The WP Minute+

[00:00:00] Matt: on your website. Nyashagreen. com, software developer, WordPress wonder girl, editorial director, writer, podcaster, consultant, many hats. What are you, what are you focused on these days?

[00:00:11] Nyasha: Oh, everything. But, uh, yeah, Right now I'm mostly focused on teaching. I am a LinkedIn learning instructor and I'm gearing up to record my course in October. so I'll be in California, which I'm really excited about. So teaching, I'm starting a new job. so that's my development job, but, I also have freelance clients.

[00:00:31] Nyasha: So teaching and coding right now. It's my main focus, but I'm still doing all of the above.

[00:00:37] Matt: Yeah, I, I want to get into, just chatting a little bit about you and I were in the, or still are, but we were in the same worlds of, Master WP. you are doing a lot of editorial over there, writing, producing, podcasting. I want to talk about that in a moment. a dear friend of mine, Carrie Dills, she also.

[00:00:54] Matt: Does LinkedIn learning, that seems like such a cool crowd. Like they fly you out. I think they fly you out anyway. I don't think you have to pay the Bill , but they fly you out to California and you get to record in their studio, which is like top notch stuff. How did, how did you come about that job?

[00:01:12] Nyasha: so I am a very open person about, if I'm going to code, if I'm going to do anything new, if I'm going to learn. I don't mind learning in front of people. Very extroverted. I don't care about making mistakes. It's, it's life. so I was actually, learning how to, Do some block stuff on Twitter, and I was just live tweeting my journey.

[00:01:31] Nyasha: I did a little bit of that when I was actually learning how to code years ago, and it helped out, you get an audience, you get people who want to help, and then you get other people like saying, hey, it's pretty cool. I want to learn too. so. I was contacted there first. they were like, you know what?

[00:01:46] Nyasha: You seem like a really fun and good teacher because you're teaching as you go. would you like to try out for LinkedIn learning as an instructor? Totally didn't think I would get the job. I've taught, I teach and I mentor and I've tutored before. But as you said, it's like they have this big studio and it's LinkedIn slash Microsoft.

[00:02:05] Nyasha: And I auditioned and I got the job. So that was my, my story with it.

[00:02:12] Matt: Is is the secret 'cause because I'll, here, I'll just, I'll be honest with you, I have no idea how to use LinkedIn. Like I want to, we have all these marketing friends that do like carousels and paragraphs of posts. And I'm like another, look, this is just another social media outlet. I can't, I can't handle mentally.

[00:02:31] Matt: so is the secret to like build in public on LinkedIn and maybe they'll catch up to you or do they find you on Twitter?

[00:02:37] Nyasha: They found me on Twitter. Everybody finds me on Twitter, which is like, or X. What is it now? I don't know.

[00:02:42] Matt: Yeah,

[00:02:43] Nyasha: Twitter. Yeah, it's Twitter. everybody finds me on there. Like, my fun fact to tell people is I'm in Time Magazine. So I was in Time Magazine in 2020 and, my mom was like, Oh my God, I have to brag.

[00:02:56] Nyasha: What did you do? Did you like discover something? Did you create something? [00:03:00] And I was like, kinda. I made a meme during the pandemic in 2020, and Time found it and they called it one of 2020's most influential memes. So I'm up there with the Pope meme and I'm in Time Magazine for a meme. And they found me on Twitter.

[00:03:14] Nyasha: So. If you are a user of Twitter and you're discouraged, you got to keep doing it. Everybody finds me on Twitter.

[00:03:22] Matt: if I just searched and I asked for green meme.

[00:03:25] Nyasha: You have to do my Twitter handle. You have to do deny the creator, nigh, underscore the underscore creator,

[00:03:31] Nyasha: this one was just, one of the DW memes from Arthur.

[00:03:35] Nyasha: She's like, you see it? She's like looking

[00:03:37] Nyasha: Sad. She can't go to the nail salon.

[00:03:38] Nyasha: That was me. That was me all 2020. So

[00:03:41] Matt: 13. 6 thousand hearts. I guess now we call it on X 6, 700 reposts. That's awesome. congratulations. I didn't know that. See, I got to do more research before I

[00:03:53] Nyasha: It's okay.

