WordPress Design & Development Around the Web for the Week of October 10

Serve Up a Delicious WP-Config

The folks at Delicious Brains have put out the ultimate Developer’s Advanced Guide to the wp-config.php file. I sure wish I had this years ago when I was starting out! Already found a few new tricks in here for this old dog to try out. Like did you know you could rotate keys/salts?!!?!

Keep This Guide Handy

I’ve been seeing a lot of buzz in Post Status Slack and on Twitter about WordPress 6.1, and for good reason! Milana Cap breaks down everything that is coming and what changes we can expect in the WordPress 6.1 Field Guide. I’m very excited about the accessibility and performance improvements, but honestly everything looks really impressive!

Digesting Twenty Twenty-Three

Another major inclusion in 6.1 is going to be the new Twenty Twenty-Three theme with style variations, page layouts, fluid typography, and more. Kinsta gives us a deep dive into what all of the features are and how we can use them as developers.

Why lament the loss of a declining statistic?

Writing in the Ellipsis newsletter early this week, Alex Denning floated the idea that “WordPress.org growth charts might not matter.” Why? Alex writes:

Our experience is that freemium is an inefficient and ineffective channel for the average WordPress product. 

You need very significant scale to make free a better marketing channel than the alternatives, and unless you already have that scale you’re probably not going to get it. 

Alex also cited WP Trends Q2 2022 data on the number of free plugins newly added each year at wp.org with 100k-500k, 500k-1M, and 1M+ installs. Viewed over 15 years, the market peak appears to have been reached in 2014, although the middle and upper tiers have had a more level and wave pattern of ups and downs beneath the dramatic rise and fall of new 100k-500k install plugins, at least between 2007-16.

A “Closed Shop”

In 2019-20, only four plugins entered the space and broke into the upper tiers. These were Site Kit for Google, Facebook for WooCommerce, Creative Mail for WordPress and WooCommerce, and Google Ads and Marketing by Kliken.

The 100-500K+ products are in a position to get their own customer data and analytics, so active install data from .org doesn't matter as much to them.

WP Trends, June 2022

How is it Possible to Break In?

People looking to break into the market with a free product distributed on WordPress.org “have to do a phenomenal amount of work,” according to Alex:

You’ll need to have an incredible product, and then support it with a mix of content, SEO, social, partnerships, etc. You then have to convert those users at ~1-2% onto your paid offering.

Given all the work you’re doing to get the free installs, and then to convert 1-2% of those free users to paid, you’re almost certainly going to have a better time going straight to paid, focusing all your efforts into activities that help people discover your product and immediately convert.

Alex describes the WP.org plugin repo as a “closed shop” now with a few exceptions that make sense as a freemium product:

• Anything in a crowded category, like Forms.
• Anything that can leverage many marketing channels.
• Anything that can leverage hosting partnerships.

There's also the WooCommerce market.

Ellipsis' Weather Report

Largely based on search volume analysis, Ellipsis' 2022 “weather data” within the larger climate systems of WordPress and WooCommerce indicate WordPress is struggling, but WooCommerce is showing its best growth since May.

Or, Change the System from Within?

If a more diverse and open ecosystem is preferred, Alex suggests the plugin repository's search algorithm needs to do more than reward plugins with high active install counts — like “a ‘rising star' label.” He notes “this is a short-term commercial, rather than a long-term ecosystem view.”

The recent discussions around the Active Installs data being removed from the WordPress Repo prompted two questions I think we need to answer as a bigger WP community and particularly our members at Post Status.

As someone who lived in the WordPress product space for 10+ years and owned free and commercial plugins, I resonate with the issues and concerns being brought up today by plugin developers. (Here I am in 2010, writing Why We Need a Premium WordPress Plugin Market.)

What I want to do here is frame the conversation to be constructive and help us all make progress together — for the good of WordPress, plugin developers, and our members.

I'll try to offer as limited a commentary as I can here because I'd like your comments and responses to these questions:

1. Are plugins essential to WordPress?

Specifically, have (free and paid) plugins been — and will they continue to be — essential to the health and growth of WordPress?

My answer is YES — absolutely! Even if it's a messy market. And we have work to do.

As of this writing, there were listed 60,229 plugins in the WP repo, and of course countless other free and paid plugins elsewhere.

Plugins are key contributions to WordPress. They extends WordPress and allows WP to stay as nimble as possible for the enormous variety of uses in our world.

I started iThemes in 2008. We were early in the “premium” market. We didn't have to depend on the repo at the time, but I would have relished the opportunity to offer and sell our products there.

If your answer to my first question is a solid yes too — and I hope it is — then my next question is:

2. What can we do to create a more sustainable model and environment for WP plugin developers? 

THIS is where we need to start the conversation, in my view.

Merely suggesting to plugin developers committed to the WP.org repository that if they don't like the rules or changes they should go elsewhere isn't fair or reasonable to them.

If you're saying that to plugin developers, but…

• You don't own a free plugin…
• You haven't built your business around a free plugin…
• You were early into the product business like I was at iThemes in 2008…
• You already have an existing platform outside of the .org repo…

…then at best, you're not putting yourself in their shoes. You're not offering realistic advice.

I also don't think it's the best or healthiest answer for them or WordPress.

What I'm talking about and asking for are ideas that make incremental progress and improvement … TOGETHER.

For WordPress and the plugin developer ecosystem to start a dialogue that is perhaps overdue. I also want to keep in mind that this is an open source project, with projects teams and volunteers who are already overloaded.

I think we start with this question:

What are the big three things we as a larger WP community (together) can start working toward to support WP plugin devs better?

I'll offer some ideas to kick off this conversation.

Let's agree we're all in this together.

There's so much division and polarization in our world already today outside of WP. In the spirit of open source and WP, let's be a shining example to our worlds of what can be when humans start talking and listening to fellow humans. Leaving some of our past behind and simply understanding where we're coming from.

But at its simplest? Be open to the conversation.

At its best? Try to embody the other's perspective. Getting into their shoes. Seeing from their perspective.

One of my favorite conversations this year was with Birgit Pauli-Haack at WCUS. The topic was Core Contribution. We initially came at it from our separate sides. But then we started listening to each other. And now …. we're working together on some things we think will make a difference for ALL.

If you know Birgit, you know she's a very special human in the world and we're privileged to have her in WP.

But I wish we had more of these conversations in WP.

It'd be better for all of us.

I grant it'll be tough … but I believe in us.

Let's acknowledge that we need to talk … together.

Back in August, I had a long conversation with Till Krüss (edited down to <60 minutes here) about his path into WordPress, Laravel, and performance. It's about time we published it as an episode of Post Status Draft!

Till is the developer and owner of Object Cache Pro, “a business class Redis object cache backend for WordPress.” OCP offers a unique and highly successful model for partnerships between a WordPress plugin product business and two valuable niche markets: hosting companies (B2B) for $1950/month and anyone running WordPress sites at scale (D2C) for $95/month. Nexcess is the latest host to adopt OCP, which they announced earlier this week.

What plugin owner has not felt the pain of an extraordinarily busy support forum? Till is up to (wait for it..) 10 minutes a day on support — which he aims to decrease to five minutes. How? End-to-end unit testing to ensure the highest code quality.

Performance optimization in general — and caching in particular — are possibly the oldest and most persistent hard problems for people running WordPress and similar applications at scale. Historically, performance has been a problem passed to the hosting industry by WordPress developers and users of too many plugins — or too many plugins that use too many server resources, especially as measured in database queries.

Till’s particular niche is not for everyone, but some of his ideas and achievements are very portable. For one thing, what plugin owner has not felt the pain of an extraordinarily busy support forum? Till is up to (wait for it…) 10 minutes a day on support — which he aims to decrease to five minutes. How? End-to-end unit testing to ensure the highest code quality. It’s an idea that needs to become a reality and a habit in the third-party WordPress product ecosystem, Till believes — and I think he’s right about that.

Test Everything, End-to-End

A large part of the challenges people have with WordPress in the wild have to do with plugins that have not been built and tested to perform at scale. There’s likely a lot of opportunity in aligning people on performance as a key, common interest. What people are these? Product, agency, and hosting companies in the WordPress space. And, as Till’s example shows, a small WordPress company, or company of one that wants to stay that way, still can thrive today.

Quality Product = Nearly No Support Needs

Traditionally, plugin owners have struggled with burdensome customer support, and having to resort to support as a customer is always an unwanted burden. Neither party wants to relate primarily through the support desk! So … why not just eliminate it or diminish support needs as much as possible? It's a win for everyone, and resources go into product development, another win-win.

Pricing and Value

Object Cache Pro's sales and distribution through hosting partnerships leaves support obligations with the hosting partner and their own customers. The value to hosts is how they can bundle OCP, a high value product, at a low cost to their customers' hosting plans. This leaves OCP focused on product development, quality assurance, and lower support/maintenance costs — which is in everyone's interest.

Object Cache Pro's Direct-to-Consumer pricing has no SaaS component. It does come with support, but customers are expected to install and maintain OCP themselves without an additional white-glove support plan. The value proposition: It just works and delivers incredible performance gains that have a quantifiable dollar value on high traffic sites.

Should we continue this conversation?

If you're interested in a followup conversation with Till or have questions about the things we covered in this one, please get in touch. Let us know if you'd like to hear a followup episode about the risks that come with the opportunities of a small open source company with a high-value product. For one thing, there are the pirates and the sharks — anyone who might steal, buy, or recreate a GPL product and kill or dilute its profitability. How do you cope with that?

Mentioned in the show:

• Till Krüss‘s Object Cache Pro is a (closed-source) commercial product that grew out of and is developed alongside Redis Object Cache. (100k+ installs on WordPress.org, numerous forks and stars on GitHub.) Redis Object Cache is a fork of an unmaintained precursor Erick Hitter and Eric Mann launched in 2014.
• Relay looks like it will be a successor to OCP as it's capable of speeds up to 100 times faster than Redis. It's a PHP extension developed in C that is both a Redis client and a shared in-memory cache.” There is a free Community version.
• Felipe Elia recently wrote a great explainer on WordPress, Objecet Cache, and Redis.
• Do the_Woo recently recorded a very insightful open discussion on the Future of Hosting (and WordPress plugin business opportunities) where Till, Carl Alexander, and Zach Stepek trade insights and stories from their work with enterprise class WordPress and WooCommerce.
• Scaling WordPress (Post Status Draft #51) remains one of our all-time most listened to podcast episodes, from 2016. Brian Krogsgard and Joe Hoyle take a pretty comprehensive look at WordPress performance and caching, including Redis.
• Jon Christopher is trying a unique business strategy with his OrganizeWP plugin that suggests cooperative ways to win outside centralized markets.
• Kevin Ohashi‘s WP Performance Tester plugin will test your server's raw capacity and show you how it compares to the current industry average established by Kevin's testing at WP Hosting Benchmarks.
• Mark Jacquith‘s Cache Buddy (2015) “[m]inimizes the situations in which logged-in users appear logged-in to WordPress, which increases the cacheability of your site.”
• Shaun Kester‘s Latency Tracker (2008) was a helpful diagnostic when pre-“Managed WordPress” hosts were struggling to keep up with the booming use (and abuse) of self-hosted WordPress and other PHP/MySQL-based publishing platforms.
• Paul Jarvis talks about his book, Company of One: Why Staying Small Is the Next Big Thing for Business, with Brian Clark at Unemployable.
• The WordPress Core Performance Team is dedicated to monitoring, enhancing, and promoting performance in WordPress core and its surrounding ecosystem. We build and manage the Performance Lab plugin, a collection of performance-related “feature projects” for WordPress core.

You can follow Post Status and our guests on Twitter:

• Till Krüss (Founder, Rhubarb Group)
• Dan Knauss (Editor, Post Status)
• Olivia Bisset (Intern, Post Status)

The Post Status Draft podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis.

Browse our archives, and don’t forget to subscribe via iTunes, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, Simplecast, or RSS.

Transcript

Introduction

Till Krüss: [00:00:00] I forked it and now it grew to like, I don't know, a hundred thousand users probably a lot more because most people just use the upstream object cash drop and not the full plugin. I know that, um, Cloud Linux is using now Spin up, WP Blue Host. A lot of big hosts are using it.

Dan Knauss: I'm here with Till..

Till Krüss: Krüss.

Dan Knauss: …and we're going to be talking about Object Cache Pro, which till launched at the end of uh, 2019. It's a business class Redis Object Cache backend for WordPress that's used by GoDaddy, Pagely Nexus Cloud Ways, and Convesio. The free open source version, Redis Object Cache is available at wordpress.org on the plugin repo.

It makes WordPress much, much faster. Till's also building [00:01:00] Relay Redis client that's two orders of magnitude (100x) faster, and there are Laravel, WordPress and Magento integrations for it. Tills a company of one and has a really unique view on how he wants to do business in the WordPress space. We'll spend some time talking about that, how Till got into WordPress in the first place as a very self-taught developer.

And we'll talk about performance and testing in the WordPress plugin ecosystem. Why there needs to be more of it and why this matters to WordPress's Growth and competitiveness. Before we get into that, let me tell you about one of our great sponsors, Pressable. Founded in 2010. Pressable is a world class managed WordPress hosting provider built on the same data network as wordpress.com and WordPress VIP.

Their state of the [00:02:00] art platform empowers agencies, freelancers, e-commerce businesses, IT professionals, and WordPress developers. To build, launch, and maintain amazing WordPress websites quickly, easily, and affordably with industry leading performance 24/7 expert support, a hundred percent uptime guarantee, and seamless integrations through commerce and Jetpack.

