Mark: Mark Szymanski, back on the WP Minute.
Matt Medeiros.
This is always a pleasure, man.
I feel like I'm saying that all the time.
Matt: MJS in the room, there's always some excitement, right?
When this guy shows up, you know there's some turmoil, at least in
his head, that we're gonna, that we're gonna try to figure out.
Uh, big topic is something that sort of hit the Twitter sphere.
I did a video on it.
Uh, let me pull up the old screen.
I said, is this the future?
Of WordPress and it's custom.
Oh, let me pull up Daniel's tweet.
That's what I meant to do.
Pull up Daniel's tweet.
Is this the future of WordPress?
This is, um, something that the wordpress.
com showed off the wordpress.
com team showed off.
It's called create content model.
I demoed it.
I showed it on the channel and I was like, I can get behind this
custom fields, custom post types in the block editor debatable.
If that's the canvas we need to use.
And I was like.
This is great for a person like me.
Doesn't want to do like heavy development stuff.
Doesn't want a big page builder around it.
I was like, I can get behind this simplicity of custom
fields and dynamic data.
Um, before we start dissecting like the controversy around this, what was your
original reaction when you saw the way it worked as somebody who's heavily,
you know, invested in let's say Bricks and also a former Elementor user?
Mark: Um, I mean, I think, I think it was Kevin.
There was a lot of engagement on this and we'll get into all that sort of thing.
But like on the surface, when I saw it, I think it was yesterday, right?
Or it was very, very recently.
Um, I want WordPress to succeed.
I want it to continue to progress.
And we talk about this stuff all the time.
I don't use Gutenberg as much as other people.
Like I'm, I'm in the bricks world, still page builder world and everything.
So I'm like not super tied to the block editor and don't use it too much.
Again, as much as other people do with the block systems and everything.
But I saw this and I was like, this is amazing because I really
appreciate like, you know, it's not the core team, I guess it's wordpress.
com, but the people that are like changing the aspects of like actual,
what we would kind of call core WordPress really appreciate this.
It seemed awesome.
I will say that my initial reaction, I think, again, I replied
to Twitter, uh, on, uh, on X, I think I replied to Kevin's.
Repost of it or something.
I was like, eh, I mean, this is amazing that we're moving forward on this.
I love that.
I really love that.
It's a little bit of a, the UX, right?
Like I watched your video of it.
I watched, um, I think it was Brian cords, right?
In this video, uh, in the tweet, like kind of go through it.
I'm not like completely sold on the way that it was implemented, but I totally get
that it was like the first crack at it.
I'm not, I'm not throwing any casting any stones there.
So at a hundred percent, uh, wanted to see it evolve.
Um, so that was kind of like my overall take on it.
Really love the direction and the concept.
The UI and UX of it could be a little different.
We could have a separate discussion about that, but that has kind of slightly gone
by the wayside, so to speak, with some of the new things that have come out today.
So, but I mean, obviously you made the video on it, but
what were your thoughts too?
Matt: I mean, this sort of goes back to why, um, I don't get as animated
about like, uh, Gutenberg or the site editor or like the whole concept
of where we're headed, because I do think it's for, um, It's this life,
lifelong debate that we've always had.
Like, that, that kind of interface, as challenging as it can be for
somebody who is used to Elementor, Bricks, or just a power developer, and
you look at it and you're like, ah, this doesn't have all the features.
This doesn't have all the things I need.
I don't mind it as an end user because for the most part, it's giving me
80 to 85 percent of what I need to make a website with a given theme.
Right?
I'm not selling websites anymore.
I'm not consulting on websites anymore.
And if I were, I wouldn't use, let's say 2024, um, and, uh,
sort of base site editor tools that a core WordPress gives me.
But as an enthusiast, I'm like, I like it.
I like what I got here.
I'm not overly, like, annoyed by it.
And when I saw this, this was like the closest thing that said simplicity
plus power at the same time.
Build.
Like design what my custom post type is going to look like, and then assign
these little blocks as my dynamic fields.
And I was like, hell yeah, this is great from the enthusiast, maybe even
power level user that I am these days.
And I liked it, uh, and I, but I can also understand that it's not for everybody,
but you know, that's the biggest challenge with WordPress is it's like,
it's trying to be for everybody, but also not for everybody at the same time.
Um, from the entry level point, I was like, yep, I'm, I'm sold.
Uh, I like it.
And I.
Originally, we were going back and forth in, uh, our Slack DMs.
And originally, like when you were saying, Hey, this thing isn't coming
to, uh, this is, you know, this is not going to come to WordPress.
And my initial reaction to that was, well, too late, it's already out there.
And the concept is out there.
And in this world of open source, I'm thinking positively going, well, the
concepts out there now, even if wordpress.
com said, you know what?
We're not going to build this anymore.
I was like, well, the concepts out there, people are seeing it.
They're experiencing, they're reacting to it.
It's a very popular video on my channel.