[00:03:54] Matt: start things off. , I want to talk about the master WP stuff. I'm going to bury the lead a little bit. talk to me about learning.

[00:04:01] Matt: WordPress development these days. I think for a lot of us when Gutenberg was first announced again, now we're going back four years in the time machine, I think there was an, and Matt said, Matt Mullenweg said, learn JavaScript deeply. I think there were a lot of folks like myself was like.

[00:04:18] Matt: I'm never going to learn JavaScript deeply because I don't even know where to begin. Like,

[00:04:24] Nyasha: told me to learn it deeply, I wouldn't know how to decode, do anything with it. and I feel like what was great about WordPress back in the day is you could crack it open, it was HTML, it was CSS, and then PHP was something I could handle, at least I could look at it and say.

[00:04:40] Matt: I can understand, kind of, if it's well documented, what this does. How does one learn WordPress development these days? Are people starting with JavaScript? Is there a different path? What's, what's your advice?

[00:04:55] Nyasha: So first and foremost, I, my WordPress story is very interesting because I started learning right when Gutenberg was introduced. So mostly it was, still classic, press? I was in the classic

[00:05:10] Matt: editor?

[00:05:11] Nyasha: Yeah. And then, when I, branched out and wanted to do my own stuff, it was Gutenberg. And I was like, what is this?

[00:05:18] Nyasha: So I kind of have that experience, even though I was there when it was Gutenberg, learning, but, my advice, because I can't say it changes a lot because there's so many nuance nuances and things of the such YouTube. That's where I learned how to get. Deep into Gutenberg. That's where I learned Gutenberg very well.

[00:05:38] Nyasha: and also again, Twitter, there's so many people in our community every week. They're like, Hey, there's this part of, Gutenberg that some people struggle with. Do you want to watch me go through it? I joined almost all of those sessions because even though I've been doing WordPress for about what, five years now, four to five years, it's still a lot.

[00:05:58] Nyasha: I don't know. Even going into [00:06:00] LinkedIn, there are things they're like, we haven't had a course on this in four or five years, And I'm like, wow. And you're looking through, you're like, okay, 2018 pre pandemic stuff. Like what can I do? How can I learn? How can I catch people up? It's YouTube.

[00:06:13] Nyasha: It's, it's free. It's nothing you have to pay for either.

[00:06:16] Matt: We're both friends with Daniel Schutzsmith. He's a contributor to the WP minute at times. And I know he is a prolific developer and always trying, new things and, and pushing the boundaries with that stuff. I'm curious. And again, I'm not a developer, but back in the day when I was building websites for clients.

[00:06:33] Matt: I would always say, if there's something custom I need to do, it's going to be in this thing called the Functions. php file. And I know there's probably like a bunch of developers laughing right now, probably just like yourself. Is,

[00:06:44] Nyasha: No, no,

[00:06:44] Matt: where, where do we, where do we start these days? Do people still go to Functions.

[00:06:49] Matt: php as like the source of custom stuff? Or is it being all built in JavaScript in blocks and, and whatnot? Or is that just not even how it works?

[00:06:59] Nyasha: no, no. Yeah. the functions that php file is still relevant. I'm still in it. it's, there are so many like plugins though where you, I can't say you don't need it. but you can kind of skip around it. The snippets, the code snippets plugin, that's like my favorite. If I'm, especially if I'm like making changes to a site I didn't build, I'll hop in there, test some code out.

[00:07:19] Nyasha: I don't really have to go manipulate their functions that PHP file. So, I think following some really good plugins will help too. but yeah, functions. php, it's still here. It's still great. And I wanted to say something about like the developers and non developers in WordPress. That came up a lot at WordCamp actually.

[00:07:37] Nyasha: And I am someone who... When I came into WordPress and even still now a little bit, I assumed everybody was a developer and I mean, you still are if you to me, if you don't know how to code, you're still a developer. Are you still developing? Yeah. So everybody is a developer around me. And, there was a talk that I eat a Jackson, gave.

[00:07:55] Nyasha: It was really good about how we can make non developers I want to show you. More welcome in the community and, if they, one of the things was if they start talking about something and it's code savvy and it's maybe something you think everybody should know, help them feel better about it.

