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For long-form interviews, news, and commentary about the WordPress ecosystem. This is the companion show to The WP Minute, your favorite 5-minutes of WordPress news every week.
Eric Karkovack (00:01)
Hi everyone and welcome to the WP Minute. I'm Eric Karkovack. Today's episode is all about busting out of our WordPress bubble and exploring the full CMS landscape. My guest has an upcoming event called CMS Conf to do just that. The conference aims to bring people from multiple CMS communities together to learn, including WordPress. Maciek Palmowski is today's event organizer. Maciek, welcome to the WP Minute.
Maciek Palmowski (00:31)
Hi, Eric.
Eric Karkovack (00:32)
It's so nice to finally meet you. We have talked online many times over the years and it's good to finally see your face. how are things over in Poland?
Maciek Palmowski (00:44)
Well, it's it's pretty hot but apart from it, it's really it's really nice. I mean Poland is really changing for the for the better, so for everyone who never been here, I think that yeah, coming to especially the north in November will be a great opportunity to see to see it.
Eric Karkovack (01:03)
Yeah, and I wanted to talk about that. So CMS Conf w what are the details? When when is it and where is it?
Maciek Palmowski (01:10)
Okay, so the conference is in November, from 12th to 14th to be exact, and it's happening in Gdynia. While I know that most people do not have a clue where Gdynya is, but don't worry, it's a part of something called Tricity. So it's Gdańsk, Gdynia, and Sopot and everyone should know where Gdańsk is. It has an airport, it's a very big historical city, and Gdynya is very nearby. There are
local communication that you can use to go from the airport to Gdynia directly. And it's the part of the Polish seaside. Sadly it will be winter so probably not the best moment to get for a swim. But still, still you can see the whole tri-city which is really beautiful.
Eric Karkovack (02:03)
Well that sounds awesome. Yeah, you won't be complaining about the heat in November. but I bet the views of the water are pretty amazing.
Maciek Palmowski (02:09)
No, this will be the moment when you will be
complaining about the cold, about the wind. So yeah, you can still be complaining, don't worry.
Eric Karkovack (02:18)
Alright, well hey, as long as there's something to complain about, that's what we want. No. but I I I wanted to to ask you, so you've been a part of the WordPress community for a long time. you wrote this blog post and we're we're going to link to it in the show notes about being a CMS tourist. What made you decide to to go and explore these other systems out there?
Maciek Palmowski (02:42)
So it all kind of started because I started working at Kinsta. And this was one of the things we were working on back then, because Kinsta started exploring not just WordPress hosting but also application hosting. And this was like something that really triggered this change when it comes to my job. that while
WordPress is very interesting. It has a huge community. We've done so many things right. It's always worth to learn how others are doing some things, how they are organizing conferences, how they are solving some of the problems that we might be having, and so on and so on. And I started visiting more conferences, I started also using things other than than WordPress.
And it turns out that every everything has something to offer. Sometimes those are smaller things. Sometimes it's like a bit different approach to thinking about the like the product development. But everyone has something to offer. And I realized that the moment when you are staying in one bubble, you're really missing a lot because you can learn so many cool things that are.
really near you because let's be honest, right now we can travel to all the conferences, there are a lot of online conferences. There there are so much things. there are just like one one plane ticket away from us and
And it really can change your perspective. It and it goes both ways because you also start to see some of the things how the WordPress community did really well, and sometimes we might not appreciate it enough. For example, still I think that when it comes to, for example, the community aspect of of our WordPress events.
And they are one of the best, if not the best, in the world. And this is something we should spread. And that's also something that a lot of other applications don't understand. That if when they try to build, like, let's say, a WordPress killer, WordPress never became big because of the software. I mean, the software
Eric Karkovack (05:09)
Absolutely.
Maciek Palmowski (05:10)
was there, it worked, but it was everything.
Around the software that clicked. But we know how it is, and that we can improve some things, and that's why learning from others and also spreading the things that we done in a in in a really good way, yeah, that's the thing. And that's why kind of changing the approach from being like just a just a specialist in in one topic to this more twisty approach of exploring.
It's really good and especially right now in the AI era because I know that being a specialist like few years ago, yeah, that was very that that was a very good approach because it was very difficult to learn new things. It took a lot of time and so and right now AI is making this barrier a bit more easier to pass. So
Eric Karkovack (06:14)
Yeah.
