Let's see if this is going to work. The Twitter feed. See what we've got.
Slide. It's working. Check. Yes, folks. We've got a little bit of
babbling here to see what we've got going. See what we've got.
The Twitter one will let scheduled it to start at noon. Maybe it's going to hold the line until precisely
sick. Yeah, it's holding the Twitter's holding
it back until precisely noon. Interesting. Okay, that's kind of a different thing.
Welcome to those who are sitting there waiting on YouTube. We are just a little
minor ahead of head ofhead of the queue here as we test to make sure we're live
streaming out to Twitter. See what we got.
See up that
There we go. Is that
okay? One more time.
We will see what happen. All right. Well, let's just uh roll on into uh YouTube. it didn't quite work or
it might just suddenly take off live anyway. So, we will just uh take it away
and uh get rolling. First things first,
back up. All right, it's interview 75 and we have Ryan Logan
from Influence WP and Change Log talking about the power of centralized change
logs and WordPress maintenance and more. Ladies and gentlemen, it is time for
WordPress plugins A to Zed, not Z.
Welcome to another episode of WP Plugins A to Zed interview show. In this episode, we are talking the power of
centralized change logs in WordPress maintenance with Ryan Logan, where we will be revealing how centralized change
logs can help website owners keep ahead of the curve in the everchanging plug-in world and more.
WordPress, the king of content management systems, powering the web with over 80,000 plugins to choose from.
How do you sort the junk from the gems? Welcome to WP Plugins A to Zed, where
we've been keeping the pulse of WordPress alive for over 16 incredible years. Join us every week for an
unrehearsed real talk breakdowns of the latest and greatest plugins, developer, and community member interviews. Some
weeks, Amber and I team up to dig in. others. I'm flying solo, unpacking WordPress news, demoing a standout
plugin, or sharing tips to power up your site. No scripts, no pluff, just the
good stuff from A to Z. So, plug in and let's get rolling.
Well, good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you happen to be hiding out there on the globe today. Coming to you direct from the brewery
overlook in beautiful southern Vancouver Island. I'm John Overall. Welcome to the interview show 75 on WP Plugins A to
Zed, where we're thrilled to have Ryan Logan, the IT wizard turned WordPress trailblazer behind influence WP and
Change Log WP. From dodging high stakes crashes as an interimm CIO in the
cutthroat world of highfrequency trading to crafting a scam-free haven for plug-in deals and change log mastery.
Ryan's ditched the corporate grind for a life fueled by community vibes, craft bruise, and a fierce commitment to
amplifying the little guy in our sprawling sprawling ecosystem. Whether you're a plug-in pedalling dev hunting
ve partnership or a site juggling agency owner chasing update nirvana, Ryan's got
the unfiltered wisdom to keep your WordPress world spinning smooth minus the affiliate fluff. So, grab that IP,
settle in, let's dive into the deals, the drama, and the downright dogged dedication that's making Change Log WP
and Influence WP the go-tos for genuine WordPress wins. Let's get started.
Welcome to the show, Ryan. Hey, John. Thanks for having me back. Oh, yeah. Well, happy to have you back.
And, uh, you know, we had a really good time on the last show. This time around, we're going to a little differently than
before, but what the heck? I've been working out my my routines here. First
off, before we get going, for those who don't know who you are, we're going to go a little bit of background history of
you. Take us back and talk to us a little bit about back in the days when you were an intern grunt uh doing CIO
high frequency trading and what what was it that led you to WordPress?
Yeah. So, I started my IT career in 1997. Uh started out as an intern. Uh
literally sitting in data closets. My task was to watch the lights blink on
the routers and the switches and to report back and say, "Hey, these are the ports that are the chattiest." And uh so
I went from that to landing an internship and then just worked my way up over the years. And right before I
exited corporate, I was uh a interim CIO. So my best friend at the time was
actually the CIO and he left the company. I took his spot until they found a replacement. So, I went from the
the bottom all the way to about the top uh before I exited and then I started my
own IT consulting firm and then I was just asked over and over again uh can you build us a website and I just kept
saying no no no. So, one weekend I locked myself in my apartment and taught
myself WordPress and the rest is history pretty much. Well, that's the one joy about WordPress. If
you have any technical skills, you can learn it all really fast. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then also I I
really have a design a real passion for design. So I I could never really uh
exercise that muscle with the IT world. So uh it was a perfect marriage for me uh the tech and the design. So
well let's uh talk about between dogs, hikes, craft beer, bourbon tastings. You know you're a pretty busy guy outside of
the code cave. How do those sorts of passions help you keep your mindset while you're getting all your other
crazy things done such as Influence WP and Change Log WP?
Well, it's it's kind of like vacations. It's something to look forward to, you know. So, I'll just check out uh each
day, whether it's walking the dogs or go sit outside and have a craft new craft beer that I haven't tried before or
maybe a new uh bourbon I haven't tried before. It's taking those hikes with the dogs, with the family, uh traveling to
local breweries and whatnot. Just making sure you get out and as they say, touch grass um enough times to keep you
grounded. Yeah. So, as far as brewer uh beers go, what's your favorite? IPAs or something
more darker? Which one? Where do you where do you land on that spectrum of beer?
Um I typically they laugh. I walk into a a new brewery I've never been to and I'm
like, "So, what beer is amber in color?" And they just laugh and they're like,
"Yep, know exactly what you're looking for." That nine times out of ten will work for me. But I've recently started
getting more into IPAs. Um it's just those are hit or miss for me because sometimes they're a little too heavy.
