Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
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.
Hey, it's Matt from the WP minute
different kind of episode today.
I'm sharing a segment.
Of Josepha, Haden trompo, C's
recent, presentation or meeting,
at the midterm goals for WordPress.
That she joined us on the,
media Corp team, which is,
an initiative@wordpress.org.
if you're a media outlet or considering
yourself a WordPress media outlet, you can
knock on the door of the media Corp team.
And I guess apply question mark.
I'm not really sure actually.
I believe it's open.
I just, I just don't know what the
process is for, for joining that team.
On a more official level.
But I found it a fascinating update.
There's a bunch of write-ups that I
think I'll do from this interview.
I just wanted to get it out there
for those who are like really
deeply interested in this stuff.
And you can hear.
from Josepha directly in this recording,
and this is an open recording.
This is not a private thing.
You can go to WordPress, YouTube channel.
I'll link it up in the description.
And you can tune in and listen to her.
And the, especially the question and
answers from other folks that attended.
Unfortunately, I did miss this meeting
because I had some prior work duties.
but I really wanted to join in
and throw in some questions,
but I still thought it was good.
You know, the, the general
consensus is slow as it goes.
WordPress is continuing to improve.
It seems like there.
Hitting the marks that they wanted
to this year, there's nothing.
That they've like urgently
said, boy, we've taken the
ship in the wrong direction.
there's a lot of investment
coming to, well I say investment.
I mean, time and effort.
probably money, but I'm
not in the general sense.
to the playground to WordPress playground.
And I think that is literally,
I've done a video about this, that
WordPress playground is the future.
Maybe even wrote a post about this.
I'm going to double
down on that statement.
That, especially as we go into 2025
playground will play a pivotal role in
folks experiencing WordPress, whether
that's your, whether you're a developer.
And you're like, Hey, I just want to try
this new GitHub PR that just came through.
and I want to test it out
and see what it's like.
or if you're a WordPress product.
Creator plugins themes.
You know, get getting yourself
familiar and, and working with that
platform is going to be important.
And if you're an end user, simply spinning
up a WordPress site to test it out.
I mean, playground, I think is
going to be the future of how we all
start to interact with WordPress.
In some degree.
so I find that rather interesting.
It's funny.
I also did a video about Drupal.
comparing Drupal, custom fields
and their views methodology.
And they have a sort of click to
install and run a Drupal site.
And it takes forever.
Like, you know, you, you click on it.
It says, okay, let's start this up.
And I, and I think it almost
builds like a whole Linux.
Environment, W, you know, in
the browser and it takes like, I
don't know, three, four minutes
for the whole thing to boot up.
whereas playground that
wordpress.net is instant.
Like you instantly go and
everyone has their own unique.
Version of WordPress while they're
in it, it just runs in your browser.
so it is fascinating as much.
As, you know, folks have been, you know,
giving it back to automatically lately.
They're doing some great things.
especially the playground.
I can't say it enough.
So here we go.
We're going to dive into Joseph a segment.
Remember.
Click the link in the show notes.
If you want to watch the full
YouTube video, so you can see the
entirety of this meeting and also
hear the questions and answers.
From the folks that were live on
the panel, I'll be at work camp us.
Be sure to say hi.
As always, thanks to all of
our sponsors and supporters who
have joined the slack community.
You can support us@thewpminute.com slash.
Support.
Josepha: It's me.
Hi.
I'm Josefa and I'm here with WordPress.
yeah, so I wanted to talk a little
bit about our midterm goals.
So WordCamp Europe, obviously Matt
showed up with his 11 opinions,
about, about what WordPress
needs to do, what it needs to be.
and after that, I ended up having
quite a few conversations with
folks about like, what is WordPress?
How does this fit with the overall
big pictures that we put out there?
big the big picture, posts that we that
I put out and fortunately everything
almost everything that showed up in those
11 points are still Absolutely relevant
to the big picture posts that I put out
now the Biggest change, obviously, this
year is around the CMS, so we had hoped
to get phase three kind of prototyped
and built out and put out in front of
the community, but early on in the year.
It became pretty clear that one of the,
more pressing items for user facing, I
don't know, user satisfaction of WordPress
is to maybe make our admin a little bit
more modern looking and probably get
all of our, you know, five different
interfaces kind of looking the same,
which I think is actually part of what
that design system that, you know, when
published is about, and so the work on
phase three, the active, like everybody.
