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.
Matt Medeiros (00:02)
Davinder Singh Kainth welcome back to the WP Minute.
Davinder Singh Kainth (00:05)
Thank you for inviting me back.
Matt Medeiros (00:08)
For folks that don't know, you're the reason why this whole thing started. ⁓ We won't go down every nook and cranny of that story, but many, many years ago I said to Davinder hey, can I just read your newsletter? And Davinder said, why don't you start a podcast about it yourself? And then the WP minute was born. So thank you, I think, ⁓ for all of this.
Davinder Singh Kainth (00:29)
You're welcome. You know all simple
things become awesome just like the WP minute. It's just you have to start it in a simple way.
Matt Medeiros (00:34)
Yeah.
Yeah. So you run, I think most famously now the WP Weekly dot com. The awards just came out for twenty twenty five. We're going to chat about those. But I know you do a lot of stuff every now and again. I see you tweet out something that says, my God, I've registered another domain. ⁓ What what what does the empire look like these days? How much stuff do you have ⁓ branded under the WP Weekly?
Davinder Singh Kainth (00:53)
You
well not many but it's gonna get
few siblings probably in 2025 not 2026 we are still in 2025 you know you get still get to used to to talking to 2026 but yeah you know as you get older your addiction to buy new domains get little down so I usually don't buy many domains but yeah excited for 2026 now now that you asked about you know what's there coming in the WordPress Empire I don't know if you follow that closely that I had a project called plugins
Matt Medeiros (01:09)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Davinder Singh Kainth (01:35)
which was basically listing of plugins and all that so it was there it was good but I'm gonna rebrand and redo in a different direction and I've already done the branding and all that and the new name is I'm gonna announce it here probably some people already know it's pluginsdaily.com simple to the point and yeah and I might even reboot my podcast but yeah but one one thing at a time I guess
Matt Medeiros (01:59)
thing
at a time. What it can we unpack that? I've been talking to a lot of creators over the over the end of this year. I interviewed Remkes yesterday for an upcoming show talking about like what it's like to be a creator. He's getting into courses now. I'm getting into courses at the WP minute. ⁓ What you so you said you rebranded it. Was it not working? Can you unpack that for us? Like what was the challenge there and why rebrand it?
Davinder Singh Kainth (02:24)
Well firstly the name, I bought Plugins Lee, Plugins plus L-Y, you know that fancy thing. I mean it's good for me but when you zoom out of the picture it's not ⁓ that good for the concept that I was going for. So I went to the drawing board, know, the WP Weekly sounds simple to the point so why not just replicate the model that has worked before, not just in doing stuff but also
naming stuff so plugins daily sounds better daily you you discover new plugins daily and this is coming out of you know need
of developers especially new plugin creators because I interact with lot of them who promote their stuff on the WP Weekly because most of the stuff that is presented on WP Weekly is free and I love to know share the first plugin from a developer because that is like your first baby and you know and most people are lost about it especially developers like how do I promote it like how do I put this forward in front of people so so plugins daily would be another F
for them and it will be all free nothing paid and all that so yeah it's not competing with WordPress org or something it's just basically you know collecting you know there are a lot of plugins that get released on github as well or on the personal website but they don't get that many eyeballs so it's like encapsulating the best of WordPress org github and the private you know websites
Matt Medeiros (03:56)
Yeah. You know, I think that there's something to, ⁓ this is my criticism to you and not that you've asked for it, but we're here and let's talk about it. You know, and I talked to Remkes about this as well. And I don't think it's bad to have like a sponsored spot, right? Or a place for somebody to pay to get that promotion because you and I and those of us that do sponsorship in a tasteful way, like we're working hard to do this thing.
Davinder Singh Kainth (04:05)
I'm trying.
Matt Medeiros (04:26)
Right? And folks that want that exposure. Yeah, if you come to me with a really cool story, a really cool angle, I'll probably feature you. But if it's just, hey, we got a new version. Can you talk about it? I probably won't. And again, unless it's amazing, I don't think it's I don't think it's bad to have a paid spot. are your thoughts on that to on ramp folks to get that promotion?
