Is WordPress Declining or Stagnating in 2024?
WordPress uptake stagnating in 2024? Uncover the truth behind the numbers and explore implications for developers, businesses, and bloggers alike.
Curious about the future of WordPress? Our latest show investigates whether the platform’s growth is slowing down or merely holding steady in 2024. With a deep dive into usage patterns and comparisons with emerging alternatives, this analysis sheds light on what lies ahead for one of the world’s most popular content management systems.
With Special Guests Matt Medeiros & Mark Szymanski
This Week Show’s Sponsors
LifterLMS: LifterLMS
Convesio: Convesio
Omnisend: Omnisend
The Show’s Main Transcript
[00:00:01.520] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to the WP-Tonic show. This week in WordPress and Sass, this is episode 930. It’s a special episode. It’s a kind of mini roundtable show. I’ve got the great Matt Medeiros with me. I’ve got his robin. I’ve got Mark Szymanski I have no idea. I have no idea how to pronounce it. And I’ve got my patient, a regular co-host. Kirk. In this episode, we will discuss whether WordPress is stagnant or in decline. We’re also going to be discussing Kevin Geary Etch. And we’re going to be discussing Jamie Marshland. We’re going to discuss Josepha’s position, and maybe even Morten Rand-Hendriksen will throw that in as well. So, it will be a show about everybody having a go. Nobody will speak to me. That’s why I’m not going to WordPress us; nobody would talk to me anyway.
[00:01:31.290] – Jonathan Denwood
It should be a great show. I’m going to let our guests introduce themselves. Matt, would you like to introduce yourself quickly?
[00:01:41.650] – Matt Medeiros
Yeah. Matt Medeiros Community at gravity forms runs the breakdown podcast over there, and then you can also find me@thewpminute.com.
[00:01:50.220] – Jonathan Denwood
He looking worried now. So, Mark, would you like to introduce yourself to the trial?
[00:01:58.740] – Matt Medeiros
Sure. Thank you guys for having me. I appreciate it, as always. Mark Szymanski. I own an agency I’ve owned since 2018 called Find a Tech I. Over the last year and a half, I’ve met great folks like the three on the call today, deep-diving into the WordPress community, the ins and outs, and everything like that.
[00:02:19.220] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s great. And I’ve got my co-host. Kurt, would you like to introduce yourself to the new listeners and viewers?
[00:02:25.340] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. Thank you, Jonathan. My name is Kurt von Ahnen. I own an agency called Manana no Mas, mainly focused on learning and membership websites, especially with Scorn. Also, I work directly with WP-Tonic and the good folks at LifterLMS.
[00:02:38.750] – Jonathan Denwood
Fantastic. But before we go into the meat and potatoes of this great show, I’ve got a couple messages from our major sponsors. But I also want to point out we’ve got a sponsor for a couple weeks. It’s motopress. If you’re looking for a great appointment booking WordPress plugin, motopress might be something that you’re really interested in. It enables you to take a online payments for any scheduled booking for anybody that’s a consultant, hairdresser or anything like that stripe all the normal gateway providers. It’s a great value plugin. It looks really interesting. I will have the link available. So we’re going to go for our break and when we come back we’re going to the show. Three, two, one. I also want to point out we’ve got some other great special offers from the major sponsors and from motor press. You can get all these goodies by going over to wptonic.com deals, WP Tonic and you find motopress and the regular sponsors plus a created list of the best WordPress plugins and services for the WordPress professional and power user. What more could you ask for? Beloved tribe, probably a lot more, but that’s all you’re gonna get from that page.
[00:04:21.850] – Jonathan Denwood
Matt likes that actually, so it makes him chuckle. So let’s go straight into it. There’s been some discussion recently, most of it coming from mark. I like the point out about is it, is WordPress. No, I was only kidding. Is WordPress in decline or is it stagnating? So Matt, I’ve been thinking about it. I’ve been watching other people’s content. I know that you watch a lot of it, you even have to listen to this show, which I’m amazed. So what’s your initial thoughts of the initial statement for this show?
[00:05:07.230] – Matt Medeiros
Yeah, so it’s obviously a big topic. I think when you have a piece of software that’s 20 years old, there is just so much that can happen over the course of 20 years. We’re on that second decade, the back half of that second decade, and I think there’s just a lot of elements that go into it. If you look at the, if you watch the WP product Talk episode with Noel Talk and Yoast, they kind of break down both of their perspectives. Both of them have published, I don’t know what you would call it, reports or blog posts and presentations about the potential decline or much more maybe like that stagnation of where we’re at a plateau. And this is something that I think Josefa has identified or had identified in her 2023 wordcamp talk just about over a year ago and sort of understanding that look, we’re going to hit this growth plateau and it’s not going to be a feature, it’s not going to be a new release lead that’s going to get us out of this. It’s going to be rolling up our sleeves and going back into the community and getting community support.
[00:06:14.410] – Matt Medeiros
And if you think again, if you go back to the WP product Talk episode, they break down their numbers. It’s not in this. We’re not crashing through the floor but we’re not growing exponentially either. Why? Lots of reasons, especially over the last five to eight years with Gutenberg. But also I see it as, look, we’re in a shift of technology that you’ve never seen a piece of software used by so many for 20 years in an open source setting reach this level. Linux maybe, but you’re not end user specific like end users aren’t touching the kernel of Linux and a lot of factors. People are tired, it’s 20 years, people age out, it’s 20 years. People are bored of this technology. Over the course of 20 years competitors come into the space. Technology is getting faster, cheaper, better, so more competitors come into the space. People start doing niche things or vertical things that WordPress tries to do all of, but new competitors come in to do things faster and quicker. Yeah, and you have this sort of level of excitement these days from folks like Mark who came into WordPress within the last ten years, didn’t see the first ten years of WordPress and how it grew there much more organically, like in the hallways of a word camp, people sitting together writing code, making this thing work for all of us.
[00:07:33.800] – Matt Medeiros
And you have a much more vocal crowd than the developer who’s just like, you know what, I’ll just code it myself, it doesn’t matter. Now we have a whole group of folks who have experienced WordPress in a much more gooey end product fashion who just want these things to work. They like WordPress, maybe even love WordPress, but they’re just like, hey man, I’m trying to run a business with this thing. I need it to be better. I need to better for me, my clients, my workflow. And largely that’s not what WordPress is all about. And I’ll end it there and give the floor.
[00:08:07.260] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think that was a good fantastic synopsis, Matt. So Mark, I think, mark, I think also there’s different buckets of users. There’s the kind of user base that Kevin was trying to appeal to with the kind of public launch of his etch product, highly agency, individual small group, agency focused. Then you have the diy crowd, then you have this bucket. WordPress, if it’s running, seems to be 44% of the Internet. It’s going to have a lot of different group centers, isn’t it, Mark? So is that maybe one of the problems or is that a positive, is that a positive feature, having all these diverse groups?
[00:09:12.030] – Matt Medeiros
I think one of the biggest things that I’ve seen so far is that there are a lot of the whole, the whole WordPress project in itself. And then the apparatus around it is like just, just incredibly nuanced. And that is what you said, what you just said there. Like, before I started really getting into the WordPress community, I was absolutely a solopreneur, agency owner, whatever you want to call it. That was my only way that I thought about these things. I was using Elementor and then I found bricks. And then I got into the community and I started learning a lot of other things. And I’ve learned a shit ton from guys like Matt that have been in here for a while and understand the different nuances yourself. You guys, Kurt and Jonathan, you guys as well. And I. I’ve tried to like, be a little more empathetic and understand the WordPress mission. That said though, I mean, when you listen to stuff like Kevin says and like our youtuber call recently with Ann McCarthy, I appreciate a hell of a lot the amount of more like Matt was saying earlier, kind of like how they’re coming back to more of a community driven, like trying to be in touch with us and understand that.
