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Main Talking Points:
John O
Word press. It’s the most popular content management and website solution on the Internet and with over 80,000 plugins to choose from, how do you separate the junk from the gym? Join us for a weekly unrehearsed conversation about the latest and greatest in WordPress plugins. This is WordPress plugins from A-Z.
Speaker
If you want.
John O
Well, good morning. Good afternoon or good evening wherever you have to be hiding out there in the globe today, coming to you direct from the brewery overlooking beautiful southern Vancouver Island. I’m John overall and this is the interview show for wp.plugins@az.com and with me today I have shunned the wolf from Web 321, our website andwebweb321.co and we’re here to talk about WordPress, the plugins he builds. He builds some fantastic plugins. It just general. Whatever comes to mind in and around the WordPress community, or even just general developing whatever we pop in our minds where we’re going to go with it. So thanks for joining me on the show Shank.
Shawn D
Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you. Have me on board.
John O
Well, I’m looking forward to it. You know, this is a renewal of the interview show for WP plugins. I’ve done them for years. In early years, the show is now going into its 17th year of podcasting, and I’ve done so many different types of episodes over the years and different interviewers. I didn’t found some types surprised at the people I’ve actually interviewed overtime. And a lot of the people I interviewed before they became famous, now they won’t talk. To me, so hey. That’s just the way the way it works, man. The way it works. So at any rate, I’m hoping to renew it and renew WP plugins back to being a go to show as it once. Was So what we’ve got with it today, we were wondering around on all the stuff today off of your website here and see what you offer off of your website and the plugins in particular that you offer.
Shawn D
Then.
John O
And because I found that you’ve got a lot of really great plugins wandering off your site, you want to just sort of pop Inns and start talking about in them.
Shawn D
Yeah, sure.
Shawn D
Um is there. Any that were really interesting to you? Because I mean, I have founded a bunch of plugins like put up on the site, there’s a whole bunch more that I use for clients that just aren’t ready for general purpose.
John O
Well.
Shawn D
They also have kind of kicking around with behind the scenes.
John O
Well, one that’s really good. I’ve gotten to. I’ve gotten to play with it in your beta stage of it, as your WP district descriptor. That’s actually one that’s I think is going to be a game changer.
Shawn D
Hmm. Yeah, that one. Yeah, I think so. I’m pretty proud of it. So, um, you know, the core of it is it does image description. So it comes up with a contextual description of what the images you’re looking. And then what it does in the media section is when you ask it to go and describe an image, you’ll come back with a title, the caption, The All text, and the description, and it will adjust the context of those four segments to try to get content. That’s fitting for it. So you don’t have like a fifty word title or five word description. It gives you what you’re looking for, and then um, if you like what you see great. If you don’t like what you see, you can try. Again. And get a new description that man. Which is also because these are running on sites that probably have a given theme to them, like whether you’re a antiques store or comic book website or something, you can preload context about what your site is about so that that way it goes. I’m probably looking at a comic book cover or. Chesterfield or a mountain Vista and your description of what you do, what your website does contributes to what the image context is that comes back and the intention is to make this work for people who have like a whole bunch of SKUs and images of product images and they just need to. Blitz through those descriptions, they’re having to kind of try to write a a sonnet for every last one of them. They can just say this describes it, and then you have your captions, which are great, but you have your titles which are there for accessibility and then they’ve done a lot to try. To. Connect the dots or inky and what the descriptions should be so people can better understand what they’re looking at and search engines can understand what they’re looking at.
John O
That’s what’s really important is to keep it from the search engines. My, in my opinion, you know this ability is a good idea, but the vast majority of what you need is one of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen now. Well, one of the biggest mistakes I myself am guilty of committing, as you know, it’s like I upload an image. I don’t have time to go through and figure this one out and just boom boom and sometimes the image only gets the title of whatever your file name was, which is sometimes a random set of numbers.
Shawn D
Exactly.
Speaker
Yeah.
Shawn D
Exactly. Totally cryptic when you could put something really helpful in there that that really gives people an idea of what they’re looking at or why it’s important to them.
John O
Yeah, I know when playing with it in the beta stage that you that you let me play with it on and this one here it made it really easy and it popped it in. It just popped in the all the fields and then you could. You could either accept it or even edit what was given to you by the. AI.
Shawn D
Hmm.
John O
And modify it to be something. Sometimes I’ll give you almost what you want, and maybe just a couple of words. You boom, you’ve got fixed.
Shawn D
Exactly. It’s putting it onto the green and then you just have. To tip it in from there.