Maciek Palmowski (06:14)
It's much easier to learn all the other stuff, to start using them, to start implementing them, instead of the approach that a lot of specialists have. Okay, how how many workarounds should I use to use my my favorite software to build the second Facebook on WordPress,
Eric Karkovack (06:34)
Yeah.
Maciek Palmowski (06:35)
for example. So so yeah, so like I said, it all started with the job and in the end it kind of
became my my kind of way of of working of of of of looking at at software at communities and and what's surprising when when I talk about it a lot of people are like whoa you must had a lot of courage to for example to do a speech at a non-word the non-word camp and I'm like why?
I just went there and talked.
Eric Karkovack (07:14)
Ha ha ha.
Maciek Palmowski (07:15)
It's simple as that. They I mean they are people. Same like us.
Eric Karkovack (07:22)
Yeah, I I think I I know for myself, like, you know, you get busy in your job, right? And and you you just focus on the thing you need to focus on.
But there is so much to learn out there. There are so many different systems. ha have you like, is there anything in particular that you've like really surprised you, like a a particular feature or or just an app in in general that has just kind of blown you away and made you say, we really need to do this and with WordPress?
Maciek Palmowski (07:53)
Like
for me there are two applications that I really fall in love. Like one was Astro. Astro started as a just a static site builder, but it kind of now is a full-blown framework. But it's still so good for content websites. It's really good, it's really simple, and it really does this thing of
Building a website in a very simple way, think right. I switched my blog to to Astro and I see that and and I was very happy to see that at some point everyone started. So it was like, okay, it's it's really nice that that that I'm not not the only one. And the thing I always enjoyed about Astro was that that it was doing the thing that it should do. So
Being this content website framework, and it does it in a very good way. That's it. It's not meant to be an e-commerce, it's not meant to be a framework for big SPA applications. No, it's a it's a framework for a content website and it works perfectly. And a lot of companies are using it. On the other hand, there is this really cool Laravel CMS called Statamin.
Statamin. is also very nice, and the thing I love about it the most is
They they were really great when it comes to all the details in building the product and adding enough features so you so it can function on its own. Because that's kind of the thing about I mean that's the main pro and co of count about WordPress.
You always
Eric Karkovack (09:51)
Sure.
Maciek Palmowski (09:51)
have to use plugins, let's be honest. That's it's also very often well.
Eric Karkovack (09:55)
Nobody has a vanilla install.
Maciek Palmowski (09:59)
I know there is one person because I always ask at every conference about hey, do you do you use at least one plugin? And of course. And I remember there was one guy who said no, I don't. And I was like, okay, that that's a
Eric Karkovack (10:11)
Wow. Must have had a very interesting sight.
Maciek Palmowski (10:15)
that's a that that was a huge surprise for me that someone like this exists. but that's true. I mean, that's the thing about our ecosystem. It's kind of built at WordPress, it's kind of a framework.
That we have to fill out with plugins. And that was always our approach. The problem is that.
You always have to install plugins, you always have to maintain them. And what's also intro important, you feel that it's a framework with add-ons. It's very often not the same product. There is there is something that you feel that it's not the core product anymore, that it's a plugin. And for example, I was always using advanced custom fields because I needed it to kind of
Model the content and so on. And while ACF was always great, I love it, I I I love working with it, Statamic had those features built in. And the way how you work with it, you feel it's it's still the same CMS. It's not a CMS and an add-on. The same goes with
Eric Karkovack (11:32)
Yeah.
Maciek Palmowski (11:33)
forms and other features that Statamic has baked in.
Of course they also have a very vast they have a marketplace if I remember of add-ons, but a lot there are more core features just baked in, which makes this Statamic as a product, it feels like better out of the box.
Eric Karkovack (12:00)
Yeah, we have I
Maciek Palmowski (12:01)
Yes.
Eric Karkovack (12:01)
mean, that is that is one of the issues that we found in WordPress is that it's you know, every plugin can have their own UI.
in the back in the back end,
Maciek Palmowski (12:10)
Yes.
Eric Karkovack (12:10)
right? And so it looks like you're going into about twelve different systems when you go to WooCommerce or you go to ACF or you go to Gravity Forms or whatever it is, they all have their own way of doing things because the you know the standard WordPress UI is pretty basic. So everybody wants to build
Maciek Palmowski (12:28)
Mm-hmm.
Eric Karkovack (12:28)
their own. So that cohesive experience, I I imagine for for those users has to be a big selling point.
