a WordPress TV, the WordCamp TV, site, I’m getting that wrong. But, I spoke at Vancouver 2023, Vancouver WordCamp, and I shared in my slides. My time blocking techniques.

Michelle Frechette 00:18:14  Oh, cool. I’ve got that right here. Hold on. I will put that in the chat. Okay. Like I’m. On it.

Cami MacNamara 00:18:20  Thank you for doing all the things I need to practice with StreamYard. I’m a huge fan. Now that I heard their music for testing your speakers, and anybody else who’s done that will know what I’m talking about.

Michelle Frechette 00:18:33  I have never done that until today when you told me to do that and I was like, oh, that’s pretty cool, actually. Yeah.

Cami MacNamara 00:18:39  They have a whole song just about testing there.

Michelle Frechette 00:18:42  You’re testing your speakers. You’re testing your speakers.

Cami MacNamara 00:18:45  Yeah, that’s pretty hilarious with, like, a band and everything. 

Michelle Frechette 00:18:49  So yeah, I know they they I’m gonna guess it’s AI generated, but even so.

Cami MacNamara 00:18:53  Yes. Pretty cool. It’s great. It was hilarious.

Michelle Frechette 00:18:57  Some of my favorite things I’ve learned is over the years, especially when I was freelancing and I could write off so many of my expenses was to keep an envelope in my car with the month listed on it. So if it was, you know, March, I had that envelope either in my purse or in my car. So that like whenever I was shopping, picking up things, I would put the receipts in there. For that month so that I could then at the end of the month, tally things up, keep track of it. And when it came to tax time, I wasn’t going where all the receipts and what did I do and how much money. And I was a step ahead or two steps ahead of the game at that point in time. So that was one that I really liked. The other thing that I have taught myself recently, so we’ll see if it hangs on as I habit.

Michelle Frechette 00:19:40 I have a tendency like throughout the day I as I’m on calls, I make little notes. And now at the end of the day, instead of just having this giant pile of notes, I’m transcribing them into action items and keeping track of them in my little like method of how I’m trying to keep on top of tasks. So I don’t know what was that I had to do? And where is that piece of paper? And I can’t read my handwriting and all those things so that while it’s still fresh in my mind, I’m translating things into tasks because otherwise things fall through the cracks. And I’m not a fan of letting things fall through the cracks.

Cami MacNamara 00:20:12 Yeah, that’s a great plan. You know, it’s kind of like at the end of every day, I’m always thinking, what promises did I make today? Right? And yeah, it’s a it’s a very helpful to get all your tasks actually on your calendar too. So you got the tasks and you have them scheduled.

Michelle Frechette 00:20:33  Yes. Yes, exactly. And I discovered today that my, Google calendar was not able to send me those two minute warnings before an event happened, and I was running late to everything because I was relying on those before. And so I was able to troubleshoot that today. And now I’m getting notifications on my calendar. So sometimes you just have to dig in and figure out what’s wrong and how to fix it, that’s for sure.

Cami MacNamara 00:20:58  Right. And you know, we get so involved in our day to day that if you don’t get that ping right before something happens, you can completely forget.

Michelle Frechette 00:21:07  Yes, exactly. Now, one of the things that you do as an agency is you actually have care plans. And how many websites are you caring for? 

Cami MacNamara 00:21:17  Over 200 a month. And, you know, I, I incrementally built that over time. It’s been ten years, so I didn’t go from 0 to 200. I have it down. I use I, I use Managed WP. It’s a tool that I’ve been using since the beginning of time, I feel like, and it is such a great tool for me because I can start my day and is the only person in my business. The first thing I log into every day is Manage WP, and it’s the last thing I leave at the end of every day because it’s my control panel for getting to those client sites in a hurry. It also is like, you know, it’s not just for the client. The client. I love that they trust me to take care of their websites. They are doing me a favor because if they have an emergency, it doesn’t disrupt my life entirely to help them. Because I have what I need to help them versus leaving it up to them to have a backup. And oops, I figured out I wasn’t really making backups the whole time. I can’t tell you how many times that’s happened.

Michelle Frechette 00:22:27  Oh, I can imagine. And you’re also still designing at the same time. So taking on new clients and doing all the work to keep the business going, which is why those habits are so important.

Cami MacNamara 00:22:37  Yeah, I’m in a networking group, and I took a couple of years off because my parents passed away and I just got back into it in September. So every Thursday morning I’m going to an in-person meeting. I have kind of some duties as a person in the group. I meet with other people. It’s but it brings in a steady flow of business. So yes, it’s I’m spinning plates all the time.

Michelle Frechette 00:23:04  What is a habit that you would think would be helpful for people who work alone remotely? Like like me. Right. I’m in my house 24/7, basically, unless I’m going out meeting somebody for dinner to go shopping. So I work here. I try to meet people online, have that kind of personal touch here and there. What would your suggestion be for like online networking and things?

Cami MacNamara 00:23:26  Well, I would, join some online groups, you know, I’ll mention Admin Bar. That’s a really good one to get, kind of like a really big, vast. It’s it’s huge. Right. But you get a lot of different types of web designers in there to connect with a group like mine. Web Cami Cafe, smaller. Anybody who’s just starting out is welcome to join.

Cami MacNamara 00:23:51  But you can also join groups that, are just interests that you have that aren’t directly web designers, but it might be another tool that you use, like I’m in the Beaver Builder group, because that’s the tool that I use, and I, I’m just interacting with people as important. It’s actually a line item. It’s a time block for me to go online and log into all the places I’m a member of and actually participate and answer a question, or give somebody a like or a heart, and that gets you some exposure. But really, I do think that, networking in your local area because nothing really takes the place of human to human contact. So tonight I was going to a Women in Marketing networking event. It’s been canceled because we’re supposed to have severe weather tonight by a little crazy, but getting out of your office and and interacting with people. And even if you’re an introvert in a small way, it can really just boost your spirits. Like you might dread it before you go. But after it’s over, I guarantee you you’ll feel good about it.

Michelle Frechette 00:25:07  And Zach mentions don’t forget Post Status for the events.

Cami MacNamara 00:25:09  Yes of course Post Status.

Michelle Frechette 00:25:12  We have lots of good conversations in there too. Of course. Yeah, I think that’s great. I love, I personally I love getting together with people, even if it’s online. And one of the things, like one of the ways you and I grew our friendship was I was like, does anybody want a coworker during Covid? And you’re like, I’ll do it. And like, that was our first really, like face to face, if you will, even though it was virtual.

Cami MacNamara 00:25:32  And let’s just admit we didn’t work at all.