John O
Answer yes, I found out one to be a very fantastic plugin here. You know, you’ve got a lot of other plugins ranged around gravity forms. You do some amazing work with gravity forms. You wanna tell?
Shawn D
Two night.
John O
Us a little bit about that stuff.
Shawn D
Yeah. I mean, I really love gravity forms for the whole time I’ve been. Messing with it, it’s. Just super powerful. Uh, the one you scroll past there was one that you asked for for me to take a an attempt on which this a language checker that looks at it, looks at the language and use on the website and the language.
John O
Oh yeah, yeah.
Shawn D
I’m sorry the language in use by the person and or the phrases they use and in a way to create conditional logic. That may affect whether or not they can submit the form or be redirected to a different form, or otherwise do do an extra level of of checking and and safeguards based on what gravity forms.
Speaker
Gives you.
John O
Yeah. And that’s worked pretty well. The one I had to get billed out for me, and it was a very nice and it’s been been fairly useful for the most part, although I’ve had to scale it back cause the client I used it on turns out that they needed some of these languages on their website.
Shawn D
Yeah.
Shawn D
Yeah.
Speaker
You.
Shawn D
So you know, so be it. A lot of stuff I do probably forms otherwise is tying into things like advanced custom fields or tying into year registrations and during the lot just to.
John O
Guys.
Shawn D
Create connectivity between the rest of the system and gravity forms to really make it do. Some heavy lifting.
John O
If someone is this about, how do you tie it into a CF? That’s custom fields.
Speaker
The.
Shawn D
Yeah. So gravity forms is really great and how it has a lot of filters and actions available throughout the whole thing. So you can populate your choices in a form, or you could push your your settings from a form like what your decisions are in the form, fill into stuff that goes into post types or into user data.
Speaker
2.
Shawn D
Have and you can move that data back and forth as well as one form value could be contextual and impact the next form value down. I’ve done a lot of custom work with gravity forms to to do that sort of stuff to put some smarts into limit. What options show up? Because because of Precursor described selections. Excellent.
John O
Alright, so no in wanderings on your site here, I tripped across something that you mentioned. If I can find it again on this short order, I should have just opened software pages here. To make it easier. But you had a particular item on your. By talking about helping Web developers with their legacies that are retiring, I thought this was an interesting thing.
Shawn D
Right.
John O
And this is looking like something that I feel is gonna be in the future, not too distant future. For a lot, there’s a lot of Web developers that are approaching retirement age, or they’re slightly past it. They’re finally going in a lot. I think I just want to go mow the lawn all day instead of sitting in front of the computer.
Speaker
Song.
Shawn D
Exactly. Yeah. So actually that’s in the footer of the page because we really want to highlight this a lot of. The people who. Show up asking for our work are saying things like my designers are tired or my designers no longer answering emails or they’ve had circumstances in their life change and they can no longer God. There it is. Did your web designer retire at the bottom?
John O
Oh, there it.
Speaker
OK.
Shawn D
So so a lot. Of people will end up coming to us and say. Hey I need help. So and so if that basically in some way if that operating and we’re there to figure out where all the assets are like their domain and when it renews and they’re hosting and how bad is stated it’s in and they’re plugins and how far they are wack and take all of these problems and start to make those problems go away and start to nurture and care for the website again.
John O
And so do you. You working on a program to try to promote or talk to other or developers that you may know that are aging out of the system.
Shawn D
Yeah. So so we have had conversations with people who have left the field where actually inheriting a lot of clients from one of one of the people I have a good contact with. And her clients? She’s on great terms with all of them, but then she ended up getting a dedicated full time gig that meant she couldn’t keep her body in clients and her and her new job. So she’s we basically worked out something where we take our management and she has all the credentials, so she knows about the clients and it’s pretty easy for the sake of handoff. And then we’ve got an basically an affiliate revenue system, so that the income we generate from those relationships, she gets. Kind of. So I mean if if somebody has like a large body of clients and want to basically retire, then come to us and say here’s what’s going on. Here’s my clients. They do the introduction, we try to bring them on board what we do and then that exiting web designer could still have some residual income ongoing and as we keep managing those clients and kick them back something for for the connection being made.
Speaker
And.
John O
Alright, so let’s see where we’re going here. What have we got? As wander into a little bit of the WordPress world right now, just.
Shawn D
Yeah.
John O
You know the general state of WordPress and what’s happening in it at the moment. Hey.
Shawn D
Oh man, what a big what, a. What a minefield of a topic.
John O
It is a bit of a minefield of a topic and we’ll we’ll avoid the major landmines of it at the moment we’ll just talk about the the future of it and.
Speaker
Yeah.