[00:10:13.380] – Matt Medeiros
I think that’s the right play because Matt, myself, Kevin, like whoever, like, we have different size communities, but we’re hearing directly from like the boots on the ground type people, right? The people that like, we might know who Anne and the people at automatic are, but there’s a lot of people that use WordPress that don’t really know anything about, like Matt Mullenwig and how automatic works and all that. So we’re trying to like be like disseminate that information. And what we’re getting in response to that is interesting and I think it’s valuable and, and I think that that’s all that to say, that there are these different types of avatars and there’s way more now than there was ten years ago. And it’s interesting and it’s not easy, but I think it’s important that we try to hear everyone out and try to figure out a solution for that. And I think more conversation generally leads to a better outcome. That’s my hypothesis, at least. So that’s why I do it.
[00:11:06.640] – Jonathan Denwood
Not always in WordPress, I can assure you of that. Mark. So, Kurt, do you think, I think for obvious reasons, there’s a enormous community of DIY power users, but there’s also, and there’s an enormous group of agencies, freelance agency, freelance developers that really built up WordPress to what it is. And I, and then you’ve had a whole new group of people that were brought in by page builders like Beaver Builder, animator, etc. Etc. So in some ways, because of some of the criticisms of not the end products, which are, I can see, has enormous power. I. Gutenberg. But just the process, I’ve been critical of the process. I think this has caused even more fragmentation of the market. What’s your own thoughts about this, Kurt.
[00:12:22.360] – Kurt von Ahnen
The tribal nature, or the fragmentation, as you put it, of all of these different factions and groups and, and stuff inside the WordPress community to me is one of the biggest distractions, to be honest. I’ve been really upfront about the first real event that I went to that was WordPress based, was WordPress us. When it was in San Diego, it was like three years ago, and I got hooked. So then I started doing WordPress meetups. I started volunteering at WordPress, Wordcamps, Wordcamp Phoenix, went to the one in Maryland for WordPress us. I mean, Wordcamp us. And the amount of people that I meet that call themselves developers, but really don’t understand how almost anything works or have never been part of the community or have never stepped outside of, you know, an elementor build to really experience blocks in its newest form. It’s like there’s a certain, there’s a certain quality of a person as a serious entrepreneur, and that’s, you never stop learning, right? Like if you become complacent, then you have, if you’ve become complacent, then you’ve kind of failed at the, at the job of being this entrepreneur. And I’m running into a lot of people that are either just coming out of that shell or are still kind of stuck in it.
[00:13:43.360] – Kurt von Ahnen
Best use case example I have is I run the WordPress meetup here in Hutchinson, Kansas. We got a guy that drives here from another city, comes here just for the meetup because he doesn’t have it where he lives. And when we started talking to him, he’s the nicest guy and he has lots of clients. I don’t know how he has lots of clients because he’ll say he doesn’t know how, he doesn’t know how WordPress works. Like we, we go through the basics and the elements of WordPress and he stumbles into these jobs and referrals and he says, hey man, I just click around until I figure it out. And it’s like, okay, let’s work with you some. So you understand taxonomies and categories and difference between a post and a page and it’s become that elemental. And I run into a lot of people that think they’re agencies or freelancers that are at that level. So we need to do a lot more education wise. And I know that we see that with the, with the voices on this screen and the Kevin Geary’s and the poodle presses out there. But I think even though there’s a ton of resources in WordPress and WordPress.org comma, for some reason nobody seems to find it.
[00:14:50.020] – Kurt von Ahnen
And so we have to do a better job of getting this baseline education out there and really drive the point that you never stop learning. This is an immense field.
[00:14:59.680] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think you’ve got some good points. Where to take this conversation, right, Matt, there’s three directions to go with this conversation, but I think I want clarify one before we move on. The bulk of professional usage of WordPress is driven by marketing agencies or development agencies. There’s various terms and sizes, isn’t it? From one person with a couple subcontractors to. There’s one of the bigger ones in northern Nevada is noble studios that I think has got over 50 staff members and they utilize WordPress quite a bit. I used to do some freelance work for them many years ago and none of them are, none of these. The bulk of these agencies aren’t. Don’t listen to WordPress podcasts, not don’t go to word camps that they market to their customers. They go to conferences where their potential customers could be. But this whole group have been one of the big drivers of WordPress. It’s been one of their key tools. Do you think in 2024 that kind of professional agency market are looking away from WordPress?
[00:16:33.840] – Matt Medeiros
I don’t think they’re looking away. They just, you know, I preface it with the same conversations we’re having today are the same conversations and the same struggles we had 15 years ago. I used to do a segment on my podcast about talking about the $500 WordPress developer, right? The person who would build you a site for $500 called themselves a developer but didn’t really understand how the whole tech stack worked. You really had to know the tech stack 15 years ago, maybe less. So these days these are the same challenges. There’s just more people and it gets amplified a lot more because of social media, because everyone has found the different pockets and groups to fall into, especially in the page builder world, those pockets are very, very loud. You know, should agencies give back to the community? Should they partake in it? It’d be great if they did. But I totally understand with a company like the one that you mentioned that has 50, 60 employees, WordPress isn’t there like giving back to the WordPress community doesn’t make, it doesn’t make business sense. In fact, no one’s like, this does not make business sense on paper.
[00:17:45.490] – Matt Medeiros
It doesn’t make sense. You know, this is why to give kudos to Mullenweg with the framing of five for the future, he’s saying, hey, take 5% of that time and give back to WordPress. That’s all it takes. I’m not asking you to give millions of dollars or commit one of your staff members to WordPress. I’m saying 5% of your time. And yeah, like if a company like that took that 5% of their time and did something, that’d be amazing. But, you know, I’m not forcing anyone to do that and saying, hey, if you don’t, you’re not part of this community. So the short answer is, I would love to see those types of companies invest back into the community, but it’s not a strict standard that you have to, and they’ll still be profitable and WordPress will still grow because of it, right? They’ll still, because they’re launching WordPress sites. And even if they don’t even go to a meetup or join in on Slack or watch one of our podcasts, still a good thing for WordPress, but we’d love to have them here.
[00:18:44.930] – Jonathan Denwood
So Mark, I think the larger agency market, between 51 hundred people, I don’t think they’re bothered what’s happened with Gutenberg because most of their work is totally custom built. They have a team of developers and it, they don’t take a pre developed theme, everything, they have an internal theme, a bare bones framework of different module coding modules. But it fundamentally, each job is individually coded up. I think the next wave of smaller agencies, one person that does graphic design, web design, I call them the Divi crowd because Divi really appealed to that individual, in my opinion, very well. And then elementor appealed to that crowd as well. But I think that crowd, if they’re still divvy and they’re still with Alamator, it’s fine. I think I just sense that what’s gone on with Gutenberg and this long journey with it has confused the situation where people then look at Wicks or squarespace. But I don’t know if I’m really right with that statement. What’s your own view there, Mark?
[00:20:23.710] – Matt Medeiros
Yeah, I think Matt and I talked about this on the recent stream. We did. And I think that from what I’m seeing, I’m not seeing too many, I’m sure there are people leaving, but I’m not seeing too many people leaving. I always think that, like, we’re in WordPress, we know what it can do. We know it’s first style, we know it’s robust. We wouldn’t really go anywhere, even though it’s, most, most of us probably wouldn’t really go anywhere because we know what it can do. I feel like a lot of times all roads lead to WordPress because I feel like if you start in webflow, at some point you’re going to realize that you need an open source situation. You start to value data ownership more, or you just need to interrupt because.