[00:08:08] Nyasha: And I laugh not because, you were talking about the functions. php like that, but that, no, that's awesome. Like the functions. php file is important, but if you don't know that, I would never judge you.

[00:08:19] Matt: I've been testing WordPress, or excuse me, the 2024 theme, which is going to come with WordPress

[00:08:24] Nyasha: Mm hmm.

[00:08:25] Matt: And I'm looking at all like the templates in there and really trying to wrap my head around the full site editor, because for, for years, I've just been, back in the day when I ran the agency, it was, I had folks that were developers and they were custom coding for me, or if we had, those types of clients that are like, Hey, we're not going to pay for custom coding.

[00:08:48] Matt: It was beaver builder. And we were just like building out. Themes and templates using beaver builder and, full site editing. Here we are, whatever, six, seven years later, not for full site editing, but for my time in agency [00:09:00] world, it's just like, man, this is so still far off from how powerful these other tools like cadence and beaver builder are.

[00:09:07] Matt: And, Elementor, Divi, all these other projects. I'm trying to force myself into it and learn it right because I have to, I mean, I make a living with WordPress, but still struggle with the navigation struggle with template editing, it's still, it's still a challenge, but I can see it being a tool in a year's time, two years time where you won't have to, like you said, like, we won't even have to worry about functions.

[00:09:32] Matt: PHP. We may not even need the snippet. because I know there's a whole host of snippet plugins. We might not even need those because everything is going to become built into full site editing. At least that's my prediction for a no code WordPress. And Mullenweg just said that in his talk, how like WordPress has always been a no code tool to a degree.

[00:09:52] Matt: so I I'm excited for it, but I still find it challenging. Have you dove headfirst into full site editing and using block based themes?

[00:10:01] Nyasha: I have, I have not, gotten to 2024 yet since I'm, like, it's been a crazy week getting back from, work camp U. S. But that's actually on my list to do tomorrow. Like, I really, really, really want to hop into it. But FSE, I've definitely, I've definitely been playing around with, because one of my things is I want to get more people in my community from home, more technical savvy.

[00:10:23] Nyasha: I also have family websites that I'm building and, knock on wood, if anything happens to me, I want my family to be able to take it over. So I've been trying out FSE because. Yes, there is a learning curve. Yes, the first time I Hopped into it. I was like, what is this? Why is everything over here?

[00:10:42] Nyasha: Why are, why are there paragraphs? It's like, what is this? But I think as a, for newer people who maybe don't know how to, not even just code, but they don't know, or they couldn't get over that old WordPress learning curve, because it's not just people who can't code, they're developers, they're coders. They can't use WordPress.

[00:11:03] Nyasha: That learning curve is so high. I think FSE is going to make that learning curve a lot easier. It just looks really, really strange to us because it's not what we're used to. And we just have to keep an open mind. I'm someone who I'm constantly trying to learn new things. And when you get into that mindset, stuff is still scary, but you know, it's just a matter of, I just don't know.

[00:11:24] Nyasha: It's not that I can't know.

[00:11:26] Matt: yeah, I think the secret, the joke, this is joke, I think the secret to developing with Gutenberg is to have a 5k monitor, right? Because when you're in it, you have the left hand pan. This is what drives me nuts because I do most of my work on a 13 inch MacBook Air. Like I'm either at my coworking space or at a coffee shop.

[00:11:46] Matt: So You have the left hand panel where the blocks, the block list is, and then you have the block settings on the right hand side, which then gives you, at least on a 13 inch MacBook, just like this tiny little viewport for the [00:12:00] post editor and all this other stuff, and I'm like, you, you have to have a high resolution monitor.

[00:12:05] Matt: To use this product, unlike I feel like Elementor or Beaver Builder, where like the, it's not the right word, but like the modals float, like I can move this stuff around the screen. I can get these toolbars almost like Photoshop. I can get these toolbars out of the way and still do my work. And with Gutenberg and full site editing, I'm like, you need to have a high resolution monitor because you can't, you just can't get it.

[00:12:27] Matt: The right feel for it, at least in my opinion.

[00:12:31] Nyasha: No, I agree. I agree.