John O
Now currently there’s a lot of people that are looking at WordPress is like, Oh my God, they’re going crazy. It’s time to abandon it. It’s like run away from it. It’s like when I first heard that.
Shawn D
Yeah, but.
John O
Let’s go ahead.
Shawn D
It will it be akin to saying, oh man, I can’t stand Bill Gates. I’m gonna stop using Microsoft products. Yes you can. And when that when people start to get skittish about Microsoft, they go away from Microsoft, you know, thousands of them do but. With the millions that are left, it doesn’t create a big impact, so everything that’s freaking out, WordPress site owners and WordPress developers and lenders is gonna cause the market share to.
Shawn D
No.
Shawn D
It’s not going to make the market share flourish. That’s for sure. So I think it may stall it out and near term. I don’t think it’s going to. Turn it away. Why? I I honestly you know now coming in almost 30 years into web design, I’m almost thinking what happens with how Google does it searches and how AIS playing role and stuff. You know, you look at people, I go to perplexity now, for almost all my searches, I almost never go to Google. And if I go to Google, most of the pages taken up with ads that are showing me, you know, paid paid results, not their organic results. So I start to really distrust Google and it’s it’s quality results. There’s poor, so if you’re being if you’re not being led to websites, the impact and value websites are starting to get a little iffy.
John O
Right.
Shawn D
And at the same time, if the likes of perplexity and opening eye are now giving you the ideal answer, but even vision the web page like it gives you a sense of the synthesis of everything you want. Well, what happens? So web design at that point. So I think maybe WordPress isn’t going to fall down because of it’s sort of internal issues like like Team and founder issues. I think WordPress may be part of a bigger thing of what happens to the Internet when you don’t need a web page to tell you all the answers about a given. And and honestly, I’ve been struggling with what that answer to that question is because part of me thinks in some way you just somehow publish a data set about everything in your business does in a way to spoon feed it to AI, and that the people who do the best job of selling themselves through this optimized system would be the ones who would be the next one to clean up as AIS will. And agents will pick up and decide and filter through the information. Come up with stuff for people and that your salesmanship through that venue might be even more important than your salesmanship on the web page.
John O
The the big thing that you just, you know, tripped over there talking about it is when you say that, you know what, go to the web design do if you getting all the information from the AI will you get the information but they don’t get the solution meaning they still need to get to a website to get the solution. They’ll have.
Speaker
Yes.
John O
They’ll have to reach out to. They’ll have to humans sooner or later. Or at least the interface for the human to their solution.
Shawn D
So so that could lead to change where you see education like the whole brand awareness and the stuff that you do with websites and the marketing piece almost diminished in favor of website. You know the calls to action where somebody goes and fills out a booking form or completes some information and that that stuff ties into those systems like you give me a form fill. Give me a book and give me a purchase on an ecommerce web. Right. And that if you find a way to spoon feed to the AI to say, here’s the stuff for this website, you should visit the commit and take an action. Then you’re just moving your CTA into AI. How much our letters right there? And then you and. You call to action into artificial intelligence for it to report the best advice, and then the advice from those sources takes you to the website to actually commit an action and create that sort. Of income that people are looking for.
John O
OK, so you still want to get into the website? Well, one interesting things I’ve done are in this last couple weeks when I was digging around prepping myself up to be playing in on GitHub again as I found a really interesting plugin that somebody’s creating. There’s two types of plugins actually. One they they kind of count count, they’re kind of they kind of Bill Gates each other. One of is a new LLM. Uh, plug in large language model plug. And you put it into your WordPress site and what it does is it takes your WordPress content and then reformats it for machine reading. For AI reading much easier than if it hits your website. The other plugin I ran it is exactly the opposite and it blocks the AI from hitting your website. So it depends on which side of fence the fall on as to which one you’d want. But if AI, while it is taking. More and more and more. Stuff, as I’ve noticed in in Google with the gun. Cool. Um AIO AI overview is what it’s called, and I’m seeing that more and more in the search, but what they’re doing with that overview is they’re giving you a snippet, then they’ve got a link next to it, and then they’ll load a load a bunch of websites in the next column that are related.
Shawn D
Hmm.
John O
To that snippet they give you.
Speaker
Yeah.
Shawn D
And that’s pretty handy. I mean, I think that’s got to be what it is is AI is gonna serve to shortcut your your visit. Yeah. So that first example of the plug-in she talked about, that’s the way the future like. You mean you don’t wanna have your marketing material under a password, right? You want to be able to have your stuff out there, so an LLM parsing your stuff like I was. If you look at behind under the code of a lot of my stuff in my site where possible schema.org code is in there or it’s in there to create the output. So it’s a machine readable.