Uh, uh, Daniel's tweet has 21, 000 views, a lot of engagement.
It made it sound like things were, were coming.
Um, but we started to get some information behind the scenes that it's not coming.
And I said something like.
But the, the, it's out there now.
Like this, this is an influential thing.
Look how excited people are for this concept.
How do we not unsee this?
You know?
And if we can't unsee it, that's weird because if a lot of people
are liking it, why wouldn't we use this or some iteration of it?
Right.
And that might be a challenging part.
Yeah.
Daniel's tweet sort of promoting this.
It, it, It has caused some confusion for sure, because you see it, you're
amped up, I'm amped up, and then sort of a rug pull at the end of the day.
That's a
Mark: good way to put it.
Um, yeah, so I want to address one thing, and then we can dive into that.
The, the one thing I would say is that I still don't have clarity, maybe
some people do, on what actually, because this is part of my tweet in
there, like, the second point when I was talking about like the UX, like,
I and you and a lot of people that watch like our content and are in this
all the time, we are absolutely one audience, this is not a new conversation.
We're one audience.
If even if we don't like, even the people that don't like, like the
Gutenberg editor, for instance, and that whole experience, most of
them are in the, in the, the weeds of WordPress to a certain degree.
Even if they use a page builder, they could figure it out if
they really wanted to, right.
But there's this other, this other, these other, uh, you know, this other
sect of users that are like DIYers that we talk about a lot, right.
I actually want the information and I don't know if it's possible,
like to if like, when we say, Hey.
You know, this is a good, simple way, but gives them power.
Like would other people understand like how to use it?
Like I, maybe I just don't know enough about UX, like, you know, the, the, the
methodology and of, of like good UX.
Cause I think, I feel like I do, but I look at it and I'm just like, I'm
confused, but I would love to see like, you know, 50 DIY wires at like
a word camp or something, try to figure this out and like know if they
were, if they were going to do it, that it's a separate conversation.
Um, but that would be my, my thought process going back to it, because I
don't know if we can speculate that.
A lay person can figure these things out.
Like, cause I don't, I don't know.
That's just a separate thing.
Going back to it, I think that, but you should also
Matt: preface it with this was built in like two weeks as like a prototype.
Uh, it certainly was far from like a polished, it was far from a
Mark: polished product for sure.
100%.
Um, I know what I know would have, I don't, I don't even know
how to speak on this though.
Cause like I'm saying like, I know it would have continued to
evolve or will continue to evolve.
But.
Let's, let's table that and let's come back to the, to
what we're talking about here.
Cause we don't actually know technically right now the future.
There's a lot of different information out there.
Uh, at the top of this, what happened was like, you know, Daniel
who is correct me on his role.
See the head of wordpress.
com?
Matt: Yeah.
Mark: Okay.
So like there's wordpress.
com, wordpress.
org.
And I've heard in the past that sometimes things go, you would
think they flow the other way from.
org to.
com, but actually it's the other way.
Sometimes I think Brian cords has mentioned that.
I think he did.
He mentioned that in your most recent one, the book of knowledge video.
I feel like I've heard it in there, but so, so that's interesting, right?
It's going from the commercialized thing down to the, uh, you know, the open
source platform for everybody to use.
That's awesome.
I love seeing that.
Um, and in this case, like it's a really cool idea.
That they have tried to do this.
And again, everyone was, I mean, this is the most engagement I've seen
on a, on a feature in, in a while.
I like, it was unbelievable.
Like, cause it, cause it, this is, this is like.
You know, you know, Maddie Eastwood, me and Brendan O'Connell used to have,
we still do, but it's a little on high as this bridge builders concept, right?
Of like bringing people together.
This is one of those concepts that does exactly that because you have
like power users, you have lay people.
And again, I'm not, no disrespect when I say these types of things, but like
I'm saying, you have different types of audiences and they can all come together
and they can be like, Hey, you know what?
Gutenberg is not my favorite thing, but this is awesome that they're
actually putting this in there, regardless of what you think of the
implementation, the UX and all that.
It's awesome that it's happening.
And that was kind of in that camp.
So then it, I mean, it goes wildfire, like it's on X.
We looked at the stats, right?
It's got like 20, 000 views.
It's got almost 50 reposts, ton of likes and everything like that.
Um, I think Brian, you yourself made a video.
I don't know if Brian made, well, he was in a live stream.
I think he's doing a live stream today.
Exactly.
I'm interested to see that.
Um, and then.
It, I mean, it, it, it, it went, if you're in all these different circles, I know
you're not a big Facebook guy, right?
But if you're in all the different circles, like it's in every Facebook
group, it's in every private community.
Like it was that big of a thing.
People were sharing it, like, Wildfire, like I said.
And it's just funny now, because now we've gotten some information and
they're like, you know what, that actually is kind of more of just like
a prototype, feel it out type thing.
We have no plans whatsoever to actually bring this into.
com or doc or, or.
org.
And.