Davinder Singh Kainth (04:49)
I'm all for sponsorship. In fact, WP Weekly, it runs on sponsorship itself because and thankfully most of the sponsorship slots are already, you know, they're already taken up and they get renewed and renewed because people see return on the investment, not just in terms of exposure. And I'm all for it and not just sponsorship. actually use affiliate links on, you know, the WP Weekly and it adds a secondary, you know, source of income. Because again, if you're doing something, you've got to attach back.
value to it in terms of making money as well. Everything can't be free. Now we talk about WordPress as a community, you know, it's like open source and all that. just imagine and there's a lot of money in WordPress ecosystem. Just imagine if you suck out all the money, would you be here? I'd be here or in fact 99.99 % people will be gone from here, right? So money is a very important factor. And I actually discussed the same thing on the Lee Jackson's podcast recently, like
If you are sharing something, adding an affiliate link is not an evil thing like most people perceive it and guess what I got little back. know, ⁓ is, know, the affiliate links are evil and all that. I don't find affiliate links evil. It's a win for both the creator as well as you as a promoter.
Matt Medeiros (06:05)
Yeah, I mean, we ⁓ we as a WP, like I don't use affiliate links only because it's really for me, the distaste is not the right word. Evil is not the right word. It's more so about the approach from the person bringing me the affiliate link. Right. It's just like, hey, promote this and we'll give you an affiliate link. It's like, well, I need more than that, you know, for this thing to operate.
Davinder Singh Kainth (06:30)
Thank ⁓
Matt Medeiros (06:33)
And it's usually the approach from the other side that drives me away from using affiliate links. But I totally agree with you. Although I say that, but there are two affiliate links that I use all the time, which I am proud to do and they pay me well. It's Transistor, the podcast hosting company I use, and Savvycal, which is the piece of software I use to book links. And they're just great pieces of software, so it's very easy for me to do that. ⁓
But I totally agree with you, like that secondary level of revenue and adding to the whole pool of ⁓ the sustainable business is important. Where do you think plugin developers or the folks that you're talking to, plugin developers, what else can they do to stand out? Like, do you give them like some marketing 101 advice? ⁓ You know, how do you get them engaged so that they can level up their business aside from reaching out to folks like you and I to get that exposure?
Do you ever give them any coaching advice?
Davinder Singh Kainth (07:30)
Yes, the classic mistake most plugin developers do is they will add a new feature
write about that in a changelog which is buried in some page and they will not blog about it they will not post about it they will not tweet about it or x about it you it's about you have to inform people that you've added new feature and to add on it like for a new developer obviously it's like too overwhelming to create a video you know and create an audio or maybe social media stuff but at least you can write a blog post with screenshot but if you compare it with people who are established who have
plugins they actually do videos you know and get on podcast so you should basically reach from every possible direction when it comes to marketing it's not like Facebook is working this is working you should try everything depending on your capacity and that is where people fail you know I can't do this you know I've made a plug-in it will sell no making a plug-in is just 30 % of the job 70 % is marketing
Matt Medeiros (08:26)
Yeah.
Yeah,
yeah, yeah, you know we I haven't analyzed it in a while, but maybe I'm sure you have because ⁓ Of the rebrand and like maybe whatever you're do for like the daily cadence of this kind of content ⁓ I remember seeing like there was like a 500 ⁓ person waiting list for the plug-in team to to approve and they've done a bunch of things to like
fast-track that now people are waiting like maybe a week to two weeks where before it's maybe months I assume you're seeing an increase in plugin development is that because in your opinion people are turning to AI and being able to build these things quickly and they're getting into the game of plugin development to see if they can make some money here or is it just the sheer opportunity for WordPress plugins now and it's just hey we're
We're all in on WordPress. Why do you think there's such an increase of plugin, ⁓ the developers going to WordPress.org these days?