Michelle Frechette 00:25:36  No, not at all.

Cami MacNamara 00:25:38  We didn’t work at all. And we met, in a WordCamp that was online, fully online. I don’t remember if it was WordCamp Europe or, but it was fully online. And GoDaddy had me working in their virtual booth, and that’s how it might have been.

Michelle Frechette 00:25:55  Might have been Denver, I don’t know.

Cami MacNamara 00:25:57  Or, San Antonio.

Michelle Frechette 00:26:00  Oh yeah.

Cami MacNamara 00:26:01  Yeah, that one was one of the first ones to go online.

Michelle Frechette 00:26:04  Yeah, that could have been. Yeah, for sure. It’s so hard to remember five years ago. Yeah. And yet and yet it’s hard to forget five years ago too. 

Cami MacNamara 00:26:11  Yes.I know.

Michelle Frechette 00:26:12  And it’s funny because I’ve recently seen these memes like, you know, like five years ago today, which was, you know, on March 13th. And I was like, what happened five years ago today? And then I was like, oh, wait, that was like lockdown.  I remember.

Cami MacNamara 00:26:23 I, I was flying home, I was visiting my folks in Northern California and I was flying home. And it was surreal because they had just closed down Seattle, like I was coming home and like everything was going to be closed. And, I like they they were spacing people on the airplane. So you weren’t seated next to people. And that was just bizarre.

Michelle Frechette 00:26:47  It was so surreal. It felt like ghost towns and like you could walk down the middle of Main Street and like, like an old Western, like draw, you know? Yeah, you.

Cami MacNamara 00:26:56  Did all of it because I, I flew home like 20 times during Covid, and there were times when you would get off the plane at the airport. There was nobody there. Everything was closed. It was just like, walk right through it is. Yeah.

Michelle Frechette 00:27:10  Really insane for sure. Anybody in the in the who’s watching right now, do you have a web habit that you’ve developed as a web designer or agency owner, or just in business in general that you think you’d like to share? Maybe Cami will put it in one of her newsletters. I mean, with your permission, of course. 

Cami MacNamara: Yes, of course.

Michelle Frechette: Because I I’d love to hear what some people have. So get typing in those comments, we want to hear what some of your habits are. I right now am laid off from a full time job, and one of the things that I have been maintaining as a habit is getting up every day and coming to my desk and doing something at my desk that I don’t break that you know, continuity of sitting at my desk and doing work. And so I, with the exception of one day that I took off to do something else, but family oriented. But I sit here every day. Some days I’m done at two. Some days I’m done at seven. It depends on what I’m working on and what meetings I have and those kinds of things. But it is actually pretty exciting to think about continuity that way. And so even if you aren’t working full time or you have a day that you, you know, you don’t have other, obligations getting up and sitting at your desk and, you know, making that commute down the hall, as I always say, I think is another habit to really be in. So, oh, here we go. Anne Mary says she learned from you to check email three times a day. Because checking emails constantly is a really bad habit of hers. Which, yeah, for sure, I’m. I have my phone in my pocket all the time, so I try to set it aside with notifications off when I’m at my desk, because otherwise I will react to every notification. So 100%, that is.

Cami MacNamara 00:28:56  Yeah. That’s one of the habits that is never going to be an autopilot for me. I, I have to fight my urge to check my email all day to get that done. And I’ve even put a tab on my Gmail that is called focus. It’s like an empty inbox that I.

Michelle Frechette 00:29:15  Yeah?

Cami MacNamara 00:29:15  I put that up so I’m not looking when I shouldn’t.

Michelle Frechette 00:29:19  Yeah. Nope. I get that, Zach has one too. I set aside time to learn, time to create, time to focus on getting work done and time to handle operations every day. It sounds like that time blocking you were talking about whether it’s the same time every day, just making sure that you’re hitting all those marks and continuing moving everything forward in a regular fashion. I think that’s a great idea, Zach, for sure.

Cami MacNamara 00:29:41  Yeah, I, I totally agree with Zach. I even have like, my wake up block at the beginning of my day. And and it’s, it’s like it’s for me to wake up, shower, exercise, and I put whatever. So if one day I don’t want to wake up and I just want to sleep until, you know, 7:30 or whatever, I can. It never happens. But I could like, you know, my time block. I would allow it. It’s flexible. Yeah.

Michelle Frechette 00:30:10  Yeah, yeah, for sure. I, I, I made a decision earlier this week that made me so happy and that, like, my calendly links have been set from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and I hate 9:00 meetings. So I was like, why do I have that on my calendar then? So I went in and changed my calendly to start at ten in the morning instead, because I it’s my calendar, I can do what I want with it. So if I don’t want 9:00 meetings, I don’t have to have a 9:00 meeting. And it’s like, why did I not think of that before? Like, how silly, right.

Cami MacNamara 00:30:43  Yeah, I, I use the time blocking in two ways. I’m, I’m blocking the time that, that I need to work and I’m available for appointments. And over the years I have really shrunk those hours that I’m available for appointments down to. I think it’s about 6.5 hours a week now. That’s it. And, but if I don’t do that, then I am working constantly on weekends and after hours because I don’t have enough time in my day.

Michelle Frechette 00:31:13  So Zach doesn’t start appointments till 11 because this morning are for creativity, which I think is perfect. Yeah. So I know go ahead.

Cami MacNamara 00:31:22  Another another way to do that is to make one day all appointments, and I do that as well. And it’s exhausting, but it kind of frees up the other days for me to not have me. Yeah, all of them. You know.

Michelle Frechette 00:31:35  Sometimes it’s hard. So like, this month I’ve been doing all of these, like over 50, 5 minute interviews with women all over the world. And so I’ve had my calendar running from anywhere from nine in the morning until 7 or 8:00 at night, because I’ve been interviewing with women from Uganda and with women from Asia and women from Australia, and like complete opposite timezones of me. So I’ve tried to be a little more, gracious with the time available to make sure that I can represent women all over the world, and not just in my convenient to my convenience. Right? So, so sometimes, sometimes it’s a little more challenging for sure, but that’s finite, right? So that’s not going to go on forever. And no. And and so.

Cami MacNamara 00:32:16  You have to have flexibility because we all have those things. We have those clients that can’t meet during the times we’re available. So we’re not going to say, I can’t meet with you ever. You’re going to adjust, and then you steal that time from wherever you took it from. So if a client enters something that is supposed to be work time for me, I’m going to reach out in the future and and close off meeting time to make up for it. So yeah.

Michelle Frechette 00:32:44  And I have so I have my regular Calendly slots available. And I have a secret calendar that somebody is on the other side of the world are like, oh, I can’t make any of those times.