Again, there's data views and I'm not, like, super educated on that whole
situation yet, but it's just a very interesting way because, again, we
love the thing, it's gotten a lot of attention, but then we get that, that
kind of news there that it's not, there's no real plans or anything like that.
It almost, not only it's like, not only it's like we're not sure where to go,
it's like, we didn't even, like, we didn't even really want it to go anywhere.
But it was out there.
Last point I'll make on this, and I'll kick it back over to you,
is all of that is well and good.
You guys, like, do whatever you want.
All I'm saying is, when you have a situation like we do in WordPress,
where we definitely have some kind of like factions going on here, and
you put something out like this, and again, I want to preface, I don't
think anybody did anything intentional.
There's no malintent.
I'm not, I'm not, I'm just, I'm just observing.
You can't even lead like even unintentionally leading people on
is going to end up backfiring in the language and the tweets in the
github Repo and everything like that.
It makes it seem like this is next like like it's it's they're asking questions
Like is this the future wordpress.
com?
Reposts it and like with eyeballs like oh look what's coming like you
can't do that if you didn't have plans That is just gonna piss people off
when they were completely with you.
It's just mind numbing that this was a decision that was kind of made.
Again, I don't think it was intentional.
I'm just saying, like, I feel like this is, these types of weird, like, like,
slight missteps, maybe we could call them, are like, just, this is, this is
the stuff that's like, how does this, like, what, what, what happened here?
Israel, I'm just looking for answers.
Maybe you have some answers.
Matt, you tell me.
Matt: Yeah, I mean, um, Few things.
So, uh, Daniel Bach, Uber, who heads wordpress.
com now, uh, is one of the most, uh, you know, intelligent WordPress developers
I've ever known years and years and years ago when I was way ahead of my skis on a
project that I was working on my agency, I knew him from his early days in WordPress
and he was the first developer that I worked with where I was like, I need help.
I have no idea how to fix this client's website.
Uh, just random, like we built some custom thing.
This is like my early days and he was like, I can fix it for you.
It's 300 an hour.
And I was at the time I was like, Oh my God, I don't even make that much money.
And, but if you know the answer, I'm going to pay you.
And I said, yes.
And he fixed it in like 15 minutes.
He's like, you don't have to pay me the whole thing.
And I was like, no, I'm going to pay you the whole thing because
you fixed this problem for me.
A super intelligent guy.
Um, you know, kudos to him for rising in the ranks of, uh, in the
WordPress world as head of wordpress.
com.
Okay.
Now, this project, like you said, is, at least on my
channel, is doing phenomenally.
Almost 2100 views, 120 likes, and the likes is really what I'm looking at.
120 likes.
is a pretty intense ratio.
A lot of people are liking this, right?
Usually, if I put out something that people don't like, I get a lot of
downvotes, and they're downvoting me because they don't like it.
They don't like the WordPress thing that I launched.
It comes in, uh, you know, in the last, whatever, 30 ish days or 60 ish days.
The only other one to come close to that is when I talked about WordPress Studio.
Actually, this goes back almost, Yeah, four months back in April,
uh, WordPress studio for local development on Mac has 230 likes.
A lot of people like that app.
And I look at those as metrics to say, literally, do you like this?
And I know the sentiment of the WordPress world.
They don't like the video.
They like what they're seeing.
Um, that's the, the weird dichotomy I'm in as a WordPress content creator.
Um,
I think the issue, uh, cause originally when I saw, I was, had a super busy
morning, bunch of meetings, I actually missed the MediaCore meeting, because I
had a bunch of Gravity Forms meetings.
Um, when I saw you messaging me, and I saw a bunch of stuff online,
originally I was thinking, Oh, Mark's gonna be upset, because he's not gonna,
he's gonna say, Why is WordPress.
com doing this?
And in my head, I didn't even make that
Mark: connection at first, to be honest with you.
Yeah.
Like, I was just happy to see something.
I was happy, honestly.
Matt: Yeah.
In my head, I was thinking, well, you know, this is just a splash.
And even if it's like, not them doing it, like I, like, as I was just saying,
I thought it, it would still represent what the future could look like.
Um, so I have no other label for this other than, uh, Uh, Yeah, it's
a, it's a fumble publicly because it's like I saw and I was excited.
You saw it.
You were excited.
All these other people see it.
They're excited.
Um, it is, it's a fumble.
It's an unfortunate fumble because I thought it was leading
down the right direction.
Uh, and yeah, this one, this one stings.
This one stings, even though it was just a little two week experiment
and we were just seeing some things.
I was just excited.
Even if it didn't end up in that sort of exact way that we
were playing with it, because no software does two weeks into a demo.
I was like, well, we got a direction.
It's it's going to come just when it could be two years, three years.
I don't know, but this looks like a direction I'm, I could get behind.
So certainly a fumble, uh, and an unfortunate one from the.
com side of things.
Mark: Well, there's two things that I'm seeing here.