Davinder Singh Kainth (09:34)
Firstly, it's easy to make a plugin if you know development. I am not the one, so it's rocket science for me because I don't know, but I can definitely read the code and make sense of it. yes, money is one part, but then there's also creativity. For example, there's a form plugin. Gravity form is the OG of forms, right? But every other week we see another form plugin, right? And it does the same thing what a gravity form would do, right?
but still people are doing it because there are only 10 things basic 10 things on a wordpress website a person would do form
builder theme, right? And people are launching the same thing and say, there's another form plugin, but then everyone is approaching their product in a different way, in a different UI, how they're going to support it, how they're going to lay out the features. the money is there and obviously AI is helping. I've seen a lot of seasoned plugin developer now using AI to build a few small components that can be added to the main plugin because it's easier and faster for them. yeah, AI plus money has never gone out of the ecosystem.
lot of people there's a chatter also this small chatter like WordPress is stagnant dead and whatever right it's not dead it's running like cheetah so go make a plug-in
Matt Medeiros (10:50)
⁓
We have, know, sort of like, I don't want to say on the sidelines, but I guess on the sidelines we have the FAIR package manager, which is like a whole other sort of network to distribute plugins. Have you followed along with that? Have you seen any of the stuff that they've done lately? Do you see that as a boost to getting?
Like you said, people are putting the .org, GitHub, their own personal website. That fourth one would be fair. What are your thoughts on that sort of technology entering the market?
Davinder Singh Kainth (11:21)
I think more the distribution channel better for the ecosystem. think irrespective of people with vested interests like I don't like this channel, I don't like that channel, think because WordPress is all about freedom and if you give freedom and extend that freedom to even distribution of plugin, why not? FAIR has been making right noises from the start and they've been adding on to it and there a lot of well-known people behind it. So the future looks bright.
Matt Medeiros (11:48)
Yeah. Let's turn our attention to the WP awards 2025. They were recently announced last week, right? Last week or earlier this week. I forget. We are this is well, here's the question. How many years running now for the for the WP awards?
Davinder Singh Kainth (11:58)
Yep.
This is the fifth year, so it started in 2020.
Matt Medeiros (12:10)
And what's your biggest takeaway running at five years? Like what's the lesson you've learned as the curator of the awards? And then let's talk about like the pattern that you've seen in folks ⁓ picking certain categories. First, your lesson as the curator of the awards.
Davinder Singh Kainth (12:30)
Firstly, it's a lot of work and it's difficult to make an...
Matt Medeiros (12:32)
you
Davinder Singh Kainth (12:35)
Difficult
to make everyone happy like you know when I started it like the first edition even I was you know exploring how it should be done and My innate nature is like let's do things in a more simple way not you know complicate things So when I started I was like okay, how do I select nominations right because everyone wants to be nominated right? So I followed the same pattern as WordPress is it's open for everyone you can nominate yourself
your user can nominate you any product gets there but when it comes to voting and you know the biggest lesson was how do I control the voting pattern because when I started in the first year the response was okay because this was new right second year it blew up really big but then I had to figure out like how do I control the
spam entries and you know how because a lot of people would say I have 100 employees I'll just ask my 100 employees to vote for 100 votes right I don't mind that as long as it's a unique person or a unique email ID that's doing it so over the years I've added this year I've been really strict like last last last year I added the you know unique IP address validation like if you are trying to vote from the same IP address you will not able to work it like the form will not submit
So this year not just I did that but I also took out all the email addresses that was there ran it through the spam filter so it was like 1500 spam entries that got you know culled at the beginning so yeah so step by step I am also because again security spam you know there's no 100 % you know foolproofing anywhere it's just a learning step one by one so yeah it's but this year I think this has been the best ever you know response like this year
2025 so yeah I'm happy about it.
Matt Medeiros (14:23)
Yeah.
What are the logistics just so for folks who don't know about the awards, when do the nominations start and are you changing that for 2026? So how long do you give yourself to get nominations?