[00:12:32] Matt: yeah,

[00:12:34] Nyasha: I have, four screens. I'm actually, if I look up, I'm sitting down, I have a standing desk, and I have four screens, and they're all above me right now. So yeah, I agree with you.

[00:12:44] Matt: that's the, that's the trick. We need four screens. let's, let's chat about master WP in terms of like. Covering WordPress news, community insights, publishing, podcasting, WordPress media landscape. I won't bore the audience with my sort of soapbox moments that as soon as I hear WordPress media, I just want to jump on it and start talking about it.

[00:13:06] Matt: what, what, what's your thoughts on, on the landscape, the challenge? The positives, the negatives, how do you see WordPress media and can it survive going forward without the typical listicles and here's how to use the theme and here's how to do this stuff. Can this commentary survive over the next five years?

[00:13:27] Nyasha: Hmm, so yes, I think it can survive, but this is the thing. I know, I'll, I'll break the ice. Master WP, I heard at WordCamp our nickname was the hot take machine. Master WP was at times a little spicy, but We talked about real things and we talked about things people believe they couldn't and we covered more than just hey, this new thing, this is how it works, or hey, this new plugin, this is how it works, which is very important.

[00:13:57] Nyasha: Again, that's very important for learning. Again, going to developers who are like, do you want to learn this? Do you want to watch me do this? Do you want me to walk you through it? The most important people in the aspect of learning Gutenberg and learning WordPress these days, but the community voices aren't there in most of these publications.

[00:14:15] Nyasha: And I thought that was something I could really do at master WP master WP. And that's what I did. And I think if we have more people getting into the community aspect, it doesn't have to be as spicy or as hot take as Master WP, but talking more about the community, then yes, it will last. We have so many people that I was able, in camps, especially smaller camps, I was able to amplify.

[00:14:39] Nyasha: So many things that people weren't talking about or didn't know about that we could, get people talking about. We just need more WordPress media companies to do that. I do get that it's scary. It was scary at times at master WP, but if we want to move forward and we are WordPress journalists, I love calling us that that's something we have to [00:15:00] be willing to do.

[00:15:01] Matt: Yeah, my take on it and so I will pull a thread from the boring soapbox that I always do is there are only maximum 10, 000 people speaking all languages, all languages across the globe. Yeah. That actually care about like WordPress news as you and I see it right as like this the type of content we would publish I feel like that's that's the max 10, 000 people.

[00:15:29] Matt: Do you feel like that's a good number or do you think it's even higher?

[00:15:34] Nyasha: think it's higher. we're still tech. We're still people. And sometimes we do intersect into, other communities. I know I have, I won't say how many people subscribe to master WP, but it's, it's more than that. So yeah, we definitely have, we have a bigger following. Yeah, we just have to think outside of the WordPress community sometimes, even though it is WordPress news.

[00:15:52] Nyasha: And then also remember, we're trying to convert people to WordPress, right? We want more people to join WordPress. We have millions of potential people we can convert into WordPress and get more of them to care about our news. So that's

[00:16:03] Matt: Yeah,

[00:16:04] Nyasha: that's a point. Mm

[00:16:06] Matt: yeah, I mean that's that's what I try to do with the WP minute is the idea is to bring it down to five Minutes because the average WordPress user Probably won't listen to you and I'd talk shop for 40 minutes right half hour 40 minutes or whatever But but maybe maybe even a five minute news reel of the WordPress or whatever like Woo commerce changes the way it handles taxes somebody might Want to care about how that affects their store, even though they are just making muffins and they're just selling muffins.

[00:16:37] Matt: They're like, well, WooCommerce is the thing I use and it changed. So I better listen to this, So, just like you would listen to your, whatever, regular radio news or TV. So, I hope to, to, to reach more. I believe that the particular challenge might be the business model, the traditional business model of news.

[00:16:55] Matt: and you saw this probably pretty close working with Rob is like funding it. At least in my opinion, it's challenging if you don't have maybe like a suite of products or an agency to sort of cash flow it,to, to sustain the news when you're going for just like advertisements or sponsorships, the sponsors are like, Hey, we want of thousands of page views or downloads every episode.

[00:17:21] Matt: It's like, well, you're not going to get that. Not with this news. If I was just doing maybe tutorials and stuff like that, potentially. But not about like what's happening, to Gutenberg, at least that's what I've faced. Have you seen the business side of it and do you have any opinions on it?