Pressable provides the tools you need to manage your WordPress websites and grow your business all in one place. They've also got a really cool demo system now. It's called My Pressable Playground, and you can create sites back in there. Edit the settings for each. Look at the security tools performance, other site management tools, and check out the Pressable API. For more advanced users, there's a robust REST API that you can develop applications on. It's all pretty open there and get a full view of everything. Just click the big “try for free” [00:03:00] button and give Pressable a try.

Dialogue Starts

So your main vocation, these, these days is, uh, am I right that what you're spending most of your time on is, is Object Cash Pro?

Till Krüss: Yeah. It's a 50 50 split, more or less between object, cash, Pro and relay. Right. Which hasn't really, you know,

Dan Knauss: been too public. Relay that's, um, how much is, is that coming back into WordPress?

That's a kind of a larger PHP project.

Till Krüss: Yeah. Without, you know, diving off the deep end here, essentially, I spoke with a bunch of people. The result was Object Cash Pro. And once I released this, you know, enterprise grade object cashing solution hosting companies came to me and be like, Hey, we want even more performance.

And then the last two years, me and Michael, um, mostly him, but the [00:04:00] last two years we spent building Relay because it's the, it's a nice addition. And to answer your question about, Back to WordPress is like, yes. However, we are expanding into the, The extension works with laville magenta, with all PHP frameworks, messes.

It's not only restricted to WordPress, but I assume this is gonna be the right dominant market. The first couple of years object. Cing is a very WordPress specific term. You see it here and there in other frameworks, but often it's just called caching. They just say, Hey, we just throw something into the cash and.

Then they differentiate between page caching and all the other things. In WordPress, it's a specific term called object caching, but really it's, it's a, yeah, it's a WordPress specific thing.

Dan Knauss: So what, what, how would you define object caching? I have kind of a metaphor, simplification for it in my, in my mind.

But what's, what's a semi-technical. Deeper technical understanding of, of what we're doing [00:05:00] with object caching in, in WordPress,

Till Krüss: how I define it. There's some really good articles written out there. I think someone just posted something a few days ago. I dunno if I can pull this up right now. Um, Interesting Filipe ira.

Yes. He just posted something. . We should put his initial notes. He has nice illustrations and he explains it. Um, essentially object hashing is you, you know, database might MariaDB all the S SQL queries that typically quite slow at scale, the more low you put on it. If you have a thousand people asking questions at the send them, it can be a bit much so at word pr Let's.

You want to fetch the most recent comments and it gives you 20 comments instead of always asking your database server for it, you throw it into the object cash. I'm doing air quotes here, which can be backed by many different service or architectures. In my case with object [00:06:00] cash Pros, cuz I think it's a really neat piece of software home and.

Instead of, you know, the next couple of visitors, they don't have to ask the database. You don't have to wait your time to first buy. It doesn't increase. You can just throw it into Redis and retrieve it really, really quickly. And Redis doesn't really break a sweat. If you have a thousand people asking questions, it's fine.

Maybe at a hundred thousand, a million, then you know, it starts to consume some resources. But it's just a really, really fast key value store. And. Ultimately object cashing helps you reduce the load on your database, which in most cases, I wanna say unless you have these, you know, 250 plugin, web percent stalls.

Yeah. Big chunk of your response time is always taking up by talking to the database, right? Mm-hmm. ,

Dan Knauss: I, I haven't seen a lot of 250 plugin my press installs. You run into those very often.

Till Krüss: Uh, I don't, I not directly, but [00:07:00] you know, working. The guys at Page Lee and some other hosting companies I see. Really horrendous What setups that it's, it feels abusive, what they're doing.

It's just, it's, it's cruel what, what they're doing with the service.

Dan Knauss: Right? Yeah. I I'm sure there's, there's plenty of, We've probably touched a few of those here and here and there. Everyone's experience, um, just keep adding to it. Mm-hmm. . But the, the thing with Adri cash, um, That's really valuable is it doesn't matter whether those queries come from the back end or whether you're in the Yeah.

Unit or not. And that's traditionally been people are working, um, doing a lot of writing inside their content management. And then if you have multiple users back there, there's really nothing that traditional cash would. Offer you. I remember there was this old plugin, um, I used for a long time. Mark Jake with, had written that, um, did try to do some smart things to cash some on the back end, [00:08:00] um, when you had multiple users going, but.

Uh, if, if you're caching, well, it's not, Is it caching queries? Um,

Till Krüss: yeah, , it's unclear. Um, it's not a query. Cash query caching would be select user one from, you know, WP Onco users that would be specifically cashing this result. And some MyQ Marie BI was actually do this internally. If the same query happens, then they just send a cash response.

It's more that WordPress says, Hey, I wanna. Look up this one user and then WordPress function itself. Check, Do I already have this in cash? Instead of cashing the query, it just cashes the object. Hence object cashing. But to speak to what you said earlier, they're just there. Yes. The advantage of object cashing, I always, I'm so involved in it, so I forget how to properly explain it.

Maybe in the, Explain to me like I'm five, the big advantages. It's easy to install a plugin like WP Rocket or. , [00:09:00] I don't know what the go-to standard is nowadays to get some browser cashing going. So if you have anonymous traffic, if you have the Google crawler going to your website, that you serve these static pre-generated HDML files.

So you don't have even talk to anything, you just, the server just has to redefine and send it back, which is really, really fast, like milliseconds. However, the moment you're logged in, if you have a community. Buddy boss, or if you have something here, shopping cart with wms, you're not an anonymous visitor anymore.

And then every request when you wanna browse to the next category in wms, for example, you always have to talk to my sequel. And now if you do a flash sale with a thousand people at the same time on you site, You always will hit the object cash and it's just nice that it's whether you're in the back end, whether you are logged in, used on the front end with a shopping guard or you know, just commented, object cashing will reduce the response times of the page load times [00:10:00] for all of these requests.

Not only anonymous traffic. It's really good to have both, to have a page cash and an object cash because you know, a fast back end, maybe even the page generation. when you run your, Hey, warm up my page cash would be faster because it doesn't have to hammer your my SQL server. Um, but yeah, that's, that's the, the essence, it, it cashes all requests or all it cashes.

That's not true. It cashes many parts that affect all requests.

Dan Knauss: Right. Yeah. I noticed the big difference, uh, when we started using it, uh, with Pagely, and I think in some other context I have, um, yeah. Cause that's traditionally been the, the big problem with, with WordPress, if you're trying to use it as a community site or you, you've got a forum or, uh, Yeah, some of a social site and a lot of people are logged in, so there's very little that.

That page cashing would do anything for. So, um, [00:11:00] In my recollection, that was the major problem hosts had. There were more and more WordPress sites and others of its generation. They're all PHP in my sequel. Um, and so you would have someone just getting hammered with a lot of concurrent visitors. Maybe they don't.

Maybe the page doesn't. Has like 50, a hundred queries. It's reasonable, but there's like 300 people doing that all at once. Or you have someone who has like the 250 plugins and it's like a hundreds of queries to load the, the front page. And it took a close look at that at one point with, uh, with another guy on the WordPress community.

And um, you would see like one, even if it was one out of a hundred queries that just went. It just never came back. , and you wouldn't get a full page load. Um, was that, is that still a [00:12:00] scaling issue that every host has to deal with? Um, or is that becoming a thing of the past? With, with stuff like object

Till Krüss: cashing, having an object, Cash.

And what press helps, um, because it's not really designed. To run a community to run these highly dynamic sites. We're making dm, we're making it work. I think the buddy boss guys talked to me recently and they said that just a load of feed of any given user, like you logged in, lot of feed. It's 300 my queries or SQL queries.

Most people I think, use Marie db. I can't speak too much about what the challenges of hosting companies are. Um, I do see. Here and there, The stories and scaling the database over seems often an issue. I don't know what it's like in shared hosting. This is not my expertise, but yeah. Um, it's a, it's a hard [00:13:00] challenge to, to scale WordPress.

That's, And it's my business now, it's, it's hard to scale and we have better tools, we have more powerful service. It's working, but it's, it's definitely pushing the edge of what it's meant to be doing initially. .

Dan Knauss: And is that how you got into this? Just because, well, you had a kind of history with WordPress and, and Lael, um, does it naturally, Does the nature of working with a WordPress for long lend itself to.

Man, I gotta deal with some performance issues. Um, but what was your way into that? Becoming a

Till Krüss: main focus? Yeah, I was working as a freelancer and I was working on this really large Ttra community, um, as a women run company, which was kind of funny as like, I think when I left there was 50 women and me, and it was a fantastic work environment.

I could say and. [00:14:00] The, It was like online learning, online courses. We didn't really have any tools when we started. I think I know 10 years ago, eight years ago, there was no good tools out there and at some point we started using Access Ally to connect with part and was just always a performance nightmare and I wanted to use an object answer.

I ran into the same problem that now people run into and come to me essentially, or to other people like Pan. And they've got a reddish caching plug in as well. That's, the data was just a sudden there so much load, page load signs were low and each page had, you know, three, 400 comments and just to load them, it was just not feasible to always ask the SQL Server and.

Saw what's out there and it was kind of a bit dire, the situation. So I forked one of, I do not remember who it was. There was a popular Redis plugin, but Eric man, Eric man, I think way back in the day, released something where it was just unmaintained. I forked it, and now it grew to like, [00:15:00] I know a hundred thousand users probably a lot more because most people just use the upstream object cash drop and not the full plugin.

I know that, um, Cloud Linux is using now Spin up, WP Blue Host. A lot of big hosts are using it, so the 100,000 users might be with Misleading, and I just scratched my own itch. I needed a good Redis plugin and it just kept on growing. That's how I kind of, you know, got into this and got started with it. I, I needed faster page load times.

Dan Knauss: Yeah, I think that's, that's a, not that un uncommon of a, of a story, but you, what's unique is to, to build a product as, as successful as, um, as Object Cash Pro, I imagine. Um, how many, how many hosting partners are you working with now with that? Because it's a, there's the free plugin, but then there's the, um, the, there's the, [00:16:00] I guess the.

Top shelf, high, high end premium version, that that's, is that mostly gonna be of use to a hosting market?

Till Krüss: Um, yeah. And individual, like the small medium businesses that, you know, if you run an eCommerce side, and we have many customers like that. Mm-hmm. , they have eCommerce sites, they make $50,000 a month in revenue and they run their own either infrastructure, have a tiny engineering team.

Two, three guys run their own infrastructure because often when you have these large scale sites, it's tricky to find a hosting company that will serve that. Right. And I recommend Pagely personally because they seem to be able to just scale out. Um, What was the question again? ,

Dan Knauss: I'm thinking Yeah. Whether I That was hosting buttons.

Yeah. Answered it. Yeah. If so, there are larger, So, so the, the client market for object cash bros is not just hosts, but businesses that are large [00:17:00] enough where they're monthly revenue, they can quantify exactly what performance is costing them. Yes. So if you are shaving. Off $10,000 worth of bandwidth. You know, it's, it, you, you can be that precise about it.

That that's, um, yeah. You know, this is a measurable quantity and your, your value is, um, auto, it sells itself, I suppose. Right. Is that, is that kind of how you

Till Krüss: approach? Yeah, and because I believe in open source, there's always the free version that gives you a lot of benefits already. Um, there's been these studies from Amazon, Walmart, Etsy.

Google where every 10th of a second a hundred milliseconds page load delays cost you. I think 1% conversion rate. Companies who worry about those numbers, they should be using Object, cash Pro. Yeah. Or if you just want the best of the best.

Dan Knauss: Yeah, there's that side of it too. That's it. It's probably fairly quantifiable what you're losing in customers.

[00:18:00] Um, and just you're paying for less efficient, You're paying to lose customers if you, if you can't, can't serve, um, pages efficiently at scale. So, All right. Um, Do you want to talk more about your, your background and, and history, or do you like to, you know, I imagine there's some things farther back that maybe suggest some things about you and, and why you shaped your business this way, because, We've talked about that before, and you know, this isn't, this isn't something you want to grow into, uh, a massive company where you become a manager of, of a support desk , or you, you know, that's under you.

You've got people, you've got engineers and, and support people. Um, this is something you wanted to remain hands on and, um, in a particular way so, Are there things in your experience and you know, the rest of life that made you aware of that, [00:19:00] um, about yourself? Because, you know, the standard stereotypical model is let's like on, let's make this thing as big as we can.

Like Yeah. Cava

Till Krüss: dozen,

Um, yeah. I.

I'm neuro atypical and I, whatever. I touched a knife I wanted to do, figured out myself. I mean, I, I really enjoy learning from other people and I constantly ask other people about things and advice, but. Just seeing the standard model of you start a business, you get some funding, then you rent an offer, and I just, I can't be asked to, to do that.

I, I wanna do things my way. That works for me, meaning working from home, I. In my underwear. Kind of, that's the, the picture you, you can visualize there. I, it works for me to be quiet by myself to focus time. If I want to take three [00:20:00] days off, I will and not be forced into this nine to five productivity model because it doesn't serve my, I don't wanna say best interest.

I've never really articulated this. Um, it doesn't work for me. It's, I work long, hard hours, sometimes months in a row and sometimes I just take time off and all I wanna do is mo lawn and go for work. That flexibility, I think, really allowed me to.

maybe make the best product I could possibly make. And I just essentially, I just wanted to do things my way. Even with the pricing model, of course, looking at all the other WordPress plugins, this pricing model, I think hasn't changed in the last 10 years. Five years. I don't know what the first paid plugin was except for, was it, um, Kareem with crowd favorite?