One, if we, if we take a step back, we kind of like on, you know, we,
we look at the situation, but we take a different approach to it.
We could say, all right, maybe it was like more of a situation where.
The dot com team, incredibly talented people.
None of, none of anything I say here is really to criticize anyone.
I'm just, I'm again, trying to observe.
We could say that they were really just extremely excited that they put
this together in two weeks and they just wanted to get it out there.
Daniel, Daniel puts a tweet up there and he's like, Hey, look at this stuff.
We just did.
This is awesome.
Right.
But the problem is like.
We, I, I don't, I don't know if this is the right way to describe this.
We are outside the realm of like playing around at this point with WordPress.
Like people utilize this thing so heavily and professionally, especially in a,
in an, in an area like this, right?
This is like you, if you post something that is impactful like this, people are
going to take this to every corner of the, of the WordPress community on the
internet and they're going to tell, Hey, they're going to shout it from rooftops.
I mean, I literally had people not like not necessarily DMing me, but in, in
In these different communities, like so excited because of all the recent
stuff that has happened and all, and all the announcements that have been
made, like etch and all this other stuff, like, they're like, Oh man,
WordPress is like, they're taking it.
Like they're, they're, they're understanding.
They're like, it's a race now.
Like I literally had people say that and I'm like, this is, it's awesome.
I love it.
I love more competition, not even competition, but I just love more
people trying to do cool stuff.
Right.
And then a day later we, we get like the, and again, this is the second thing.
Maybe.
They didn't have plans for it.
They were just kind of like testing the waters out and now
it's like, Oh, everybody loved it.
Okay, now we'll do it.
I haven't heard that yet, but that could be the next thing.
But the fact that like, we're going to, we're going to release
something like this, we're not even going to pose it as a question.
We're going to pose it as like a marketing, like, Hey, this is next.
And then to kind of like backpedal a little bit, maybe fumble that
fumble it slightly like that is just how you like completely confuse
the shit out of your user base.
And then like, how, how are we supposed to, you know what I mean?
That's just kind of the vibe that I get.
And, and the last thing is like, coming from com, I know like probably not a lot
of like, lay people, again, so to speak, follow com, but I would, I would feel
like the, if you had to like guess, and maybe I'm wrong here, my hypothesis would
be, who's gonna follow com versus org?
I feel like com is more of like, like, you know, end users potentially, like
going to com and doing that type of thing.
I don't necessarily know.
Exactly.
I'm, I'm, I'm speculating, but if you were gonna post something on.com,
don't you think like a lay person would be like, potentially see that
and be excited about it as well?
So now, now you're not only confusing the people that are actually like,
like potentially building, adding to it and, and in, in depth with
it, but they're also confusing the people that could just be using like
a wordpress.com install, like on, you know, like a, you know, one of the plans.
I'm just, I, I, I don't, I just didn't get it.
And again, it's not, I'm not trying to criticize people, I'm just.
I think it speaks to a broader thing if we zoom out and we don't just think about
this one thing, like this, this type of, you know, like, Oh, we should do this
then this, then this, it's just, I just feel like that's kind of lacking there.
And maybe that's just the, maybe that's the, the whole crux of
open source and WordPress and all that in general, but I don't know.
It's just kind of weird to me, especially because it was on the commercial side too.
Now that I think about it,
so I'm really confused.
Matt: Yeah.
I mean, you know, the.
You know, go back and people listening to this or watching this go, go and I'll
link it up in the, in the show notes.
I did a hour plus video with Brian cords who coincidentally also, um,
uh, voiceover the, the video for this announcement with air quotes.
Um, and we, and we talked about a lot of the challenges with, you
know, understanding wordpress.
com and wordpress.
org.
Again, if those lines were not so blurry, uh, Maybe if we saw something
like experimented in, in wordpress.
com, we would probably just feel, Oh, it just stays in wordpress.
com.
So maybe we weren't so like, Oh, this is going to come to wordpress.
Because again, that's how I saw it.
Even if somebody said, well, why are they, why is.
com building this and not, you know, the, the core wordpress
team or the core secondary
Mark: issue though.
Matt: Yeah.
I would say like, well, That's fine.
And, and the, and the thing exists and now we see it and they
can contribute that code back.
We did get word.
I don't know if you want to get into it or not, but we did get word that
that code is not going, uh, into core.
It's not built for it.
And it's, it's really, they're just going to bypass it again.
I still struggle with that sentiment because humans have seen the way it works.
And I mean, you can be influenced to some degree, especially if
you had such positive reaction.
Um, what makes us a little bit.
More challenging.
Uh, and I wanted to pull up a old article that I wrote many years ago when we were
in the, uh, there was the Calypso project.
You ever heard of that, that code name before?
Mark: Hmm.
I I've heard of it.
Did you just, did we just talk about this recently?
I feel, I feel like I just saw it recently, actually.
Matt: So, uh, I think this is it, uh, the tug of war WordPress
experience, web host, and us.