Speaker
Yeah.
Shawn D
Because being machine readable is so huge because there’s all these big players in looking for your data and you wanna give the the data without giving. Them the value they can walk away from. Like, give them everything up to that point and then give them away to come back and get to you for the actual punch line.
John O
Right. Well, that’s what we want to have now. That’s still leads to leads down the path of. Is WordPress going to stay a viable platform in the coming 5/10/15 years?
Shawn D
I think 15 years it’s definitely not um thought, you know, zooming back to five years, I kind of think five years from now WordPress may still be significant. Like I used to be super keen on Drupal in the early 2000s, you saw the Drupal was the one was the winning horse and WordPress was cleaning the scrappy blogging software and do those purples adoption just kept climbing and climbing, and now they’ve got they have lost the number of installs, but the internet’s gotten bigger, so the percentage share by comparison has shrunk.
John O
Yeah, I remember that.
Shawn D
Yeah. And I think going forwards, WordPress is gonna probably see the same thing. I think it’s at 40 odd percent, depending on who’s math you’re looking at.
Speaker
Hmm.
Shawn D
I don’t think the number of installs is is gonna drastically increase. I don’t think the percentage share is going to crack above 50 and I think it’s going to be one of those things where similar how you have a static website with no forms, you’re probably I’m not going to get a lot of uptake or at least. A lot of benefit out of it, right? But if you have a lot of interactivity and ways to get people to practically commit, you will. So WordPress has to in the same way up it’s game. To make sure it stays with times, keeps everything machine readable and then doesn’t get lost in the weeds about performance and and complexity because I’ve seen some code that you know or some site rollouts that are just stupid complex when you just really wanted to be simple and clear.
John O
Well, yeah, that’s an important thing as we simply in clear. So in the short term, where we’ve got all of the upheaval going on right now between WP WP engine and automatic.
Speaker
Right.
John O
You know that’s going to continue now for six months to another two years depending on whether they decide. To settle or. Not. Yeah, and yeah. What’s happening with that?
Speaker
What?
John O
I mean, where we thought we had a quiet period and you know Matt had changed lawyers. He seemed to have suddenly it was yesterday before he started throwing out a bunch of crazy again and.
Shawn D
Yeah, yeah. I mean I. See stuff like he like he’s on. Bringing out about how. Oh good. Amberg is so popular, it’s so great.
John O
Oh yeah.
Shawn D
Look at it how it’s installed base it’s like.
John O
You know.
Shawn D
So with jetpack, by that same reason or. Hello Dolly. Like.
John O
Yeah, yeah.
Shawn D
The fact that you forced us to use it. Doesn’t mean it’s popular. It means it’s welded in.
John O
It means as well the dead and 80% of the people that install WordPress don’t know how to. Change it to begin with so.
Shawn D
Exactly. Exactly. But I mean I I’ve talked to so many other developers and we all have very few of them, the less Gutenberg.
John O
Yeah, I I I. I find about 25% of the developers bless Gutenberg and love it. They’ve accepted it and they love it and it’s like 25% the other 75% have chosen.
Speaker
The.
John O
Different versions of their own customizations from elementor to blocks to what’s the one you used. One the you you big on TV.
Shawn D
I like diving. I’m big on divvy. I’m also getting really big on breakdown.
John O
That’s it. Breakdance breakdance I breakdance is actually. I went and looked it up because you mentioned like what is this break dance? And I went and looked it up. It’s like you. If there had been around before Elementer, I probably would be using that instead, and the problem is, once you get yourself into one of these subsections of WordPress and you get really good with the code that works with those subsections, switching to another one is kind of rough.
Shawn D
Hmm.
Speaker
The. Yeah.
Shawn D
Yeah. And we’re pretty committed to divvy so. But sometimes it’s performance tanks out, which I don’t like, and I we haven’t had enough practical exercises with Divvy 5 yet to really see if it solves some of these big problems. But then I go to break dance and. The stuff just. Screams like I’ve got GT metric scores. Where out-of-the-box and no optimization since coming close to 100% and it’s like a WordPress with a lot of data and I’m using break dance and that’s the distinguishing piece. Hmm.
John O
Nice.
Shawn D
So it’s like, well, I gotta say. That’s that’s the winner, yeah.
John O
Well, I’m. I’m still down. I my my latest my latest launch for my new company site straight out-of-the-box with elementary pushed up to almost 90% GT metric. So and.
Shawn D
Yeah, I and I think that’s it. Performance has gotta be key, because if nothing else, WordPress itself is still going to serve out those machine readable parts and evacuate for other than a day.