He had this one plug and I was, I dunno, [00:21:00] $500 a month or like some crazy amount, the, where you could migrate between sites with this one outlier. Everybody does the same pricing with, you know, a couple of dollars a month, maybe less than a hundred a year, and you get your unlimited license to me didn't work.

I wanted to keep it small. I wanted to have a hundred customers that pay me a hundred dollars a month. That would be my full-time work and support a hundred companies individually. That was the initial intention support a hundred companies because I can't, that wouldn't, wouldn't be too far out of my capabilities and it wouldn't completely drown me in work.

And so that's how I really priced ocp. This is, this is what I wanted and. What I'm seeing now is that I can serve the WebPress industry much more by working with hosting companies, and I'm talking with a lot more than, uh, listed on my website officially, who already, you know, signed up. There's a few bigger announcements coming now with Word Cam BS that I don't think I can talk about or would be, It's not my [00:22:00] place to her to share these things.

Um, but yeah, I just, I wanted to. I wanna do this, do things my way. That was, it was really important to me, and I'm really glad I did because I'm also seeing that I don't think I'm a good employer. Um, unlike people. What's his face? Joshua? Joshua Trouble? Yes. I think he was a really, it's, he seemed, Maybe you can leave some notes here.

If, if anybody's working for him. He seems like a really good boss and, I'd like to be like him, but I'm not, or at least not at this point. And may, maybe I'll get there and I want to grow and scale. What, what I would like is I would like someone to come in, be the CT cto, as ceo, take over the company, and I'm down with whether this is raising money or.

Getting, you know, with all the acquisitions, I think it makes sense for a established, skilled team to come in and grow this. But as long as I'm [00:23:00] not on my own, but have a very small team, which I have right now, I don't, I don't wanna just grow and grow and grow. That's not my, I wanna create a good product.

I wanna have happy customers and not have depression because I'm burning the candle at both. . Yeah. Do

Dan Knauss: do you think that, that to me doesn't, man, I, I, I resonate with that a lot. I, I feel that a lot. I, I feel like there's a lot of, well, maybe not a lot, but proportionally, but that there's a, there's a culture in, in WordPress among developers and, and others that is kind of the smallest, beautiful Yeah.

Approach. And have you found other, like others? Kind of supporting, validating that or other people you think have done

Till Krüss: that except that all the smallest beautiful gets bought up. . Yeah, they do. But then because we have these, oh, what do you call them? [00:24:00] Conglomerates now, like with the cloud waste acquisition today, um, by digital ocean.

There are these giant, I dunno, visually speaking skyscrapers, you know, there's a bunch of them, but there are so many CRAs in the pavement in between that where smallest, beautiful can grow and you have like beautiful little happy, healthy flowers. I don't know what the, where the analogy is going. Um, There's space to grow.

There's always issues in between where you have small companies that can solve a problem that there's so many that exist in workers and create a really good solution, and then they will grow and maybe they'll be bought up and integrated in the big sky scrapers. Maybe not that, that it doesn't really matter.

There's always space for small, whether it's a startup or just a small business or your, your site project to, to flourish. I.

Dan Knauss: Yeah, I was thinking of John Christopher, who's you, you probably saw some of that in post [00:25:00] Slack and his give attention because it's an unusual, um, approach with organized wp. Um, yeah, he goes way back with, He's very intentional about it.

I think that's actually a project that has a previous plugin behind it goes back 10 years or so. So even when he was doing search WP and from what I was reading and hearing, A large part of it sounds, sounds like you, where part of the thinking is not just a technical or revenue oriented planning, but how is this something that fits into my life where my relationship with my customers is meaningful?

Um, and that kind of connects with what I'm hearing from you about like yeah, you don't want the, the stress. Over promising and delivering cuz your own scale has gotten out. Like, that's, that's what I've found most painful and personally a barrier in, um, [00:26:00] freelancing. You know, if, if you're doing you, it doesn't, it wasn't, it's not something that quality can maintain at, at scale and to the extent you put relationships and maybe in your own community, into your clients, um, that really matters.

Like you, uh, you feel. Like you're letting people down if, if you can't, so, and I don't, I think they're at a point of scale. No one cares anymore. Right. They don't care. A big conglomerate, like you're not a successful

Till Krüss: number. The customer service, this is always what I think about, and I'm sure I've shared this once or twice before where I don't wanna interact with.

Customers or people like this. I have my friends and I have my personal world where I wanna interact with humans, but on the internet there's too many sketchy people out there. So to me, one big goal was to keep customer service as minimal. And what's the opposite of hostile? Um, peaceful . As [00:27:00] nourishing as possible to me being an open source maintainer for, I dunno, 18.

18 years maybe. Mm-hmm. started with like half a mint back in the day, if anybody remembers that. Yeah, I do. Only the old people and Sean Inman, Iam, I dunno what his name is, but, um, you know, this analytics software, being an open source maintainer for so long, I, I saw the progression. Maybe I'm so jaded now.

Maybe the internet has changed and there's more people now I'm not. But back in the day, it was really pleasant to interact with users of my software that I wanted to write and publish for free. And over the years I just saw that it's more, not more and more, but the percentage of shitty and hostile and interactions.

I don't know if I can curse on this podcast here. Um, I think just the F word probably, maybe I'll refrain from using it became. It's more [00:28:00] unpleasant to me. And with object aspro, I wanted to have the same thing where I, I make a software, people pay me for the service every month to use the best of the best, but they didn't talk to me.

That was my, my goal. And instead of keeping them away and not responding to customer service requests, I wanted to create software that is so stupid, reliable that they don't have to talk to me and bring back everything I learned from my many years in the Laville community. Bring this back. Test driven development, reliability as a, as.

The number one core value of, of the software, not performance, not all the fancy belts and whistles and, and cool designs, not reliability, just you install it and you don't have to think about it because it just works. If there's an error, it recovers by itself. That was the intention because I don't wanna do customer service as my, my, my life, and.

Again, I could scale and hire people, but I know why have a whole customer service team, What if the [00:29:00] software just works? And right now it's slowly changing over the last, let's say, I think it's almost three years now in ste, in November, um, two and a half years, let's say the majority of my days is I work, I do whatever I want, I can, I can drive my businesses forward, whether it's the sales and marketing or whether it's software and I.

Have been doing five minutes of customer service so far, and now it's slowly getting to like 10 minutes a day, which is still delightful to me, but it's 10 minutes now. I'm not stoked about it, so I'm working on making all these questions that over and over ask, and in the customer service chat or emails I integrate into the software, so I wanna bring it down to five minutes by just making it more intuitive, more reliable, and more.

Explan explanatory. Explanatory. Kind of like the apple iPhone where you, it just works for the most part, right?

Dan Knauss: Some, I, I can, I can hear people, I, I can read minds of [00:30:00] like, you know, you, you're talking on the one hand of like putting yourself out of business almost. But on the other hand, I can also imagine a lot of WordPress plug-in developers and, and far beyond that.

10 minutes. 10 minutes a day. One guy on support. That's, that's like paradise . Yeah. Cause the, the, the, for years and years and, and ongoing, the, the, probably the single most common, um, uh, complaint and, and it's more than a complaint. It's a life. It's a quality of life. Mm-hmm. issue when you listen to developers and product owners with.

With a support desk and it's, it's where the highest frustrations are and where they end up spending its money, time, and, and your mind.

Till Krüss: Mm-hmm. . So, and to me it's, my personally till this thing here, it's my happiness, my, [00:31:00] my contentment, and how I feel about life. Doing a lot of customer service is not part of that.

Right.

Dan Knauss: Yeah. Uh, to be honest, both sides of that transaction don't really want to be in there. It's not, um, it's not where we wanna spend our time.

Till Krüss: Yeah. And if it's five minutes a day, I can put in the energy. I can be quite nice and helpful. But if it would be 2030, if it's an hour, and like this is what I gotta do if I wake up and.

Have a coffee and new customer. So it's just, I don't wanna do it. I would probably sell the business to Digital Ocean and, and move on. It's, that's not the life that I wanna live. Right. Yeah.

Dan Knauss: What, what allowed you to, to know that about yourself earlier on? So that just seems unusual. What, what takes you down that, that path of knowing your limitations and know?

What you want when it's the opposite of what everything else says, like go and grow. This is a form of growth, but it's not the [00:32:00] stereotype, the one we always think about of bigger, more people, more tickets that come with our support tickets. Mm-hmm. .

Till Krüss: What? Think. Think what's? I think, I think the Ansys iowaska, psychedelic substances.

What do you call them? plant medicines, if you wanna say. I think that's the answer. It could also be just I, because I'm near atypical, I have to do things my way. Maybe that's it. But I definitely, as a human, I value introspection and self inquiry. It's top of my list of things that I like to do in life and with myself and what drives me and what I find interesting in myself and understanding how do I.

How to still function and how do other people work, which is a lot more challenging sometimes because there's someone that can be so irrational and self inquiry and [00:33:00] psychedelics allows me to. Or has allowed me to just be more self-aware than I was five years ago, 10 years ago, and just increase that. If that's a quantifiable number, which I don't, maybe it isn't, get to know myself more of like what makes me happy, what makes me, what helps me be content, or what nourishes me, What drains me, and being self-aware I am, I'm a huge fan of that, that self inquiry.

Dan Knauss: Yeah, there's no, if you don't leave any room for it, it's, it's gone. And that time is gone. I, I feel you on that. Um, yeah. The last five years have probably, for almost everyone, have been possibly the toughest, um, in our lives. I, I think that's probably not that unique. And a big part of it for me is, um, along with, with remote relationships and remote.

and social isolation happening at the same [00:34:00] time that there's, um, it's been a complicated, um, situation to keep enough of your own head space and relationships and, and things like that, um, that are, that are closer to home. That, you know, traditionally we find our identity and grounding and meaning and, um, Yeah, it's just gotten so much harder.

And it sounds like you've kind of gone the, the opposite, opposite direction. Pretty successfully with, with that, ironically, by, as, as other people scale up and develop all these inefficiencies, here's this guy with this, with this product that solves that problem to some extent, remaining this kind of calm.

Center of the wheel , it's like I'm imagining the, the nun, everything else spinning around and you're trying to [00:35:00] do as few, uh, as little, as little movement within the center of that as as possible. Um, seems like a smart, desirable way to work. To me, um, it

Till Krüss: wasn't,

Dan Knauss: Yeah. Have you changed, has anything changed in, in your practices, in, in models or is this pretty confirmed at, at this point, this is how you want to do it?

You're, it sounds like you're entertaining some idea of business partners. You know, as long as you have a, a role that allows, allows you to, to have the, the space and, and activity that you want.

Till Krüss: I think it's, um, it's a good question. I dunno if I have an answered this. Um, I,

because it's such a loud voice on the outside, everybody does the same thing. This is how you speak, this is how you [00:36:00] behave. This, there's so much conformity and we all wanna do this. As you know, talking apes. Because this, It's such a reinforcement. I think it's called something cultural head. Gem. Gem. Gem.

Yeah. That's the word. Yeah. This is my ESL coming out here. Where it's over and over reinforced that it's good to be efficient. As a German, this is, I relate to this a lot, but um, it's, efficiency is important. Work is important. First question is, what do you do? Like everything is so work centric that it's.

Sometimes hard to put aside. So I still entertained the thought of like, Hmm, can I do this my way again, , Can I do this in a way that works for me? Can I be efficient or can I support growth my way? It's hard to just shut it out because it's so dominant in all of, at least the societies that I live in and [00:37:00] the circuits that I live in where money and success.

What are you doing within like that, the values are just so reinforced externally. That to me to again, find, I'm gonna quote Joshua Strayer again here. Like, what do I actually wanna do with my life? Um, not that he's the first question you ever asked me that, but how do, what do I want? And, and, and forgetting my inner.

Sometimes happens, and maybe those are the moments that I think about growth and investment. Yeah. And, and scaling out. Um,

I definitely see to, to switch gears here as well, I definitely see being, working with hosting companies the last couple of years, maybe the last years last year more and. I can make a bigger impact in the workforce community if I would have proper backing and, and, [00:38:00] uh, better team. And seeing now working on this particular product for the last close to three years or three years, probably with the development cycle, I'm really good at product.

I'm good at figuring out with people need. In my five minutes of customer service, I get enough information figuring out what they need. Being technical enough to bridge the gap and, and creating quality products. That's kind of the, the pride or that's what I'm proud of or take pride in. And I, in an idea world, I'd love to focus on that and not think about receipts and my.

Accounting balances and all these other things. I try to outsource these things, but there's so much more to a business, so much more including customer service. Just focusing on product would be, I think, a very idea idyllic state for me to be in, of just, I get to just [00:39:00] create and make the world a better place.

At the same time, less resource usage, faster, low times, less electricity being used and. Less headaches for people like the, the emotional impact of people worrying about the WordPress websites. That to me is a un quantifiable number that I really like to get higher. Um, why worry about your software? Like, let's worry about the relationships that we have or the what we want maybe, um, our ourselves and like these, the things that actually matter.

So with software is making the lives a bit easier and less annoying. Um, I'd love to do that. Back to your question of like, has anything changed? Just more and more discovering, running all of this myself and then outsourcing some engineering parts or the, you know, accounting, bookkeeping. Obviously it would be fun to just do product itself.