So, I have this, let me pull it up, uh, for those who are watching, uh, and if
you're just listening, I'll link it up.
It's an old post I wrote, uh, back in 2016, December 2016.
And the Calypso project came out, and this was, from a 50, 000 foot
view, it was an app like experience.
Thanks for watching.
On wordpress.
com and also a local app that you could download.
Oh wow, iPhone 7 is a screenshot in my, in my book.
It still looks the exact same.
No, I'm just kidding.
Yeah.
Um, and here's a little screenshot again for those.
Yeah, it does.
Uh, and those who are viewing, you can see this little screenshot here.
It says, um, I'll just zoom into it.
The new wordpress.
com.
You can download the desktop app.
So I wrote this whole piece, you know how I am.
I, I, I'm a futurist.
I look at it and I go, Oh, what does this mean for the future of WordPress?
And in my opinion, I was thinking what they'll do is build out this app that
you download to your desktop and use natively to build your WordPress websites.
And Oh, by the way, wouldn't it be great.
So, if instead of building your WordPress website, um,
you could, or building your WordPress website locally, you
could then host it somewhere with the same frictionless experience.
In other words, build your website and your app and then send it to any web host.
And that web host would be WordPress.
com and whatever partners they might have.
I was looking at that as the, the future of building WordPress.
I mean, we're all excited about apps back then.
That died down.
The Calypso Project.
kind of vaporized, but now we have studio.
And what I look at, which makes this whole thing still confusing
is Daniel put out the tweet.
Oh, if you love the content model stuff, you're going to love wordpress.
com roadmap, which he has.
The screenshot of his tweet, and he says, you might have also caught my
tweet yesterday about the new create content model prototype, which allows
anyone to define the custom post types and fields natively in the block editor,
game changing and incredible or two or two of the dozens of positive reactions.
We hope that our prototype spurs product of productive conversations
within the core community.
And that's that last piece that I'm still stuck on because we heard.
No, no, no.
This is even, even this prototype shouldn't, you shouldn't look at it.
You should just move past well, which is very challenging, you know, for,
for me, you know, in, in this world.
But the point is, is I think wordpress.
com is doing things and doing things outside of the norm of
WordPress, which I think they have to, in order for wordpress.
com and automatic to survive, there has to be a different experience over there.
And I'll say it again, and I do want to write a post about this or finish
writing my post about it, but the reckoning is coming where there will
be a different experience over there.
Like this content model could be an experience you only get at com.
And I wouldn't have an issue with that.
Because you could be influenced by it and somebody could build
it in open source WordPress.
But I wouldn't mind if com had that kind of experience and said,
Yeah, you gotta pay for that.
I wouldn't mind because that means, Hey, that's a way for Automatic to survive.
And it's not really.
undercutting us in any way.
Um, and I think these are the early days.
Uh, where we're starting to see maybe studio and, and my whole thesis of an app
first experience and smoothing out the experience for end users is coming and
that best experience will be at dot com.
Mark: Yeah, I mean, there's a couple thoughts there.
Um, the, the, the layup one on that tweet specifically is if this was never, if,
if this was put out and the, and there was no plans to actually make it happen
and it was literally just, hey, look what we can do, but we're not going to do.
You have to, you have to say that, like, you absolutely have to say that somewhere.
It's gotta be like, this is just a prototype.
We are not planning on, on releasing that.
Like, I know that's a weird thing to write in a tweet, but like you, you
have to absolutely say, I mean, I, again, I watched Brian's voiceover
video again, too, um, that was, you know, it was in that tweet there and
it, it didn't make it sound like that.
Again, I'm not criticizing anybody.
I'm sure Brian didn't even write that script or whatever.
Like it's, that's, has nothing.
I'm not saying about individual people where I'm saying that at
a 50, 000 foot view as WordPress.
I feel like that is something that is just like as a, as a consumer of
the information, I was confused and I'm in this, you're in this, right?
Like imagine the other people is kind of the way that I look at this.
So that's the first thing.
The second thing though, I mean, I don't know how deep we want to go into that part
about the commercialized product versus.
org thing.
I'm barely scratching the surface on kind of forming an opinion on that.
I mean, if, if, if.
com had the content model thing, and that was like one of the benefits
that you would get from using that and supporting automatic, like I get that.
I definitely want automatic to continue to survive.
I'm not sure if that's like off the top of my head, one of the
best ways for that to happen.
Obviously that's just the example here, but like, I would probably, if I'm
trying to use my, Logical mindset here.
I'd probably like go look at other open source platforms and see how their
situation goes, like even outside of it again, like Linux or something like that.
Like how do those companies.
If there are any sort of a commercialized arm that is taking care
of that, how do those things survive?
Is it normally that the commercialized product gets a better product than here?
Because here's the one thing, I think I sent you this video in DMs.
There's a recent like, if anybody's like outside of the WordPress space, like
technical like, um, I think Linus Tech Tips just did it, I don't even watch
him that often, but he had like a video on like Android open source, right?