[00:17:37] Nyasha: I have, and I agree 100%, so many people that have found out I'm not with Master WP anymore. And, by the way, I'll still do, like, guest articles and stuff, so I am still working with Rob, just not full time. but so many people who know I'm not there anymore, they're like, when are you gonna start your own?

[00:17:54] Nyasha: And I'm like, I loved, I loved it. I love doing it. I love writing for [00:18:00] master WP. I love the hot takes. I love the spiciness. I love just informing people and up, uplifting people. It's expensive. It is so expensive. And I was also a developer, so trying to pivot into another developer job, having to, I'm teaching for LinkedIn, so I'm going to be flying.

[00:18:19] Nyasha: Every month for the rest of the year, someplace that's far, so it's like the time and money commitment is just not there. it's, it's just too expensive right now. And it's like, I could just do generate something basic. Everybody's like, well, do your own newsletter. I want to put my heart and soul into it.

[00:18:37] Nyasha: I know that sounds. It might sound extra, but I want it to be a quality product. I don't just want to put something out there. So people remember my name. Hopefully they just remember me in the good times and the stuff I do now. So I'm with you. It's, it's just too expensive.

[00:18:53] Matt: yeah, before I do this thing called the, this WordPress hot take newsletter. I,

[00:18:57] Nyasha: Oh, yeah!

[00:18:59] Nyasha: I love you all. Good seeing you. And I'm about to jump off of this cliff. remember the good days. I'll see you later before I, burn the whole. yeah!

[00:19:09] Matt: it's, it, it, it, yeah, it's tough,and, and I, this is again, more, it's going to turn into a quick like therapy session, but what does that word camp us folks were like coming up to me and like, Hey, you should cover, I don't know, like you should cover this company's financial situation.

[00:19:25] Matt: Right. And I'm just like. Things like number one, like we barely make any money at the WP minute. It's me, Eric, and a little bit of Raquel that like prop this thing up. And I just, I'm just a, a part timer in this thing. And these are, these aren't things I can cover because these companies have lawyers that

[00:19:46] Nyasha: Yeah.

[00:19:46] Matt: are going to, are, are going to come after me if I ever wrote a piece like that.

[00:19:51] Matt: So like, I. Thanks for thinking of me out of like this journalist,empire. But all I do is write one post and somebody goes, yeah, we're sending your, the lawyers after you and I lose everything. So that's the challenge. If you want to bankroll, a few hundred K in legal fees, let's do it. know, otherwise, I'm sorry. I can't cover every single thing that comes out. It's tough.

[00:20:15] Nyasha: Yeah, that's another thing. I wish we could be like, the New York Times and the Washington Post of journalis of Of WordPress, but people have to understand the financial commitment that goes into that. And, I, I like to eat food. I don't know if you see me and Jeff Chandler, we're WordPress.

[00:20:30] Nyasha: We started WPFoodies. com. But I like food and I like eating and,I like traveling and I need to feed myself. And so, yeah, maybe one day.

[00:20:40] Matt: Yeah. I don't want to. Yeah. I don't want to burn the house down yet. what was the, what was your biggest takeaway from WordCamp US? I was actually just going through Mullenweg's talk and pulling out some of his future predictions. but what was your biggest takeaway for WordPress, for the community, for yourself?

[00:20:57] Nyasha: I have to splice it up from [00:21:00] Matt. I was already I learned react years ago when I was first coding and I didn't stick with it. I stuck with PHP. That's actually I got into WordPress. My mentor was like, PHP, you want to, you want to code in WordPress? I was like, what? What is that? but,from Matt learn react and also what you were saying earlier.

[00:21:18] Nyasha: I feel like I didn't answer it. If you don't know where to start learning JavaScript. Just learn basic vanilla javascript. It's it'll mold. It'll mold to wordpress You'll see like I I wasn't the best javascript developer and if I can do it anybody can do it I I really believe that but for matt, I definitely am going to relearn react.

[00:21:36] Nyasha: I already started because the blocks are based on a lot of react. so learn react for matt just from the conference as a whole. It was so wonderful. And I, I really did. Sometimes I feel disconnected from the community, but I felt closer to the community. And also we all need to contribute more and find more ways to get people contributing.

