David is a full-time freelancer who specializes in WordPress (and BuddyPress) for startups, Fortune 500 companies, and everything in between. Organizer of WordCamp Miami for 10+ years.
Hey everyone, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the incredible journey we’ve been on with Charitable. š
The progress we’ve made in supporting campaign creators and helping them receive the donations they need has been nothing short of inspiring. I’m very excited to share some of the amazing features we’ve been tirelessly working on to make this process even more seamless and impactful.
One of the pivotal areas we identified was the creation of campaigns itself. Too often, we noticed that users were settling for low quality third-party themes or generic designs that failed to capture the essence of their cause.
We understood that not everyone is a designer or coder and that’s why we worked hard to develop something truly helpful: the Visual Campaign Builder, introduced in Charitable 1.8.0. š
Imagine being able to choose from a variety of professional templates tailored for different charity types ā whether it’s for schools, medical causes, or supporting local businesses. With just a few clicks, you can customize every aspect of your campaign page ā from adding donation buttons to embedding videos and photos ā all through a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface. No coding required!
The Visual Campaign Builder empowers you to craft a captivating campaign page in minutes, instead of hours. And the best part? We’ve already integrated some of our most popular add-ons, like recurring donations and video support, with more exciting collaborations on the horizon that I canāt wait to share.
At Charitable, our mission is simple yet profound:
TURN COMPASSION INTO ACTION.
What’s one way of doing that? Making the journey of running a campaign easier and more effective for everyone involved!
The Visual Campaign Builder is just the beginning of this effort and I couldn’t be more thrilled to share it with you. š
Click the link below to learn more… and feel free reach out to me with any questions or ideas you might have.
1. On (plugin, etc.) licenses in the WordPress space: “I think we should stop doing lifetime licenses (of plugins, services) in the WordPress world… when you say ‘lifetime’ I think it cheapens the word.”
2. On the $36k price tags of Automattic’s new 100 year hosting plan: “It’s a lot… But in some ways, I wonder if it’s too low. We tried to model inflation. Different cost of underlying things like the dot com registration or domain registrations.”
3. On standardizing LMS and making the category a higher citizen in the WordPress ecosystem: “This week, TutorLMS, Sensei, LearnDash and LifterLMS got together…. Can we actually agree on using some of the same SQL formats? Could we make it so that’s not a lockin? Also an “LMS” channel is now in the #WordPress official Slack. Now everyone involved in this space can come together and agree on standards and in the future they can work together better.”
4. WordPress plugins that “kinda do the same thing”: “Open source.. allows innovation happen. Good competition actually makes everyone better. Bad sometimes in that as a WordPress user, like if you go one plugin, you might be kind of logged into it.”
5. According to Matt: “WordPress was the original no-code tool.”
6. Letting go of “baggage” (notice I’m not using the d word – David): “I would just like officially for 2023 to reset all of that to neutral. So, if you think I like something or don’t like something, let’s reset that to zero so we’re not gonna make it another 20 years carrying around a lot of baggage, right?”
7. Someone asked a question, mentioning an attempt to education WordPress (core) developers on accessibility, with Matt’s response: “”One assumes [ordPress developers] don’t know about accessibility standards. And I would actually argue that they care about it quite a bit… they still going to mess it up. There will always be a process. If there’s certain things you literally think they don’t know about, the WCAG 2 .1, do a session and talk to them.”
8. Matt is concerned on how things are labeled and understood in the WordPress admin, and what to see that improved in the admin redesign: “I’m actually thinking about most in the Admin is how much knowledge it pre-supposes… can we name things simpler… media and comment mod needs to be better.”
9. What would Matt do differently at the start of WordPress? “Changing the name of the “ID” column name in the post table in the database” (Although he’s had time to think about this question and has revised it).
Asked: "What would you do differently about #WordPress?"
Easier Editing ā Already available in WordPress, with ongoing improvements
Customization ā Full site editing, block patterns, block directory, block themes
Collaboration ā A more intuitive way to co-author content
Multi-lingual ā Core implementation for Multi-lingual sites
Recently I posted a poll on Twitter and Mastodon that asked if you had to a fifth phase to Gutenberg, what would you make the single overall theme (note the wording – not āwhat would you like to see in Gutenberg nextā, but the overall theme). I wanted to see what WordPress users (admittingly those mostly on top of WordPress news, Gutenberg, etc.) would like to see beyond the four announced phases of Gutenberg now that we are entering Phase 3. Iām here to summarize the responses, and include some comments made in Slack and privately.
Question for #WordPress folks: The #Gutenberg project has 4 phases… but if you had to add a FIFTH phase what would you make the single overall theme (knowing the phase would still be years away)?