Um, it's not [00:40:00] my reality at the moment, but I would entertain it if it's, if it's done right. And I've heard this a few times, whether this is the Pagely acquisition or WP Media, the WP Rocket guys, there seems to be companies out there that are still have a lot of financial backing, but they're not,

I, I don't know how to say this. They're not cutthroat capitalists. Right machines. Good.

Dan Knauss: disadvantage maybe, but worth life. Worth living.

Till Krüss: Yeah. Like the, the one group one or one group. Mm-hmm. one.com hosting. And in Scandinavia, they just seem to, maybe it's a Scandinavian model. Again, just more focus on Yeah, we all work, we all pick pride in that maybe or identify with what we do for, for, for work.

But not at the extreme expense of our personal lives.

Dan Knauss: Yeah. [00:41:00] I, I think who's gonna argue with that? and feel good, feel like they really mean it. But yeah, that is a, it does seem more and more like that's a, a culture and the spirit and ethos that's, that's been diminished over time. Mm-hmm. in open source and Yeah.

It needs, it needs advocates in

Till Krüss: it's, Yeah,

Dan Knauss: it's a, it's good to have voices for that, but there's also some really practical things to it. Some of what you were saying, I, I know you, um, if you wanna drive down headaches and inefficiencies and stuff that doesn't work and poor quality products, testing is probably your main answer to that.

For practically speaking, what can WordPress do to. take, take a lot of trouble off of, off of, um, individual shoulders and off, you know, off the project, I [00:42:00] suppose too. Is that, is that accurate that the, the role of testing and standards, um, are an area that we're, we

Till Krüss: haven't, um, yeah. Really matured in? I think so, and I'm still , I still dislike it, um, but I do it because it's, I wanna push a big release on a Friday afternoon and go camping for the weekend without having to worry about it.

And I've done this a few times now, like I try to release on a Friday afternoon and push big releases to, I don't know what, it's like 400,000 sites now. Um, Test driven development, whether this is, yeah, whether this is test driven development, meaning first you write your tests and then you write the software, or if you do it after the fact and you spend the extra, you know, 30% I think it is on, on average.

Um, The extra time to write tests, get to, you don't have to chase the [00:43:00] 100% code coverage where every single line is tested, but at least test the major parts of your software and whether this is JavaScript browser integration testing, and when you click this button, something happens and it works. Or this is just following the, the paths and PHP of like when.

What happens when you flush the cash by cli? Does it actually empty your red estate? Just having sanity checks in place? It's a very technical topic. Testing in general, there's, what's his name? Um, Chris Hard, The grumpy programmer, who is just his whole life seems to be an advocate for testing, um, in, in many, many different communities.

Not exclusive to php, just test your software. And to me, that allows me to be confident in what I. To trust my own software cuz I'm very flawed and make mistakes all the time. But my tests will tell me when I do and just have peace of mind over the weekend where I [00:44:00] can, I don't have to stress out about pushing out a release that might break other people's sites.

And this has been a very frequent occurrence. And WordPress, anybody from, I'm not gonna say any names, but I'm sure we all write the stories that as a release and sudden. I don't know. Millions of websites are slower because there's no tests, so there's no quality. Qa, What's it called? Quality assurance.

Quality qa. Qa, Yeah. There's no teams. And whether this is manual or I think it should be automated because why spend human hours trying to do this? Just take the time to write these test. It's. It helps me. And then also to this extent of like customers have, I think more trust in the software. When there's releases and there's no, Oh, buck fix is, Buck fix is buck fixes and many small.

You can see the the evolution of my free plugin, the Reddest object Cash. Sometimes when I do a big release, they do six [00:45:00] releases and 24 hours. It's so many people using it and something breaks for someone. And this is what I wanted to do different with Object Cash Pro. It's written from the ground up and it's test driven.

Like there is no, it's not, not quite a hundred percent quote coverage at this point, but it's a very, It's thoroughly tested. Yeah.

Dan Knauss: Right. And what's the barrier to that? Becoming more of the. in WordPress are, are you involved in the on the core test team at all? I know you do. Uhfor the new

Till Krüss: performance team.

No, I'm not. I see that there is a lot of tests in WordPress core, like it's well tested. I think the, not the theme market, but the plugin market itself seems are probably a pain to test the plugin. Industry plugin. Severe is, testing is not a common thing. I, I don't see it very much. No few people seem to even talk about it.

I don't wanna be an [00:46:00] advocate for it. I have other things to do. Maybe I should do a presentation at some point at a conference just to like see the, So the seats, what do you call? Put the seats in the ground. Yeah. Yeah. It's, uh, it's really good. I don't know if there's anything in the way except for awareness and then actually taking the time to do it.

It, it, it's time consuming. It's expensive. If it's 30% of the time that you write code, that if it's an hour, I don't know what 30% is, 20 minutes, 80 minutes, something like that. A third, let's say, of that time coding. , you would then spend writing tests. It's not fun. I, I don't, You can make it kind of fun with like a decent test.

We, a nice tooling, but it's still, you, you, you're doing this. However, for me, now down the road, seeing that I have three years of. Software in one place. I don't wanna test all these pieces that have written a year ago. They work, they can just stay [00:47:00] as they are, and if they break, I will know down the road and they can actually move a bit faster.

Now, in the future of like whether this is adding new features or changing how timeouts work. The last release I pushed yesterday was adding connection retries and the few things broke and I, I just know I don't have. Abuse . I don't have to abuse my customers and they test it on their life production sites.

My tests will reveal these issues first, which I, I think it's the more customer friendly approach to not let your customers test your software. And, um, I listen to the Accidental Tech podcast the other day where Apple kind of dust is at scale. They just throw it out. Developers do the QA for them. I think that was the comment.

I can't speak to that, but it reminds me of this talking about this.

Dan Knauss: Yeah, very much so. Yeah. Do you, do you think that that, um, WordPress is, you could say relative [00:48:00] isolation or under participation in the larger PHP world is part of the story too, that if, if there was more overlap and more. Mm.

Relationships in, into, into things like Elle or a Million Possible Directions with, with PHP and is more, more directly involved with it. That, that, that would help, uh, that would enhance some things like, like stand uh, standards around testing and and so on. Um, we just kind of, our ecosystem and people do their own thing cause it's, they're not.

They're not, um, their peers are in a, in a different place than, say, someone working in, in a, a PHP framework somewhere

Till Krüss: else. Yeah. I think there's, I mean, there's a lot of smart developers on WordPress as well that's maybe [00:49:00] cross to, to the other. Ecosystems over outside of WordPress and they include testing, whether this is Google engineers being hired or whatever it is.

There is, there is good tooling out there. I don't think we're too isolated. We definitely judge and look down upon, um, understandably so. Maybe that's just because of the lack of testing, but I, I don't even know how to solve this. To me it's a problem and maybe it would be enforcing tests for plugins with more than, I don't know, a thousand users on the repository.

Because you can measure OB objectively. You can quantify the code coverage, whether let's say it's 80% what, whatever's a reasonable or 50%. , I dunno if you can have the main path. I, I, I don't know the, the details of this, but you could also enforce it such as like, Hey, you've got now 12 months to test your software, and then it gets a little check mark.

Hey, [00:50:00] this plugin has a test suite. I would need to build one for my free plugin. Now , But it, it might be a good, good idea and to include in that there's been a. Talk in deep What Core Performance? Performance Core, I don't know. They just changed the name, The performance team. Mm-hmm. , Um, to have, whether there's this badges that.

When you have a clean, what percent stall you install a plugin. How do the, my queries, like what's the impact of this plugin? How is performance being handled? And I dunno how much you can automate these tests, but maybe we need more reviewers that there is more high quality code a. On the wordpress.org, at least for the ones that have, um, you know, a hundred thousand, a million users that you know that these are actually properly tested for performance degradations or recessions, um, regressions.

Sorry, so many recessions going on at the moment, and for [00:51:00] performance regressions or just for testing, I think that would be a decent approach. I don't know if this is feasible. Someone, what's her? Epstein, she something. Half Elf is on a Twitter profile. I don't, Yeah. You know what I'm talking about. Yes. Um.

She, I think, runs the plugin team and I don't know what of the, what is possible and it's of course it's a big burden. Again, on that you, we push on open source developers and maybe there needs to be fun. I don't know how to solve this problem, but testing would definitely improve the overall trust in WordPress, that you can upgrade a plugin without things going slow or breaking.

I think it would be a good approach and. I would say it's certainly part of the secret sauce for Object Cash Pro and its success. It just, you can trust that it's reliable. Yeah. And business is first. Well,

Dan Knauss: as an alternative to putting it on on.org, there's always the possibility I've wondered about this, like why the, I'm not aware of this happening, but [00:52:00] in a maturing market and ecosystem that I think we do have, there's the possibility of industry.

cooperation and self-regulation to some extent, where you, those larger plugin, um, companies could on their own, see the, see that value and decide on a standard amongst themselves some common tooling or, or practice or something like that and do their part to kind of police that end of the, the market or set an example that, that sounds like.

Very strong policing, but I mean you're, you know, pleasing bugs. Um,

Till Krüss: oh, we already have guidelines for the plugins, what you can and can't do. Yeah, it's very clear and they all make sense. Maybe adding performance and test coverage to that could be at least a discussion. I'm sure it has been. I will talk to Felix at work, us about this on the country today.

Dan Knauss: Good. That's, uh, yeah, that's definitely a, a [00:53:00] progressive direction to, to move in. Um, where, where do you see, um, opportunities and, you know, for, for you and, and just WordPress in general, where are they, where are the opportunities and I guess the, the risks and, and threats. People would often seem to have more of those in mind, but, um, how those two relative quantities is they're, Which is more on your mind and, and what are you, what are you seeing down the road?

Till Krüss: probably with everybody. I'm more, I think more about the risks. Yeah. And threat than the opportunities. The monkey brand. Mm-hmm. , I don't know if an answer to, if I have an answer to this, I, some of them are a bit concerned of like, how long is WordPress around? , but it doesn't, it's not slowing. Maybe this is just like you said, the talking apr, [00:54:00] I, it's not slowing down.

There's acquisitions everywhere. I don't see it dying out for whatever reason. All the replacements like it's.

I guess, yeah, I don't know. I, I, I don't, I don't think I have an answer to that question. Sorry.

Dan Knauss: That's fine. It's a big, big, wide open one. Um, I, I think a lot of, a lot of things you, you've touched on, I wish I, you know, we, we hear more, and I, I hope resonates with, uh, a lot of people. We don't often connect the human social embeddedness of our lives with the.

We're doing or not openly or we don't share that and, you know, why else are you doing what you do? Um, some people are pretty open about it, but, um, I would, I would like to hope that there's, there's opportunity in this space for people who wanna work that way, who are wanna work like you [00:55:00] do, and that this is, this is a good model that however big everything else may get.

There's those cracks, like you said, between. The sidewalk where there's room for a relatively low stress. Good, good work. Um, and

Till Krüss: I'm glad you found that. If there's any more questions, if, if you like listening to this, if you enjoy the, the, this conversation, the stories, if there's anything the listeners want to hear more about or any questions, I'm always happy.

You can hit me up on Slack, on post status, Slack for of course, WordPress, Slack email. You know, or send questions to Dan and we can do, uh, if there's the demand for it. Uh, episode two on this.

Nexcess is the latest host to adopt Till Krüss‘s Object Cache Pro, which offers a really interesting model for partnerships between a WordPress plugin product business and a valuable niche market: hosting companies and anyone running WordPress sites at scale. I recorded this conversation with Till back in August, and it's about time we pushed it out. This isn't the final cut for a Post Status podcast, but I wanted to release it now, as-is, since it's very timely.

Performance is a pressing concern for WordPress and WooCommerce — and a large part of the challenges people have running WordPress in the wild are plugins that have not been built and tested to perform at scale. There's likely a lot of opportunity in aligning on performance as a key, common interest for product, agency, and hosting companies in the WordPress space. And, as Till's example shows, a small WordPress company, or company of one that wants to stay that way, still can thrive today.

Till's particular niche is not for everyone, but some of his ideas are very portable. For one thing, what plugin owner has not felt the pain of an extraordinarily busy support forum? Till is up to (wait for it..) 5-10 minutes a day on support — which he aims to decrease. How? Testing to ensure the highest quality. It's an idea that needs to become a reality and a habit in the third party WordPress product ecosystem, Till insists — and I think he's right about that and much else.

This Week at WordPress.org (October 3, 2022)

News

• WordPress 6.1 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) Now Available

WP 6.1 DevNotes and Team Updates

• WordPress 6.1 Field Guide
• Performance Field Guide for WordPress 6.1
• WordPress 6.1 ready to be translated
• Enhanced TypeScript support in WordPress 6.1
• Reference Styles values in theme.json
• WordPress 6.1 Accessibility Improvements
• Miscellaneous REST API improvements in WordPress 6.1
• Block API changes in WordPress 6.1
• Content locking features and updates
• Simplified data access with new React hooks in WordPress 6.1
• Introducing WP_List_Table::get_views_links() in WordPress 6.1
• Escaping Table and Field names with wpdb::prepare() in WordPress 6.1
• Create-block scaffolding tool updates
• Introduction of presets across padding, margin and block gap
• Improved PHP performance for core blocks registration
• Introducing “Update URI” theme header in WordPress 6.1
• Block-based “template parts” in traditional themes
• Improvements to WP_Query performance in 6.1
• New cache Site Health checks in WordPress 6.1
• Navigation Block Fallback Behavior in WP 6.1

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Related News:

• ECMAScript Proposals

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And how much weight does the community carry?