Focused diligently on phase three work
sort of paused early in the year while
we took a look at the admin and what
we wanted to be in the future, how
blocks will work in there, and then
ended up doing a bunch of foundational
work, which is not user facing a lot
of, major backend elements and APIs to
make sure that we can get that done.
and so I've been really excited to see
that design system get out, because
I think that one, it does kind of.
Pull together some visual elements
of what we are aiming for.
And then also gives a common
design language to WordPress.
That is the hope is that we can
improve the user experience by having
a more consistent look and feel
across our admin, and then also having
the dashboard and the admin areas.
Just be more modern and more
in line with what the software
actually is capable of doing now.
So that is probably the biggest
shift from that big picture post,
but it happened a long time ago.
And so there are, however, four
things in those 11 points that
Matt brought up at WordCamp.
Europe that I think really commit to that
and, and support that change in direction.
Obviously the first one being that simple
things should be easy and intuitive
and complex things should be possible.
the admin area, along with just kind of
having a massive influx of notifications
has gotten more and more complex as we
have gotten through WordPress as a whole.
and so.
Getting that into a state that's a
little bit easier to kind of fall
into and understand is going to be
really important, and then there were
three other things in there as well.
One, that WordPress should be more
opinionated and quirky, that people
who are building WordPress should be
using WordPress and a bunch of the,
Gutenberg engineers recently did a ton
of user, user, what is this called?
Sorry for the recording.
I am sick.
And so I can't get my words.
Sometimes user testing.
That's it.
A bunch of user testing.
not only to check flows for onboarding,
which I know have been an ongoing concern
for, the project or for the software,
but then also for like any basic activity
that you want to accomplish so that
you can feel successful and have the
desire, to learn those bigger concepts.
Just trying to make those a lot easier,
a lot clearer, and a lot quicker.
And so, that goes into that.
And then, if we get all of those things
kind of back into an easy, comfortable
state, then the, the part that Matt
shared about blogging and commenting and
pingbacks being more fun, and allowing
websites to be more dynamic again, I
think that that shows up over time in it.
the second element from the second
goal from our big picture post was
around the community, continuing to
support, our community as a whole
through learning events and mentorship.
and that would be for current
and future contributors early on
this year as well, the community
facing teams, the event folks.
had a big shift toward, less focus on
bringing in new contributors, which
has been our lifelong focus, and more
focus on bringing in new users with
the belief that everything that we've
done to enable contribution will
still function as, as it always has.
so the work that is going in now
is to get better feedback from.
People who are attending our workshops and
our events and making the online learning
as clear and important and valuable as
all of the business stuff and networking
that you can do at meetups and WordCamps
and then also all of our flagship events.
We have the dashboards coming, which
Ray has mentioned, and that's part
of the reason we're doing that.
Like we're working to standardize
the questions that we ask new and
returning attendees to our events
so that our organizers can have
some clearer and better information
to make decisions that are helpful
for them and impactful for them.
We also are foregoing the
giant annual survey this year.
We're going to take advantage of the giant
annual survey that, Stack Exchange does.
We're included in it, again this year,
and so we're going to take advantage of
that information because they get more
people from outside of the WordPress
space, to give us some better information,
more accurate information about future
users of WordPress as opposed to current
users of WordPress, so that we can kind
of get some, some indications of what
our opportunities are for future growth,
but then also, Making space for those
kind of ad hoc polls that we see popping
up on LinkedIn and Twitter and anywhere
else where people can just say like,
Hey, do you use it for this or this?
If you were doing this activity today,
would you choose this or this, and
get kind of more timely feedback for
the features that we're trying to
experiment and build toward, that way.
And so the things from Matt's 11 points
that fit in with that are that we should
have better feedback loops in general.
Agreed.
Hard agree.
it doesn't help us to be
moving forward with speed.
If the direction that we're moving
forward in is not something that
our, users need or want from us.
and then also one of his call outs was
to be a supporter by going to meetups,
events, and other things that help us
stay close to users, because we are
the people who are building WordPress.
And so, if we are building
it, we should be using it.
And that includes if we're
building it, we should be talking
to the people who are using it.
In ways that we expect, and
ways that we don't expect.
And the best ways to do that is to get
to those events, either as organizers
or just regular old attendees.
I'm headed toward Camp U.
S.
and I'm going to do my best to be a
regular old attendee, sitting in some
sessions, seeing what's happening and not.
and that'll be a change
of pace for me as well.