Maciek Palmowski (12:37)
It it and it and it really is. It really is because like I said, it if you look at it, it works exactly the same, right? Because yeah, you just create an additional field and when you create a post you can fill it out. It works exactly the same. But there is something that you feel, yeah, but this just feels better. This feels better and yeah and
Eric Karkovack (13:02)
We don't I I wanted to bring up too that you know, th there there's a there are developers out there that say, okay, WordPress is outdated and you know, it's PHP and and MySQL is stuff that that's been around a long time.
But for me personally, I think that the longevity of WordPress is one of the great reasons to use it because I know it's going to be here in five years. Whereas a lot of the newer CMS, I don't know what's going to happen, you know, if their communities build up to that point that can you know support the the app for for years to come. So I feel like in your event, CMS Conf is gonna bring all these these different people together. I feel like that's
like if there's one
One
lesson that WordPress might be able to teach a newer system, it might be that. It might be how to stay around a long time. And then on the
Maciek Palmowski (13:55)
For sure.
Eric Karkovack (13:56)
other hand, I feel like these newer systems might be able to teach the WordPress community something about different ways to look at solving those common issues that we all face no matter what system we're using.
Maciek Palmowski (14:13)
Yes, that's for sure. And we will have people not only w when it comes to those older CMSs, we will also have people from from the Joomla community, from Drupal community. so like now we can kind of call them the old three, right? Because they are one of the oldest CMSs that are still on the market. but the truth is that they do know how to stay on the market for
For so many many years. And that's for sure something something useful. And they already know about some problems that a lot of CMSs didn't had yet. Because let's be honest, when WordPress started, I think PHP 4 was a thing. So
Eric Karkovack (15:04)
Yes. That's
a little bit ago.
Maciek Palmowski (15:08)
Right? So so so that's something really incredible. On on the other hand, yeah, we will also have people from from payload, from high graph, some from those really like let's call it new jazzy and and API first CMSs. So yeah, I think that and and we are still thinking about the topics for the discussion panels.
but for sure we will have to talk about something like this. This what those old versus new CMSs can offer to each other, what can we learn from? Because all of us have totally different set of problems we had to solve over over the years. I mean, if we look at it, I mean w when WordPress started, Git wasn't there. So whoever thought about
version control in such a way and the fact that we will be collaborating online in such a way. And we are. And many CMSs that started that that that were created after this, they were all already in a different position. They knew that they should build in a bit different way to make this collaboration easier. So really there there are so many things, so many interesting stories that they can share with each with each each with each other. yeah.
That's really something I can I I really can't wait to to to to see how it goes because I really think that at least I hope it will all end up in a very pleasant and cultural just
Eric Karkovack (16:52)
Well are are there any
are there any presentations you're especially excited about?
Maciek Palmowski (17:00)
yes. Yes, there are really a lot of them, to be honest. One of them will be about EmDash because it's of the new CMS by Cloudflare. And there will be a presentation and a workshop too. So if someone wants to dive into EmDash, I think that's that's a really interest that that's a really good moment to to do so. we will also have a really great
Talk about accessibility of CMS backends that can be your next differentiator, which is also something I I can't wait. one of my personal favorite will be by David Eglin about the missing layer in content modeling, because I was always a huge fan of modeling. I know it's maybe not the most obvious hobby you can have, but but yeah.
for sure there will be also a talk about Astro, which I'm also pretty excited about. So, yeah, we will really see quite a lot of those different angles. and also there is a very interesting talk by Michał Strzeshnewski. Do I still need a CMS? That's a very interesting question that a lot of people should have right now in the
Eric Karkovack (18:22)
Yeah.
Maciek Palmowski (18:23)
in the AI era.
or for example, Simon Kraft who owns the plugin that broke production. That's also a very realistic problem. that sometimes when we are especially using AI, we're not thinking about it. But yeah, what it's a and and Rodolfo will also have a great talk about a CMS is nothing without the community. So like there is a there there will be a a lot of talks and
The only difficult part about the fact of being an organizer, it will be very difficult to even see one or two presentations, but but I definitely have a a pretty long short list. It's let let's be honest, it's it's it's it's a rather long list.
Eric Karkovack (19:08)
What
Maciek Palmowski (19:10)
But luckily there will be recordings,
Eric Karkovack (19:12)
Yeah, we'll keep
Maciek Palmowski (19:13)
so I will watch them.