[00:20:58.770] – Jonathan Denwood
You have actively used webflow, haven’t you, in your business?
[00:21:02.850] – Matt Medeiros
To a degree. I wouldn’t say that I would use it. I’ve used it professionally, but I have limited experience with Wix and webflow and Shopify and all these other platforms. And I can’t see myself, even with all the stuff that’s going on, I can’t see myself leaving WordPress because it just doesn’t make sense, any sense to me. Like, I know the power of it. What would, I put a nuance to this, though, is I think there’s a lot of people, this is the problem. And I think it’s, I’m positioned interestingly because like, I’m a younger dude in this, in this, in this space, and I’m seeing like, you know, all the wisdom ahead of me. And I’m also seeing the new people coming up behind me. And I don’t know of anyone that actually knows what WordPress. Like, they don’t, they don’t understand what we know about WordPress. They see Webflow, they see framer, they see, they’re all flashy and cool. Maybe it’s a stage that they’ll go through. Maybe they’ll go and play with Webflow, a wix and framer, and be like, oh, well, one day I can’t do something. Maybe I should try something else and then find WordPress.
[00:22:05.310] – Matt Medeiros
I don’t told Matt this. Like I said, I don’t know if there’s an exodus problem. I think there’s like a discovery problem. I think that’s more of our issue because I don’t even know how I got into WordPress when I was like, somebody just told me about it, but I was like, right. I was like a little bit before 2017. I was like, a little bit before, like all these things started popping off. And I just think this is a time, a timely thing.
[00:22:28.280] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, but one thing, Mark, and I think Kevin has pointed this out. I think I’ve been surprised that the figure hasn’t declined. I’ve been quite impressed that it stayed at around 43, 44. His argument is, or he’s the Nazis, is that less north american? You know, real paying clients, real agencies that doing work in the 515, 20, 30,000, they are not really looking at WordPress anymore. They are looking at other solutions. He doesn’t, I don’t know. I am not in that world. I don’t, don’t know if there’s any organizations. What’s your own feeling about. I think you’re saying that you don’t think, well, let’s put it over to Matt before I put over to Kirk, because you were in that, you know, slightly higher agency world, do you think less of that crowds are looking at WordPress?
[00:23:38.850] – Matt Medeiros
Yeah. Again, my only viewport is the, is the WordPress agencies. I don’t know of anybody else. I don’t really follow any other agencies that are using webflow or another platform to do this stuff. All I know is everyone doing really well in their WordPress agencies with, doing migrations from a sharepoint or an adobe and all this other stuff. So I only see it from, from the positive side, I would also counter this, and I know this is maybe not the strongest of arguments, but WordPress is again, 20 years. Who knows what’s going to happen with the web flow and the square spaces of the world. It’s basically these commercialized platforms. In five years, ten years, do we see a cycle come back? People go, oh, okay, 20 years in WordPress. I got to try something else. Let me go over here. And then the natural evolution of economics hits those types of platforms and the prices go up, the restraints come in and they go, you know what? I want to go back to WordPress because there was less of that. It was a much more affordable stack and it’s open and I can get the resources that I need.
[00:24:48.560] – Matt Medeiros
This system keeps going up in pricing. Shopify is a perfect example of that.
[00:24:52.210] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. When I was active developer, a couple of agents we were using expression engine. We weren’t, we weren’t they. The owners of the agency, I got into WordPress and, and I was using it for my side git gigs. My clientele, small book of business I was trying to build up locally and WordPress was a great, but the agency work I was helping with, they wouldn’t touch WordPress. They were expression engine focus. But they were dealing with job. They wouldn’t take on a job unless it was $30,000. So Kirk, I think one of the other. Kirk, I think one of the failings, you know, automatic, it’s their business, they can run it whatever they like. But I just feel that they, this Gutenberg Road, the main thing, I think it’s affected WordPress is that really automatic have done really bugger all with Woocommerce, and they’ve really missed an enormous opportunity to take the fight to Shopify. And I think that’s been one of the greatest missed opportunities can be rectified, but their total inability to get to grips, woo Woo and offer a real hosted solution that can take on Shopify is one of the big, biggest missed opportunities I know of.
[00:26:36.900] – Jonathan Denwood
What do you reckon, Kurt?
[00:26:39.600] – Kurt von Ahnen
Woocommerce is that gorilla in the room for me, Jonathan, and at the risk of everybody reaching out and wanting to strangle me, you know, if I can avoid woocommerce in an installation and go with some native payment gateway and some other plugin or something, I will. But then, you know, there’s occasions where someone, maybe they’re selling digital content, like courses or ebooks and stuff, and, you know, coffee cups, tote bags and tapestries, right? So then you’re like, okay, now we got stuff that’s digital and we got stuff that’s being drop shipped or shipped or taxed in different regions. And, and, and so then the complexity of woocommerce really comes to light. And it’s great, but it is, it can be clumsy for some people to use, especially the client, after you build the site and there’s some change they need to make because of accounting. I wish, I wish that, that, I wish that WordPress would embrace the e commerce model more as part of core.
[00:27:40.330] – Matt Medeiros
Right?
[00:27:40.870] – Kurt von Ahnen
I just wish that that could happen because then there would be that like a little toggle switch that would say, is this an e commerce site or is this a content site? You know, and if it was an e commerce site, you’d be able to build it out and do it and have it as it would be a direct competitor to the Shopify experience. When we are looking at an audience. And I keep thinking of top of funnel experiences to kind of get off of what Mark was saying. You know, he’s saying that the younger people might not be coming in. Young people think if they have an Instagram or a Facebook group, group page or something, that they’ve got a website, right? So there’s the idea. The idea or the concepts of what constitutes a digital property for people is all over the place. And that comes back to that education thing that I’d mentioned. But those top of funnel activities. And if we look at the top of funnel from an e commerce perspective, like you brought up, Jonathan, I can sign into Shopify. I can pay that fee to have that work.
[00:28:37.140] – Kurt von Ahnen
But, but it’s a for e commerce stepping into it. Whereas if I go the WordPress way, I got to figure out, you know, do I want shortcart, do I want woocommerce? Do I want this, do I want that? What’s the difference? How do I know? Am I making a big mistake? I don’t know. I got to find the hosting and it becomes a deal where they, a newcomer feels like they need someone like us to mediate the process. Whereas with Shopify, they sign up, subscribe, put in their credit information, and they have a store.
[00:29:04.290] – Jonathan Denwood
So, Matt, I think their inability to turn this missed opportunity, first of all, do you think it’s a missed opportunity? The last time I did a Shopify job was six years ago, and it was a $30,000 job, Matt, and it was for a high end clothing women’s accessory business. They had twelve units, retail units, and they wanted to build a e commerce and Shopify because I just built it on Shopify. But they stay, they started to want to add the functionality, which they were, you know, which was out of contract. They were going to pay for it. So I had to start, we started having to purchase add ons from Shopify. And some of these add ons were not fantastic. Quality and the price, because it’s soon, if you start having to buy Shopify add ons, you think woocommerce add ons are expensive. You go into the Shopify world, right? And it started to turn into a real Frankenstein project. I just wanted to get it off the books. Matt. She was starting to become a handful also for various reasons, which I won’t be going. I just think they’ve just missed the enormous opportunity here.