Davinder Singh Kainth (14:36)
I've been following the same pattern. the nomination period runs from 40 to 50 days. Again, after that ends, there's a break of 10 days. And then again, voting period runs from 40 to 50 days. And once that is done, I take a break of one week to calculate votes and all that. yeah, and then I, because now I'm a little more prepared. So I make the final result page minus the voting count in advance.
and you know the first year I was so dumb I shouldn't be calling that you know when I was trying to calculate votes and I said I'm gonna calculate manually and I spent so many hours calculating manually I mean this is not how you should do it right so now it's easy like I just download the whole excel sheet of the voting I dump it into the Google Drive and then I have a function that I run so it will basically automatically calculate who got how many votes in per category so yeah it's like 10 minutes job now
Matt Medeiros (15:13)
Yeah.
Let's talk about the categories. Let me just scroll down. Oh, you probably already know off top of your head, but I have the page up. We have 29 categories, and the 29th category is niche plugins. So that's when you're like, screw it. I just have this one category. just going to throw everybody into this. How do you come up with categories? And I'm sure, and we'll tell a story how I reached out to you representing Gravity Forms in a little bit, but I'm sure you have folks knocking on the door going,
Davinder Singh Kainth (15:39)
Another pain point.
Matt Medeiros (16:03)
Don't put me in this category, put me in that category, or why don't we have this category explain those logistics and pain points.
Davinder Singh Kainth (16:10)
⁓ You've just hit the nail on the head I get asked these questions every year and when I you know When the voting opens and someone come and email or DM me hey my product should not be in this category It should be in that category. So, okay. I don't argue with anyone. I just okay I'll put it there even though you know if you go to the niche plug-in, you know category there are a few entries or nominees that could have been in the their own category above
But again, people say, ⁓ I don't want my product in this category and that category. But then categories have evolved over time. Like the Bricks add-on category, like I used to get a lot of Bricks ⁓ product submissions, right? And adding Bricks add-ons in a page builder category would be defeating the purpose. So over the years, Elementor add-ons became a category. Bricks add-ons became a category. Then there was a WooCommerce issue as well. Now there's a single
WooCommerce add-on plus there are people who make you know, they have a shop with multiple WooCommerce add-ons So I split it into two so you can nominate your WooCommerce add-ons shop with multiple add-ons or if you are running like a single add-on that goes into a separate category and Next year I'm planning to you know, split even further maybe do 30 35 categories I don't know but yes, there could be you know, this is a I guess step-by-step improvement process because there's no
perfect answer to it because there will be someone in some corner unhappy about it. You know, I'm not perfect.
Matt Medeiros (17:44)
Yeah, yeah, it's tough. And when you opened up nominations or you open up voting, ⁓ it was for Gravity Forms anyway, some of our certified developers were in the form building tools, which like if you didn't know anything about the space, you'd be like, ⁓ that makes sense. Right. But then that would mean that folks would be voting. I sort of guess what you're just saying with like bricks. People would be voting for Gravity Forms add on.
in the category where Gravity Forms is in there for the form building tool. that would make the person like try to decide and if they were just a customer of one of the CDs, maybe they're voting for them, just to help them out or whatever. And that would take away from the Gravity Forms side of it. I totally agree. Have you thought about, again, open criticism, but we're here. Have you thought about running like nominations directly to the businesses first?
Davinder Singh Kainth (18:15)
Yeah.
Matt Medeiros (18:40)
If that makes sense, like in other words, have you thought about taking the business categories that are in here and saying, hey, for the first week, make sure that you're in the right category that you should be in and give me that feedback and then open up nominations? Have you thought about adding that? It's more work, but I'm wondering if that would help lessen the burden later when the votes are coming in and then people are knocking on your door going, hey, move me over here, put me over there.