Michelle Frechette 00:32:53  I’ll be like, well, this calendar work for you? And it’s got more expensive, but it isn’t available to everybody all the time. So I try to yeah, little little tricks that kind of work for me here and there.

Cami MacNamara 00:33:02  Yeah. The Calendly secret meeting is fantastic.

Michelle Frechette 00:33:06  Yeah it is. And Ann Marie says she blocks off Fridays. No meetings that day. It is freeing. Absolutely. For sure. Zach, are you the Zach that joined the. Oh, I guess we don’t need to put that up there. You can just respond to that one. Claudia says she has a secret scheduler too. Very helpful. Absolutely. And it feels almost clandestine. Right. Like you’ve got this. Like, nobody knows about this unless I bring them into the fold. 

Cami MacNamara 00:33:34  I feel a new habit coming along right here. I think that that would be a great I mean, you know, think about yourself as a web designer. And you’re just starting out, and a lot of these things, like setting up secret meetings and stuff, these are things we learn over time, right? Like, I didn’t always have the secret meeting thing. And then once I started using Calendly more, you know, on the regular backup, it’s been 5 or 6 years or something way before Covid. But it just really was like, wow, this is cool. You know, I like, I like, had a calendar for happy hours. Oh, yeah. You know, before Covid.

Michelle Frechette 00:34:17  Sure. Yeah. And I’ve learned, like, I for my WPCoffeeTalk. I have only one evening and and Saturday is available. And if I know I want to sleep in on a certain Saturday, I just block that day on my calendar. I just want block and then people can’t schedule for that week, but for that week. And it doesn’t have to be right away. People can schedule for next month or, you know, a few weeks out or that kind of thing. So I’m not. Nothing is urgent when you’re recording a podcast.

Cami MacNamara 00:34:43  Yeah. And and that’s the other thing about scheduling, like online scheduling, is I usually make sure there’s like a 12 hour buffer between when somebody can book with me so I don’t get a, you know, I might start my when I start my day, I know what my schedule is.

Cami MacNamara 00:34:59  I don’t want people to just be hopping in there in turn, like a one meeting day into a five meeting day all of the sudden.

Michelle Frechette 00:35:07  Yeah. Zach says he also has a schedule that isn’t as lockdown for VIPs. I’m assuming. Zach, that’s the link you give me? Just asking. can I give you another habit I developed this year?

Cami MacNamara 00:35:19  Yeah.

Michelle Frechette 00:35:20  Which is I mostly travel for business to this point and occasionally for fun. I actually have a whole kit of things that I keep in my suitcase. Duplicates of things like I have, you know, my toiletries bag. And I have duplicate minis of all the toiletries so I don’t have to take things from my bathroom and push back and forth. So I keep that in there. I keep a little, extension cord in there, and I keep my international plugs in there so that an extra watch charger, like all of the things, extra phone charger, so that I don’t have to make that list every time I travel. I have all those regulars already in the suitcase.  All I really have to do is anything specific to that trip and my clothes.

Cami MacNamara 00:36:03  Oh, that’s a great idea.

Michelle Frechette 00:36:06  It’s a huge time saver, huge time saver. And it saves me from forgetting things like Tylenol or, you know, those kinds of things because it I I’ve arrived places before with a horrible headache and don’t have any Tylenol with me. And then I have to go in search of in a foreign city that I don’t know, and find some Tylenol or pay at the airport ten times what Tylenol costs, you know, those kinds of things. So yeah.

Cami MacNamara 00:36:32  Yeah, travel hacks, that’s a whole nother that other a lot of great, great tips for that. When I was going to California a lot, to see my folks, I had like a hanging toiletry bag. And in the morning when I was getting ready, that’s when I was packing it.

Michelle Frechette 00:36:49  So, yeah, that’s a good idea too.

Cami MacNamara 00:36:50  That was kind of a nice, streamlined, streamlined way to take care of that.

Michelle Frechette 00:36:56  Absolutely. But I have just purchased extra plug, you know, power strips and things that I can plug all my things into for charging overnight in a hotel room. I have enough of those that I keep one in the suitcase, so it just makes me happy.

Cami MacNamara 00:37:09  Well, I know when I see you in Arizona in about 3 or 4 weeks that, that’s going to be how you’re rolling in. All right.

Michelle Frechette 00:37:17  Exactly. All ready ready. That’s right. So. Oh, and Zach says, you know that his camera bag is go ready at all times, as is mine. Zach, I made the mistake once of not charging batteries, and I got an hour and a half away, and I had no batteries charged, and I was like, well, it’s a pretty drive, but the birds aren’t going to be photographed today because I forgot to charge things. So. Yeah. Claudia has a bag of stuff in the car all the time. Yeah, I have a little purse.

Cami MacNamara 00:37:43  Good idea.

Michelle Frechette 00:37:44  A little mini pair of sewing scissors in my car. Because, like, when I get a Starbucks or something, the hole is never big enough to actually, like, drink through. You know how, like, you have to have that second hole. Yeah. So I’m like, poke it through with an extra pair of scissors, because I made the mistake of using a pen once and ended up with ink in my coffee, which I don’t recommend to anybody. But yeah, if lip balm in my car I have that. I have a nail file and clippers and things that you wish you had when you suddenly go broke a nail. What am I going to do now? You know, kinds of things. So great advice. All great advice though. Oh, I love it. All the tips and tricks from people in the in the comments too, any last minute before we start to wrap things up here, folks, if you’ve got any other ideas, throw them in there.

Michelle Frechette 00:38:25  Also, if you have any questions, you know, we want to, we want to hear them. Please put those in the comments as well. If you have a question for Cami or me, panic-mode is the go to before travels. Yeah, I’m a last minute packer, which is also why I have those things packed in advance. Because otherwise I’d be like, oh, I forgot my toothpaste and oh, where’s my toothbrush and all those things. So I just have. I mean, you can own more than one toothbrush. Did you know that?

Cami MacNamara 00:38:56  Yeah. I will get my I will get my suitcase out a few days early and just start throwing things at it. It’s not packed, but it’s a pile. And I just. Then, then the night before. That way, if I’m doing laundry, I can just. Put tuff in there. Yeah. Fold it.

Michelle Frechette 00:39:14  Yeah. Anker makes a USB-C charger hub that can charge up to four devices, including a laptop. Oh, that’s a great idea. I had something like that, and it got confiscated in Seoul, so I lost that. It was in my suitcase. They told me I could go all the way down to baggage claim and back up through security. Or I could toss that $30 charger. And I said, go ahead and throw it away. So, yeah, don’t. That’s another thing. Don’t pack things in your suitcase that can’t travel. Good advice. yeah. Any last minute thoughts Cami anything that you wished I’d asked you or that you want to share.