[00:30:32.930] – Jonathan Denwood
Matt, what’s your own thoughts?
[00:30:34.980] – Matt Medeiros
Yeah. When you get into, like, if you ever spend any time selling into the enterprise, like the real enterprise, you start to see pricing that makes your eyes bleed and you start, then you start to say, oh my God. In my own little agency world, I should start adding many zeros to the work that I do. The Shopify example is a perfect example. Why I think what we’re going to see maybe in these next couple of years, we’re still plateauing, but we’ll start to see folks coming back again from strict economies, prices going up. Shopify used to be one of my favorite models, from a mothership to agency kind of relationship because they were growing and just like we saw with APIs from Twitter and Facebook. Yeah, yes. Come develop on our platform, make our experience better. And then as soon as they hit the ability to make, they cut, make money. It’s okay, we don’t need you anymore. And that’s the same thing that happened with Shopify. I know plenty of war stories. Jordan Gal, one of my good buddies with Card Hook, is a perfect testament to him doing really well in their marketplace and them going, oh, you’re doing really well.
[00:31:36.940] – Matt Medeiros
We’re going to put our finger on you now, shut you down and acquire your competitor so you can’t do this anymore. And we’ve seen agencies get pushed out and the price go up. So that’s one of those examples of these other platforms just running a business. That’s all it is to them.
[00:31:52.570] – Jonathan Denwood
You know, I’m not the brightest tool. I’m not the bluntest. Why can’t they leaving me? They’re leaving a ton of money on the table. What? Can I not see the obvious? I think it’s pretty obvious what they should be doing with WordPress.com. they should be turning it into e commerce hosted woocommerce solution.
[00:32:16.210] – Matt Medeiros
The same thing that I say all the time when we critically analyze mat and automatic is even with all the money in the world, he doesn’t have enough humans and enough time to do this. And it is two massive battleships, WordPress and woocommerce. Never mind WordPress.com, comma, automatic and vip. The thing I tell Mark all the time and others, and I’m not the only one to say this, everyone knows this. First time entrepreneurs, product makers, ideas, ship this thing. This ship this thing is going to change the world. Second time entrepreneurs go, I need distribution because that’s really what matters. You can have a subpar product, but if you have intense distribution, you’re going to win over the better product because the better product won’t be found as much. And WordPress has massive distribution. Look at Shorecard, look at bricks, look at etch. Look at all these page builders. People are a lot more vocal. There’s a lot of challengers on the WordPress doorstep and WordPress has that issue where we got to figure out where the hell we’re going with this. And I think there will be a reckoning of where WordPress is going in the next couple of years, if not a year.
[00:33:30.440] – Matt Medeiros
We saw automatic hire a new product lead. I think what Matt needs to really do is get all his direct reports the hell away from him and put in people who are going to operate this ship where he can really focus on long term health and growth of automattic. And we’ll start to see people who are responsible for these things who may start answering our questions that we’re not getting the answers to these days. It’s going to be really hard to supplant WordPress and woocommerce. As much as you might love shore cart or north commerce, imagine if Bigcommerce launched in 2024. Going into 2025, they probably have a better chance of market impact. These platforms have steep, deep distribution through web hosting companies. It’s going to be hard to really dethrone them, even if you don’t like the Woocommerce and WordPress functionality.
[00:34:25.160] – Jonathan Denwood
All right, thanks for that, Matt. We’re going to go for our middle break. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back. My guests have been insightful, I’ve just waffled. But before we go into the second part of the show, I want to point out if you’re looking for a great hosting partner, a hosting plus partner for your membership and community websites, why don’t you look at wptonic? We offer a lot more than fantastic hosting for these demanding type of websites. We offer a true partnership. To find more for you, the WordPress professional, just go over to wphtonic.com partners, tonic.com partners. Why aren’t you going there, Mark? This is. There we go. You’re supposed to be typing. There we go. So let’s move on a bit. So we had Kevin’s first presentation. I listened to it. He was as powerful as he normally is. Very, very vocal. A lot of energy. Kevin, loving to bits. He’s not very english though, is. He’s very american. So I’m thinking of buying, buying it just to support what he’s trying to do. I think it’s really interesting what he’s trying to do.
[00:36:04.310] – Jonathan Denwood
And I give him. I think him and his team are up to it. I think they could do it. But I was just expecting at least a minimum viable product. What we got was a founders pitch yesterday. I don’t know if you were listening to it, Matt. You were part of the chosen 1000. I thought I had to. And I could say I am considering buying into it because I do see his vision. What’s your own thoughts about this, Matt?
[00:36:41.780] – Matt Medeiros
I didn’t watch the live stream. I didn’t sign up to it. I really wanted to take an approach from not being convinced by the presentation and wanted to really sit on the sidelines and adopt what folks were going to say when it came out. And that’s kind of just the perspective that I have. Mark was obviously there.
[00:37:04.480] – Matt Medeiros
That was very different indeed.
[00:37:06.680] – Jonathan Denwood
You got to be, because if I say anything that upsets Kevin or anybody in the WordPress, they will block me and hold it against me for the rest of my lifetime. It’s quite amazing really. I didn’t know my power to influence us that much, folks. So, Mark, you know, you’re on this board of advisors. I’ve got to be honest. I love his vision. I have some, but I was expecting a minimum viable product at this stage, not just a pitch. Basically that’s my honest feeling feedback about it. I do agree that him, of his track record with his other products, him and his team probably have the technical ability to pull it off. But we are talking about something that will be done maybe in a year’s time and its e commerce version will be done in two years. Why did you decide to become part of these advisory board, Mark? What, what was your own view about what he’s trying to do?
[00:38:23.110] – Matt Medeiros
Yeah, so he came to me, obviously. I’ve been following Kevin for a while and we talked pretty regularly. Just like I don’t know about all sorts of different things there. As I started creating content, I was on his channel because I was an elementor refugee. Right. All that sort of stuff. I can’t remember what month that was in, but about a month ago he came to me and told me about kind of the etch things like, hey, you know, I want to tell you about it. Then he asked me to be on the board. The transparency, I’ve said this on accident. I said it on my stream today transparently from my perspective on the board. There’s other, you know, good guys on there as well. But we’re not like getting directly compensated or anything. We are. We got a free limited. You can consider that for sure. But we’re not, we’re not like, it’s like a paid position or anything. And then obviously we’re going to be affiliates of it, which everyone’s an affiliate of it, if you, because everybody can sign up for that and has an affiliate code and all that. So just getting that transparency out there.
[00:39:18.190] – Matt Medeiros
But why, I decided, because when he told me the vision again, I had, and you could ask him this directly if you wanted to when you have him on the show next time. I took it from an opportunity of trying to understand. I’ve never launched anything like that, and I just wanted to kind of learn from that experience. So that’s candidly why I did it. And I believe in the, in the vision of it sounds like, and everything he’s told me and like, from the presentations and things, he wants to bridge the gap a little bit more. Right. It was like acss and frames and bricks, and he obviously has his opinions on Gutenberg and everything, but this product is much more of like, building a top what is already there and just modifying it rather than like, let’s just create a new page builder, like a bricks or like an oxygen.
[00:40:00.310] – Jonathan Denwood
He wouldn’t answer my question, is it going to be covered by the Creative Commons WordPress open source license? And he wouldn’t answer my question. Do you know if, or is it, like, animated, going to be a kind of semi enclosed system? Is it going to be covered by the Creative Commons license?
[00:40:22.440] – Matt Medeiros
I definitely don’t know all the details. I would have to assume at this point that it’s going to be a private product. Like, it’s not going to be like an open. You’re saying it’s like an open. It would be like an open source?