This week we’ve seen a lot of discussion around the Active Install Growth Chart in the WordPress Repository. Mark Zahra has rallied the community to push back and find answers. He has an open meta Trac ticket you can follow and comment on to see where this goes, but it does beg the question: how open is our open-source community when decisions can be made unilaterally without warning and without community input?

This isn’t the first time the community has dealt with changes (remember when Gutenberg was introduced?), and it certainly won’t be the last time (history in any community bears witness to this), but when should the community be involved, how much involvement should there be, and how and when do you notify the community at large?

Decision-by-committee is difficult enough, and decision-by-community is called an election. Surely there must be a way that we can gather information, keep the community informed, and move forward in a mutually-beneficial way. I don’t claim to have solutions, but I, along with many of you, will be watching to see how this goes.

Racism and Allyship

Racism and Allyship continue to be a conversation in the WordPress community. Allie Nimmons recently hosted a two-hour webinar on How to Be a Better Ally. Feedback on the event was all positive, mostly due to the non-lecture way that Allie presents on the topic, and also the workshop approach to challenging the attendees to think about their current beliefs and how they consider themselves allies, how they think they can do better, and how we can all challenge ourselves to think about our place in the community to one another. I consider myself an ally, and I look for ways that I can improve continually, and this workshop helped me move forward in that even more. If you weren’t able to attend, you can still purchase the event and watch it online. I urge you to do it.

WordPress Business News Roundup for the Week of October 3

Active Install Charts Removed from Plugin Repo

In reaction to as-yet-unpublicized details about the abuse of active install data in the WordPress.org plugin repository, the charts displaying that data have been removed from plugin pages in a move expected to be temporary. Important (and familiar) questions are emerging as this story unfolds. While we wish many things had gone differently, the questions that will help the most and move plugin businesses forward have to do with the things they (and anyone in the WordPress community) are always free to do. Most of all, “What are winning growth strategies for plugin owners that aren't dependent or overly focused on single measures of success — whether they use the .org repo or not?” READ →

• Cory Miller: What Can We Do Better to Support Our Plugin Developers?
• Daniel Schutzsmith: Diversifying Revenue, the 50% Coding / 50% Marketing Lifecycle, Active Install Clawback, and Turbo Admin

Trust and Distrust: Microaggressions, Active Install Growth Data for Plugins, and Open Source Security — Post Status Excerpt (No. 70)

In our weekly chat for Post Status Excerpt, Nyasha Green and I take on three big, unavoidable issues in the WordPress community — touching briefly on one that looks like an iceberg dead ahead that no one is paying attention to. All of these issues deal with trust — how it can be harmed and the difficulty (and necessity) of repairing it: 1) racism and microaggressions, 2) the sudden removal and uncertain fate of the active install growth chart in the WordPress.org plugin repository, and 3) open source and security. Briefly discussed: emerging US federal policy that aims to secure open-source software. Zero-trust architecture might work well for networked machines, but human relationships and communities need trust. (Full Transcript) LISTEN →

Going from Agency to Products: The Story of Barn2 — Post Status Draft 125

Katie and Andy Keith started out as a WordPress agency almost a decade ago and then tried to break into WordPress products, first with themes and then plugins. Challenges arose with reliable project management on the agency side while they tried to establish a foothold in the WordPress plugin market after a first attempt with themes. The WooCommerce Extensions Store is where their business took off. With niche extensions that had no competition, they ranked very quickly. Other ideas for plugins solved problems in custom development projects for clients. Eventually, the Keiths developed a formula for evaluating new plugin ideas. Learn from their challenges and successes — there are a lot of interesting details that only come from experience. Hosted by Cory Miller. (Full Transcript) LISTEN →

Open Source Communities: You May Not Be Interested in CISA, But CISA is Very Interested in You

United States national security interests are poised to become more invested in and engaged with open-source projects classified as public infrastructure. From Log4j to the Securing Open Source Software Act, how did it all come together in 2022, and what may lie ahead? READ →

• When the Free Rider is Government — Chinmayi Sharma argues our digital infrastructure is built on open source, and it cannot provide adequate security so governments should help out.
• Open Source Software Security Summit 2: 10 areas of focus to improve OSS security
• A proposed amendment to HR 4521, the America COMPETES Act of 2022, would authorize the creation of a set of Critical Technology Security Centers inside the Department of Homeland Security through CISA, including one focused specifically on open-source security.
• The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee held a hearing on Log4Shell and open-source security in February. GovTech did a nice summary of the event, but there are many details in the speakers' prepared statements worth reading or viewing. (Speakers include David Nalley, Apache Software Foundation • Brad Arkin, Cisco Systems • Jen Miller-Osborn, Palo Alto Networks • Trey Herr, The Atlantic Council) The Q&A; is worth a listen. WATCH →

The recent discussions around the Active Installs data being removed from the WordPress Repo prompted a couple of questions I think we need to answer as a bigger WP community and particularly our members at Post Status.

As someone who lived in the WordPress product space for 10+ years and had free and paid plugins (found this from 2010), I resonate with the issues and concerns being brought up particularly by plugin developers.

In the spirit of Mark Zahra's “let's work together, not against each other,” what I want to do here is continue a constructive conversation and help us all make progress together — for the good of WordPress, plugin developers, and users.

My intention is asked in the spirit of Mark Zahra's sentiment of “let's work together, not against each other” and is simple:

To give voice to those awesome people and the countless others building WordPress plugins around the world, to help frame the conversation to be clear and constructive, in order to help us all move forward.

So to our WordPress plugin developers ….

What worries, concerns, problems, obstacles, challenges do you have creating, building, maintaining WP plugins?

What are 1-3 initiatives would you prioritize that would create a better, more sustainable environment for you in WP?

As always, keep it about the work, never personal. Talk about and share your experiences, not blame.

In this episode of Post Status Excerpt, Dan and Ny take on three issues in the WordPress community that can threaten or impair trust while also revealing how foundational trust is, especially in open source.

First, they talk about Ny's article at MasterWP, “Enough with this woke stuff: and other racist speech you can unlearn,” which explains microaggressions and received a significant number of macroaggressions in reply — but also far more positive support from the community.

Next, “How do we rebuild trust when it's harmed?” is a question that leads into the biggest WordPress story of the week — Matt Mullenweg's apparent decision to shut down access to active install data at the WordPress.org plugin repo due to an unspecified security breach and/or privacy concern. The way communication has happened — or hasn't happened — about this decision is clearly damaging trust in the WordPress community, particularly among business owners with a product in the plugin repository. Ny points out how this all looks to a newcomer to the WordPress community — again, trust takes a beating. But while we lack clarity about the po. ssible return of install data in some form, Dan suggests asking why this data is trusted and valued by many plugin owners. What business decisions can it helpfully inform? Are there alternative and possibly better sources of data about a plugin's users?

Finally, Dan briefly talks about the emergence of draft legislation in the US Senate: the Securing Open Source Software Act. It seems likely that in the near future, US security agencies will be getting people, dollars, and new organizations involved in assessing risk in open-source software. Are WordPress auto-updates critical supply chain infrastructure? When should individual freedoms be exchanged for collective security? When do we need to know what our machines and software are doing? When don't we? Zero-trust architecture might work well for networked machines, but human relationships and communities need trust.

Trust can be betrayed in so many ways or failed even with the best of intentions.

Dan Knauss

Mentioned in the show:

• Nyasha Green, Enough with this woke stuff: and other racist speech you can unlearn (MasterWP)
• Mark Zahra, A sudden change leaves WordPress plugin devs in the dark (MasterWP)
• Dan Knauss, Active Install Charts Removed from Plugin Repo (Post Status)
• Dan Knauss, Open Source Communities: You May Not Be Interested in CISA, But CISA is Very Interested in You (Post Status)
• Cory Doctorow, Our technology is haunted by demons controlled by transhuman life-forms

Credits

• Nyasha Green, Editorial Director at MasterWP (Twitter)
• Dan Knauss, Editor for Post Status (Twitter)
• Olivia Bisset, Web Producer intern for Post Status (Twitter)

Every week Post Status Excerpt will bring you a conversation about important news and issues in the WordPress community and business ecosystem.

You can listen to past episodes of The Excerpt, browse all our podcasts, and don’t forget to subscribe on Spotify, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, iTunes, Castro, YouTube, Stitcher, Player.fm, Pocket Casts, Simplecast, or by RSS.

Transcript

Dan Knauss: [00:00:00] Good morning Ny.

Nyasha Green: Good morning, Dan. How are you?

Dan Knauss: Okay. I think! We've got quite a few things cover here, but I think today, the first — the first is probably a topic all onto itself. Something you could spend a lot of time on!

I feel like I'm in the role of like bringing, bringing someone to the family Thanksgiving dinner and having to explain like… Oh yeah, Uncle—

They said that.

Nyasha Green: Oh yeah, So , I wrote an article at Master WP about microaggressions. Mm-hmm. . And you know, usually when I do my social commentary, I do tie it to tech. And I mean, the reason I wrote it was tie it to tech issue, Twilio and claims of reverse racism and hiring and [00:01:00] things like that. And affirm of action and.

What I saw the conversation around this tech conversation was that, you know, a lot of microaggressions, which I talk about is like, you know, unconscious bias and basically racism. Um, so I was like, you know what, this seems like something that the community really needs to learn about and hear about. So, took my wonderful African American studies degree in research background, , and um, you know, did a good article on microaggressions.

Mm-hmm. , which led to more microaggressions. That let this hate mail led to me taking a little break from Twitter. But, um, I guess that's addressing the elephant in the room. But I mean, I look at it as something as I still don't regret writing it. I don't regret what led up to writing it because we have a good number of people in the community who are very informed and they are very.

You know, resp receptive to information like this. I got a [00:02:00] lot of support. I got more support than hate. Okay? So I want to do, I do wanna acknowledge that, but there are quite a few people in the community who actually, you know, they need this information and they ignore it. But you know, that's not going to stop me.

And although I'm taking a break from Twitter, you know, it's because, you know, I have a lot of other things going on. Um, yeah. So I'm perfectly fine and I can't wait to get back on Twitter cuz I'm really gonna argue. Yeah. I'm ready to argue with people. , I'm just kidding. But I, no, I do miss Twitter. It's.

It's nice connecting with people of the community. Yeah. Be in a meaningful way. And like I said, there were lots of people who were like, you know, I really needed to hear this. Like, this actually changed my perspective. I think I might buy a book, one of the books you recommended, Things like that. So, Oh good.

If I can help one person, like that's all, that's all I need. I don't need a, A group.

Dan Knauss: I think it was really good article. I, I haven't heard all of the, the stuff that you covered and you did have a, a bibliography at the end, so Yeah. Mm-hmm. , people [00:03:00] wanna read, click through and, and, and get into some more. Um, I thought it was pretty generous and even handed things.

It's interesting people. Triggered about it because you were pretty clear that microaggressions are, are things almost anyone can do to anybody else for any number of of reasons. Um, but, um, I don't know. I'm, I'm always, I'm surprised, not surprised at the kind of reactions that you, you get, um, when you touch these, these subjects.

I know it's, it seems pretty much that women. are the, the targets of, of that when, when there's equity and inclusion and justice type subjects that come up. Um, and that kind of bothers me. We talked about that a bit before. Mm-hmm. , the kind of, what I wouldn't say it even approaches hate mail and we get the kind of angry I'm leaving, [00:04:00] I'm unsubscribing it, you know, you shouldn't talk about this stuff.

It's always anonymous. Um, that comes to me. The, the stuff I've seen, um, that post status gets, Um, I, I think your experience is quite a bit different and that kind of concerns me that, um, people getting, I think a, a pretty, even, even handed and calm, even like calmer than , a very tolerant response to. Some tough issues where there's, there's definitely kind of abusive things going on out out there.

Um, the reaction is more of the same a as you said, directed very personally from people who are using their work accounts to do it. And they're not hiding their identity at all with you. I don't know what they're afraid of. They don't do that with, with us, but it [00:05:00] kind of, That doesn't speak to anything good if they feel confident.

Um, just cutting loose on, on you, on, on women who write, um, something that they don't want to hear. And it is, it is exclusively men as far as I've ever heard.

Nyasha Green: Yeah. Um, As, as you said, as we talked about people, as you saw on Twitter, people are writing from their Twitter accounts with their WordPress information in it.

Yeah. They're sending it from their business address that. Their business, their business, email addresses that have their addresses and phone numbers and stuff. Mm-hmm. , that's what's, uh, . It's interesting to me because even if you, I, it's a disrespect thing, honestly. Let me, let me go back. They do it because it's, they know like, I can say this to you with my chest, and there's no repercussions.

Or they think, they think that, right. And, um, it's a disrespect issue. It's always amusing to me. Going back a little further to what you said, you were like, you wrote it very like, you know, without emotion. Objectively, I've, I've seen a [00:06:00] lot of people say that. A lot of people said this to me. Mm-hmm. , they were like, this was written like a research paper.

Yeah. Because, you know, one, it was. Two. The biggest thing that I want people to know is that I don't have the luxury of being able to be emotional in writings like this. When I write about my race and my gender or things that I have experienced, and the moment I show any sign of emotion, I'm the wrong person.