Of course, when you ask anything of Gutenberg people canāt help to voice their overall opinions about the project as a whole. While I will read whatever people have to say about it – good or critical – a handful of comments were just out of context (referring to maybe starting over with Gutenberg or in attempt to be clever their comments were too broad) those werenāt particularly helpful for the question… so I appreciate time it takes to respond to my question, I’ll be setting these asideā¦ The rest fell into some main categories and some “runner ups” worth mentioning.
Media
I put this in the poll (although people were encouraged to add comments, and weāll get to those) and it āwonā the poll in terms of the choices I provided. āMedia Library will get some well needed attention during this [imaginary] phase.ā Jason Cosper remarked.
Some people said all they wanted was āfolders in mediaā. I think because there isnāt a standard āgoodā media enhancement plugin, either people have their own enhanced plugin of choice or simply āsufferā with the current WordPress media system. And media doesnāt just mean storing photos or the āmediaā menu in the adminā¦ it seemed to extend to how WordPress treats and stores media, photos, and videos. In fact, Hendrik Luehrsen commented that the āmediaā choice should be rephrased as āasset managementā in generalā¦ and I would tend to agree with that.
So media was the most popular vote. But not the only one.
Mobile
Mobile was in the poll and overall scored second place. Not too many commented in the polls about mobile, but Iāve seen complaints during the entire Gutenberg project about the pains of trying to assemble something in mobile. Mobile rarely (if ever) appears featured in Mattās State of the Word or major updates as far as I remember (correct me if Iām wrong). I canāt imagine experiencing even a striped down version of Gutenberg on a phone but a very lite experience should be possible – almost as if Iām entering something into Apple Notes even to update later.
Alex Staniford: āI think it is the single biggest thing that’s stopping WordPress from seeing wider adoption in arenas like social media. The app is not extensible at the moment, and I think that should changeā¦ I would love to see the new admin experience tie nicely into the future app, including extensions. If we’re all using a standard set of components, I think it’s do-able.ā
AI
Remember if there was a Gutenberg Phase Five it would be at least TWO YEARS from now – something I donāt think occurred honestly to many of those who respondedā¦ but with the recent boom to AI I felt the addition of AI to the poll was a wildcard but valid. It got a decent third-place response (12%-19% of the poll votes). Not much commenting on this, so not much to tell. But considering what Matt Mullenweg said recently in Post Status Slack Iām wondering if he would have picked this personally:
Okay y’all: Forever ago I told you companies could be built in a remote and distributed fashion, and it’s amazing to see most WP companies operate in this way, impacting thousands of people’s lives. In 2015 I told you to learn Javascript deeply. I don’t have a catchy phrase yet, but my message for 2023 will be to spend as much time leveraging AI as possible. The boosts to productivity and capability are amazing. This is not a web3/crypto/widgets hype cycle. It’s real.
To this slice of the WP community, the ~1,300 people here, I want you to really internalize this message as deeply as possible. Open source and AI are the two mega-trends of the next 30 years. They complement each other, and you should think deeply about how. ChatGPT can’t ready Shopify’s code.”
There were lots more suggestions – and while I think almost all are completely valid for a focus in WordPress, I honestly donāt think they fit the āGutenberg Phase Fiveā title. Thatās not to be exclusive but again if you look at the other four phases, they were in logical order and were effectively new areas where especially Gutenberg was going to change WordPress. The phases didnāt mean nothing else was being worked on – to various degrees of attention to someās frustration – there were other areas that gained attention and that were included in the WordPress releases that included Gutenberg so farā¦ but while I personally donāt feel they fit the āGutenberg Phase Fiveā at least on the surfaceā¦ these are worth a mention:
Ticket Clean Up / Bug Fixes – WordPress definitely needs to take a break and focus on cleaning things up – there are some old Trac tickets out there. I would support having a WordPress release JUST for thisā¦ similar to the Mac OS Snow Leopard release of Mac OS (for those who know about that release it was pitched as a cleaning up/performance version more than anything). Not a Gutenberg Phase, but def. a release maybe in between two Gutenberg phasesā¦ as Michele Butcher-Jones puts it: āMine would be a mix of accessibility, UI, and a a good revisit back to what was the initial Gutenberg that we launched and might not had refined as well as we should have before jumping into another aspect.ā
Accessibility – My comments to this are similar to ticket cleanup, although I would hope that accessibility improvements would be in every release and every phase of Gutenberg.