[00:40:32.340] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes.
[00:40:33.010] – Matt Medeiros
Yeah, I don’t, I don’t think there’s. It is currently an open source. Could be wrong about that. I also don’t know what the future holds because currently, right now, as I understand it, there’s proof of concepts, but, yeah, he didn’t demo anything. So I’m literally on the edge of my seat as well because I haven’t seen anything like that. I’ve just heard the pitch just like everybody else and heard the vision. So I guess we’ll just see how that evolves.
[00:40:57.190] – Jonathan Denwood
All right, so what do you reckon of it, Kurt?
[00:41:01.480] – Kurt von Ahnen
I am going to say something that might not be well received, but I like Kevin and I like some of his styles. But when I signed into that webinar, I really felt like I stepped back in time and I was watching fire marshal bill tell me.
[00:41:14.670] – Jonathan Denwood
Let me show you something.
[00:41:15.830] – Kurt von Ahnen
And then there was nothing to see. I, um. And I’m not gonna lie. I’m not. I’m not at some of the levels that Kevin talks about, you know, with the codes and the classes and because I’m kind of a point and shoot kind of dude, and I have people on my team that do the more technical stuff for me, and some of the stuff I got lost in, I would have liked to have seen something a demos, made up, screenshots, even if they were made up in Figma and animated, like, like I would have been. I wanted to see what. I wanted to see what it was.
[00:41:47.680] – Jonathan Denwood
You’re so right. Because if you’ve gone to tiny seeds, my friend Rob, or you go to any, and in 2024, you haven’t even got a minimum viable. You haven’t even got something in Figna. You can’t show anything. They just laugh at you. I’m sorry, Kevin. Just doing a. You’re not part of the startup world, Kevin, but just utilizing the power of your personality and your credibility with other products. I do understand it, Kevin, and I’m still considering buying it, Kevin, just because I do see a need. But you’re so on, Kurt, so that was problematic for you.
[00:42:33.490] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, but oddly enough, I found myself in the same position. I’m like, I sure hope he hurries this webinar up, because, you know, I had to get to this show. So I’m like, I’m sure hope he hurries this webinar up so he gets to the offer, and I figure out if I want to buy this thing or not. And the whole time I’m like, I don’t even know what it is. It’s like, it was just a. But you pointed out in the roundtable last week, you were like, he is a marketing genius. I mean, all of us signed into this thing. All of us responded, you know, when he said, put in the chat, you know, x, y, z, we all went, XYZ, XYZ. What’s going to happen next?
[00:43:05.350] – Jonathan Denwood
He said he wasn’t very happy about. Hopefully he wasn’t talking about me, because I think I’ve been quite surprised, supportive of him. He’s been on my show enough times.
[00:43:12.960] – Kurt von Ahnen
No, I love his energy. I love some of the critiques he does. Sometimes his delivery is a little harsh, but that’s part of the show. That’s part of him. And there’s times where my delivery is harsh with some of my clients and topics. So I totally get it. I just. I don’t get it. Like, I need to know we have clients. You and I share clients that are more visual than others. And in this instance, I’m a visual player. I needed to see a mock up or something. Like I did a pitch for the Department of Defense. That was all kinds of stuff. And I was like, let me just make you a mock up of what it would look like. And if you say yes to this hundred thousand dollar deal, I’ll make it work for you.
[00:43:55.540] – Jonathan Denwood
Right, let’s go on. Let’s move on. Let’s move on to Jamie Marsland, head of WordPress and YouTube. Jamie came on my show last week. He wanted to come on. I’ve got no beef with Jamie personally. He’s done me. I wish him well. He wouldn’t answer any of my questions. He refused to answer any of my questions, which kind of, I found a little bit annoying, to be quite truthful about it. He did it very politely and tactfully, but he refused to answer any of my questions on the show. I think you do a great job, Matt. But it’s a contradiction because the way he got hired is automatic. It’s a private company, they can hire anybody. It’s their business. But this is the whole problem because it isn’t all their business because he’s now the head of WordPress and YouTube, but automatic isn’t all of WordPress. So all the contradictions of this witch’s brew, as I call it, is all assembled right in front of you, in front of him being made the head of WordPress and YouTube. Am I on the right track here, Matt?
[00:45:18.640] – Matt Medeiros
I mean, I think it’s the biggest challenge with all of open source anything. I don’t follow this rust development. Rust being a coding language framework, I’m not even sure, but it’s a popular tool that I know a lot of folks on the podcast tech world use and one of the open source contributors there, or the main maintainer sort of retired because he just couldn’t take the political stuff anymore. And that’s just a tiny, tiny project compared to WordPress and that is a large issue is who has control over WordPress. All roads leading back to Mat, even on the open source side is one of the biggest challenge. And when you take a look at the Jamie Marsland hire and you but that right up against the struggles of a make marketing team for the last, I don’t know, ten years, you really sheds it.
[00:46:06.300] – Jonathan Denwood
You could write a novel just about that.
[00:46:07.980] – Matt Medeiros
You could write a novel just about that. But one of the biggest challenges with the, and I always, you know, try to support the folks on the marketing side of it. But you simply cannot market this open source project that touches millions and millions of peoples in many different ways without control of the brand, talking to the product, having access to data, and in this day and age, having access to social media and being able to have this message ongoing and having a team that works hand in hand with all entities of the project suddenly and at the same time, I can understand from Matt’s point of view how am I going to give access to that data, to these social channels, to volunteers who could come and go at any time? They are not employees and there is no security in that structure. So it’s a conundrum. But the hire of Jamie Marsland says, wipe that board clean. Hey, Jamie, here’s access to crucial data in the YouTube account. If he’s smart, he’s going to knock on the door and say, I’m also going to need to know what other content is ranking for WordPress so I can make videos.
[00:47:17.420] – Matt Medeiros
So when you look at it from that perspective, I have some big issues with that because they were struggling for big issues.
[00:47:26.620] – Jonathan Denwood
But if the job had been offered to you, you still would have taken it, wouldn’t you, Matt?
[00:47:30.900] – Matt Medeiros
No, I don’t think Matt would ever hire me, and not for the price I’d want. So I have issues with that on the personal level too. As a creator, I also see it and I think a lot of stuff, like in the rest of life, you don’t really see the impact or feel the impact or even care unless it actually impacts you. When you have somebody in the calm.
[00:47:53.830] – Jonathan Denwood
Losing a lot of friends here in this episode, we both. I just feel that you just cannot be honest in WordPress. You just can’t. Not in a bitter, nasty way. Just beef honest. I just don’t think in 20, I’ve.
[00:48:08.660] – Matt Medeiros
Made a career of being honest for 15 years.
[00:48:12.120] – Jonathan Denwood
I give you your due. You’ve always, always kept your credibility at the top and you’ve kept it, Matt.
[00:48:22.080] – Matt Medeiros
So the access that Jamie has, that brand positioning that he has, it is a very, he’s in a, he’s in.
[00:48:31.980] – Jonathan Denwood
A very space to say, thank you for that.
[00:48:34.360] – Matt Medeiros
Thank you. He’s in a very privileged place. Right. I want to just get this idea before I forget it. When you can be the face of WordPress.org comma YouTube and a face on the WordPress.com channel, to the layperson, you are the face of WordPress and everybody in the room who does YouTube knows your face shows up over here and your face shows up over here. The viewer goes, oh, that’s that guy from over there? Let me go over here and subscribe to his channel. This is a very unique position where he gets to represent WordPress. And even if he quit two years from now, it would pay off continuously for a long time. And that is a very privileged position, you know, to be in. And especially if he was still monetizing his personal channel. My God, that’s, to me, that’s like way against the grain.