I'm an Android guy, as opposed to you guys that are Apple.
And, um, It was like that the core experience of that open
source product or that open source project of Android is so terrible
compared to like the Google flavor.
Now the Samsung flavor now, you know, whatever else there is.
And it's like, it's almost like it's not even a thing anymore because
it's, it's so much worse and it hasn't really been kept up with.
So I don't know if any of that could happen with WordPress.
I would just be concerned perhaps.
Cause that's another example that it feels like somewhat similar.
But that's a larger topic.
I don't know if you have thoughts on that specifically, but that's where I would
go with that would be my next questions.
Yeah,
Matt: I, I do, but, um,
I, I just think that there is, there's definitely the need to clear up the, um,
You know, all, all the confusion in, in, in the air, you know, for, especially for
events like this, you know, happenings like this, that people just can't figure
out and understand why, why it happened.
And, and I think that the only way for, but yeah, I always have to bring it
back to the commercial side of automatic because that's just largely in my head
right now, they, they have, you know, I don't think they're profitable.
I have no idea.
Right.
It's all speculation because they're a privately held company.
But I don't think they're profitable compared to their, you know, investments.
Um, and there needs to be, there's either going to be another round
of funding, if there hasn't already been, and we just don't know about it.
Um, I'd imagine there'd be another round of funding, and somebody at some
point is going to say, Get profitable.
Start building at scale.
Um, you know, really start expanding this thing.
And I don't know how they're going to do that with just
hosting and just Jetpack, right?
I think that Band Aid needs to get ripped off where they can turn to people and say,
whatever the number is, 45 percent of the modern web runs on open source WordPress.
And we have a, which is massive opportunity.
And then for them to say, over here, our WordPress is like 20 percent better.
So if you want a better by like 20 percent experience, come over here.
And I think most open source projects, Ubuntu, Android, maybe licensing and
support, that kind of thing, is all like more support driven, which you
could also say that's what hosting is.
Yeah, it's hosting, but it's also support for WordPress.
You know, I don't know of any other open source project that has, you
know, the strict model of it being 20 percent better over there.
Um, I just feel like that's what they have to do and they, they
could do, um, if they wanted.
Or slow trickle, uh, out features where hey, in this release in WordPress 6.
7, WordPress.
com gets this and then WordPress.
org gets it at WordPress 6.
8.
You know, and there's like a, a one cycle thing.
I wouldn't care about that.
I'd be like, cool, you know, automatics building cool stuff like this example, and
they're going to slow roll it out to us.
We'll get it in the next version.
I would be totally cool with that.
Um, And I don't know of any other projects that do that.
We were on a call, I think we were, you and I were on a call last week,
on a live stream last week when they brought up Expression Engine.
Or I was definitely on a live stream, I thought you were with me.
Um, Expression Engine, tiny compared to WordPress.
But that's an open source project, and they have the free version.
And then, yeah, you have the paid versions, which have cool stuff, cool
features you're not going to get in the free version, and you have to pay for it.
Yeah, okay, Expression Engine does it, but Expression Engine is tiny.
It's cool.
It's actually a pretty cool CMS.
Um, but, you know, tiny compared to the influence of WordPress.
Um, yeah, at the end of the day, though, the optics here are unfortunate.
Uh, Anne McCarthy has been sending us some stuff on, like, different, like,
Other avenues of, like, the data views, the native data views that are coming to
WordPress and, like, some of the other ideas, um, that, you know, we've been
talking about for getting custom post types and custom fields into WordPress.
This is in our, you know, just for, for clarity and transparency sake,
um, she's not sending it to just you and me, she's sending it to a bunch
of YouTubers that meet up regularly.
It's in the YouTube Slack group.
It's not an actual channel.
It's just a group DM.
So for all intents and purposes, it's public.
I won't read it like line for line, everything that she has been sending
me, but she was trying to shed some light on it to say, look, yeah,
this thing is not moving forward.
Um, here are some other examples and, and I haven't had a chance to dive into these.
Um, but I think this will be a particular challenge, like the way
that she is communicating this to us.
Although I find it valuable and I'm glad she is even for us to be like,
Hey, check out like all these GitHub repos for you and I to like dive into.
We're like, well, I don't have time yet to like sift through all this stuff
and I'd have to go and experiment it.
Here's why I liked what the wordpress.
com did.
And here's maybe just a lesson for WordPress development and features
that are coming to WordPress.
He gave us a button.
I could click a button and test it out.
Right.
He just set up the template in Playground or blueprint.
I forget what I forget what playground calls it, but it was all there.
It was all set up.
Because sometimes I try to pull in The PRs and github to
it to playground and it fails.
So I was just like, it gets frustrating.
I'm like, I don't have time to like dig into this or open up a ticket,
but I, that, that's what I want.
Like, that's one good lesson out of this is you got a cool feature.
You want me to try it.
Give me the button to click and I'll go click it and play with it.