It doesn't matter what the other party did to me, right? Because there's this big, uh, I don't know what you would call it. It's this big theory with people discount your experiences and they say it's because you're emotional. It's because you're looking to be a victim like you in, like, I enjoy stuff like this.

I don't enjoy racism or racist people. I prefer to pretend they don't exist. That if I could do that, that's what I would do. But, um, I just couldn't show emotion. And it's been a while since I've written like that. Um, I've been able to show emotion for a while, but I knew with this I couldn't. And you see with that, we still got hate mail

So, uh, I got told I was being a victim of, I was like, Of what? [00:07:00] No response. I was like, What am I a victim of? I'm like, I'm, this is, I have. Micro aggress against people. I've used ables language, you know, not knowing I've said things, um, toward people that I didn't know was harmful. And it was important to me to unlearn that I don't care if I didn't do it on purpose.

And I'm like, Doesn't everyone feel like this? No, they just rather not be told that they're doing anything bad at all, ever, even if it's unintentional and even if it hurts people, but you know, that's them. But for everybody else who wants to learn, I'm always here .

Dan Knauss: Yeah, it's, uh, definitely worth checking out if, um, if you haven't seen it enough with this woke stuff and other racist speech you can unlearn, which I think is very inviting.

Um, uh, and yeah, that, uh, it, it can be unlearned that's a, a positive. Um, yeah, I've seen mail come in about that, complaining that we don't want to hear anymore [00:08:00] of this. Change your thinking, change your mind. Woke stuff. Too bad. Yeah, too bad. Uh, everyone who has that kind of reaction is just a voting for doubling down on, on bigotry or the idea that they have nothing to learn.

Um, and yeah, I know, I think that's a pretty honest and good generous starting point that we're. There's, there's not really any way through life and relationships without stepping on people's toes, and sometimes intentional, sometimes unintentional. And if you don't learn from that, you're, you know, that's, uh, at some point it's not ignorance anymore, it's intentional damage you're doing.

Um, but I'm, I'm glad you wrote it and I hope more, more people. Engage with it, read [00:09:00] it and think about, think about it. Um, I, I think, uh, it's a tough one. Cause you, you also tackled the myth of meritocracy, which will die hard in, in tech. Um, , you know, I, everyone's a victim who hasn't earned their way up or, you know, proven their worth or, or mm-hmm achieved something that I consider, you know, notorious. Yeah, that's, there's a lot, there's a lot more going on in here than I imagine people think who just dismiss it at the title. So that's, uh, it's definitely worth, worth going through. And honestly, it's not in my time. I, I don't think this is something we've talked about a lot.

I don't think it's come up, um, a ton in, in just let's talk about. Kind of, um mm-hmm. conversations. [00:10:00] Yeah. In reaction to bad events. Un unfortunately in problem individuals and, uh, conflicts that come up. So it's, it's worth, it's worth having that conversation as a running one. And I hope the, um, diversity inclusion, um, equity approach to.

To the, to not just events, but um, to, um, to help people, um, look at each other and relate in general will. We'll make that more of just, this is, this is just normal, right? . There's, there's a lot of different cultures and perspectives and age groups represented in a large, large community like WordPress and having an open door and open conversation on it.

It's good. Um, anything else you wanted to [00:11:00] get into? About that. I know there's, there's so many big things looming behind it, but yeah, you need some time to rest, recover, and.

Nyasha Green: Um, not many big things for me. Um, I just want people to, I, I was worried people were thinking, um, especially the first few days I was off Twitter that I was like somewhere crying. I'm not,

Dan Knauss: Oh geez, , no.

Nyasha Green: This man could not ever in a million years make me cry, baby. But , um, it has encouraged me to keep talking.

Like, if, if the reception was a little more tame, , I definitely probably would've said, You know what? Okay. People heard and they understood. The pushback has made me want to talk about it even more. Mm-hmm. , So I'm, I'm cooking up some things and we had Ally, uh, Neon's workshop on how to be an ally, which, um mm-hmm.

talked a lot about microaggressions and a lot of things we were experiencing cuz Ally's been through the re, through the wrong. Is that the expression? Thank you.

Dan Knauss: Through the [00:12:00] ringer.

Nyasha Green: Through the ringer. Especially when you talk about, you know, racism in Europe and, you know, Yeah. You can't even talk about racism in Europe according to Twitter.

So, um, and I'm going to talk about it. So, and I'm going to Word camp. I, I don't care if no one has Christmas, I'm going to work Europe next year. But, um, Yeah, we're, we're gonna keep talking about it. I, I hope to see more workshops. I may do one I don't know yet. Um, I'm gonna keep, I'm gonna keep talking about it.

If, like I said, if I'm only reaching one person out of all the people that this goes out to, that's fine. Yeah. ?

Dan Knauss: Yeah. Good. No, um. I, I, I think, uh, anyone who thinks that you were off Twitter for any of those reasons is just out of , out of touch. No. Yeah. Pin pinned your flow foot to the floor with a steak knife.

Got bigger. wasn't a steak knife, but was a Japanese, a big

Nyasha Green: shift [00:13:00] knife.

Dan Knauss: The sword.

Nyasha Green: It was a Santo chef knife. It was very sharp. I sharpen it every week. It was an, it was a beast. Let's, let's embellish this story. Oh. And then, Yeah. I don't, I know.

Dan Knauss: Jump me. I told you I don't, I don't want to talk about sharp needles, knives every, you know.

Oh man, we won't, We've been through that. I've been upset when that happened. I was like, Oh, oh, oh,

Nyasha Green: oh. But I just wanted it to be known. It was not a state knife I could have handled.

Dan Knauss: No, it was huge. A state knife. Yeah. Yeah. It was. Uh, well, I, I hope that that recovery. Goes really well and admire your, your spirit, but it, it is good to get off.

It is good to get off of the social media and I'm glad for the supports you've got and the team that is always seems to be a hundred percent behind you and is good with disagreement and, and some amount of, of [00:14:00] tussle and stuff. And, and that's. That's probably a good move in a good way to move into the, the bigger, the bigger topic in most people's minds for this week.

But, um, yeah. Um, I, I really think the macro microaggression and how people teach, uh, how, how they treat each other. . Um, it's just a huge thing on onto itself and it really affects, it impacts trust and I think that's the theme, the theme here. And it's, it's always one in open source and in communities and in relationships.

How, how healthy is our level of trust? Um, For each other. And this, uh, this active install growth chart issue going away has certainly touched a lot of people's nerves and confidence or, or trust for, um, their relationship with.org and how things work there. [00:15:00] Have, have you, uh, what are, what are your, what are your thoughts on that?

It's, I guess nothing's really changed in a week as far as I can tell this morning.

Nyasha Green: That's a spicy topic. I don't know. I don't wanna say the wrong thing. I'm just kidding. You know? Nah. Um, , no. Um, that was a very interesting topic. Um, I have not jumped a lot into plugin developing. Plugin development. I've wanted to, that's something I have on my to-do list for the future.

Um, there's so many different aspects of WordPress I want to kind of jump into cuz it's very interesting. I don't, and I'm, I'm being honest, like I don't really know how to feel because I've seen both sides of it. Um, you sent me some good information. We had a very good article. Um, I don't wanna Bri pronounce his name.

Dan Knauss: Mark Zara. Mark. He's a great guy. He's, um,

Nyasha Green: he is, he is awesome. Um, he had a article by him. Oh, go ahead.

Dan Knauss: Oh yeah, he, he brought [00:16:00] it to everyone's attention first, I believe. Um, yeah, so for those. Have been under rock or, or new to all this , I think it was late Thursday night, um, a week ago. Um, uh, uh, someone who works for, for Audrey Capital, um mm-hmm.

So you would assume like directly. Responding to, to something Matt had re requested, took down the, uh, re reverted the changes in an old track ticket that in 2017, introduced the active install charts that are in the advanced section on plugins, um, in the WordPress DO org plugin repository. So, Plugin owners and really everyone can go in there and see a somewhat obscured, rough estimate of, um, how many sites appear to have your plugin installed on it at the, within the last 24 hours and.[00:17:00]

And then over time, how that needle moves. Is it, is it going up or down? And, and if there's a, a growth or decline trend, what's that line averaging out to? So that's been there for a while and, and people really, a lot of people have really relied onto it. And that just went away with a ticket that just said it's insufficiently obfuscated data.

So clearly there's, there's sort of an implication and then further things, there's definitely a security issue. The attempt to put out, to make some data public and not all of. Um, completely exact and comprehensive and available to everyone. That wasn't the attention, but some, some entity, um, with the capacity or more.

I know a lot, there's a lot of services and people who scrape that, who pull that data in some way. Um, To get a fix on the market, on to offer it as a service to look at other, [00:18:00] your plugins, your competitors, how things are going. Um, that was just pulled and there's co, the, the primary code involved, um, is not public, is not out in the open, and it's what would be receiving the, the pings from all the sites and interpreting them.

As, Okay, does this count as a live site? If so, score one and then making that available through some kind of API where you can pull, um, pull out your current active installs. That too, that's the part that apparently has a security privacy issue and needs attention and, um, that has not been formally, officially.

Clearly publicly stated, there's a discussion in meta slack, uh, mechan and WordPress slack, where this, you know, if you wanna read through, read between the lines and [00:19:00] people unofficially, but who I think are, uh, uh, totally trustworthy and, and know enough about what's going on. You can figure out what's happened.

And that's the article I put together. Uh, trying to take that as at face value. Um, that appears to be what's gone on. And you see the, the reaction if you were a plugin owner. In the,

Nyasha Green: I wanna pause on something you said. You said, Well, if you know that these people are reliable, the right people are telling you the right things.

What if you're a newbie like me right to this and you don't know these people not saying they're not true. Exactly. I don't, You know, I, I.

Dan Knauss: My thought, Who is Triple J? Why should we trust him?

Nyasha Green: No, I wouldn't say that. I'm just like, I'm going off what you're saying. You're like, Well, these are the right people.

And I'm like, Well, you know that. How would I know that? You know? Yeah. That's me not playing devil's advocate. Cause I think that's stupid, but I, that's me just like waiting in, like I, I don't really [00:20:00] personally know these people. I, I get. , I get the side, I get both sides. Again, because one, I, I looked at it when I was deciding on plugins that I didn't really have a lot of information a on because, you know, the more people that seemed to be using it mm-hmm.

the more reliable it seemed. And so, I mean, I definitely get that as a consumer. I'm definitely like, Okay, I'm gonna do a little bit more research and, you know, I'm lazy. So, you know, that's on me, that's on them, that's on me. But I, I get where plugin owners are panicking over that. Like, it's, it's their money, it's their business.

Like I, I get that. And then like, it does not seem to be a lot of clarity on it. Like especially when it went down, like it just went down like, ugh, you know, we need to fix this. Mm-hmm. . And it was kind of like, that's it. And it. , Right? What can we get an explanation? And it's like they have to dig, dig, dig.

And I'm, I know speculation is bad in general, especially when you don't have all the facts. Um, so I know there's been a lot of speculation on what's really going on and why it was really taken down, you know, outside of the few statements we got. But [00:21:00] do you blame them? Can you blame them? Like, if you're in the dark, all you can do is guess, I guess.

Dan Knauss: Yeah. And that's not helpful from the, from the, um, from a normal corporate communications or community management standpoint. Mm-hmm. not having, not having an internal PR arm, not having some means of, of communicating to stakeholders in ways that calm things and, and spread correct information. Um, is it just.

Who does that? So I think a lot, a lot of people feel disrespected, but this isn't a new thing. Um, they should know that it's, it's that way. It's been that way for a while and I would assume it's wanted to be that way. Um, but if, if you were expecting or wanting something a little more standard, that is not, not the [00:22:00] case.

And it does lead to people getting wound up. Speculating wildly and, and, uh, with distrust, uh, is spreading a good deal with distrust. And I think that's, that's what people are going to do every time.

Nyasha Green: I mean, and I'm, I'm with you on that. It's been this way for a long time, so people are pretty much, um, You know, a lot of people pretty much expect it.

So they're like, Well, you know, these things happen. That's one way to look at it, but I would like to quote the Great American Television Show The Wire. Oh yeah. And say the thing about the old days. Is they The old days, ,

Dan Knauss: Was that bunk who said that? I think

Nyasha Green: he did. Yeah. It wasn't, Yeah. So, um, This is the thing, like, again, me just looking at this from my perspective as a newer person, if I'm, if I don't know to expect these things, how can I expect them?

Right? Like, that's a lot, a lot of things happen in community, even outside of this, where it's like, well, that's how things have been done. And it's like mm-hmm. . [00:23:00] Yep. What am I supposed to do? , Like, I, I, Okay. Like I have to, There's no onboarding to how things are done. We've talked about,

Dan Knauss: That's a big issue.

This is your onboarding.

Nyasha Green: Yeah. So it's like, Trial by baptism. Trial by fire. Yeah, that's what I mean. But you know, and I know some people, some people who are still having these conversations, they've been in the community and they're used to this, but I mean, it could be, they could be tired of it. They could want change.

But I, I do agree with you saying like it's, it's gonna spread a lot of disinformation. No, you didn't say disinformation. It's gonna spread a lot of disagreement and we really don't need that. At all. You know what hashtag WP Drama. Um, but I mean, people also need answers. It's like I don't have a clear answer for what they should do because when I'm confused and I feel like I'm in the dark and nobody's giving me answers, I'm definitely going to complain.

And sometimes when you complain, it turns into hashtag WP Drama .