[00:49:31.060] – Jonathan Denwood
Right, right.
[00:49:32.980] – Matt Medeiros
So there’s the access to data, there’s automatic coming in and saying, you know, hey, the marketing stuff didn’t work with volunteers, but now we’re going to put an automatician in its place and then I’ll button it up with this. When we look at where we’re going with it, you know, this plateau that WordPress is in and marketing and messaging and getting connected to humans again, I think this is what automatic is really doing right now. Since Joseph’s talk from last year, we’re seeing Jamie, we’re seeing a media core, we’re seeing automaticians creating more content and reaching out to the community. The issue is it’s still all automatic. And that brand messaging of WordPress is largely now going to start getting shaped.
[00:50:14.290] – Jonathan Denwood
By automation to give any real power to it. I’m talking about Matt, the great molinoid.
[00:50:20.650] – Matt Medeiros
Yeah, it’s not easy. It’s also not easy. Like, how do you give a volunteer the keys to, here’s Google Analytics, you know, it’s impossible. So I get it.
[00:50:30.480] – Jonathan Denwood
But what do you. I think Jamie did, am I right in that you were there? He did refuse to answer any question that came from me, really, didn’t he?
[00:50:39.780] – Kurt von Ahnen
He’s got a skillful, genius like way to do it, though, because he just goes, it was very english. Be more specific in what you’re asking me. And then, and then you get fuddled and then we just go to something else. But yeah, he didn’t answer anything when the announcement came out. I just remember seeing the heading and going, what the hell is the head of WordPress YouTube? Because I thought, do I have to start submitting my youtubes to someone for approval?
[00:51:08.460] – Jonathan Denwood
Now?
[00:51:08.880] – Kurt von Ahnen
What’s happening here? And are the rest of us going to get demonetized? Is there some deal with Google now to take the rest of us with you, with WordPress content off the searcher? Like it was, I was, what is this? And then, you know, you realize it’s just a play on Words and it’s, you know, but he’s, to me, he was already the face of WordPress. I watch a lot of Jamie stuff, and I was very good at it.
[00:51:31.360] – Jonathan Denwood
I think he did an excellent job. He’s very good at it.
[00:51:34.450] – Kurt von Ahnen
And I wonder if it’s much ado about nothing, because he had already made such a great stance as an advocate for WordPress under his own name that I feel he’s in a precarious position to try and duplicate that energy or do something wonderful on the WordPress channel. Like, it’s. He’s done such a good job on Poodle press that he. He’s really got to come. He’s really got to come armed for bear. He’s got to make something awesome on this WordPress channel and win the rest of us over to go follow that, even though we already follow his other stuff. So it’s. It’s. It’s a hard task. When you look at trying to wrangle audiences from one channel to another, there’s always a certain percentage of attrition and failure, and I just hope that that’s all been factored in and he’s not, you know, held with his feet to the fire on that.
[00:52:25.240] – Jonathan Denwood
All right, so, Mark, got any comments at all?
[00:52:28.390] – Matt Medeiros
Yeah, say something, mark. Come on.
[00:52:30.990] – Matt Medeiros
You know I like to listen first.
[00:52:32.860] – Jonathan Denwood
All you have to do, Mark, is. I didn’t understand that question. Can I.
[00:52:37.970] – Kurt von Ahnen
Has anybody heard about etch yet?
[00:52:40.940] – Matt Medeiros
No. No, no. Jamie is very, very good at creating content. I think Jamie is a content creator. He’s a much better content creator than I am. Like, he. He knows how to get eyeballs. You can tell from the way that he interacts on Twitter, the way that he creates his. Like, it. He. I mean, I think he was even doing, like, YouTube consulting for a period of time. Right? Like, he is a youtuber and a content creator, which I think is absolutely needed. If we go back to our other conversation about, like, trying to compete with, like, a webflows, wix and all those types of things because they throw money into that, right? So I think that, that, on the surface, I feel like this is, like, a good idea and a good direction. Is it the. Is it perfectly placed? Is it perfect? Was it perfectly like. Like, computed? Probably not based on everything Matt said, because I agree with most of that. I also know, like, we know directly from people in automatic that this is, like, the first time that they have done these types of things and they don’t know what they’re doing, so to speak, bringing somebody in, because they’ve never done something like this specifically with a head of YouTube.
[00:53:51.950] – Matt Medeiros
It’s brand new. Right. So I try to give a little bit of empathy there. My biggest issue is that while I agree with, like, the full synopsis that Matt. That Matt gave here a couple minutes ago, I just don’t know how you reconcile all this under our open source nature of all of it. Like, maybe there’s a solution, but, like, you know, Matt and I have talked a lot, and I’m still not seeing a full solution other than what we’re doing here with, like, Jamie. I feel like this is the first crack at it, and hopefully it evolves and gets better. But I feel like what I’ve seen from Jamie so far. Cause I don’t think we’ve even seen any videos other than, like, the WordPress, obviously, the WordPress.com ones that he did. Like, I don’t think we’ve seen any videos on the WordPress.org channel. Every time I’ve seen him talk about it, like, last week on the thing, on the podcast here, he was basically almost trying to crowdsource information from other, you know, individuals in the community to see, like, oh, what would you guys like to see? What are you seeing from your audiences and stuff like that?
[00:54:48.650] – Matt Medeiros
So I’m not sure if that’s a good thing, bad thing or what the plan is there, but it would be very. I’m just interested to see what happens. I don’t really. I see everything you guys are saying, but I don’t know how it. I don’t know how it evolves, and I don’t really have a particular solution. I haven’t really heard one either, so.
[00:55:05.890] – Jonathan Denwood
So are you okay, you two, to continue for another two minutes, or do we need to wrap it up now?
[00:55:13.070] – Matt Medeiros
I’m good.
[00:55:13.870] – Matt Medeiros
Yeah, you’re good?
[00:55:14.880] – Matt Medeiros
I’m good.
[00:55:15.680] – Jonathan Denwood
Let’s go on to Joe Saffa. I heard you talk, Matt, about her, and I think you place a lot of conference in her ability to reason with a great leader. I think she’s a lovely lady. She’s been on the show. I’ve got no personal empathy. I think she’s in a hopeless position myself, Matt. If I had been her when the great leader had his little outbursts on Twitter, which I had different feelings about, because I didn’t agree what he did. I thought, it’s extreme. The power dynamics stunk to me. Really stunk. But also, I’m not very friendly with the people that he had a go with, so they’ve been. They’ve personally attacked me. And some of the people he had to go at tried to make out I was a racist. I’ve got no love for a Matt at all. But I still thought what he was saying was not very. If I had been her, I would have resigned there and then. I would have just said, I’ve had enough, Matt. I can’t. We’re gonna have to part company. You know, I’ve tried to tell people that things were changing, that I was gonna influence things.
[00:56:52.480] – Jonathan Denwood
We’re gonna go a different road. And then I’ve got to deal with this now, Matt. I’ve got to clean up your mess. You know, I just don’t have any. It’s not that I’ve got a personal beef against her. She seems a very pleasant individual. I just. I just think she’s just in an awful position.