[00:21:55] Nyasha: Jeff and I and a few others, not just Jeff and I, but we were the main foodie people. We started WP foodies, but I said, I will do this website, but I want people to contribute these photos. So the WP photo directory They need photos, they've been doing calls for them. We can start our own WordPress project.

[00:22:13] Nyasha: Lots of people do, but it takes away from the con contributing and pe the contributors need help. So, finding more ways to contribute, especially when I'm a person who I can write, I can speak, I can edit, and I can also code. Yeah, I definitely need to be in there contributing more. I'm also, co-req of marketing team, so I am doing some things, but the takeaway there, again, are contributing and.

[00:22:37] Nyasha: My last takeaway is everybody's so sweet, right in that master WP, I got a lot of hate mail. So it was, sometimes I didn't know where I stood in the community's eyes. I was like, Oh my gosh, if I go to this conference, will they try to jump me or something? But no, that was a joke. I know that was a joke, but, no, everybody was so loving and kind and like, A lot of people really enjoyed the work I did at Master wp.

[00:22:58] Nyasha: So, those are my takeaways. Contribute, learn, react, and just appreciate how great this community is and can be.

[00:23:06] Matt: actually this is a, a sort of good little, Sidebar here, I actually attended the, marketing meeting yesterday and by attending, attending, I mean, I lurked, I

[00:23:18] Nyasha: Okay.

[00:23:18] Matt: the sidelines and, and I watched say, say, read, put the,produce the, produce the meeting. I think that, and I'm right there with you.

[00:23:26] Matt: I think more people can contribute. More people should contribute the battle two or three episodes ago. I talked about, the upcoming WordPress admin redesign

[00:23:38] Nyasha: Mm-hmm.

[00:23:38] Matt: in this 2024 video that I preview, the theme with. I say, look, if, if you, I don't want to hear any complaints is why, is, is sort of like how I, as how I framed it, like, here's the theme, you can literally go into the Figma file, see this thing being designed, right?

[00:23:57] Matt: You can see cursors moving around. People are typing, you [00:24:00] can see people collaborating on this. And if you have an issue with it, just like if you had an issue with. WordPress admin, the way that this, hero block appears on 2024. You might not be able to change it, but at least you can say something about it.

[00:24:16] Matt: Right. As long as you're being constructive criticism or whatever, but you can, you can, you can give your opinion on this. And that is the beauty of WordPress. I think maybe that folks hear it and they feel like it's overwhelming.

[00:24:30] Nyasha: Mm hmm.

[00:24:31] Matt: Like by contributing, like, what do I have to do? Do I have to learn a thing?

[00:24:35] Nyasha: Do I have to spend many, many, many hours a week doing something like this? it was great just watching the marketing meeting, Mm

[00:24:41] Matt: out. Do you feel like the points of communication might be the struggle? Like you and I are used to Slack and blog posts, but maybe your average user is like Slack.

[00:24:51] Matt: Like, I don't want to sign up for this thing. I don't want to engage. Or do you think. No, this is at least the minimum bar you have to reach. Like, you have to use this Slack thing in order to be in here. You have to kind of know what GitHub is to be in here. What are your thoughts on getting people to contribute to these, to the project?

[00:25:14] Nyasha: I, I do think just based on my experience and talking to people, people think it's harder than it is. nobody knows the process. So that is a communication issue. also it is difficult for people who don't use Slack to have to use Slack, or for people who are in, A million slacks. I am in like 15 slacks and I am, at first I was constantly worried if I would miss something and then at this point I'm like, okay, I have it set to just DM me, just at me and I'll catch it.

[00:25:40] Nyasha: but also the process, I don't know if you remember, the process of getting into the make slack is complicated. at contributor days, the first hour is like, let's, let's show you how to create your, your profile for make, make WordPress. And then we'll show you how to get into Slack. That's a whole, that needs a session.

[00:25:56] Nyasha: So that's definitely a barrier. once you're in, you're good. But I, I think again, it's communication and it's, people don't know how, I guess they don't have the confidence to contribute. I had no idea I can contribute to. So many teams that, well, I knew I could, but I didn't think I would, had the knowledge when the marketing team did the WP 20, What would you call it?