Cami MacNamara 00:39:50  You know, I just believe that if you can make a tiny change every day and it helps you run your business better, that, you know, that is sometimes we just get so bogged down with what we should be doing or, you know, maybe we want to make a change and it seems too daunting and just breaking things down into tiny little, increments that you can deal with. And that goes for like a task, like a redesign.  If you’re feeling overwhelmed, just do one little thing. If you only work on it for 30 minutes today, consider it a win. So celebrate all the little things that you do

Michelle Frechette 00:40:30  Yes.

Cami MacNamara 00:40:30  That makes a difference and help you make it through your day. So often we just don’t give ourselves enough credit and can be too critical of ourselves and how our day goes. Nobody has a perfect day, you know? Maybe. I mean, and if you have one, you’re not going to have one the next day. Right?

Michelle Frechette 00:40:50  That’s true. You seldom get two in a row.

Cami MacNamara 00:40:52  That’s. Yeah. You seldom get two in a row and just, you know, whatever you do, some days if you have a bad day, you know, maybe you needed the day off. And just in that instance, you’re taking care of yourself. And that’s a good day.

Michelle Frechette 00:41:07  Absolutely. Do you have your, your celebration jar there on your desk still?

Cami MacNamara 00:41:11  So I do, but I emptied it today because it got so. It got so full then. 

Michelle Frechette: Oh that’s awesome. 

Cami MacNamara: I had yeah like it got really full. But yes, I put little post-it notes in here with what I accomplished. Just one little task at a time and I keep it. Normally I empty it on Friday, but I’ve been, I’ve been go I, I kind of worked a little on Sunday, so. Got full early.

Michelle Frechette 00:41:36  Yeah. Zach says the best process for writing down your systems is to have the people doing the work write the SOP. Yeah, that’s true too. Absolutely.

Cami MacNamara 00:41:46  Well, that would be me I the person.

Michelle Frechette 00:41:49  Yeah, a lot of us, it’s just ourselves for sure. Yeah.

Cami MacNamara 00:41:52  But yes, I do agree that, like, having those things written down that you do is just a fantastic way to kind of map out what, what you going on.

Michelle Frechette 00:42:03  And they’re all written down at WebDesignerHabits.com. How is that for a Segway? That was pretty cool.

Cami MacNamara 00:42:08  That was pretty awesome. Thank you Michelle.

Michelle Frechette 00:42:11  You’re welcome. It is free to sign up for this newsletter. It is free to join Cami’’s Facebook group. If you are interested in learning more WebDesignerHabits.com, we’ll get you all the stuff to sign up for that newsletter. It is a treat. I read it’s the one one of the only three newsletters that I read top to bottom every week.

Cami MacNamara 00:42:31  So thank you, thank you. You know, it isn’t complex. It’s just like one thing. I don’t look it up a whole bunch of other things.

Michelle Frechette 00:42:38  I mean, that makes it easy to read, right? So it’s easy to consume for sure, which has one of the reasons I love it. And if it doesn’t apply to me, that’s okay. I still learn something. and if it does, great. Yeah. So like, I don’t have a lot of clients, so I’m not writing newsletters to clients, but, but I do a newsletter for Post Status and, you know, staying on track for that and all the things.

Michelle Frechette 00:42:58  So anyway, so thank you, Web Cami for joining me today.

Cami MacNamara 00:43:03  Thank you. Thank you for having me, Michelle, I really appreciate I appreciate it and I so appreciate you in our community, you know, you are the glue that keeps the WordPress community together.

Michelle Frechette 00:43:15  I try, I do what I can to try to help others along the way and to create a happy place. So thank you. Everybody else, I’m working on my, my, guest for next week. It most likely will be Roger from Kinston, so I’m not going to put that in writing, but we’re working on some details. If not, then I’ll have somebody else and that will be upcoming. But if you have something you want to talk about, a project that you want to share, get in touch with me. Maybe you can be on the next Post Status Happiness Hour. So thank you everybody who’s been here all day chatting with us or for the hour chatting with us and really appreciate all of you. And, again, Cami thank you. I appreciate your time today, too.

Cami MacNamara 00:43:58  Yeah. Thanks for having me. And I really enjoyed meeting everyone and reading all your comments.

Michelle Frechette 00:44:05  The comments were great. Yeah, yeah. For sure. Awesome. All right. We’ll see everybody next week.

Cami MacNamara 00:44:11  Bye.

This article, Post Status Happiness Hour Session Twenty Three, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

Web Agency Summit is Next Week

• Atarim and Omnisend are presenting a free online Web Agency Summit next week, April 7-11.
• The event will share strategies for web agencies to adapt, scale, and thrive amidst AI and digital innovation.
• More than 12,000 attendees are expected for the more than 50 sessions led by expert presenters.
• Sign up to attend here. Tickets are free, but limited.

Post Status Launches Virtual Stage Webinar Series

• Post Status Executive Director Michelle Frechette has created a new series of webinars called “The WP Speakers Virtual Stage Series.”
• The Virtual Stage creates opportunities for speakers whose WordCamp submissions weren’t accepted to share their expertise with the community.
• The program will run weekly YouTube Live webinars at 11 AM Eastern Time.
• Speakers can submit talks on any WordPress-related topic, with organizers encouraging creative and unique presentation ideas.
• Michelle will personally review applications and coordinate with selected speakers to schedule their presentation weeks.
• Each talk will become part of Post Status’s permanent content library, extending the speaker’s reach beyond the live event.

Google’s March Core Update Impacts Rankings & SEO Tools

• Google’s latest Core Update for March 2025 is now complete with significant impact on the rankings of some sites.
• Semrush noted that the SERP volatility in the last 30 days was in the very high range: 9.3/10.
• In addition to ranking changes, this core update also impacted the ability of some tools like Ahrefs and SE Ranking to get accurate data.
• Google offers a list of questions for site owners to consider if they lose rankings after a core update like this one.
• Their stance remains that creating helpful, reliable, people-first content is the key to good rankings.

The Admin Bar’s 2025 Web Professionals Survey is Open

• For the last few years, The Admin Bar’s Kyle Van Deusen has surveyed web professionals to capture the latest trends for solopreneurs and agencies.
• This year’s survey is now open.
• The 20 quick questions are multiple choice and should take less than 10 minutes to complete.
• The results of last year’s survey included responses from over 1,100 web professional globally and had some interesting takeaways.