[00:57:15.920] – Matt Medeiros
Yeah, you would hope she isn’t, like you would hope that. And, you know, I hope it depends. Like, if you were to look at the, through that lens of what happened with Mullenweg, which I think started with the whole San Francisco Bridge lights and his access to the WordPress Twitter account, and then it sort of just like parlayed into this, you know, really grotesque thing from a leadership perspective. Right. And certainly, yes, when you look at leadership perspective, that took it down a few notches, to say the least. When I look at him, and as a leader of, you know, our community on the Josepha side, I think she had to just look at that and say, that’s a personal thing that’s happening over there. It’s not this direct thing where it’s impacting WordPress itself. Yes, it’s all WordPress people saying it because they all kind of know this. But I don’t think she jumped in rightfully so, because at the end of the day, even as the director of WordPress, the executive director of WordPress, people, people aren’t ready to sacrifice, like, their livelihood for this stuff.
[00:58:29.920] – Jonathan Denwood
I do, they do fear him considerably, don’t they? People in the WordPress do fear him quite a bit.
[00:58:37.960] – Matt Medeiros
I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know if it’s, if it’s fear. I mean, yeah, I mean, I’m sure people are like, I have a good thing here at automatic and I don’t want to lose it. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that because we are just talking.
[00:58:52.220] – Jonathan Denwood
About, I think as a founder and he is the CEO, automatic, I think to be effective, I think people do need to fear you a little bit, don’t they? They need to respect you and they need to fear you a little bit, don’t they?
[00:59:08.840] – Matt Medeiros
Yeah, there need there. You need, you know, there is that level of people you have to be on your toes around, you know, this person largely because history tells us that’s the kind of CEO that builds something really, really great. And by really great, it’s just the ones that bubble to the top. You know, there are really great companies, really profitable companies without a fear factor CEO. In fact, I work for one at gravity forms. You know, Carl might seem like fear factor on Twitter, but internally he’s a great guy. And I’m not just saying that because he pays the bills, but I. There are times where, you know, we can be open and challenge whatever presumption he might have or on the product side of things. And it’s not. It’s not anything bad. Just, you know, just like when people punch down on automatic and automatic employees. Awesome motive as another example. These are people who are just, look, man, I’m just. I get it. You just want to have your job. I can’t fault you for that. You got a great gig. You’re getting paid well. You got a good job. You using WordPress, you’re loving what you do.
[01:00:09.390] – Matt Medeiros
You don’t need to be psychotic like me who has to tune into every single piece of content.
[01:00:15.000] – Jonathan Denwood
You’re psychotic. God knows what I am, and craft.
[01:00:18.260] – Matt Medeiros
A theory, you know, in an opinion on this, because I just happened to make a career out of it. So, yeah, you know, I hope. And this is the only thing. So Mark says this to me a.
[01:00:28.160] – Jonathan Denwood
Lot, is like, you gotta admit you’ve paid a personal price.
[01:00:32.510] – Matt Medeiros
Absolutely.
[01:00:33.460] – Jonathan Denwood
Keeping your credibility and just being honest.
[01:00:36.380] – Matt Medeiros
Absolutely. Yeah. Especially with, you know, with Matt and probably leadership, you know, I’m sure they also keep me at arm’s length and it’s whatever, but I have to look at her position as second in line to Mullenweg, even if it doesn’t mean anything. I have to look at that and say, look, if you have real issues with this space, then you have to take it to her and be that. And you can’t bring it to Matt. You don’t want to bring it to Matt because you’re afraid of him. You don’t want to interact with him. You don’t support his vision or whatever, then take it to Josepha. If you can’t take it to Josephine is.
[01:01:13.080] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s the problem, isn’t it? I have no coherent idea what his vision is for WordPress. Sorry, I don’t.
[01:01:21.460] – Matt Medeiros
Yeah, I’m going to be talking a lot about that tomorrow with Kevin, but it’s still an open source publishing platform for everyone to, you know, their words to the Internet.
[01:01:33.730] – Jonathan Denwood
So, Mark, have you got any idea what the vision of WordPress is and what the strategy or, you know, for the next two to five years, WordPress from the leadership of WordPress, do you, do you feel you’ve got a coherent idea where it’s going?
[01:01:53.090] – Matt Medeiros
I think that’s probably especially talking to Matt so many, you know, so frequently. I think that’s probably one of my main goals right now. Whether that’s a, you know, that that goal is futile or not, we’ll come to find. But I just cite that last youtuber call where we were talking, Ann McCarthy and Aaron Jorban and a lot of other people. And like, that was, I think a lot of people in that call were shocked when they saw the WordPress philosophy page and it said, like, basically, you know, it’s a publishing tool rather than anything else. And I feel at the core of it, I do understand that they want core to just be the core experience, like how Kurt was talking about earlier. Like, they’re, I don’t think they’re ever going to consider bringing like e commerce into the core, I mean, unless there’s like a drastic change. Right? So my point is, like, that was eye opening to me because I feel like I was in a position and many other people were, we don’t know the vision, and then we see the philosophy written right there and we’re like, oh, okay, so that, that is the vision alleged, like allegedly in, written in black and white.
[01:02:51.160] – Matt Medeiros
And now it’s like, okay, well, you can either agree, you can either agree with it and be fine. You can either disagree with it and just be like, well, I can’t change this, or you can like, speak up and say, all right, maybe I don’t really agree with this. Maybe we should change things or whatever. But if you want to do the third one, which is kind of where I’m at, and obviously Matt has had opinions over the years and everything like that and has, and has verbalized them. Like, where I’m at right now is like, I just hear a lot of speculation and I actually don’t know what, like, power and has or what power rich has, but they’re all approachable. They’re actually all really great people. And I’m happy that Matt goes on interviews from time to time. Matt Mullenweg goes on interviews from time to time because that’s amazing. And I don’t know of like another platform where you could just like, kind of like, kind of get to the founder or the CEO. That’s awesome. But I don’t think we’re leveraging that enough. I feel like there’s a lot more speculation still.
[01:03:41.230] – Matt Medeiros
And I just kind of want, like, I’ve literally had a one on one with Ann. We’ve had the youtuber thing. I just think that that’s an approach, like, go directly to the, we got to go directly to the source and just be like, hey, is this true? Is this false? What do you guys actually believe? What do you not believe? What are you trying to do? What are you not trying to do? And give them the benefit of the doubt and hopefully they don’t lie about that, which I don’t think they would. But I’m saying, like, that’s the only thing there. You go to the source and you get an answer. Then at least you have an answer. And then if they’re not lying, then you can, like, be like, okay, I agree or don’t agree, and then you can have, like, an honest conversation from there. Maybe that’s naive of me thinking that that’s possible, but I, but that’s my current thought process on that.
[01:04:21.450] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I can see where you’re coming from. I just feel like I’ve, I’ve known quite a few people who got pretty big businesses in the plugin and they just fear him. They, they just fear him. They will not say anything and they say he’s always been Curtis, very pleasant to me, always got on with him. Okay. I don’t know him. Matt knows him much better than I do, but I know other people that have dealt with him and they haven’t got a good word to say about him. They really, they fear him. But he’s never been like that to me. So I cannot make head or tail of it because I know other people have worked at automatic for years. I’ve known other people that only lasted a week. But you could say that with any reason, the large company. But he is feared substantially. How much of that’s based on fact, how much is based on who knows? It’s enough of which is Baruch, this finish off. I think one of the strengths of WordPress, Matt, is that it’s very passionate. People are very passionate. You wouldn’t have these discussions, a salesforce conference or, you know, you got WordPress, you got word camp, us coming up, and you seem to have all these tribes a word that I use quite regularly on this show.