Eric Karkovack (19:15)
that's great. Well, I I was gonna ask about that and i it just sounds like a very diverse group of topics that you know, of course as you s said it, this is covering the the whole landscape of CMS, not just WordPress, not just Astro, not just Joomla, which is great. like for someone who's coming to Gdynia. for this conference, what do you hope they they get out of the experience?
Maciek Palmowski (19:42)
first thing that they will maybe also embrace this more touristic nature when when it comes to choosing your software and kind of working with different communities. so like if you feel that you are a part of a bubble and you will break this bubble, that's amazing. That's one of the best things you could achieve at
At a conference like this. so that's one thing. And also for I also hope that a lot of people will see that yeah, there is this world outside because it's I've I don't want to say it's a problem, but as as as you said, yeah, we it's it's very often it's it's it's our job, we have to do things, and there is the rest of our lives. So we do have limited time.
But maybe thanks to events like this, you will see that it is worth checking out what is happening like on the other side. Because you might learn so many cool things from it. Or maybe you will just see some like solutions and you will say, Okay, now I need to create the something like this, but for my CMS. So in in general.
It's mostly about opening our our minds. I feel that's like the the the most important part of of this. But also if you will learn something more deeper technical, that's also amazing. But this is this is also something that I always said about going to university and different other levels of school. One of the most important things is to never lose this happiness h happiness in learning new things.
rather than just learning some some stuff right now and maybe even forgetting about it later. It's more about keeping your your mind open.
Eric Karkovack (21:50)
Yeah, and I think that's a a great thing, especially for open source right now. you know, we have so much to learn from each other. It y and you know, th i sometimes we get a little too tribal about it, I think. Well,
Maciek Palmowski (22:03)
Yes.
Eric Karkovack (22:04)
you know, if somebody hates WordPress or somebody hates Drupal or or whatever, you know there are still very good things and and things to to
That we could probably all agree on, things that we probably all could learn from each other. And I I love that CMS Conf aims to do this. Now, the final question I have for you is okay, we'll say this this year goes wonderfully. i do you plan on making this a yearly event? And if so, will it travel around Europe or or mainly stay in Poland?
Maciek Palmowski (22:38)
So at this point I can already tell that slightly it has already started traveling. Because so, first of all, yes, we really hope that next year in Gdynia or at in Trimiasta there will be the second edition of this CMS conference. This will be like the, let's call it the cent this central event because it started here and let it continue at the seaside. We just hope that it will be.
That we will move it a bit earlier so it will be a bit nicer weather. So then we can be mad at it. The fact that it's too hot rather than it's too cold or windy. On the other hand, we are starting a series of smaller events that will be called CMS Conflocal. And
Eric Karkovack (23:27)
Correct?
Maciek Palmowski (23:27)
we are already in the middle of planning one in Vilnius in Lithuania.
And next year there will be also one in Germany. Here we are still not sure where exactly. but yeah, we are also planning to build those smaller meetups that will be free for everyone, much cheaper when it comes to organization, just to make it just just to have more opportunities to meet with each other.
And we plan to have those local events to happen twice a year in each place. So that's kind of the and with with Vilnius, for example, Patstack is helping us a lot. So they are they they they they will be the main sponsors of the of the first edition. so amazing. and yeah, I I I really can't wait how it all will
will go on. I mean, if everything will work well probably in who knows, maybe in five, six years there will be CMS conf Americas, like Cloudfest, right?
Eric Karkovack (24:41)
that sounds
good. Although I would love to travel to Europe and and and and hang out with everyone
Maciek Palmowski (24:46)
I mean
Eric Karkovack (24:47)
there.
Maciek Palmowski (24:49)
so I mean like I said, probably four or five years. So right now I invite you to to Gdynia
Eric Karkovack (24:59)
Well, you know, I I I love that you're doing the local meetups as well, 'cause I mean that's really how you build community, right? You can have one big event a year, but WordPress
really built a community on local meetups too. I you know, it's
Maciek Palmowski (25:13)
Yes.
Eric Karkovack (25:14)
not just the big WordCamp events. you know, i in a in America we had
Maciek Palmowski (25:16)
WordPress WordPress did it really well.
Eric Karkovack (25:18)
a lot of regional events that have disappeared, but we still have meetups. so that I think that's a wonderful strategy for getting people i involved all year round.
Maciek Palmowski (25:29)
I I really think that WordPress did it really well and because the community was either growing from grounds up based on the smaller local events, but also thanks to the bigger ones, because they were much louder and more people could learn about them. So the community was built from like two directions and and it still is. It still is because w at each WordCamp Europe, for example.