Worth a Look

• Elon Musk has sold X to xAI and plans to blend “xAi’s advanced AI capability and expertise with X’s massive reach.”
• Amazon has announced a new AI agent called Nova Act that search, make purchases, and perform tasks on a schedule.
• Interesting Read: How the FBI Tracked, and Froze, Millions Sent to Criminals in Massive Caesars Casino Hack

This article, Agency News Weekly, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

Host Krim discusses Digital Experience Platforms (DXPs) with insights from Dan Drapeau. Key topics include CMS fragmentation, vendor lock-in, AI's role in DXPs, and strategic priorities for 2025.

BobWP reflects on his struggles with sales throughout their entrepreneurial journey, emphasizing a preference for honesty and transparency over aggressive selling techniques, ultimately valuing their humanity over sales success.

WordPress 6.8 Cecil is out, and it’s a great release. It’s unbelievable that it’s already been downloaded over 6 million times as I write this. That feeling never gets old.

It’s a funny time in WordPress because there are a lot of really interesting open questions:

• Can we iterate faster with canonical plugins?
• What’s the fun thing we can put in to celebrate 7.0, and when will that be? (I was rooting for real-time co-editing like Notion/Canva/Google Docs.)
• How can we use AI to automate our manual work around WordPress.org?
• Can AI help us make 60k+ open source plugins and themes in the directory more secure? (I think so.)
• What should we do with our 13k issue backlog? (That’s a lot of bug gardening.)
• How will AI change how people build and update sites?
• Just like RSS and web standards supercharged WordPress for the podcasting and search revolutions, what standards or APIs can we ship to help 40%+ of the web work with AI agents? (Plus an entire rabbit hole of all the new sloppy crawlers using so many resources.)

Some of these broad changes are mixed. At one point, I used Google to search for things and would visit their top result, which is great for website owners. Nowadays, Google pulls almost everything I need into the results page, so I don’t see as many random sites. But on Perplexity, sometimes I’ll read the answer and then visit 4-5 of the sources it cites to learn more, so I’m visiting 4-5x more random websites, usually powered by WordPress, than I would have even in the early days of Google. We don’t know how this all plays out yet.

These questions are also against the backdrop of some of the brightest minds in WordPress spending more time with legal code than computer code, which could last until 2027 or longer with appeals.

Speaking for myself, I was in my first deposition today. I really appreciated the due process and decorum of the rule of law, and just like code, law has a million little quirks, global variables, loaded libraries, and esoteric terminology. But wow, after a full day of that, I’m mentally exhausted. Hence, I’m posting about 6.8 after it’s had 6 million downloads. I’m more impressed than ever by what smart lawyers do, and the entire thing, though sometimes imperfect and frustrating, is a blessing to our democracy. However, I can’t wait to return to spending the plurality of my days with engineers and designers again. I’m sure many other folks in the WordPress community would agree.

bbPress 2.6.13 is a minor release that fixes 1 small incompatibility with WordPress 6.8.

(This fix is already merged into the 2.7 development branch.)

Thank you to vortfu, peterwilsoncc, spacedmonkey, joemcgill, swissspidy, and jorbin for helping communicate this to the bbPress team

Transcript

On the podcast today we have Aaron D. Campbell.

Aaron is an international speaker, open source advocate, and self-described outgoing introvert. He’s been a regular contributor to WordPress for more than a decade, and is currently Director of Product at A2 Hosting.

His long-standing enthusiasm for WordPress stems from its role as a necessary counterbalance to closed web solutions, providing a vital open-source alternative that fosters accountability among digital platforms. Aaron’s vision of WordPress’s importance has fuelled his sustained commitment and excitement for the platform, matching his initial zeal from years ago.

Today we talk about a topic that’s integral to Aaron, and likely resonates with many of you listeners, the importance of the open web. With the advent of closed platforms, open standards, and open source have become more crucial than ever.

Aaron shares his journey in the WordPress space, and how his commitment to the open web has kept him passionate about it over the years. We discuss the evolution of open web concepts, maintaining interoperability, and ensuring your digital creations remain under your control.

We compare this with the growing dominance of closed corporate platforms, and examine the impact of profit motives, versus the more altruistic goals of open source. Aaron articulates why preserving the openness of the web is essential, not just for innovation but for the entire fabric of global society.

If you’re curious about the role of open systems and the future they shape, and why the open web matters now more than ever, this episode is for you.

Useful links

Aaron’s presentation at WordCamp Asia 2025 – The Future: Why the Open Web Matters

A2 Hosting

ActivityPub

AT Protocol

Scale Consortium

We are excited to sponsor WordCamp Lisboa on May 16th and 17th, following a Warmup Meetup. I will be at our booth, ready for podcasts, and I encourage attendees to get their tickets now.

In Episode 642 of Do the Woo, host Matthias Pfefferle brings us another Open Web Conversations and dives into the world of decentralized social networks and the open web, specifically focusing on the Fediverse, with guest André Menrath. André shares his unconventional journey into software development, driven by his passion for events and democracy, and […]

BobWP touches on the challenges of managing multiple calendars for 14 shows and 30 hosts, highlighting the need for flexibility in scheduling.

I was more than surprised when Maja Benke, a well-known German community member and strong supporter of accessibility, put me in touch with Topher and HeroPress about Kenya. Of course I had heard of Topher. I had read a few posts from people in the WordPress community on HeroPress, people I’ve met, people who have inspired me, people who are very close to me for various reasons, and even some I disagree with. Nonetheless, they are all true WordPress heroes. I assumed the introduction was about someone from the Kenyan WordPress community who should be featured next on HeroPress or perhaps about proofreading something related to it. Imagine my surprise when Topher told me, “It’s about you!”

I don’t consider myself a hero, especially not in the WordPress ecosystem. My past contributions have been small and widely scattered here and there. A bit of polyglots, a bit of community work and a bit of WordPress TV. I’ve attended several WordPress meetups and, always with the help of others, founded three of them in Nuremberg, Würzburg, and Diani Beach. I’ve attended multiple WordCamps across Europe sometimes as a volunteer, other times as a speaker, and I was even fortunate enough to sponsor some through my company, AdminPress. I was the lead organiser of WordCamp Nuremberg 2016 and Würzburg 2018, both with incredible teams that made both “lead” and “organize” easy.

Being part of the organising team of WordCamp Europe in Berlin 2019 was my final major involvement, so to speak, before my contributions took their first hit due to COVID.

If I were to compare myself to football personalities, I would side with Jürgen Klopp, who once described himself as “The Normal One” rather than with José Mourinho claiming to be “The Special One” (Yes, I’m talking about real football not the sport where the ball is egg-shaped and carried with the hands, yet still called football but I digress…). Again, I’m not a hero. So why should I appear on HeroPress?

