Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
The WP Minute brings you news about WordPress in under 5 minutes -- every week! Follow The WP Minute for the WordPress headlines before you get lost in the headlines. Hosted by Matt Medeiros, host of The Matt Report podcast.
Eric Karkovack (00:00)
Hi everyone, and welcome to the WP Minute. I'm your host, Eric Karkovack Today's episode features a segment from my interview with Steve Burge. Steve is the founder of Ramble Ventures, the company behind popular plugins like PublishPress and Logtivity. You'll find the full interview over on our WP Minute Plus podcast. Visit thewpminute.com for all the details.
Eric Karkovack (00:26)
you've written books on, several of these, these systems, including Joomla, Drupal. How does WordPress compare in your mind? and was there like, you have experience with these different open source platforms. What is it about WordPress that made you want to
know, dedicate your business to these products, to that ecosystem.
Steve Burge (00:54)
They speaking they being Matt, maybe WordPress got the business, the product business side of things right. Drupal really didn't allow you to sell modules in their case, their version of plugins. And Joomla just didn't really have the
the business behind it to drive the growth, drive the just all the different structures you need to support a big project you need. ⁓ Think of all the hours the Automattic staff have dedicated to WordPress over the years. Joomla just didn't have that. So Joomla didn't have the business behind it. Drupal didn't have the business structure allowing
companies to sell modules, sell plugins. WordPress got it right in terms of allowing a ecosystem of small businesses to grow up around it.
Eric Karkovack (02:00)
Yeah, I mean, if we were just focusing on core and only ⁓ the ability to ⁓ provide free modules, free plugins, I I think the contributions to WordPress would be quite a bit smaller and we wouldn't have, I mean, even the freemium plugins that we have now, we take for granted, just like Yoast, for example, ⁓ anyone who can install a free SEO plugin that does a lot of good things for you and upgrade.
But that doesn't exist without the kind of ecosystem that we've built here.
Steve Burge (02:35)
You can see the same thing, I think, in the SaaS world that I'm not as familiar with it as I am with the open source world. But to my understanding, Shopify has won in that kind of space by allowing a huge ecosystem to grow up around it. Whereas Squarespace, Wix, Weebly, ⁓
I don't think Webflow does either. They're much more locked down. I don't think I've ever met anyone who has made a good living by selling add-ons to Wix. But some businesses, some projects get it right. And WordPress did and Shopify has done in recent years too.
Eric Karkovack (03:09)
Yeah.
So how do you think WordPress is doing right now in terms of publishing? know, you know, like obviously Publish Press is all about workflow. Taxo press does a lot of that as well. Where do you think its strengths lie right now and where do you think maybe it should be improved?
Steve Burge (03:41)
Ooh, are we talking publishing for ordinary people, publishing for enterprises? They're quite, quite different segments.
Eric Karkovack (03:46)
I guess the ability
to create your own workflow, publishing workflow.
So probably more on the higher end.
Steve Burge (03:52)
In the WordPress Well,
there is none Everything has to be all of that is in the realm of of plugins which is not a knock on WordPress, I guess because they have the 80 % philosophy and Those workflow tools are not for the 80 % of people
Um, even people with Several staff members all writing content can normally get away with just using draft pending review and published that's enough, the workflow tools are really for the The 10 the 20 to have much bigger teams. Um Let's say we work with we've done work with the pharmaceutical companies where
They're very much at the 1 % end of the spectrum where if they publish something incorrect on their website, like some incorrect medical information, they're in a world of hurt. They need to get it right. But that's 0.1 % use stuff. So is WordPress doing very well when it comes to publishing workflows? No, but I've...
I think it's fine to leave that for for plugin territory there's no there's no contact form in the WordPress core for example no e-commerce all of that's plugin territory
Eric Karkovack (05:25)
Yeah, I think we get a little greedy sometimes about what we want in core, right? I mean, you see, you see it online all over and over again. Why don't we do this? Why don't we have that? And in a lot of times it's really just a niche use, right? It's not something that is just said, everybody's going to want. mean, yeah, it would be nice to have a publishing workflow, but I could also just grab a copy of Publish Press and, know, and, and refine it and of who can do what and, know,
have different ⁓ statuses and review systems in place, that's kind of the beauty of WordPress. You're not stuck with one way to do things.