So that's a, that's a kind
of one of those changes that
occurred on our second big goal.
And then our third one actually
has not changed too much.
The third big goal that we had was around
the ecosystem and especially focusing on
the data liberation project to make the
process of getting from one non WordPress
space to a WordPress space easier, and
then WordPress to WordPress, as required.
That has been ongoing all year.
We had a few prototypes at
the start of the year that.
We're kind of okay, but not
quite what we were looking for.
and it was around WordCamp Europe that
we had gotten a pretty viable, concept
of what could work and what will
work, I think for easier migrations.
And the hardest parts of that, the, the
parts that require, you know, you to
be as brilliant as Adam Zielinski are.
Almost done.
We're ready to start, to, to start
hooking into it and extending it
like we do any other WordPress thing.
And so for that, actually, we're kind
of get gearing up for an adoption phase
of it, of all of the, like, top hundred
plugins that exist in the WordPress repo.
I think only 12 of them.
Use blueprints so that when you are
testing a plugin inside playground,
it gives you some information,
some, some fake data so that it's
clear what it's trying to do versus
what you are hoping it will do.
and also so that it
functions correctly in there.
And so that's going to be our next
phase for that, is to get the hardest
parts built so that, so that every
In the WordPress ecosystem can make
a blueprint and put it in there.
And so their users know, is
this solution, something that's
going to solve my problem.
as we have been gearing up for
that, we also are really nearing.
I believe it.
I feel it in my bones nearing the time
when we can just put a try out WordPress
now button on the homepage that takes
you to a playground instance that has.
valuable, not valuable.
A useful theme, a theme that looks like
what we want, a good first timer site
to look like, and a couple of plugins,
so you get a sense for like what a theme
is, how it works, what plugins are, and
how they work, and really can, can test
drive your site before you get into it.
We're really close to
that, I'm pretty sure.
And so the things that
Matt had brought up, this
summer.
If you're in the northern hemisphere
about that in his 11 points
were wikis for documentation.
We are actually prototyping
a playground driven wiki
experience for our documentation.
And that looks like it's going
well, I don't understand it, but
there is a post out that we can get
a link for and share with you all.
Getting forums back into kind of a
front and center space so that people
can have not only conversations, but
also like see who else around them is
having the same issues or the same,
excitements, the same extending,
opportunities that they are having,
and a lot of work is going into that.
We have a bug smashing event
for it at WordCamp US coming
up, which should be pretty fun.
and the call to having plugins
and themes, having mirror.
Infrastructure to the WordPress
project is still ongoing
better theme previews obviously
playground is going to drive that.
And the work with data liberation
is playground driven at the moment.
And so as we are building out all of
these things for the data liberation
project powered by playground.
I'm pretty sure the rest of these, holes
that we have in the new user experience
when they're trying to just decide whether
WordPress works for them or not will
also, get a few bridges over those gaps.
And at that point can only be made
better by our plugin authors and
our theme authors, really embracing
that new tool and making sure
that their tools work inside it.
And so.
A little bit.
Matt's 11 points show up almost as
like tactical elements that live
inside the goals that we have for
the WordPress project this year.
We pulled together.
A whole list of projects that we either
have shipped or are about to ship that
specifically relate to all of those 11
tactics that go along with the three
goals that we have, and I'm going to try
to get it published before WordCamp U.
S.
so that we all kind of have the same
sort of thing that we're looking at.
and I, I think maybe.
Reyes can get you all an early, an
early copy of it, before, before it
gets out there, so that if you have
questions around that, we can get those
answered, or if there are anything that
doesn't really make sense to you all,
you can let us know about that too.
but that's kind of the, that's
kind of the long and short of
how those all fit together.
and in the post that we pulled together
about the work that's been done just
kind of in the last quarter around
those, tactical elements for our goals.
I was tired looking at it.
It was like four pages long.
And so we're going to try
and make it a little shorter.
but it's just a continuing testament to
the work that the community does toward
the things that we think are going to make
WordPress be able to grow in the future.
And so I'm really excited to be able
to get that post out for you all.
Like I said, depending on how fast my
brain continues to work, well, I'm sick.
I'll get that out before WordCamp US.
I believe that we can do it.
and so, yeah, that's, that's it.
Kind of the lightning tour
of where we are with that.
And I'll pause for questions
on that or anything else.
I guess