Even more so, I’m turning 60 this year. I started using WordPress in 2005 but only discovered in 2012 that it was more than just a piece of software, but also a community. Let’s be generous WordPress has been a part of my life for about a quarter of it. And by now, we’ve come full circle, as WordPress has once again become a mere tool for me just as it was when I first started using it. Perhaps I should briefly explain the other three-quarters of my life to provide some context for my journey with WordPress (and why it is no longer my main focus).

Tolerance, Diversity, and Solidarity

I was born and raised in Neuwied, Germany, a small city that shaped me through its history and principles, perhaps more than I realised at the time.

In the 17th century, the city’s founder, the Count of Wied, granted religious freedom at a time when many others did the opposite. This openness attracted people of diverse faiths bringing with them knowledge, craftsmanship, and ideas. Neuwied became a place where diversity was not just accepted but thrived. Tolerance was not an end in itself, but the foundation of cohesion, innovation, and prosperity.

As the town expanded, surrounding villages became part of Neuwied. One of these villages was Heddesdorf, which was responsible for several nearby villages, including Irlich the very part of town where I grew up. In the mid-19th century, Heddesdorf was led by a mayor named Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen, one of the pioneers of the cooperative movement. Facing famine in the rural areas of the Westerwald and Siegerland, he developed a system that enabled small farmers to survive.

“The whole is more than the sum of its parts.”
— Aristotle

By pooling resources and forming a cooperative, farmers could buy seeds at lower costs, share labor and support each other financially, and market their harvest together. All of this was done without the intent of making a profit but instead on the principle of solidarity. To this day, I maintain an account with a bank that bears Raiffeisen’s name, and I am, of course, a member of the cooperative that operates it.

Modesty, Honest Work, and Quality

My late father was a craftsman, a plumber. He deliberately kept his company small, even when he had opportunities for larger projects. He refused to expand beyond what he could personally oversee, ensuring that the quality of work never suffered. For him, it wasn’t about prestige or unchecked growth. It was about honest work, personal responsibility for his employees, and ensuring that every job was done right.

As a result, I didn’t grow up in opulence, but in a stable, middle-class environment. I had access to a good education, solid structures, and a supportive atmosphere that encouraged me to forge my own path. These values still shape me today. I have inherited my father’s philosophy except that my craft is digital.

A Change in Perspective: Living and Working in Kenya

I have been living in Kenya for seven years now. This decision was not driven by a desire to leave Germany, but by curiosity, another value rooted in Neuwied. In the 19th century, Prince Maximilian zu Wied traveled across North and South America, and his explorations inspired Karl May’s adventure novels, which we devoured as children. Now, I wanted to explore how my skills, values, and profession would hold up in a different context. And I quickly learned that what I had considered “normal” was not as universal as I had thought.

The cultural differences are not just fascinating, they are also deeply educational.

Germany thrives on structure, planning, and efficiency. In Kenya, flexibility, networks, and situational awareness are paramount. Decisions require more context, as they must account for social relationships. Time is experienced differently, and trust is built not through contracts but through consistent presence and reliability over time.

My tolerance and openness were tested like never before. But differences are not disadvantages—they are an invitation to challenge our own thinking.

Making Privileges Visible

It was only in Kenya that I fully grasped how many doors had been open to me without any effort on my part. Not because of my talent, but simply because of my passport, my education, and my social security. And sometimes, simply because my white face afforded me opportunities that others had to fight for.

Consider WordCamps in Europe, the US, and Asia. These events are a reflection of privilege.

For those of us from these regions, attending such an event—even organising one—is relatively easy. Travel restrictions are minimal, and at worst, it is simply a financial decision—getting a visa, booking a flight, and securing accommodation. Travel times are short, flights are reasonably priced, and thanks to the stability of the WordPress industry, many of us can make a living from this industry and therefore can afford these trips.

But what does this look like on the African continent?

Exercise: Open Google Maps and compare the size of Africa to Greenland. Now, check Wikipedia for the actual area of both.

Surprised? Shocked? Many of us, me at least, were misled in school. The Mercator projection distorts Africa’s size, making it appear smaller—and therefore less significant—in Western minds. The distances alone across Africa are twice as long as those in Europe or the US. There are no low-cost airlines like in Europe, offering fares that almost resemble the costs of bus tickets. A trip from Kenya to Nigeria—two major economies on the continent—takes a full day, even by plane, with layovers in Ethiopia. Even though WordPress developers in Kenya may earn above the national average thanks to remote work, attending a WordCamp outside their country remains prohibitively expensive. For reference, during the recent WordCamp Nairobi, I met a participant from Cameroon who had spent approximately $1,500 for flights and accommodation. Keep in mind that in Kenya, the average the average income is around $250 per month.

I wrote about this in more detail on my not very well maintained personal blog. Even though the original idea dates back to 2019, and the article was written in 2023, everything remains relevant today.

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility
— Uncle Ben in Stan Lee’s Spider-Man

For me, the meaning shifts when you replace “power” with “privilege.” What I perceive as power is, in reality, privilege. In my case, it is the privilege of growing up in stable circumstances, with access to education, healthcare, and technology, in a country that has provided me with opportunities many people never receive. And with privilege comes responsibility, not moral superiority, not a saviour complex, but simple questions: What do we do with the resources available to us? How do we share our knowledge? How do we create structures that enable others to  also grow?

This perspective is not always easy to convey, especially in an era where many business models prioritise short-term returns, platform effects, scaling, artificial intelligence—insert any buzzword of your choice. Increasingly, control is being sold as freedom, and systems are being centralised without consideration for democratic processes. As developers, the technologies we create often accelerate these trends. Without a strong foundation of values, we risk becoming complicit.

Open source in general, and WordPress in particular, thrives on the very values I was raised with: openness, tolerance, diversity, and solidarity.

Without trust, collaboration, and a commitment to pragmatic solutions, open source software cannot evolve. Without a focus on quality and the drive to continually improve, no sustainable business model can be built on open source. Without humility, we leave no space for others whose contributions make the whole greater than the sum of its parts. And without a conscious effort to use privilege meaningfully, or better yet, to dismantle it we will not succeed. Not in the WordPress community. Not in this world.