John O
Yeah.
Shawn D
Those machines pulling for that stuff is just going to piece out and the Nope. We’re not taking your data or we don’t. We’re deferring. Somebody else gets the number one spot. For what data we trust the most mode is because the data delivery is going to end its speed.
Speaker
Yeah.
Shawn D
Performance is going to be a. During in how much these different sources services do when they index and process information, so you can’t have a dog’s a dog for speed.
John O
Yeah, I am, Dan. Nice to see you there. Ignore my typos, I don’t have. I don’t have Amber here on the show or or my alter ego to do all. My typing for me today. It’s just me my typing, my typing kind of sucks.
Speaker
No.
John O
I I I know it. I mean I I managed to get my typing skills all the way up to a massive 35 words per minute back in the day when I went to college. And since then it’s just gone right back downhill. And it’s even getting worse now because the dictation for for Microsoft Word is like 95% accurate now. Yeah.
Speaker
Roof.
John O
And it’s like and that’s with me and my rambling, mumbling voice sometimes. So when it when it stacked good, now it’s just I I do very little typing. I actually am starting to crank out articles again because I don’t have to do all the typing form.
Speaker
Yes.
John O
I just gotta clean up the Senate structure. That dictation does because.
Shawn D
How well I used to.
John O
Oh.
Shawn D
I used to love dragon naturally speaking. They had an app that this is like 12 years ago and it did it really well and then they just discontinued it.
John O
Did that’s because somebody bought him and crushed them?
Shawn D
It was like oh.
John O
So that they can develop their own. I’m sure.
Shawn D
Yeah, yeah.
John O
I don’t know that for a fact. That’s just my guess that generally happens, but I remember Dragon naturally speaking. It was first created in early 2000s. It never got very good. And during that time.
Shawn D
Yeah, I know, but. The app I used before I was like it must have been 2013 or so and I it was very impressive. I was on my way to being a novelist again, of just kicking out a bunch of stuff I could speak while I was on walks or whatever. Just kind of instead of listen to music. I’m making something while. I’m walking, so that’s just me.
John O
Mom, no. Here you can pull it off while you walking. Me, I can barely chew gum and walk at the same time, so that’s.
Shawn D
Good.
Speaker
Yeah.
John O
Alright, so where we are now, we’re wandering around here inside the WordPress community and what’s going to happen with it. Most folks realize that word Press isn’t going nowhere. Even when I’ve been poking myself around on the reddits and the Cora forums, Reddit, Quora, and sub stack, I’ve been digging into those a lot lately. And only a small percentage of people are abandoning WordPress for some other platform. And. As I was digging around doing some other research, I started discovering plugins. I hadn’t even thought to look for the problem. The reason I hadn’t seen these plugins mostly is because a lot of plugins are not contained in the WordPress repository and after what automatic or WordPress pulled on. No WP engine back in the fall, people are scared to put their plugins on automatic now or on WordPress repository now. So a lot of people, a lot of people are going self hosted or as we’ve been working on because you and I are doing some work together.
Shawn D
Yeah, yeah.
John O
We’ve been working on getting it. So you can use um. Don’t the jet get up?
Shawn D
Yeah.
John O
Thank you. The sick brain. Brain just lost it.
Shawn D
That’s nice. I thought this spark go and if you know.
John O
Yeah, GitHub and so you can use GitHub to do and host your automatic updates for the plugin. And when I was doing some research, I tripped across. I sent you to the guys repost. Somebody has written a full set of plugin of full set of plugin for either self hosting your plugin or hosting it up on GitHub. And somewhere else. So it’s like almost everything you need is available somewhere. You just gotta dig deep enough to find it.
Shawn D
Exactly. And I think like the what you get out of wordpress.org is the discovery mechanism and that’s huge. Like I’ve published stuff all over the place, and if you put, if you don’t put on. WordPress.org you’re guaranteed. To have no one know it exists. And and you become a very well kept secret. So you’ve got to have a good discovery mechanism and last year or or or.
John O
Yeah.
Shawn D
Yeah, last year I. Started off search allplugins.com and then I just didn’t keep pushing it and that was one of those things I wanted. Where was a real agnostic source that anyone could upload a plug in and have that included as well as at some point is going to put in discovery mechanism where you include stuff and then the plug in that it had would. Kind of go in and intercept the ad plugin function in WordPress and then it would let you. It would have augment the list that you get from WordPress out of word with the search all plugins data set and then you can see everything because if you didn’t you’d miss stuff like elementor or well elementary as a freebie. But gravity forms or WP forms like all these huge products that are very cornerstone with WordPress. If you looked at wordpress.org. Do you think don’t exist?