[01:06:13.640] – Jonathan Denwood
You know, you got Kevin’s tribe, you got my tribe, you got your tribe, you’ve got Jamie’s tribe. You’ve, you’ve got all these tribes and there’s nothing wrong with tribalism, is there? A little bit. But there’s also, there’s a problem where it goes too far, isn’t it? Do you. I recently I think, and you know, you mentioned Malton, I think you were discussing something with Mark about when Moulton was really more active in WordPress and he wanted more, more structure about between what WordPress.org was and what automatic owns and has, you know, kind of, I just sense that. And Moulton has a really strong following outside of WordPress and in WordPress. And he was a personal friend of mine, but then he just blew me away because, because he wouldn’t support me publicly. He just said, we’re finished, you gotta fuck off, Jonathan. And that was quite hard to take. But he’s driven by political iology, but, and he has his crew, has his tribe and he didn’t want that to be damaged. So he just threw me to the sharks, basically. So there’s a lot of people like that. Do you think it’s getting to the stage where it’s really damaging WordPress?
[01:08:04.810] – Matt Medeiros
No, I don’t think it’s damaging WordPress on the, on the surface. Morton and Rachel’s project was the WordPress governance project. It’s at wpgovernance.com. even though it’s an archive project, you can go back and look at the history of it and I think stopped around 2018 to 2019. But yeah, just. Morton as I guess in this case, you would probably call him a political activist in this case to try to build governance around the WordPress project. Control, access, communication, etcetera. Certainly not an easy task and one that just directly butts heads with Matt. So a very difficult project. I actually am still surprised how far that got looking back the last few years of how this project has, has come together. And David Henler, I can’t remember, I can’t remember his full name. DHH from Basecamp put out a great post that I always reference about open source is not this democratic decision making process. It still leads back to one, maybe two people who still control the project and everyone else can help along for the betterment of the open source project. But you’re still always going to have one, two or one entity in control here.
[01:09:31.020] – Matt Medeiros
And that’s what we have with automatic. And I wrote a piece called keys to the kingdom, and that is something.
[01:09:38.430] – Jonathan Denwood
That did not go down too well, did it?
[01:09:41.020] – Matt Medeiros
No, it didn’t. But at the same time, like, I would say that you have. Part of you has to be okay with Matt’s leadership. And I am still 100% behind his vision and his, and I just wish.
[01:09:58.010] – Jonathan Denwood
He would modify a little bit I was more critical, but then I saw the group of people, which Moulton was the head of that criticizing and they’re, they’re driven by a political iology that I find even less attractive.
[01:10:16.400] – Matt Medeiros
Yeah, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t know the sum of that group.
[01:10:22.320] – Jonathan Denwood
Very vocal.
[01:10:25.260] – Matt Medeiros
But, you know, anyway, the point is it’s very challenging. We’re never going to take away the control of WordPress. And from Matt, I don’t think we actually need to right now. We do have to keep a watchful eye on all things automatic, for sure. And also understand that automatic is the biggest benefactor for WordPress and still the best steward for WordPress because as I’ve said before, you don’t want Salesforce controlling it.
[01:10:49.870] – Jonathan Denwood
What do you reckon, Mark? What’s your input? Before we finish the show, roll that.
[01:10:54.410] – Matt Medeiros
Grenade over to Mark.
[01:10:55.620] – Matt Medeiros
Matt. Matt says it all. Matt’s been here. He knows it. I don’t know. I would, I would just say that my approach on this is to try to understand because I haven’t been here as long as you guys and I see some things that I’m like, I don’t necessarily know. I agree with, but I don’t really have enough of, I haven’t formed enough of an opinion and with the experience to actually, like, enact the change. I just, I still think, though, I think this is, if I could summarize what I’m trying to get out here. I think there’s a lot of people like me that, like, watch shows like this and they want to be in the know and they want to potentially hear their, have their opinions heard, but I just still think that it’s still kind of like opaque how the whole automatic situation works.
[01:11:39.870] – Jonathan Denwood
I think what you got to understand, Mark, is that the tip of all this is Gutenberg. This is where all these bridges meet, these crossroads. It’s good because it’s been the inability of Gutenberg to get the level of traction that brings a lot of this to the surface. It’s always been there, all these discussions, but it’s the Gutenberg project, even though a lot of this has nothing to do with Gutenberg. That’s why it’s hard to follow, Mark, but is the, Gutenberg is the tip of the spear. It’s the sharp edge that brings all this into focus, in my opinion. Would you agree with that? Man.
[01:12:23.900] – Matt Medeiros
Um, I don’t know if it’s. Well, why do you, why do you think Gutenberg is the tip of the spear?
[01:12:30.720] – Matt Medeiros
Do you think it was the kindling that started it? Is that a better way to say it?
[01:12:35.160] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, in a way. But I think for many people, the overhead of an ever-changing project to the established plugin developers is increased cost to them, as well as the market fragmentation, which it was supposed to deal with. To some degree, it’s actually got worse. It’s always been there, and it always will be. And in some ways, you could say it’s one of its strengths. It’s just the middle ground you got to find, and then you’ve got an interface that doesn’t work very well and other elements, and they’re all brought together. Also, some people think it was due to the lack of growth, or it was supposed to replace WordPress with a more developed, better place.
[01:13:42.710] – Matt Medeiros
Yeah.
[01:13:43.240] – Jonathan Denwood
And it just hasn’t done a lot of that.
[01:13:46.900] – Matt Medeiros
Yeah, I’m not a developer, but I understand people’s struggles with it, like developing for it, enhancing it, and stuff like that. Although I do see a lot of likes, feature themes are doing well. I know many block-based patterns and stuff happening, which is fantastic. Yeah. That could be the real issue that maybe Matt was hoping would have been, had been more accelerated at this point when he made the bet. I think good leaders are making bets, and, you know, we’re getting behind something more visionary. I still believe in WordPress as the web’s operating system, which he said many years ago. It’s just, it’s just taken a lot of time, and I think people are just sick and tired of waiting. But I believe that, like you, the most vital part of this community is people’s third-party choices. Do I think WordPress needs Gutenberg’s experience to compete with other platforms? Yes. Do I think it needs to be the only solution that survives? No. I’m happy that elementor and all these different things are thriving because it gives you a choice, which no other platform gives you, which is super strong, in my opinion.
[01:15:01.280] – Jonathan Denwood
Right. I think it’s been a fabulous discussion. Thank you so much, gents. Matt, what’s the best way for people to learn more about you and your wise words? Matt?
[01:15:14.510] – Matt Medeiros
Wise words, indeed. We’re camp us. I’ll be there with the gravity forms team. Gravity Forms will have a great word campus sale. So if you’re looking to pick that up, check it out@gravityforms.com. And then I sometimes do all the other stuff with the Robin to Batman. Mark Zamansky over@thewpminute.com Yes, please follow Matt.
[01:15:34.620] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m afraid I have to disagree with everything Matt says, but no, you don’t want to agree with it. I say you’d be bonkers if you did that. I don’t even agree with what I say. Mark, what’s the best way for people to learn more about you?
[01:15:57.040] – Matt Medeiros
Yeah, absolutely. I’m live on my YouTube channel every Thursday at 11:00 a.m. Eastern. I am occasionally, as Matt said, his Robin over on WP minute. You can find all my links and social media.
[01:16:12.670] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. We will be back next week with a guest. Another great discussion. This has been slightly unusual. This has been a kind of mini roundtable, but I thought, being all normal, that August is usually a quiet month; my God, it’s not been silent in WordPress. But thanks both of you. My co-host had to leave slightly early because he had to run something for lifter lms, and he could only put up with an hour of me, which is understandable. We will be back next week, folks. Bye.
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