[00:26:18] Nyasha: Campaign. I contributed to almost every team. Like I did support. I was like, nobody wants to hear me give support. Someone was, had a trouble with a site that I had just built out. I was like, oh yeah, this is what you do. And like, I was doing marketing. I did design. I'm a horrible designer. I designed a word camp poster.

[00:26:36] Nyasha: Like. I was doing stuff I didn't think I could do and all it took was for someone to like, set it up in that campaign to say, Hey, these are the people that need help. These are the things we need. You think you want to take a crack at it? I'm like, yeah. So a lot of people would just come into it. They don't know like what the community is.

[00:26:53] Nyasha: Basically, that's a learning curve. How do I get into this Slack? Oh, there's make WordPress. Okay. Some people who [00:27:00] are developers don't even know the difference between code. com and. So it's just the big WordPress learning curve. And that's something I'm seeking to change at LinkedIn. I want to do courses that help people get over these specific curves, but it is communication.

[00:27:14] Nyasha: And it's like the people who are putting in all this work, like say, read. They are one person and they get, they're stretched thin already. So I think we need to do our due diligence as well as people trying to come in and learn and try to, connect as much as possible and learn as much as possible.

[00:27:29] Nyasha: But if we can break this slack, make learning curve, we'll flood the slacks with contributors.

[00:27:37] Matt: you would have thought that with all the and I'm gonna just search for it right now because I know there is a commercial product and I'm going slow here so I can find it as I talk. Yeah, so wordpress. com slash p2, which,for folks who've been in the WordPress space for a while know that this was a project that started many years ago as like an open source.

[00:28:02] Matt: a plugin or a theme way, way back in the day, and I think it was a theme that was available. You could just use it. Anyway, the point is you'd imagine. That automatic would have had a communication tool first, or at least built a communication tool to make this part of, contributing easier. And I'll zoom out a little bit more because I don't think this is a technical problem.

[00:28:27] Matt: Like, I don't think it's like, Oh God, WordPress is so technical or these things are so technical. Am I that person? I think it's just tens of thousands of human beings. Trying to get them all on these little fragmented platforms, slack, get GitHub, wordpress. org, make blog, right. And like getting all these lines of communication down.

[00:28:50] Matt: I'm surprised P2 hasn't been pushed into like this, I guess for a lack of a better phrase, like a slack competitor

[00:28:58] Nyasha: Mm

[00:28:59] Matt: that we could solve communication across the board our way. So that when you onboard somebody new into the community. Like, when you come in, imagine a world where P2 took over Slack, let's just say.

[00:29:11] Matt: And it was open and people could just sign in and you could just sign up and like all the onboarding flow is there was like, do you just want to read stuff? You just want to hang out and talk with other WordPress people. Do you want to learn how to contribute? And you could say, yes, I want to learn how to contribute.

[00:29:26] Matt: And it just unlocked all of these onboarding flows and documents and videos on how to do this stuff and just brought people into the WordPress way. I don't know. I'm just pie in the sky at this point, but.

[00:29:39] Nyasha: No, that's wonderful. That's, that's a dream of a lot of people, but they need the help. And, there's the whole sponsored versus non sponsored contributors. I don't like talking about. You know it's spicy when I don't want to talk about it. It's like, I don't want to, I don't want to get into that.

[00:29:53] Nyasha: But, people need the help. People just need the help. If enough of us do it.

[00:29:57] Matt: Let me give you my hot, let me give you a hot take.[00:30:00]

[00:30:00] Nyasha: Okay.

[00:30:00] Matt: I wrote about this. a while ago, when the whole, like Mullenweg had his fever moment when he said that GoDaddy was a existential threat to WordPress.

[00:30:11] Nyasha: Oh, yeah.

[00:30:11] Matt: I said, I said, why doesn't GoDaddy just take, I don't know, 2, 3, 4 million dollars a year. And, and I know they, they, they have core contributors now, but just imagine taking whatever it costs, maybe that number's too low, but whatever it costs and all of a sudden go, daddy says, you know what, we're going to, we're going to take 50 developers and commit them to, to core, right?

[00:30:38] Nyasha: Mm hmm.