John O
Yeah. So OK, so this search all plugins is some as a project of yours.
Shawn D
OK.
John O
Oh dear God, I didn’t even know you were building this.
Shawn D
Yeah, I started along with it last year and got a little bit whizzed down the road and then it was like OHSAS.
John O
Have you have you considered doing some asking for some compute community support for this thing now that there is there’s there are some serious want for this because in the last four months not 4.
Shawn D
Ohm.
Speaker
Yeah.
John O
Yeah. We’re we’re in February now, aren’t we? January, December.
Shawn D
Yeah, it’s. Yeah, I think every word, every yeah.
John O
It’s about four months. Let’s go with November and December and January. In the last three months.
Speaker
Yeah.
Shawn D
Yeah.
John O
There have been several new alternate repos launched onto the Internet for WordPress plugins.
Speaker
Hmm.
John O
There is one out there. Um, I forget the fellows name from from over on the mainland. Who’s created a repo that searches that? The plugins are all hosted on GitHub. And so and then there’s another one. We’ve highlighted a couple in this show in the last few shows. We’ve highlighted a couple of repos and as I find I might try to highlight and bring them to people’s attention so that more and more people will know that these repos are.
Speaker
Yeah.
John O
Starting to exist. But something such as this that can go out and tag all these different. Those could be big and maybe some of these other developers that are launching it might even be interested in this if if your codes open source, throw it up on the GitHub and see if we can. Get some shared with it.
Shawn D
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think like wordpress.org does a lot to create and vet stuff as it comes through.
Speaker
Yeah.
Shawn D
So I have to make sure that this would that this would do that same level of vetting or trust, or somehow put trust into the mix.
John O
Alright. Well, that’s what that that’s that.
Shawn D
And then.
John O
I guess that’s a bigger, tougher thing because, yeah, wordpress.org they do every plugin that goes up there has to go through the security thing. Although in the beginning they put everything up that came through.
Speaker
Yeah.
John O
But I guess there was. More trust in the beginning than there is now. Spell, especially where, especially with the plug in that that I’d highlighted a few shows back of the Russian plugin that was out there hacking peoples sites.
Shawn D
Baby, I licking Ohio.
John O
So yeah, you do that. You do gotta pay attention to. What? What you’re downloading in the source, you get it from and then you know you do have to pay attention to that.
Shawn D
Yeah.
John O
So yeah, I guess that that’s it. That would be a tough call for this. Is there a hell?
Speaker
Yeah.
Shawn D
But somehow put in. I mean, you could do something where if it had a lot of five stars and a lot of adoption, it would position better than something that didn’t have much in the way of stars or or adoption as well as the reputation of the publisher would also factor in.
Shawn D
The.
Shawn D
So some weirdo who flies by night.
John O
I I think I think you’d have to.
Shawn D
Didn’t get a lot of love.
John O
I think you’d have to dig more on the reputation of the developer because I’ve run into well, I’ve. I have literally reviewed thousands. Of plugins over the years. She and I’ve seen a few really great ones that have come, and even though I push them, they had them in the repo but they didn’t get very much adoption and they just sort of vanished away or in particular instance. I remember 1 particular one the guy was built, the membership plugin was the most fantastic thing ever. He ran into the negativity and the bad side of the of wordpress.org and they treated them so horribly. He just he. Packed up his bags and went and took another job, went to a new career. Yep, you know, I remember his last e-mail because I was emailing back and forth with him for a few months and then he just walked away. So I’m walking away from this. I can’t do it anymore. He’s sorry dude and.
Shawn D
It didn’t sound amazing that. Yeah. And that can happen. And I mean, that’s the other thing I think before the senior problems at WordPress cropped up, there’s a lot of stuff about the gatekeeper problems and a lot about the misogyny that were really creating negative outcomes, massively negative outcomes in the community and what happens to some of these products or things that come in from from people who either knew or not known in the field.
Speaker
Yeah.
Shawn D
And it’s it’s, it’s. It’s a shame because, you know, for some really good voices and can contribute some new energy.
John O
Right.
Shawn D
And. I saw the. Flip side of that problem. Play with. The Drupal community. We had some bad code and bad concepts from people. Who admitted I have run? I’m not a coder, I am a degree in sociology and I still started coding and it’s like.
Speaker
Ohm.
Shawn D
How much are you missing and what you need to have in the code?
John O
Yeah.
Shawn D
Because you’re smart, but you don’t know about the about the specifics. But because there are vocal or well appreciated or had supporters, they’re their code was very much fanned and made prominent.