Dan Knauss: Oh yeah. That's almost inevitable. And so seeing it both ways, [00:24:00] Um, it, it shouldn't be Mark coming into Post Slack and in Twitter and saying, Hey, did anyone notice this ticket that just kind of crept in there and late Thursday night and, Hey, look, this chart's gone.

Um, that's. At once, kind of highly irregular. But then again, is it, is it really to me for this, for this family?

Nyasha Green: To this family, I guess not like I'm the, I'm the, the, the daughter-in-law, I guess I'm married into this family. Yeah. I'm at Thanksgiving. Like, Huh, ?

Dan Knauss: No, I feel like, yeah. Well, sorry you married into the mob.

Um, . I apologize for uncle over here. . Um, well, yeah, I, I think trying, I always try to see things multiple ways and, and look for what's the most. [00:25:00] Most productive way forward that will align the most people in a understand productive way And what can be learned here? Um, I, I'm willing to, because John James Jacoby stepped in and is a real long timer and is on the Medi and the ME team's a bunch of.

Good people. Mm-hmm. who, um, were not apparently in the decision making about this, but have some degree of knowledge and oversight or independent, um, takes on. On the non-public code in question and have made it, and I see no reason to, to distrust any of that. So what, what has come out short of it? Not a press release, not something on even the taverns not, you know, being, being quite critical and not not getting any special, um, quotes from.

Inside explaining this, um, what we've got is what's come out on the, on the [00:26:00] ticket and it, they're saying it's a security issue that the either privacy, security, the, the way the data, um, was being pulled and used was over line that they were. Not willing to tolerate going on, and they want to change how that data access works.

And I also trust them that it's gonna come back at some point. But what's muddied the waters is Matt has, um, disregarded the um, The desire for the, the, the crowd that calling for like a full explanation and, and just kind of leading it going forward with the discussion of, well, what is this data that you want?

Um, what would, what helps the most? Um, and trying to kind of move things i I, in this direction of competition, how do we promote cooperative competition, Cooper competition, Um,

Nyasha Green: ooh, let's make that [00:27:00] a word. .

Dan Knauss: So it's a tough pivot to not to say, Hey, don't, let's not give you any kind of, we can't give you any full, There's not even official statement saying, We can't officially disclose what's going on here, but we're trying to remedy it in the meantime.

Um, There's a couple of paths, how this could come back and how it could look, what's your feedback and input on that. Um, that's kind of what's being attempted, but the room temperature isn't really conducive to the most, um, helpful feedbacks, but just for me, just in watching, I'm, I'm, I haven't seen a lot of people explain why that one number is so important the way they think it.

Um, and it makes me think like if you're that fixed on this thing, that could come and go, that wasn't there before. And none of the really big businesses are, [00:28:00] um, they're, they're not living and dying by this, and I'm not sure anyone really is, you know, eggs all in one basket. Like really, Um, this is a, a wake up call I would think that if, if that's how you're running your business or you, you think it works that way, maybe you need some other.

Other ways to analyze your success or, or, um, decline in with your customers.

Nyasha Green: Okay. I, I can't agree with you there, , but can I cannot, can't, cannot. I cannot.

Dan Knauss: Oh. Oh, really? What do you, what what, I mean, what about it?

Nyasha Green: Like you said, that's, that's all fine and dandy for the bigger corporations, but for the smaller person, it's like, Whatever, Figure it out.

Find another method. Oh, well I, again, you said this is how it's been done, but it's like, how many times can you do that to people? Honestly, [00:29:00]

Dan Knauss: I, Yeah, I think that's a separate thing, right? If you kind of put that aside, this isn't a great way to, this isn't a great way to handle a community. Um, it's not a great way to handle business community.

Um, It is what it is. It's happening. We put that aside. That's happening. Why do, why do you, you know, even if this hadn't happened, why is that? People saying that they go to that chart multiple times every. It only updates every 24 hours. And like the, the, it's general, it's kind of shotgun analysis. So I would say like maybe a week's worth of data would give you, it's just kind of a thumbs up, thumbs down on what, on install activity.

And that's, that's for your free plugin. So if you're trying to make, um, if you're, your revenue stream is coming elsewhere from a premium product or, or something else, um, this is just people who are trying you out or using. The free [00:30:00] version and it's, it's just a general pool of, um, not, um, Well actually you can, you couldn't, um, you may, it may include, I guess it would include both, but once you have paying customers, I would pay attention to them.

You have direct, you have a bit more direct, um, access to them and focus groups. There's a lot of things you could, you could do to, um, to get better. Data on how your, your product's being used and there's other ways to distribute.

Nyasha Green: You don't think that would be a lot on smaller business owners, people, you know?

Dan Knauss: Sure. It's a lot. Um, and I, it's always kind of surprised me though, how, um, how. There's, there's just, Well, you know, everyone wants an easy, an easy way forward, But does that really, does that really substitute for, um, real business intelligence, for real customer [00:31:00] feedback from real contact and relationships?

Um, the people I've seen who seem to effectively build a, um, a small plug-in business who in intentionally are, you know, they're not trying to build. Thing at scale. They're, they're trying to do a company of one. Um, they promote it from the beginning on their, on their own channels. They know more or less who they're talking to.

They're soliciting feedback. Maybe they have the, the code on GitHub, um, or wherever it is. They're engaged with a lot of people using it. I just, I don't see why a single measure as vague as that one is. Such, such an obsessed over, um, detail. I mean, I, I understand, I hear what people are saying about it. I get that mm-hmm.

but it, when you actually literally analyze it as like, is, does that make good business sense? I haven't, I haven't seen that. [00:32:00] The only, the only good one is, and I think it's, it's kind of a painful scene, but, um, Matt said about this, the same thing people. See it as a thumbs up if they see it going up, it's a motivation to keep working.

It's like, okay, that's valid. Like that. That's good feedback to give. Um, but what, there are all these other reasons people talk about why this is a, an important business metric to them. And I just, I think almost all of those are highly, highly questionable or at least, you know, you could probably get better information Another.

And the

Nyasha Green: independent, like, so I, I've never ran a plug-in business. I don't know if you have, you have a lot more experience than me. So, I mean, well we aren't we just speculating on what they can do. Like, you know, I, I trust Mark, Mark said that was one of the only tools they had, so it's going to make it a lot more difficult.

I mean, like, I think that's worthy of them [00:33:00] complaining. I think if that was their only tool, like I, I don't know. I can't, I can't like jump in and say, Well they can do this, they could do that. They could go do this cuz I don't know.

Dan Knauss: Well, but it's their, It's their only tool. Cause they've allowed that.

They've allowed that relationship to exist.

Nyasha Green: So it was the easiest. And they like just kind of, I. It's, it's the easiest tool. So they kind of, it was easier for them to latch onto that instead of doing like alternate things, which they can do now. Is that what you saying? If it's,

Dan Knauss: yeah, if it's really true that, that you put your, your business in the hands of a freemium type of product and the free versions in the repo, and this is the only measure you have of, of your potential market size.

That's choices you made. I, I . I mean, there are a lot of other, And you went in someone's house and, and this was here once and, and some years ago it wasn't there. And, um, I, I understand why that, that feels like a, a breach of trust. [00:34:00] But no one ever had a contractor understanding. To the other one, to anything different that this is, that they have a right to this.

Um, I,

Nyasha Green: uh, I think the analogy is, you know, you went into someone's house and they said, Hey, it's an open. And you can use this thing right here. And they're like, Okay. And they use it for years and then they walk into the house one day and it's gone. And the person's like, Well, it's gone. Oh, well tell me why you needed it.

Dan Knauss: Well, it wasn't quite that, It was more like someone, someone's been coming in the back door in the kitchen and they took the beer cooler.

Nyasha Green: Yeah. Someone else has been like sneaking in and doing bad stuff and now everybody, we can't pay forward.

Dan Knauss: We gotta go to the, Yeah, we gotta shut this down and, and go and address this.

And,

Nyasha Green: but there was no communication on that. I found out about the, the communication is cut that through somebody.

Dan Knauss: There's, there's two levels. If you look at it, there's a, there's a much higher level thing here with how much bigger entities are using this data. Mm-hmm. and potentially abusing it, and the need to get everyone on the same page, and [00:35:00] everyone has the same data and even has the ability to hide it.

If you don't want your business exposed or your dad exposed that maybe that you can, you can put a privacy control on it. Mm-hmm. , but the, the rank and file the small. Smaller business entities that are upset because they've really been relying on this. Um, totally understand that. But it, it does raise questions of why you have that level of dependency and does this number really do all that for you?

Is your business truly going to, to tank or suffer in some way with without this and could having it taken away, whether are your options, do you. Are there any kind of creative ways forward then? Um, I, I would think that there, there are, having watched that space enough and how different businesses operate partly in using the repo, not using it, um, and how they do their marketing, how they do their relationship with their [00:36:00] customers.

Um, I, I think it. It's something that matters a lot to people, like you're saying, who are, who are small and maybe don't have the capacity, um, or it's a part-time thing or a side part project. Mm-hmm. , and they're leaning heavily on this rather than other things that maybe they don't have time to be doing.

But it raises questions about what's ineffective, um, business model, what, what's good data and how do you get it? And, I think that there's, from above, there's a bit of an attempt to push that question on that part of the business community. And I don't know if that's an effective way to do it, but it doesn't seem

It's not nice, it doesn't build trust. Uh, but I don't know, I don't know given enough, uh, pain points maybe. I don't know. We'll see where. Where it goes and the people caught in between on it, I, I feel for them. But, um mm-hmm. , [00:37:00] I don't have any, any reason to, to distrust those who have tried to be mediators and I, I think they're, I'm glad they're, they're there putting, putting in their 2 cents.

Nyasha Green: I feel bad that they've had to be mediators. This is a, a lot to push on someone. It is, but I am interested to see where this goes. And I'm glad people are talking about it. I, I, I know communication is a bit as of a doozy sometimes, but I'm glad people are talking about it. Um, I'm, I think we need to revisit it.

Listen, visit this cuz what if it just blows over?

Dan Knauss: I don't think it'll blow over. I, I think it's, I don't, I don't either. It's like a watershed,

Nyasha Green: I don't think at all. . Yeah. But I'm interested to see where it goes. ,

Dan Knauss: but it, there is, there is some sense of, um, a desire to redefine that part of the ecosystem, that culture there.

Yeah. Definitely not wanting a [00:38:00] leaderboard of winners and losers or top 10 or something like that, but have some kind of helpful metric that motivates people that, um, is useful to them and isn't something that can be gamed and that someone higher up isn't pulling out and trying to figure out how can we game these stats or.

Aggregate enough of this to, I don't know, build an even bigger secondary market for plugins, like a Zillow of plugin and that number is over your head as your business value and, and you wanna flip, you know, you wanna sell. Like this is, things have been moving in that kind of direction. I, yeah, call it financial, a financialized market.

And I don't, I don't think that's really in most people's interests when, you know, it's like, When the housing market isn't people's houses anymore and or their homes or community or neighborhood, it's just, what's the number on this here today and what can I get for it if I were to sell it? Give me a number.[00:39:00]

You know, there was a bit, there's been a bit of a movement in that direction. I question the, the health of that, but it's really a question of pH kinda economic. Culture, open source culture philosophy. What kind of market ecosystem do you want to have? And I think from above they're being pretty clear that they want something more cooperative down there, which is tough for people to swallow because on a higher level, these are, they're the corporate entities that are playing full bore, um, corporate capitalism, you know, on a, on a higher level.

Mm-hmm. , um, where. No one's suggesting co-opetition between hosting entities. Entities I love, but maybe they should, you know, I mean, in a way, um, it is, it is throughout open source. I mean, there has to be some level.

Nyasha Green: I'll suggest that on Twitter. Yeah. You'll be breaking with me. I, I think

Dan Knauss: I'm really like the cons really in, in [00:40:00] favor of that.

I think I'm not a, I'm not a unrestricted market person and I, I don't think the idea of a commons. works with that. You do need limits and at least a culture with some kind of consensus on, hey, we don't overly extract this here and there. And, but that's right. That's, that's not a conversation you can have in normal corporate America.

Um, Oh no, But it isn't, it is an open source thing and, um, how do we help each other grow? While in the midst of some degree of competition, um, that's a really worthy discussion. And uh, it's unfortunate. I think that the trust issues are high and the confusion and eventually misinformation may be high and we can't have that appropriate conversation.

I hope we can, but mm-hmm. . [00:41:00] Yeah. Well enough said about that one. I'm not gonna speculate where it's gonna go, but it's been a weekend. It's been a season,

Nyasha Green: Yeah. Oh,

Dan Knauss: The um, the last thing I was gonna ta I don't think we'll really tackle it too much. No one's looking, no one's looking at this. Have you? Um, I haven't found a single person. I'm, I'm start. Poke around and mm-hmm. more technical sources. And I'd really love for feedback from, from anyone who has, um, closer familiarity with government policy that's emerging around security.

Um, there's a, there's finally, this stuff goes back a few years, but there's a senate bill, um, that's very specifically targeting open source and security and how we can, how things can be changed. [00:42:00] to, I think ultimately is, you know, it's about mitigating risk that, um, the US federal government, really any go, any government's always concerned with risk.

They're highly invested in open source. Um, and it's not open source in particular, Most people will point out software across the board. Um, how can this be exploited and hacked has gotten into the public eye and into. , the, uh, the eye of people in, um, in government whose job is to focus on things like supply chain, security, that, you know, things that are considered public infrastructure, um, in a national interest that we need to secure and can't just have people hacking through, exploiting, you know, whatever they think is going on.