[00:30:39] Matt: One would imagine like, that's a pretty influential, influential, like chess move.

[00:30:45] Matt: Right. If just like how automatic has. I don't know how many core contributors automatic has 100, 60, 100. I don't know what the, yeah, I don't know what the number is, but there's a lot of influence from automatic that comes into, into WordPress. Go daddy could say, you know what, we've got billions of dollars too.

[00:31:03] Matt: We want to see WordPress go into a different direction. And they slide in 50 developers into core. That would be pretty interesting because to me, suddenly, okay. Mullenweg would have to take a step back and be like, whoa, okay. You're bringing 50 people. was hoping you would just bring like a dozen and I would still Trump you with, with like a hundred, but now you're moving like 50.

[00:31:26] Matt: That's a pretty big, like territorial grab right there. I think like that's like the positives and negatives of. Of open source, suddenly, I think the end user would win, like we would kind of all win because you'd have more human power in their developing WordPress, but, GoDaddy could be like, Hey, we really want a thing that helps GoDaddy in this, in this whole thing.

[00:31:49] Matt: Am I just crazy talk? Or do you think like something like that could happen in the future? Which,

[00:31:53] Nyasha: No, I think that's a great idea. One thing it makes me think about though is, in our community, there's a lot of fear from big corporations coming in and doing and doing that. Allen Emmons and I actually talked about it. I believe on one of our podcasts for Master WP on press the issue about how.

[00:32:12] Nyasha: More big company corporate influence would actually help out a lot of issues we're facing But the community is so scared especially small business owners and smaller agencies who are afraid of losing their influence So that would be one monster we would have to slay before getting to that point

[00:32:29] Matt: which monster do we slay though? Like, do we, which one,

[00:32:34] Nyasha: I I don't know. I don't know that's it's a lot of battles to fight Honestly, I don't know. We should make a, we should make a slack to talk.

[00:32:49] Matt: At the end of the day, like, I still think, Automatic is the best steward for WordPress. can you imagine if it was like Salesforce, which is a pretty big

[00:32:59] Nyasha: [00:33:00] Mm

[00:33:00] Matt: in, in Automatic? Could you imagine if it was Salesforce that ran WordPress? It would just be like... Awful.

[00:33:07] Matt: Yeah, it wasn't gonna say it. Yeah, I'm I'm I didn't say it man said it so, Yeah, this, yeah, it's okay. My house, this house can burn down. It's it's there's no value here.

[00:33:19] Nyasha: Okay

[00:33:22] Matt: Oh man. This has been a great conversation. I'd love to keep going, but we're going to start wrapping it up. Where do you want folks to go to say thanks? plug away any URLs, any events, anything that you have up and coming this foodies thing with Jeff. Wow. God bless you.

[00:33:39] Nyasha: I have so much so you can always find me if you want to contact me if you want to talk www. niashagreen. com. So that's my website. you can find me on twitter at ny ny underscore the T H E underscore creator, C R E A T O R. I'm very active on, in the community on Twitter. I'm also starting WPfoodies.

[00:34:02] Nyasha: com with a couple other wordpressers. All we do is talk about food on Twitter. people actually walked up to me at WorkFPS saying, The food, the food, the food. So we're like, we gotta, we gotta do this. I will be keynoting WordCamp Rochester next month. So September 30th, if you're near Rochester, New York, or you want to fly there, I'll be the keynote speaker.

[00:34:21] Nyasha: We're going to have fun. Please come. And am I doing anything else? I'm doing a lot usually. Oh, if you're near Columbia, South Carolina, I am a co organizer of the Columbia WordPress meetup group. And I have a LinkedIn learning course coming out next year on blocks.

[00:34:37] Matt: Fantastic. Everybody else is the WP minute plus go to the WP minute. com slash plus subscribe to the podcast. Follow the weekly newsletter, which didn't happen this week or last week. busy traveling vacation. It'll, it'll come back. It'll be back. But we had a great post just written up interview with Brian Gardner.

[00:34:56] Matt: Eric Karkovac led that interview talking about speaking of blocks, his block full site editing theme called powder. I almost said frost, but it's powder powder. Did I get that right? It's powder. check it out. it's great interview with Eric and Brian.