John O
Right.
Shawn D
And then you go the opposite way of really solid code from somebody who just has bad bedside manner. And I’ll just die.
John O
Yeah.
Shawn D
And WordPress is the risk of having the same thing if you don’t let a variety of voices come in, give them respect and and park your park. Any animosity? Yeah.
John O
Well, this is definitely something that I think I’m going to poke at you about for the search plugins because this would be a dream.
Shawn D
Yeah.
John O
This would be a dream item if even if even it was set up to just search without being able to with a big giant warning that says beware of the code you download or where you get it from. Hmm.
Shawn D
Yeah you could. You could load it up and caveats just so people know what they’re. Getting into but. Yeah, the which is why I had like a form like an intake form and then I could do the manual look but I. So very quickly at this took off it. Would be impractical. To be look even deeper.
John O
You, you you couldn’t do it. It’s the same the same problem. WordPress hadn’t. The beginning is, you know, once they did that and then they needed the gatekeeper, they had to get volunteers to come in and do the vetting because they couldn’t. One, they couldn’t pay the pay the money necessary to. But and the other problem is is pretty soon you end up with the kind of gatekeepers that, well, if you don’t quite fit their profile for whatever their profile might be, your blocked at every channel. Yeah, I know, I know that one. I know that one personally and first hand. You know it happened.
Shawn D
Yeah. And I have to.
John O
It happened. It happened to me, which is why I’m I see these plugin authors. Please you’ll give myself. Give a review. On wordpress.org. Sorry buddy, I can’t. I’ve been banned from wordpress.org for 10 years now. So not ten eight years.
Shawn D
Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s a problem of the watches.
John O
Eight years, yeah.
Shawn D
The watchers.
John O
Yeah. There’s the problem with that that comes in and yeah, it becomes becomes kind of complex and multiple ways as the more you dig into it. So now you’ve got some really great items here. Oh, I need to bring that up to show the world what this looks like. So. You can get a form here to. You know, people can submit to comment with you and maybe connect with you.
Shawn D
Hmm.
John O
So anyone listen to this, you know.
Speaker
Go, go.
John O
Fill out the form on search allplugins.com and reach out to Sean. Tell them if you’re interested in helping, helping make that happen.
Shawn D
Right on. Thank you.
John O
Because I would love to see that something like that happen now would be.
Shawn D
And and replace that tragic, tragic logo I.
Speaker
Alright.
Shawn D
I don’t know. I mean, somehow I must have been on heavy drugs and the computer at the same time, but that you know, that logo’s going away at that. You’re it’s the last week of that logo. Forever. I just cannot believe I left that.
John O
Well, if all that if all else fails you upload the image into a into a AI. I use grok for these things, but upload the image and say create me a logo based on this image.
Speaker
Yeah.
John O
And see what it can do for you.
Shawn D
Yeah.
Shawn D
So it’s so sad, but anyways it shows a more but more of a developer than a designer on this one.
John O
Well, you know we’re we’re we’re I’m not. An artist either. So you know, most of my artwork now is AI. A lot of my artwork in the past I I have done really good art, but it’s not my Forte now. I have other people to do art for me, so I don’t.
Shawn D
It’s.
John O
I don’t. You have what?
Shawn D
That web 321, we do have talented design people, errands turned. Out some great stuff. We’ve got other people we tap into who can who work with us, do turn out really great stuff. So when we need the design depth, we’ve got it. But I just did this one as my own Skunk works and some to nuts and and include a logo.
John O
Yeah. Include logo man gotta have a logo.
Speaker
Thank you.
John O
Must have a logo, even if it’s the most *****. This thing in the world.
I’ve done that a few times. Start with the horrendous logos like the logo now for WP plugins. That’s not what I started with on this show. This was actually submitted to us by a listener way back in the beginning.
Shawn D
Usually.
John O
I think the show was like 5 years old and and one of my listeners. You know when, hey, I can create your logo and so I can’t pay you. You said no. I’ll create it and just give it. Yeah. And said OK, hold on, I’ll take it and then I gave him full credit for it for a couple of years and then I lost track of giving credit.
Speaker
The place.
John O
To the local author. Sooner or later, I’ll find out who created it again by going through old stuff, and then I’ll I’ll recredit the person for it. But yeah, they did a. Great job on it.
Shawn D
Most well, you know it works.
Speaker
So.
Shawn D
It’s cute. It’s subtle, the little ground turning into mouth.
John O
And yeah.
Shawn D
It’s kinda cute.