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Werte, Privilegien und Verantwortung

Ich war mehr als überrascht, als Maja Benke – ein bekanntes deutsches Community-Mitglied und starker Befürworter von a11y – mich wegen Kenia mit Topher und HeroPress in Kontakt brachte. Ich hatte von Topher gehört. Ein paar Beiträge von Leuten aus der WordPress Community hatte ich auf HeroPress bereits gelesen. Menschen, die ich kennengelernt habe, Menschen, die mich inspiriert haben, Menschen, die mir aus verschiedenen Gründen sehr nahe stehen oder sogar welche, mit denen ich nicht übereinstimme. Dennoch sind sie alle wahre WordPress-Helden. Ich war mir sicher, dass es sich bei dem Kontakt um jemanden aus der kenianischen WordPress-Community handelte, der auf HeroPress gefeatured werden sollte oder ein entsprechender Text den ich vielleicht hätte korrekturlesen sollen. Meine Überraschung hätte kaum größer sein können, als ich hörte: „Es geht um dich!“.

Ich betrachte mich nicht als Held. Schon gar nicht im WordPress-Ökosystem. Meine Beiträge in der Vergangenheit waren klein und sogar weit gestreut. Ein bisschen hier und da. Ein bisschen Polyglots, ein bisschen Community, ein bisschen WordPress TV. Ich habe mehrere WordPress-Meetups besucht und (immer mit Hilfe von anderen) drei davon in Nürnberg, Würzburg und Diani Beach gegründet. Ich habe an mehreren WordCamps in ganz Europa teilgenommen, ich habe dort voluntiert, bei einigen Talks gegeben und hatte das Glück, einige durch meine Firma AdminPress zu sponsern. Ich war Lead-Organizer des WordCamp Nürnberg 2016 und Würzburg 2018, wobei beide mit tollen Teams aufwarten konnten, die das „Lead“ und „Organize“ leicht machten.

Teil des Organisationsteams von WCEU in Berlin 2019 zu sein, war sozusagen der letzte Akt, bevor meine Contributions durch COVID einen ersten Schlag erhielten.

Wenn ich das auf den Fußball übertragen müsste, würde ich mich eher auf die Seite von Jürgen Klopp stellen, der sich selbst mal als „The Normal One“ bezeichnete, als auf die von „The Special One“ José Mourinho. (ja, ich spreche vom echten Fußball, nicht von dem Sport, bei dem der Ball eiförmig ist und mit den Händen getragen wird, aber trotzdem Fußball heißt – ich schweife ab …). Aber noch einmal: Ich bin kein Held. So warum sollte ich auf HeroPress erscheinen?

Außerdem: Ich werde dieses Jahr 60 Jahre alt. Ich habe 2005 mit WordPress angefangen und erst 2012 entdeckt, dass es mehr als nur eine Software ist, sondern auch eine Community. Seien wir mal großzügig: Wir reden hier von etwa einem Viertel meines Lebens, in dem ich WordPress zu einem Teil meines Lebens gemacht habe. Und mittlerweile hat sich der Kreis geschlossen. WordPress ist für mich mehr oder minder wieder zu einem reinen Werkzeug geworden, so wie es einst begonnen hatte. Vielleicht sollte ich die anderen 3/4 meines Lebens (so kurz wie möglich) erklären, um meinen WordPress Weg besser zu verstehen (und warum dieser für mich gerade eher zu Ende ist).

Offenheit, Toleranz und Solidarität

Ich bin in Neuwied geboren und aufgewachsen. Einer Stadt, die mich durch ihre deren Geschichte und ihren Prinzipien geprägt hat. Vielleicht mehr, als ich es damals ahnte. Im 17. Jahrhundert gewährte der Gründer der Stadt, Graf von Wied, Religionsfreiheit, während viele andere das Gegenteil praktizierten. Diese Haltung zog Menschen verschiedenster Glaubensrichtungen an – und mit ihnen Wissen, Handwerk und Ideen. Neuwied wurde zu einem Ort, an dem Vielfalt nicht nur akzeptiert sondern aktiv gelebt wurde. Offenheit war nicht Selbstzweck, sondern Grundlage für Zusammenhalt, Innovation und Wohlstand.

Die umliegenden Dörfer wurden Teil der Stadt Neuwied, als diese im Laufe der Zeit wuchs. Eines dieser Dörfer war Heddesdorf, das selbst schon für einige andere Dörfer in seiner Nähe zuständig war, wie z.B. Irlich – genau der Teil der Stadt, in dem ich aufgewachsen bin. In der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts wurde Heddesdorf von einem Bürgermeister namens Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen geführt. Kein Geringerer als einer der Erfinder der Idee der Genossenschaften. Angesichts der Hungersnot in den ländlichen Gebieten des Westerwalds und des Siegerlands ermöglichte er den Kleinbauern das Überleben.

“Das Ganze ist mehr als die Summe seiner Teile”
— Aristoteles

In dem sich die Bauern zusammenschlossen und eine Genossenschaft gründeten, konnte Saatgut billiger gekauft werden, Arbeit und Geld wurden gegenseitig verliehen und die Ernte gemeinsam vermarktet. All dies geschah ohne Gewinnabsicht und auf der Grundlage von Solidarität. Noch heute unterhalte ich ein Konto bei einer Bank, die Raiffeisens Namen trägt, und natürlich bin ich Mitglied der Genossenschaft, die die Bank betreibt.

Bescheidenheit, ehrliche Arbeit und Qualität

Mein jüngst verstorbener Vater war Handwerker, ein Klempner. Er hielt sein Unternehmen bewusst klein, obwohl er Angebote für mehr und größere Projekte erhielt. Er vermied es mehr Leute einzustellen, um nur noch deren Arbeiten kontrollieren zu müssen und die Qualität der Firma auf’s Spiel zu setzen. Für ihn ging es nicht um Prestige oder Wachstum um jeden Preis. Es ging um ehrliche Arbeit, die mit den Menschen zu tun hatte, die er beschäftigte, und um die Verantwortung für die Aufträge, die er und sein Team ausführten. Ich bin daher nicht in üppigem Wohlstand aufgewachsen, sondern in einer gut situierten Mittelstandsfamilie. Es fehlte mir aber auch an nichts: ich hatte Zugang zu einer guten Ausbildung, stabilen Strukturen und einem Umfeld, das mich ermutigte, meinen eigenen Weg zu gehen. Auch diese Werte prägen mich auch heute noch. Diese Haltung meines Vaters habe ich mir zu eigen gemacht. Nur das mein Handwerk digital ist.