We see how many new people come just to just to see the flagship event. And when we ask, okay, but were you ever at a I don't know, some smaller meetup? No, I didn't even heard that there are smaller meetups. So But here you are, now you know. And also that's kind of the thing that when we were thinking about the CMS conf when we started organizing it, that we wanted to bring the
WordCamp vibe, so the openness, making it pretty as affordable as possible. Although we don't have sponsoring from the foundation because we're doing it on our own. So of course it's a bit more expensive than like a normal WordCamp. But still, when we look at other let's call it commercial events that like cost 500 euros, and if you want
Dinner, you still have to pay for it. And he'll and here it's like 150 euros and all the food included. And Mariusz, one of the co-organizers, he's always I think that this is one of the most important things when he organized the an any event, that all the attendees are well fed when they leave the event. He always makes sure that there is enough pizza for everyone.
And yeah. I mean everyone has their main focus of when when we were organizing an event and for sure Mariusz, is is making sure that everyone is well fed.
Eric Karkovack (27:37)
Well that's good. You don't want to eat it's hard to learn on an empty stomach. It's hard to learn when you're a little bit
hungry. So
Maciek Palmowski (27:42)
Exactly. Exactly.
Eric Karkovack (27:45)
So you can settle in
Maciek Palmowski (27:46)
And
Eric Karkovack (27:46)
and you can learn about all these different great systems that are out there and the communities that are building them. Maciek I I appreciate you coming on to tell us about CMS Conf Where can people learn more about it?
Maciek Palmowski (27:59)
So of course the best source would be visiting our website which is cmsconf.com. And also, and this will be in the notes, there will be a coupon for 25% off for a ticket. So so you will
Eric Karkovack (28:18)
Awesome.
Maciek Palmowski (28:18)
just have to click click a link that Eric will add.
Eric Karkovack (28:24)
Wonderful. Well that's that's great. I I I wish you the best of luck with the event. I think it's a wonderful idea and it's something
Maciek Palmowski (28:30)
Thank you.
Eric Karkovack (28:30)
that I think the the open source community just plain needs. We need to get together. We don't need to be in all these different silos like we are now. So congratulations on that.
Maciek Palmowski (28:39)
Exactly. And I I I can tell you as
a very small anecdote at the end. I remember I was once in London during it was a PHP UK event. And there was one presentation about Drupal and about a thing called Drupalisms. So things that happened in the Drupal along the years. And I was listening to it, and if we would just replace some of the words, their history and our history.
Was almost exactly the same. We just picked a bit different technology here, we we did some things a bit differently, but in the end we had the same problems, we had the same bottlenecks and everything. So if I would go on the scene and just start using words of our solutions like track for tracking and so on, the story was the same.
I'm sure that if we would look at typo three, if we look at Joomla and all those other CMSs and also some of the newest ones, on some level, on some levels they are also probably hitting the similar problems that someone solved already. but because we are in those siloses, we sometimes just don't know about it. And hey, we you were just
one question you could just ask someone and someone could tell you that yeah we had this problem it ended like this and in the end it you should go like this.
But you didn't even know to h whom to ask.
Eric Karkovack (30:21)
It's amazingly simple, isn't it? When you think
Maciek Palmowski (30:23)
Right?
Eric Karkovack (30:24)
about it.
Maciek Palmowski (30:25)
Like really, sometimes you are just like one question away. And you will learn that someone already did this. And they were sure that this will solve the problem, but in the end it made it worse. But on the other hand, we do prefer learning based on our experience. I think like, for example, every kid is doing this when our parents are trying.
Really don't do this. Don't do this because you will hurt yourself. No, no, no, no, it'll be okay. Yeah, in the worst moment. No ev everyone did. And if and and
Eric Karkovack (30:58)
Yeah, I've done that.
Maciek Palmowski (31:03)
if our parents and couldn't you just listen to me?
Eric Karkovack (31:07)
No.
Maciek Palmowski (31:08)
No, no, no, no, no.
It's it's not the same.
Eric Karkovack (31:14)
Well well, thanks again for for being on, and we'll be sure to put that discount code in the show notes. and thanks to everyone
Maciek Palmowski (31:21)
Thank you.
Eric Karkovack (31:21)
who watched and listened today. We appreciate you. Come visit us at theWPMinute.com/subscribe. Grab our newsletter, become a member, support the work that we do here at the WP Minute. We will see you next time. Thank you.
Maciek Palmowski (31:35)
Thanks,
bye.