John O
Yeah, it was. It was very subtle. It was very different from what my original logo was, you know, which was not all the best thing. In the world. But it was a logo to start. Yeah, you know and. On the whole, it’s been it’s been an interesting trip for me, you know, in realizing that this show here is. Well, when I’m I’m cleaning up my primary website of John overall com and archiving everything there as we’ve moved everything over to WP plugins and over to WPP Pro and I realized that I have over 1200 podcasts produced for this show. Get there.
Shawn D
Wow.
John O
So that means, you know, we got, we got 643 episodes of the actual podcast, which means I have another 600 episodes of interviews and other miscellaneous shows that I did over time that were just plugged into the podcast feed. Yeah. So that means I’ve done a lot of a lot of episodes and different things for which in and now I realize that this show at one point it was very well known. I was recently on it. They haven’t aired it yet, so let’s hope it airs sometimes soon. The WPP Tavern jukebox. Andy, the current host. There he was telling me that my show helped inspire him back in the beginning, he was listening to my show back when I was in the first few 100 episodes with my first co-host Marcus Couch. So nice and cycle class kind of cool that you I I actually made it. I made an impact on somebody and I didn’t even know it. So this is kind of it’s kind of neat to hear those things over time when you run into people’s.
Shawn D
That’s excellent.
Speaker
They.
John O
Like I remember you.
Shawn D
There’s somebody senior at Chaosium, the the game company behind Wound Quest, and Call Kathy and stuff like that.
Speaker
Delete.
Shawn D
And way back I used to do a lot of game writing and publish like in Dragon Magazine and and stuff like that. Way back in the day, and I met this guy and he was a he was the brother of a close friend of mine.
John O
Yeah.
Shawn D
And the funny part was, he says. Oh yeah, it was really cool. You need some of your actually was getting game designer. It really said I could go and do something with this and now he’s like senior Chaosium and it’s like, huh? I, you know, inspired him and look where he is and he’s like, well, Congrats on that one, right.
John O
Yeah, well, that’s it. There’s kind of it’s kind of interesting and that’s the whole idea is we want to inspire more people and we need in particular to inspire the younger generations coming up behind us. Now me I’m getting.
Shawn D
Exactly.
John O
I’m getting to that age where I want to retire from this industry and you need to have. Another good developers and people come up behind us to carry the torch and run.
Shawn D
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, the idea that I would have been. In web design this. Long is like, really who I am.
John O
No, that’s that’s I’ve been doing this now for Web design 2004. Opened my first design company, 1999.
Shawn D
Yes.
John O
I opened my first hosting I launched. I I I’ve launched my first server for web hosting in 1999, so I’ve been doing it since 98. I see you were doing it since 96. You got a couple of years on me.
Shawn D
Yeah. And in the 80s is when I got nerd I got I nerded out on the Apple computer. There’s and then IBM PC’s doing game design or trying new game design back then. And yeah, didn’t get it. Didn’t get a game finished, but so be it.
John O
Yeah.
Shawn D
And then came back from the skill set in the mid 90s.
John O
Yeah, that’s where I started. Was one of my first. Game. Way back, but I I I I spent my 80s not touching computers. I was. I was working as automotive mechanic and barely touching computers in my in the 80s. But alright, well, what I’m going to do here, I’m going to closeout this part of the show for those on. The downloads. And they can pick up if you want to check out any further stuff, we’ll be here for a few more minutes. After over on the YouTube channel, so come back to us after the outro credits and we’ll be strictly on the YouTube panel. So I’ll go over there and check it out. And we’ll be right back.
Shawn D
Reminders for the show all show notes can be found at wppplugins8z.com, and while you’re there, subscribe to the newsletter for more useful information delivered directly to your inbox. WP Plugins A-Z is a show that offers honest and unbiased reviews of. Things created by developers because you support the show help keep the show honest and unbiased by going to wppuddings8asset.com/donate and set the donation level that fits your budget. Help us make the show better for you by subscribing and reviewing the show at Stitcher Radio, Google Play, and in the iTunes Store. You can also leave us a review on our Facebook page using WP plugins at oz.com/facebook. You can also watch the show live on YouTube. Check out the screencast and training videos and remember to subscribe and hit the bell to get notifications of all new video. Homes follow the show on Twitter, at WPP plugins at Oz. John can also be reached at his website johnoverall.com, or e-mail him directly. John@wppro.ca, thanks for joining us and have a great day.
John O
Thanks for listening to the show. This show is copyright by John overall.com. So until next time, have yourselves a good morning. Good afternoon or good evening, wherever you happen to be out there on the globe today.
Speaker
Hey. The.