Perspektivwechsel: Leben und Arbeiten in Kenia

Seit sieben Jahren lebe ich nun in Kenia. Die Entscheidung war bewusst – nicht getrieben von einem Aussteigen-Wollen, sondern von Neugier. Auch das ein Neuwieder Wert. Prinz Maximilian zu Wied bereiste in im 19. Jahrhundert Nord- und Südamerika und lieferte mit seinen Forschungen die Vorlagen für Karl Mays Abenteuerromane, die wir als Kinder verschlagen. Nun wollte ich entdecken, wie sich meine Fähigkeiten, meine Werte, mein Beruf in einem anderen Kontext bewähren. Und ich sollte herausfinden, ob das, was ich als „normal“ empfand, nicht wirklich so universell ist.

Die kulturellen Unterschiede sind nicht nur spannend, sie sind extrem lehrreich.

Deutschland ist geprägt von Struktur, Planung, Effizienz. In Kenia zählen Flexibilität, Netzwerke, situatives Handeln. Entscheidungen brauchen oft mehr Kontext, da sie soziale Beziehungen berücksichtigen müssen. Zeit wird anders erlebt, Vertrauen entsteht nicht durch Verträge, sondern durch Präsenz und Zuverlässigkeit über längere Zeiträume. Meine Toleranz und Offenheit wurde mehr denn je auf die Probe gestellt. Aber: Unterschiede sind kein Nachteil. Sie sind eine Einladung, das eigene Denken zu hinterfragen.

Privilegien sichtbar machen

Erst in Kenia wurde mir richtig bewusst, wie viele Türen mir offenstanden, ohne dass ich sie mir selbst erkämpfen musste. Nicht, weil ich so talentiert war, sondern weil mein Pass, mein Bildungssystem, meine soziale Absicherung, sogar einfach meine Hautfarbe mir Möglichkeiten eröffneten.

Sprechen wir für einen Augenblick über die WordCamps Europe, US und Asia. Sind sind Ausdruck dieses Privilegs.

Es fällt uns, die wir aus diesen Regionen stammen vergleichsweise leicht an einem solchen Event teilzunehmen oder gar mit zu organisieren. Wir reisen mit wenigen Beschränkungen in die Länder unserer Wahl. Schlimmstenfalls ist es eine Frage des Geldes um ein Visum zu erhalten, das Flugticket zu bezahlen und für ein paar Tage Unterkunft und Verpflegung zu finden. Die Flüge sind in der Regel überschaubar lang, kosten kein Vermögen und dank einer stabilen WordPress Industrie in der wir arbeiten dürfen sind die Kosten auch leicht zu decken.

Was davon existiert auf dem Afrikanischen Kontintent?

Übung: öffne Google Maps und schaue dir die Größe der Landmasse von Afrika und die von Grönland im Vergleich an. Schlage Wikipedia auf und suche nach der Fläche der beiden genannten Landmassen.

Überrascht? Schockiert? Unsere Sicht von außen auf Afrika wurde uns – mir zumindest – in der Schule falsch vermittelt. Die Merkator-Projektion macht den Kontinent kleiner als er ist. Und damit in unseren westlichen Köpfen unbedeutender. Schon alleine die Flugstrecken von einem Ende zum anderen sind doppelt so groß wie die, die wir in den USA oder in Europa zurücklegen. Die Billig-Airlines die z.T. Preise anbieten, die eher nach Busfahrten klingen, gibt es in Afrika nicht. Um von Kenia nach Nigeria – zwei der großen Volkswirtschaften – zu kommen, bedarf es auch mit dem Flieger einer Tagesreise mit dem Umweg über Äthiopien. Und auch wenn WordPress Entwickler dank Remote Zugang zu Projekten die Möglichkeiten haben mehr zu verdienen als der Durchschnitts-Kenianer, sind die Kosten für die Teilnahme an einem WordCamp außerhalb des eigenen Landes immer noch prohibitiv hoch. Zum Vergleich: das kenianische Durchschnittseinkommen liegt bei ca. $ 250 pro Monat. Flug und Unterkunft zum WordCamp Nairobi kosteten einen Teilnehmer aus Kamerun ca. $1.500.

Ich habe auf meinem – nicht sehr gut gepflegten – persönlichen Blog (in englisch) ein bisschen ausführlicher darüber geschrieben.

Auch wenn die Grundidee aus dem Jahr 2019 ist und der Artikel im Jahr 2023 geschrieben wurde, ist trotzdem alles noch anderthalb Jahre später gültig.

„With great power comes great responsibility.“
— *Uncle Ben in Stan Lee’s Spider-Man

Für mich gewinnt er eine neue Bedeutung, wenn man „power“ durch „privilege“ ersetzt. Denn das, was ich als Macht empfinde, ist in Wahrheit ein Privileg: aufgewachsen in stabilen Verhältnissen, mit Zugang zu Bildung, Gesundheitsversorgung, Technologie – in einem Land, das mir Möglichkeiten eröffnet hat, die viele Menschen nie bekommen. Und aus diesem Privileg erwächst Verantwortung. Keine moralische Überlegenheit, keine Rettungsphantasien. Sondern die schlichte Frage: Was machen wir mit den Ressourcen, die uns zur Verfügung stehen? Wie teilen wir unser Wissen? Wie schaffen wir Strukturen, in denen auch andere wachsen können?

Diese Haltung ist nicht immer leicht zu vermitteln, besonders in Zeiten, in denen viele Geschäftsmodelle auf kurzfristige Rendite, Plattformeffekte, Skalierung, künstliche Intelligenz, … buzzword deiner Wahl … setzen. Es gibt in der Welt aktuell eine Tendenz, Kontrolle als Freiheit zu verkaufen, Systeme zu zentralisieren, ohne demokratische Prozesse mitzudenken. Die Technologien, die wir als Entwickler schaffen helfen dabei, diese Tendenzen zu beschleunigen. Ohne einen stabilen Wertekanon machen wir uns zu Mit-Tätern!

Open-Source im Allgemeinen und WordPress im Speziellen lebt genau von den Werten, die mir vermittelt wurden: Offenheit, Toleranz, Diversität, Solidarität.

Ohne Vertrauen, Zusammenarbeit und dem Streben nach pragmatischen Lösungen entwickelt sich Open-Source Software nicht. Und ohne die notwendige Qualität und dem Willen Dinge permanent zu verbessern lässt sich kein erfolgreiches und nachhaltiges Geschäftsmodell auf Open-Source aufbauen. Ohne etwas Bescheidenheit werden wir keinen Platz für die anderen haben, die ebenfalls wertvolle Beiträge liefern und das Ganze zu mehr als seiner Summe machen. Ohne die sinnvolle Nutzung von Privilegien und letztlich den Abbau dieser werden wir es nicht schaffen. Nicht in der WordPress Community. Nicht in dieser Welt.

The post Values, Privileges, and Responsibility – Werte, Privilegien und Verantwortung appeared first on HeroPress.