Extensibility – This was mentioned more than once, although itās definition is a little hazy. This mention primarily came because of the comment from Milana Cap: āBetter integration with existing PHP. Better extensibility. Modifying any part of Gutenberg, any part, shouldn’t be more than a hook away. Make Gutenberg works the WordPress way.ā While I donāt agree that things should have been āextensibleā from day one (things change and people will complain when they do – sometimes better then things settle to add certain hooks), I think some items have sat long enoughā¦ but this would need more specifics.
There was also mentions of āin browser block developmentā, āuser experienceā, āadmin redesignā, and ācommunity growthā.
Remember, i’m not saying these are less important than anything previously mentioned. The context was Gutenberg Phase 5 though and for me that is a meaningful context to the Gutenberg project and long-term strategy.
Wrapping This Up
How about me? I’m not a Gutenberg developer – I’ve built small sites entirely with blocks but still can ignore the block editor for certain projects. My feelings about it’s past and present are mixed although I’m excited to see it move forward.
I believe that although I don’t feel they should be the “theme” of a “Gutenberg Phase” I think having a “pause, clean, and polish” release is a GREAT idea. Focus on the three bullets of “runner ups” I listed above. I don’t think even a release will resolve majority of the items to catch up on… nor will it likely satisfy the harshest critics, but it’s a start. And this could be between a Phase 4 and the imaginary Phase 5.
But to actually answer my own original question of “Phase Five” of Gutenberg… for the sake of keeping WordPress competitive I would say “mobile” – what experience can we provide on smaller devices (that outnumber desktop devices around the globe) would be benefit content creators? Media rework is a very close second… But I’m putting some side money on AI honestly. It might be a little early, but as my experience with it grows week by week I can’t help but feel that it will work itself into the editor and other areas of WordPress… i’m sure page builders and Wix and SquareSpace and [insert anyone in the space you think worthy of consideration here] are already working on their integrations (for better or for worse).
All in all this was a good survey… and I thank everyone who responded on Twitter and Mastodon.
Iām not expecting another phase added to Gutenberg officially and even if there was, it would be years away, with enough time for the landscape of WordPress to change so that new priorities are in place. It wouldnāt surprise me that if by Phase 4 there are new things to consider to keep WordPress relevant that might redesign that Phase as itās currently understood.
This is a brief overview and highlights of Matt Mullenweg’s presence (usually in the form of a Q&A at WordCamps, now that the annual State of the Word has been separate for a few years). Matt wasn’t able to be there in person, but (despite some technical issues) was able to communicate on the big screen with Josepha Haden and Nirav Mehta hitting on stage in front of him.
Milana Cap was up first asking about resources and funds to allocate for tools, specifically for the #WordPress Docs team, but for teams and possibly per project.
“So the documentation team is not just writing documentation, we have so many things around it that we are working on and we — we are paying tools by our own money, I’m paying a tool by my sponsor’s money from XWP and if we could have some kind of support for those kinds of things, logistic that we are doing, to be able to do what we do for WordPress, that would be so helpful.”
Milana Cap
Matt said Automattic (or WordPress project?) would pay for tools if they had, but stressed considering open source solutions first. He did make it very clear that “If there’s ever something you need, don’t hesitate to get in touch with the Meta team if you need a tool sponsored.”
It was a bit of an awkward slow start to a Q&A but with all things considered it was a good start and things seemed to pick up as it moved along.
A short time later Matt also mentioned this, more in passing it seemed but i caught it…
"If I'm super-honest, right now I'm pretty embarrassed about a lot of what is going on with #WordPress .org. It is not up to the standard of what WordPress, itself, provides, which is world-class software.ā
“It is not up to the standard of what WordPress, itself, provides, which is world-class software. Inside the core software, I think we’re doing pretty decent and in many places, fantastic job of many things. But we haven’t yet been able to translate that to the project surrounding it, including WordPress.org itself. So it’s very, very much on my mind and something I’m been talking to Josepha. Sometimes we need more DRIs, Direct Responsible Individuals. Maybe try that approach a little bit more than necessarily the consensus, which we’ve been attempting now for several years.”
Matt Mullenweg
My $0.02 (with my limited understanding) on this was (and still is) that the the speed of the redesign of http://WordPress.org isnāt going quickly enough. Perhaps not as quickly for a community and influence as large as WordPress as might go with other organizations. And not just development (the grunt work as it were) but maybe management and coordination. This fits in with Matt’s comment on Direct Responsible individuals and Matt also mentioning “too often, we are doing, particularly design by committee and trying to develop a consensus and everything and it would probably be better if we just chose a single person.”
Hearing Matt comment about “being embarrassed about WordPress.org” was a mix of raised eyebows and appreciation of an honest opinion, but it makes sense once you view the context. Of course the pandemic and Matt’s lean toward’s open source being a non-paid contribution (while sponsored work is ok) might not make this easy.