But , there have been plenty of examples and there always will. Will be some. [00:43:00] So we just, we haven't really seen that, um, that come down before and I think we will soon. So have you, have you seen anyone talking?

Nyasha Green: Not really. Um, it seems like something Rob would tackle, um, top Yeah, I think you'd be interested, but, um, I'm, My input is as someone who has worked for the state and federal government in a tech capacity, I don't have a lot of faith in this.

Right? Can I say that?

Dan Knauss: Why? Get in trouble? I don't think you'd be,

Nyasha Green: Will they come snatch my microphone? Yeah. bust through my window in the back.

Dan Knauss: Um, you aren't gonna quote the giver, are you?

Nyasha Green: Oh, I got other quotes, but I, One per episode. It's all get, um, Oh God.

Dan Knauss: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.

Nyasha Green: Please. No. Um. I, [00:44:00] I understand. Okay. The big, uh, the big hacks that have been going on, like the, having the Uber , um, you know, there are a lot of con security concerns out there. I get it. But I don't see, I guess I just don't know enough about this bill to see what they're going to do to help. I just feel like it's more government regulation.

I feel like I found very, I feel like I found very. Pro Capitalism this episode. Hmm. I'm thinking

Dan Knauss: on the one hand. Yeah, but on on the other. Yeah.

Nyasha Green: Ah, stop me when you see, when you hear stuff. I'm just kidding. I'm kidding. Um, dang. I do now I have to, I have to sit with my thoughts now. Um, no. I get the security issues, but I really don't see what they're gonna do to help, is basically what I,

Dan Knauss: Well, it is, I think everyone does have a common problem.

It's mostly. D updates. . Mm-hmm. , The, and how they get. Um, so if you have unup updated, the, the largest problem, you have a really, really big [00:45:00] attack surface. Like the log four j log four shell thing was under the auspices of Apache Project. Uh, it wasn't that something wasn't unmaintained and, but there was, um, uh, a, a security vulnerability that was discovered that had been around a long time.

Just no one had noticed it. And then you needed to patch it quickly and, and distribute. All around something that's very widely used, and that is the, the tricky spot. How do you get mm-hmm. , you can't. So in terms of, of WordPress, there's all these really old installs out there. Mm-hmm. , Um, and some are so old, I, you can't push an update too.

Mm-hmm. , you'd have to have anyway. Forced updates have become more of a, a less controversial thing. There was a day, oh probably. Not too long ago, year or two, um, when it was, it was controversial for, uh, again, a decision [00:46:00] made by through unknown processes and deciders to we're just gonna push a forced update on an insecure plugin or some core thing, um, that's emerged and, and that can be done just pushed down.

And I think that's just becoming more of, of the norm for security. Reasons and how that, there hasn't been a really discussion of that, how that fits in the ethics of open source. Um, if I choose to use this software, can you push changes to it against my, um, consent or without my consent and change my client's sites and stuff like that.

Um, yeah, I think we've kind of moved into a place where, It's kind of like getting a vaccination, like, like, Oh Lord, please, you wanna opt out? You wanna opt out to this? Um, there's a real problem, um, to doing that, but it, I mean, I, that too. I, I, These are, these are [00:47:00] two sides to the openness and, and freedom and rights, Individual rights versus collective.

Um,

Nyasha Green: I will not be hopping into the vaccine debate. You know, I'll debate anything that is scary to me. , I'll still debate it, but people are scary when we talk about vaccines. I get scared. Um, but I, I think that to me, where it goes to me in my mind is for security updates. We don't talk enough about, about how computer illiterate, I guess is how you would.

Mm. A lot of society is getting, especially when you think about the younger generations who are dependent on their phones and tablets and they don't really know how to use computers anymore. Sure. It's like, um, you have older people who, you know, have struggled with that, and now we have a younger generation and then it's like us in the middle.

So I think, I think that's going to be an issue because we're forcing people to. It's update and they don't know, You know, they know one version they [00:48:00] can't learn, or not that they cannot learn newer versions, but there is not a lot of adequate education out there to learn newer things. And I'm not just talking about WordPress kind that's in my mind, but that goes through a whole host of other software.

I just, I think we need more literacy before we do stuff like that. I mean, I'm not opposed to it at all. Um, I.

Dan Knauss: It would certainly help for trust again, like, um, if you, I think more and more people are just expecting and, and vaguely, maybe they don't even understand that their devices are being updated all the time.

Yeah, I monitored all the time.

Nyasha Green: Definitely. Don't they? Definitely. Don't you remember when they said 5G was like causing covid? Did you hear that?

Dan Knauss: Um, that okay.

Nyasha Green: Conspiracy theory. That was one. Yeah. Yeah. And I was like, What? And like it was, people were send me stuff, they were like, You're in tech. Is this true?

And I'm like, What? And I'm like, Why would you even begin to believe [00:49:00] this? Where is the correlation? It's like people really don't. Anything . And it's like, you know, I'm not calling people stupid or ignorant. Please, if you're listening and you sent me a covid conspiracy theory, I am not attacking you. Um, I, it's just that people are, there's too much lack of information.

I feel like that's the theme of this, uh, of this episode. If you don't give people enough information and literacy, they'll speculate. They'll create their own narratives and then they'll spread them. Right? And then we have all this what? And then we'll hear stuff when we say what. Yeah. What I do that like 16 times a day, so Right.

It's, they, they have so much more to do than just force updates, but I don't have the faith that they will do that. That's me.

Dan Knauss: Well, there, there's a lot, there's a lot that can be done in, in testing and and security practices to make more secure product, but there's always gonna be stuff that just needs a hot fix.

It needs enough to push to it. Dependencies that aren't even within the project, but that we use and that some other project [00:50:00] uses. Everyone's got to be able to, um, verify what they're using, what version it is, maintenance status, and how do you, how do you quickly update a lot of stuff across the network.

I think that's all good, but yeah. What, what you're saying with a highly, with something, um, as ubiquitous as WordPress or. Apps on your phone. Um, people aren't, it's better if you can get them educated enough to trust that, okay, this is how this is done and mm-hmm people are trying to keep this secure and here are the risks and so on.

And, um, maybe there's some kind of catchall consent. If you know you're using this, this is what's gonna happen. It would be great if, as a community, talked more about those things too, and then mm-hmm. , um, informed people of, of what to expect about security with client work. It's totally, [00:51:00] absolutely necessary to, to explain about the importance of updates, maintenance, and security issues, and, and that being a constant ongoing process.

But when, when people don't understand and then something happens, you get what? The demonn haunted world. I keep thinking of this essay that that's a Carl Sagan book. And Corey doctor wrote a great essay a few years back when, when Volkswagen was uh, uh, gaming their catalytic converters or what, whatever that was when they, whoever hooked the hook, the cars up for testing to emission standards.

Um, it. The computer would realize, ah, we're being tested, so let's cheat. And we go into cheat mode and give a different output than, um, when you're on the road, you want more power delivered to the user and it's actually over emission standards. They got caught for that, but it was a sophisticated software [00:52:00] thing.

BMW did this to, uh, I wanna pronounce these in German way, Ba a. I, I don't know how many did this, but I was talking to a friend of a friend musician who bought one of their sprinter vans. He's really, uh, fancy bmw, um, vans, and they got, they had to do a recall on all their, Their catalytic converters, um, because they had a cheat system in it too, I think.

And they had agreed to some, you know, there was a, there was litigation and they just agreed to replace it all. Not that they had done anything wrong or something like that. And, and he was in the states, he's Canadian, bought this thing in, in Canada and it was in the States and the computer on the car, and his van started saying, You have 10 more starts.

You gotta get this to a dealer, Do the recall, have the part swapped out, and if you don't and, and you need to do that in 10 more starts, you start, you stop and start 10 times this thing's not gonna, it's [00:53:00] gonna be towed, you know, It will not, your, your vehicle will no longer function. Um, so it's like ransomware built into thereby the, the manufacturer of your vehicle.

Um, huge. Shift from . I don't think you knew that that was even possible. They left the thing running.

Nyasha Green: Well, , that reminds me. I do. Because that reminds me of the, the, I don't know if I've never had it, but I've known people who've had these type of cars. If you don't make a payment on your car, you miss a payment, they cut.

They really just lock your car and then you can't crank your car up. Yeah, you can't use your car. You've never heard of that?

Dan Knauss: Like they do remotely through the card. They do it remotely disabled.

Nyasha Green: I'm, I'm, I thought that happened to many people. Like I've had people go to pump gas and then they can't crank their car up and they'll say, Oh, you owe it's money.

Dan Knauss: My car is older than my oldest kid. I have a 1997 crv. Like the early years were, were really good. I have a Honda [00:54:00] guy, um, who um, yeah, like, yeah, I'm an old tech person, , so you couldn't Yeah,

Nyasha Green: that's, but that's like, that was kind of old. That's like, I learned of that when I was like a teenager and that was like, oh my.

I am about to turn 32. I was around 15. That was, I'm doing math 17 years ago, .

Dan Knauss: So yeah, I think that's, I stuff should be built to last some things and maintain. Oh yeah, definitely. And I don't like the idea of. Of being surveilled and controlled remotely. Oh, yeah. Um, and that's, um, that's the world we're moving into.

Mm-hmm. and to some extent there, you know, well there's real abuse and ethics issues and uh, personal autonomy. And I don't think that kind of car system is at all what anyone in open source wants or, or just coming. But there's always a trade off to, uh, with security, how do we, how do we protect. [00:55:00] Ourselves, Um, the most people efficiently.

And it's, it's by overriding, you know, anyone who might individually say, Wait a minute, I wanna evaluate this update code before, you know, most people are just gonna sit on an unup updated thing and mm-hmm not know what's going on. And that's, um, ultimately you have authorities saying that's just not okay cuz it's a security risk to.

Much more, much more significant higher level interest than, you know, Bob Smith with his whatever software he is running. Mm. Well, I think that's a, that's just a fascinating, ethical, intellectual thing, and I, I hope, I hope that we can find a few people to kind of dig more into that as, as that goes along.

But, um, yeah, trust. Everything's about trust.

Nyasha Green: You [00:56:00] made me think about trust falls. Trust. Trust falls when someone like stands on a chair and you all hold hands. Oh, that,

Dan Knauss: Yeah. I've never done that. Uh, no. I didn't

Nyasha Green: want, I was scared. Yeah. I didn't trust, I did not trust those people. But, but no, you're right.

Trust is, is that today's word? That's a big word for Elmo. .

Dan Knauss: Yeah. Just cause people are being, just cuz people are being nice and communicating well with you doesn't, you know, you assume good intentions, but I mean, trust can be betrayed in so many ways or failed, um, even with the best of intentions. And I think how we recover from it, there's no ideal state, you know, no human group is gonna have pure trust unless they're completely in denial, like a cult or something about how everything is awesome.

There's always damage. In and histories of, of um, reasons not to trust each other in any long relationship. [00:57:00] And you kind of have to find a way to be resilient through that and recover from it and reassure each other. Yeah, we're aligned. We want the same things, pretty much. Um, I'm not, I, you know, and I've got your back and that's what we need.

It's hard to come by.

Nyasha Green: I agree. Trust in communication.

WordPress Design & Development Around the Web for the Week of October 3

Diversifying Revenue Streams as a Solo Devpreneur

Web Developer, Entrepreneur, Organizer, and The Man in the Arena Carl Alexander has shared his journey creating Ymir, writing a book, freelancing, and how much he actually makes from all that to live each month. TL:DR; Not as much as you’d think. This kind of transparency into the entrepreneurship side of WordPress can be so valuable and helpful for everyone to see. I suspect many of us can relate to this, especially in the WordPress space where our abilities as developers, designers, and builders are often taken for granted or undervalued. Carl’s answer is creating a Github sponsored page, which is a great way to show appreciation for a developer's work, especially the free plugins that they maintain. Aurooba Ahmed has made a list of developers you can sponsor as well.

The 50% Coding 50% Marketing Lifecycle

We see it all the time: some application or website comes out with half the features of a similar idea you’ve been toiling away on for months, maybe years, but they get all the traction because they market the heck out of their brand. Chances are they also probably hired a small marketing team or agency to help them, and for many of us, we don’t have that luxury. Enter the 50:50 concept from Jon Yongfook of Bannerbear. It sounds like it would be complicated but it’s really simple.

Oh Look, Somebody Took Something Away and Didn’t Communicate About It Well, That Tracs

This week’s #WPDrama has surrounded the abrupt removal of the install growth charts for security reasons on WordPress.org and the Trac ticket created in response to that from Post Status member Mark Zahra which highlighted the frustration felt across the plugin community. I cannot stress enough that all of these frustrations could have been avoided by good communication with the community right after the removal. Instead, everyone was left to piece together different conversations on Twitter and Make WordPress Slack to understand what might be the future for getting similar or even better analytics into the Plugin Directory. As of this writing, there still is no response from the team that removed this feature or what a process might look like for future analytics improvements. Again, an open-source project the size of WordPress should have a team just to help write a synopsis of major changes so anyone can understand the why, when, where, and what’s next.

This Week at WordPress.org (October 3, 2022)

News

• WordPress 6.1 Beta 3 Now Available
• WP Briefing: Episode 40: All Things Testing with Special Guests Anne McCarthy and Brian Alexander

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Related News:

• ECMAScript Proposals

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