Davinder Singh Kainth (19:05)
So what I did this year and even last year was like during nomination, the nomination form, I never had categories there. But now I added an open-ended field where you can add a category that you feel it's right rather than a drop-down box that said page builders, this and that. So that at least gives me an idea where this person wants to slot their plugin or service, right? So this is one improvement I did. I think the other improvement can be like
When I open voting, just first one week would be just a dry run. You can see all the nominees that are there for the voting and if you have any objection, there's one week. Let me know and then the actual voting opens a week after that. So yeah, probably another idea to work on.
Matt Medeiros (19:52)
Yeah,
yeah in the podcast world not the WordPress podcast world the actual adult podcast world the the industry the awards like the big awards that they have a pie you have to actually buy into the nominations like you have to spend money to get into the nominations and I'm just like this is you know coming from WordPress and coming from like this open source mentality that you and I share is just like hey no we're trying to just
Davinder Singh Kainth (20:01)
You
Matt Medeiros (20:20)
We're trying to open this up for everybody like everybody has a way to get in. But in like real world, they're actually and I'm sure this goes across any industry that's doing awards. They're paying for the nominations and stuff like that, the slots for it. And I was just like, really? That's how this stuff gets done. It's so weird. But I also get it from from that side of it, because there is big money at play. Not that there's not big money at play here, but there's also bigger money at play, I guess.
Davinder Singh Kainth (20:47)
Well, I said it's like WPBoards is lot of work, but it's also a return on investment that I get because thanks to sponsors for the awards and they've been because there's no actual return on investment for a person's or a company sponsoring an award. Obviously, there's a visibility part of it, but it's more like a community support. And if you see there, there are a lot of brands that supported this year and they've been supporting like year after year. So there is money in WordPress.
Matt Medeiros (20:54)
sponsors.
Yeah, yes there is. ⁓ Let's talk about some of the surprise categories and I'm wondering what you can pinpoint on how maybe people interact with the survey. So podcasts, which this podcast won the gold award this year, it's one of the lower categories of votes across the board.
I'm interested to hear like your feedback on where you see the most performant categories and if people aren't voting in those categories, do you start to think maybe I shouldn't include this category next year? And please keep the podcast category.
Davinder Singh Kainth (21:55)
I'm
I think the most popular is always like themes, page builders, form plugins and also you know the ecosystem players from Bricks and Elementor like you know people are very loyal and they just want to show their loyalty by voting so that is why even the Elementor algorithms and Bricks which compared to the overall WordPress ecosystem is still a subset right but they still get a lot of votes and even the developer tools, dynamic data, ACF is always at the top because developers love
their tools you know they want to show off like I love this tool so I'm gonna come and vote for it right that is why ACF and you know Metabox all these you know dynamic data plugins they get a lot of votes so yeah it's all about people you know loving a tool and then coming in the other thing now you're talking about the which get most you know I also got this criticism earlier if you see the first two three versions of the awards years I used to display
every vote count for every nominee and some people reached out to me hey i like to participate but i don't like getting seen like my product got only one vote or a zero vote so you got to fix that so the way i fixed it i just displayed the first six you know top vote getters in every category i think that's more fair
Matt Medeiros (23:15)
And I think it's fair to say that ⁓ folks can just like if you go to the WP Weekly dot com slash awards hyphen and then put the year after it. like right now I put two zero two three twenty twenty three. I can go back and look at what happened in twenty twenty three. Let me see. WordPress podcast. I lost and I was beat out by Divi chat. But ⁓ Divi chat, I'm sure, did a concerted effort to push this. ⁓
Davinder Singh Kainth (23:24)
Yeah. Yeah.
Matt Medeiros (23:44)
to their audience, right? At the time, the podcast was running. They were probably pushing out to the audience saying, please go vote. So that leads me to sort of like the last question here. What are your thoughts on that promotional side of it? Like, what do you want to see? I mean, we mentioned spam bots before, or not spam bots, but folks like voting with their team behind the IP address. But how do you want folks to healthily share this to encourage users to vote?
⁓ I put it in the newsletter for the WP minute I mentioned on the podcast like please go vote and support us. What else do you want people to do to encourage votes for their brand?