I will say that the foundation side of WordPress, as you know, had no employees. So, no one gets paid by the foundation. We do do grants and scholarships and things like that, but it’s not really set up to be an employment entity. It is a place where people can come together, regardless of who employs them or how they get paid and work together on something. I realize that this isn’t for everyone. And, that a number of folks, as part of their Five for the Future contribution, they get sponsored.
Matt Mullenweg
It might simply be a matter of time and power too. Glad to see Matt addressing this. But moving on!
WordPress being taught in schools was brought up and Josepha’s comment is good to take in:
“WordPress moves too fast for them to be able to build curriculum…. It’s also kind of like a “power to the people” sort of thing and schools find that moderately alarming.ā
Josepha Haden
On a brighter note, Matt did create the Kids Camp Slack channel live during the Q&A.
This part of my life, this little part, is called happiness.
Michelle Frechette then asks that with the layoffs we’ve seen what did Matt think that – as a community – can do to create more jobs and stop the anxiety and fear that comes with the layoffs we’ve seen.
Matt:
āI think actually WordPress can benefit from recessionary times, as well, because we provide one, economic agency where people can do things themselves, people can be entrepreneurs.ā
“People with WordPress skills to look at businesses in their area who might be spending more on some of these other services and give them the opportunity to bring them to WordPress.”
“I can’t think of an developer application that hasn’t had a GitHub link. Contributing is a great way to fill those holes in your resume, as well.ā
And also:
"I feel like open source really shines in recessionary times." @photomatt#WCAsia
Matt got asked about ChatGPT, AI, and how it would effect open source. His response:
" ChatGpt and other large language models and other things, I think are absolutely the future and we should be thinking about how we can leverage them to make ourselves more productive and not try to fight it.ā@photomatt#WCAsia
Matt says WordPress has “10x times the number of domains using it as the number two competitior Spotify” and “I could see WordPress being around – not just around, but core to the fabric of the web 100 years from now and I would love to attend a WordCamp Asia in my 80s.ā
Matt got asked about the WordPress onboarding procedure (the 5 minute install for the most part). His response was to plan for the WordPress onboarding process to be serviced by hosting provides and there has been a ton of innovation in the onboarding flow. But there’s so much AFTER the WordPress onboarding experience to consider as well – with Gutenberg serving as the blank canvas that users get to and need to be able to use.
On localization and translation especially for Asian countries Matt would love to some improvement there:
On localization and translation:
āOutside of Japan it feels like many of the countries representative of @WordCampAsia#WordPress adoption within many of these are not seen as a must.ā@photomatt#WCAsia
On WordPress getting a “bad wrap” thanks to bad hosting and opportunities for hosting companies to improve:
āI think it's getting better, also from the competitive nature of hostingā¦ beyond rolling out auto updates we can improve code audits for plugins and themes.ā@photomatt#WCAsiapic.twitter.com/GeHeflBbwx
Matt also mentioned, in a response to another question, that he feels that the “title” field for a WordPress post should no longer be required… similar to how in Twitter you don’t need to add a title to write something.
I’ve been talking a lot about this and some of the Gutenberg team, how can we make it easier, both in theming and the Core interface to really make titles more optional because I just want people to be able to feel like they can post anything to their blogs. A little bit how bloggings evolved with people talking about SEO and findability takes a little bit of fun and spontaneity.
I used to post hundreds of times her year. I think it is more like writing a college essay. Just if we can lower those barriers to entry and make people comfortable with posting silly things or just posting a link or just posting a you tube embed or something and not every blog post having to be, like, a huge thing, with a title and paragraphs and, you know, SEO-optimized and featured image and all that sort of, you know, kind of additional burden we put on a post. It’s great to allow that, but I think that kind of microblogging is something that I want to make a lot more effortless within an interface.
Matt Mullenweg
Matt ends the Q&A answering a question on how we as the WordPress community can show off WordPress that it’s “not just for cheap website but can be even for Enterprise applications”. In a word: examples.
My quick answer is nothing is as good as showing examples. So, doing excellent work and then raising the profile of those and I know we’ve redesigned the showcase, but I really want to make this a lot more prominent and I want every single Rosetta site to have a really prominent showcase so by elevating the best examples of WordPress, I think that is better because we can, you know, say all day that WordPress is secure, it’s performant, but being able to point to a site, like whitehouse.gov, that switched to WordPress. Being able to point to examples like that and say, well, if it’s secure enough for the White House, like, it’s secure enough for you probably, is really, really helpful.
Matt Mullenweg
Note: Longer quotes taken from the transcriptions and the tweets and shorter quote from my imperfect human ears.