And that was, that was exciting.
That was good.
Mark: That was amazing.
Uh, but it, it again kind of speaks to the fact that coupled with
the language in that GitHub repo.
We did all this, that's awesome.
Why, why is it not, why was it not ever gonna get released?
Like, I mean, it's a try button.
Like, what?
I mean, unless we have bad information, which I'm not saying we do.
I mean, it's just, it's very confusing.
Like I don't, I just don't know what to make of it.
It's, it seems like an amazing, um, an amazingly cool thing that seems extremely
like forward thinking and, and like progressive to the WordPress CMS that
everyone was unanimously kind of on.
And I hope that, I honestly hope that this, our conversation here
ends up getting obsolete and they do end up bringing this,
like they decide, Hey, maybe.
All these 20, 000 views on this video signify that maybe we should actually put
this into something and, and plan to have it, this or some, you know, some evolution
of this into com or org or what have you.
Uh, because I think that that would be, I think it would be beneficial.
Um, just, I'm just confused as I usually am.
But to your main point though, the, the button thing, if you guys aren't
sure about that, like if you go to the, the tweet, you go to the,
the GitHub repo, there's literally a button in the readme file just.
So, I mean, that's a hundred percent agree with you.
If you want somebody to try something, you got to make it easy for them
because, you know, uh, myself included, I don't live in GitHub.
Uh, I mean, I know how to be dangerous, but like, if you just tell me like,
Hey, go here, try this thing out and let me know what you think.
I could do that.
That's definitely my speed.
Matt: Yeah, I have it pulled up on the screen again for those,
uh, who are listening, check out the video, um, with Playground.
I, and.
This is a playground versus studio is like a whole other topic in my head.
Uh, cause playground and studio are again, if I go back to my blog post from
2016, like that native app experience, being able to have a smoother, quicker
experience natively on an app, I think will still outpace the, You
know, using the web, um, you know, for speed, uh, and, uh, a smoother, uh,
UI like playground and studio, even those two compete with each other.
In my opinion, it's like, which one do you want people to use?
Do you want to use studio from wordpress.
com, which syncs up to a wordpress.
com account, or do you want to use playground, which is still an automatician
still owned by automatic, but with air quotes, like the, the wordpress.
org side of things, even that is like.
Oh, who's going to get these features?
You know, like you could run that, the canvas, uh, whatever it's
called, the content canvas creator.
It doesn't even matter anymore, we're not using it.
That thing.
Content model.
You could use content model on studios, so Daniel says in his blog post.
Um, so which one wins out?
You know, the playground or studio?
So even those two compete, which is hilarious.
But I think these are the future for like developing, developing.
WordPress natively and then sending it off to, to wherever.
Uh, and that's, you know, again, going back to the commercial side, that's the
stuff I'm really interested to watch is can it go wherever, like, will they
allow you to hook up to any hosting account through studio or playground,
uh, or is it just going to be.
com again?
I wouldn't care if it was just.
com because I look at that as that's the revenue model they need.
Or do they say, yeah, hook up, uh, to any web host, but by the
way, we're advertise to you.
In studio app, um, all the stuff that we have at dot com or jet
pack or WP cloud, et cetera.
Um, that'll be interesting to see how it plays out.
Mark: Yeah, definitely gonna keep that in mind.
I mean, we all have to keep in mind that we got to make money, but
especially the tool that we're using here, we have to make sure that, uh,
generates revenue again.
Either, you know, there's a lot of different things going on on
the dot org side kind of now, too.
Um, and but like, I mean, just from automatic in general again, I hope
that, you know, That's a consideration, but we got a live demo here.
Look at that.
I mean,
Matt: look how fast that was.
That's amazing.
Right.
The like, just click a block, save a custom field, publish this.
And then my custom post type is made.
I add the new custom post type.
Mark: Oops.
Better not spell my name wrong.
Again, I
Matt: did that.
I just got, I did that on purpose for, for all those WP tonic.
Mark Zeminski, whatever he called you.
Uh, and then we go to add new page.
This is riveting for, uh, the podcast side of things, but I just want to
get down to seeing this, like, and then you can come in and just pull
in your custom field right there.
It's just already saved in a block and I can just pull in my custom
fields and build out whatever, or I can throw a query loop in.
I don't think I can have any control.
I do have control of that.
Um, you know, maybe I, maybe in the future, I could have filtered this, like,
you know, said, uh, show this custom field from, you know, this custom post type.
I mean, two weeks, that's what we, we built this amazing interface in two
weeks, and it's, and we're not getting it.
So, yeah, it's just, it is super frustrating, um, to not have this.
Mark: Yeah.
Um, you know, I'm the dynamic data guy.
Um, you know, I, I love that.
Um, and I, and I want to see that continue to continue to grow.
And I mean, obviously like that was, that was version one of it.
Hopefully it continues to evolve.
We don't know though.
We don't know.
We just don't know anything.