Davinder Singh Kainth (24:21)
Yeah, if you've been nominated, you can reach out to your tribe users via email list, social media posts, but don't go into the bribe mode like you get 20 % off if you vote for us. That's only thing I would not want people to do it. Now you added your award nomination in your newsletter and you won, right? So a little bit of effort is also needed from all the nominees and the effort shows in the results as well. It's not the people who didn't want, were not the good products.
Matt Medeiros (24:30)
⁓
Davinder Singh Kainth (24:51)
good product. It's just how you push out to your community.
Matt Medeiros (24:54)
Yeah. Anything you can hint at for next year yet, or is it too early to say how like any new feature you might add or any new way of going about this that you're thinking of?
Davinder Singh Kainth (25:04)
No, I'm already tired.
Matt Medeiros (25:07)
You're already tired of thinking about it.
That's great. That's great. Yeah. So check it out. The WP Weekly dot com slash awards 2025. You can see the winners from 2025. I'm just going to read them. Read the top five winners here. ACF Pro number one. WooCommerce number two. The admin bar for. I'm going read the subcategory. ACF Pro for dynamic data plugins. WooCommerce for e-commerce tools. The admin bar for WordPress community.
Elementor for page builders and Rank Math SEO for SEO plugins. ⁓ Check that out at the wpweekly.com slash awards 2025. There's a banner there. You can click it and get into it. The year's ending. December 12th is when we're recording this. ⁓ I want to talk predictions 2026 for WordPress. ⁓ What do you think is going to be the biggest change for WordPress? The software, the software.
in 2026. Have you started to think about that? Are you pontificating on what big changes might be ahead for WordPress?
Davinder Singh Kainth (26:10)
I think Gutenberg will get even better and we will see a little refresh of WordPress admin which is already there in the roadmap for 7.0. I just read it yesterday or probably today. plus, you know,
even though they are working on the AI WordPress team and all that, but they are actually building a really good foundation for WordPress and AI talking really well to each other. I think more and more developers, third party developers might even leverage that because ⁓ their AI team is definitely, if they are not building things that...
people would immediately use as of now. They are basically building the foundation. So expect a little more AI into WordPress. I mean on the foundational level, but yeah, and I think it's gonna remain rock solid and
Probably we will have more community events in the next year compared to 2025 like they've been just multiplying every year and the word camp Asia the big one is coming to India next year So yeah that I think that would break the records like that would be the biggest word camp ever attended probably
Matt Medeiros (27:18)
Yeah, I so we held a predictions episode. It will be out before this episode. And the thing I brought up there is and you know me, you've known me for a while and you know how I criticize things. But but I'm under the impression that. I think Matt and automatic are going to want to shrink the amount of word camps and have a.
bigger, more automatic controlled WordCamp. And I don't think it's a bad thing when I think of like HubSpot and the inbound conference. Like HubSpot doesn't do a zillion meetups throughout the year and a million different events. They have one big one to show off like, here's how we're leading the industry. Here's all the cool features in HubSpot. And I would imagine that Matt would want to make a bigger impact with a state of the word.
Like if state of the word was like an Apple day, they'd want like they'd have to, cause people are going to get two, like, my God, 12 different word camps I've went to, you know, throughout this year. It's like one a month. I mean, you'd go on all these work. I think he's going to want one big one that says this is what's coming to WordPress. And I actually kind of want that from like, Hey, if you're going to up the value and the production value of it and make it look awesome. like the rest of the world looks at that and goes, that's the WordPress that we want. I'm okay with that, but.
Davinder Singh Kainth (28:16)
Yeah.
Thank
Matt Medeiros (28:45)
That's my crazy prediction. It's not going to happen in 2026, but I think it might set the stage for future years.
Davinder Singh Kainth (28:48)
this.
So your prediction?