But, um, I don't know.
I think that,
It's, it's probably, it would be a little different, you know, than using
like a bricks or something like that.
Obviously, you got to get used to it and everything, but I don't know.
I just, I want us to, I would love to see it continue to like
focus on those types of things.
Again, I just, I don't know what to say.
I just really appreciated the fact that we had something here that was like really
brought people together, so to speak.
To, for lack of a better way to say it, like just like
everybody was on board with.
And then the fact that we get just like punched right in the gut after that.
Um, It's kind of weird, just like a little bit of weird
miscommunication, I feel like.
So, um, I hope it, I hope it finds its way.
But the one other thing I'll say here is because I've also heard, and I don't
know if this is a sentiment, what I've interpreted is like, oh, maybe another
way is like, hey, this is what's possible.
Because WordPress, again, I don't think people understand this, myself
included, WordPress is kind of becoming this concept of like a framework,
like underneath the hood of this.
There's amazing stuff happening that I'm only like this much
knowledgeable at, right?
Like all of the, the, the rest API, the fields API, which is that what this is?
Like leveraging to a degree?
Like the fields API?
I don't, yeah,
Matt: I, I don't know if it's using, which APIs it's using.
I'm assuming it's using something in order to do this.
Mark: Regardless, people way smarter than me on the dev side are like
doing awesome things to core.
I totally understand that the trouble is that like, it's not, it's not
progressing fast enough on the UX side, but you could leverage all of that.
There's a lot of themes and things like that, that I know are leveraging these
types of tools, which is fantastic.
The weird part though, is like, again, when we see something like this, it's
like, who is kind of making the decision as far as like what we should kind of put
in there, what we shouldn't put in there.
I know it's a bigger conversation.
Um, but those are, it's just a weird.
It's just a weird spot for me to kind of see something that, uh,
everybody would really appreciate.
I'm, I didn't see one like real objection to the concept.
Um, so I'm not sure why that wouldn't be considered for, for
org, for com, like whatever.
It's just an interesting, it's an interesting spot.
Um, yeah,
Matt: they'll, they'll probably have to go and rework this, uh, GitHub page.
Yeah, again, the optics say, like, want to move this concept forward, feel free
to open an issue in the repo, discuss your proposed improvements, pull requests
are welcome, you know, we built this prototype, we may invest in it in the
future, uh, may invest into it further based on the level of interest, I mean,
the interest looks pretty high, our near term vision is outlined on this
roadmap issue here, and they have, you know, even had a little roadmap for it,
uh, which was, which was great, but.
Anyway,
Mark: I don't know.
Maybe that, maybe that's it then.
Maybe it was like kind of like a feeler thing.
Uh, the, the language around it was a little confusing.
The follow up news around it was more confusing, but hopefully maybe
it's like, Hey, I mean, they're obviously within complete, you know,
ability to just be like, okay, yeah.
I mean, you guys love this thing.
We'll work on it.
Like, I guess they could definitely do that.
Right.
And I hope they do.
So it's just, it's Yeah, just a little strange.
I would, I would hope that we'd be a little bit more clear on the stuff
that we don't know if it's going to move forward and just be like, Hey
guys, what do you think about this?
Like, just say that rather than be like, we're doing this, we're doing this.
Whether you, it kind of came across as we're doing this, whether you like it
or not, and then everyone did like it.
And then we got the, the kind of the rollback thing.
And then it was like, Oh, okay.
So yeah, it was just a little, just a little strange, but hopefully
it all works itself out, I guess.
Matt: Our promise to you, dear listener and viewer, is that
we will follow this story.
We will ask it to the ends of the earth to figure out what's going to happen.
We will meet with.
Shutting off and every connection is coming back right
now, maybe, and we're back.
Mark: Yeah.
You dropped for a second.
You're good.
I don't know what that was about.
Matt: Uh, our promise to you is that we will follow the story and ask
the questions to get the answers.
Um, and we'll, uh, we'll follow this.
We'll talk to folks at WordCamp US.
We'll talk to Anne.
Uh, we'll talk to the powers that be, hopefully, and get some answers.
So we want it.
I want it.
I like it.
Uh, it's a W.
Yeah, I want the truth.
Uh, insert.
You can't handle the truth meme here.
Um, Yeah, anyway, good discussion.
Uh, this is definitely, how do the kids say it?
This is an L.
Today.
Mark: I mean, we'll see.
L today maybe right now, but long term hopefully it'll be a dub.
Matt: Yeah.
You know.
Mark: Yeah, get that dub.
Uh, mjs.
Matt: bio.
Mark: Mark, where else, where else do you want folks to go?
Uh, that's it.
All the links are there.
Uh, if you guys are going to be at WCUS, I'd love to chat with you.
Um, yeah, excited for it.
My first one, so we'll see how it goes.
Matt: Fantastic.
Everybody else, the WPMinute.
com, the WPMinute.
com slash subscribe.
We will see you at WordCamp U.