You're 50 % right and 50 % wrong in my view, like in right in terms like state of word. think, I don't know what they're thinking about it, but I think state of the word should be scaled up to be the premier event because that's how you present the WordPress at an enterprise level. Now coming back to the WordCamp, I don't think so there will be any scaling down. I think they will go up the level. Why? The problem is you are in US and you're thinking from that lens, right? Now if WordCamps go
way and it's just state of the word. It's just US people from US and know neighboring you know developed so-called developed countries would able to access that and
you you hardly get visa for US these days so forget about you know I'm not even talking about the money aspect rare so yes state of the word should be scaled up to be the event of the WordPress representing WordPress at the level but wordcams will stay like that in fact they will grow a lot and you know I list actually wordcamp events in my newsletter so if I see every second or third
know week there's a word camp event in some corner of the world and there are more events that are happening in asia and even more in africa now which is a welcome change i guess
Matt Medeiros (30:13)
Yeah, yeah, ⁓ only time will tell. I mean, yeah, I totally agree with you. I see this through the lens of, you know, where I'm at, you know, in the US. ⁓ And it's just, yeah, from the marketing, also like in the marketing brain of me, I'm just like, man, how many times can they like have these before people don't want to go to them? I'm a curmudgeon. I hate to travel. I don't even like...
Davinder Singh Kainth (30:23)
Yeah.
Matt Medeiros (30:41)
Traveling to state of the word, I wasn't going to do that either. Like seven hours on a plane to go across the country. I don't want to do that.
Davinder Singh Kainth (30:48)
I think you should
try it. In fact you should try WordCamp Asia and WordCamp Europe some year, maybe next year. I think next year, obviously Asia is in India, the other one, WordCamp Europe is probably in Poland. yeah, just try it. You will love the vibe there. Even I used to think WordPress is a waste of time. That was my thinking like few years back until I decided to attend one and my thinking was all flipped on the head.
Matt Medeiros (31:09)
Mmm.
Yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's a travel for me really is that's that's the curmudgeon side of it. It's like, God, I got to get on a plane. got to get there four hours early, leave four hours later. But you're right. You're right. I will try it. I will try it. Let's close things out. The AI stuff really quick. Are you positive, net positive on on AI in its introduction to WordPress? Like, do you see that as a good thing? And how do you think they leverage like so much of the
I say this like there's so much of the dominant stuff in AI is all these closed source businesses open AI Even though it has a name open in it ⁓ Anthropic, you know Gemini Google, know micro all these folks. These are all like typical closed source players I don't really see any discussion around the open source side of AI There's a whole site called hugging face. You could check that out. It's like a github for open source AI stuff
I never really hear that discussion coming into the WordPress game, and I'm curious if we're all excited for the functionality of AI, but we're just taxing ourselves in the future by saying, well, you need open AI, you need Anthropic to do this. And I'm just curious your thoughts on that sort of tug of war.
Davinder Singh Kainth (32:34)
Well, unfortunately that's how the AI ecosystem is going as of now. Like we have a base layer where users interact but under the base layer there's a paid, you know, closed ecosystem that is throwing out the data and you're interacting with it. that's the sad reality as of now. Unless someone, some big companies with big funding pitches in and wants to do the open source version of it. If it does happen, I think it would be good for everyone, not just WordPress, even other, you know,
platforms can also leverage it.
Matt Medeiros (33:08)
fantastic stuff. Davinder Singh, the WP Weekly dot com, the WP Weekly dot com. Sign up to get your weekly dose of WordPress news. And don't forget to get your brand and company ⁓ in the nomination pool for 2026. You know what? Start sending him messages now. Let's let's let's let's tire him out before the year even turns and start telling him to get your business into a new category. ⁓ And then the plug in daily. It's the what's the URL for that one?
Davinder Singh Kainth (33:22)
You
Mm-hmm.
You ⁓
pluginsdaily.com
Matt Medeiros (33:39)
pluginsdaily.com. Check that out as well. Devender, it's always great catching up with you.
Davinder Singh Kainth (33:44)
Thanks for inviting me.