But uh I literally I'll try anything one time and and then um I actually have an
I keep track of everything I've ever tried. So, and I I used to keep track of all the ones I
tried. There was an app that I used to use that tracked all the different beers that I tasted those like for several
years when the craft brew blew up around us. Um, that's why I say brewery overlook. I've got a craft brewery right
off my balcony from my apartment that I stare at and smell what they're brewing on a regular basis.
Yeah. I use the I use the untapped app. So, it plug plug for untapped app. But
that that was it. That's what I used to use. Yeah, I would actually. Yep. So, I real
quick like this where I live in near Charlotte, North Carolina is a big time brewery spot. Um, and I'll actually say
my favorite are from right around here. And it's not just because they're local. They are literally like my favorite.
Well, that's the joy of it. And all my favorites are my local ones. Like I've got three breweries within walking
distance of my h of my apartment. Yep. So, it's always nice to need one. Just grab a growler, go fill it all up. 100%.
All right. Well, we've had you on the show before back in interview 65. So, what's evolved for you over the past
Well, that was back in March, I believe. Um since March with um WP Influence and
what what brought about change log WP? Uh well, Influence WP turned one, we'll
call it September 1st, so this month. Um what's changed there is a couple big
changes. one, I used to try to be everything to everyone. So, I tried to promote podcasts, newsletters, all of
that. Um, hosting companies. I quickly found out that, um, I'm going to be able to serve WordPress best if I focus on
WordPress product creators. So, that was a major shift, uh, a very welcome shift because it makes my life a lot easier.
Um, I know who I can help the most. And then the other thing, too, is I used to I used to have to do a lot of partner
outreach to get this thing really spun up and active. Um I'm finding now that people are starting to come to me which
is making my life so much easier um there. So they're coming to influence WP
asking me to be a part of it. So that's uh it also it's encouraging whereas before I had to do the outreach. Um
change log WP was some a passion project as well that's always been in the back of my mind. I I always knew that I was a
developer short of making it happen. So you have to find a developer that's uh also passionate about the subject matter
or it doesn't really work. Um and then that's where a partnership was formed to
bring it to life to to solve problems and to help people not just to do something that we just thought was
interesting. That's quite fantastic. Now with the
influence WP, we'll touch on that real briefly before we dive into change log.
Now tell us a little bit um it we a lot of people know but not maybe not
everybody in the audience here uh knows what are the benefits of influence w of
deep tripping over the acronyms there influence WP what are the benefits of it
and how does it help not only the creators of products but also the users
of those products yeah so starting with the creators. Uh
what I hear quite often um from the creators, they they're developers. They're not marketers. I'm actually I am
not trained. I'm not a marketer. I don't consider myself a marketer. I just You're getting real good at it.
I'm trying. Yeah. But there's like the they just want to code. um and they don't want to do the marketing and they
don't really have maybe they're just starting out and they don't really have a lot of money coming in from their plugins or themes or whatever and they
want they're they're looking for a way to get their their name out there but they don't have the money to take on a
marketing firm or pay lots of money to be whatever sponsor some some things.
So, this is a literally a free way for them to extend their customer reach. As
long as they offer, all I ask is they offer a deal to the WordPress community, then they're in for free, and I will go
to bat for them and and help them spread the word. Um, if they're not able to offer a deal, they don't like that model
for whatever reason, they can just pay a very, very small fee just to help me keep the lights on and I'll still do the
same amount of work for them. Um, so I've been there. I've had products I didn't know where to turn. I didn't have
uh the channels, but not all of those things at the same time. So, if you are
purchasing anything in the WordPress space and sometimes even outside like things that help you with your WordPress
site that aren't WordPress products, like video recording software for example, you should check InfluenceWP
first before you purchase any of that. I don't, like we said, I don't get an affiliate commission or anything like
that. It's just me helping these product creators spread the word. But you are gonna in almost every case you're gonna
save more than you are on another website that offers similar deals.
Excellent. And so sorry I I got sidetracked there. I was
having a minor technical glitch that uh I've solved.
Um yeah. So now I just got to pull my brain back in because I I'll continue. There's one more point.
I'll let you think about it. You you continue. Yeah. There's one more really good point. You continue get one more real good
point and of course Hey folks, this is all live and tape so I'll edit it out and post. Hey, all the all stuff.
Yeah. So some of the push back I'm going to talk about one of the push backs. One of the push backs I get from product creators is the deals. Uh it's not very
often but once in a while I get one. So I've literally had a big company which they are now a partner. Um, we went back
and forth. Uh, no, we we don't really do that. And I said, "Hey, did you you know, you have an affiliate program. You
are you are giving away 30% of your revenue to your affiliates. What are
they doing for you?" Well, they're putting their link on a page and we're paying them. Okay. Why not give
Influence WP at 30% as a upfront discount or hey, let's just make it 20%
upfront discount and you never have to pay me an affiliate commission. how does that not make sense from a business
standpoint? And they they would go back a couple of days and then I would get the email that says, "Yes, you have a
very good point. Let's do it." So that's the thing I really want to drive home to
people. It's like if yeah, you have an affiliate program, that's absolutely fine. Continue running that. But this is a different approach that you can also
take, right? That I really want to drive that home. You're giving people a discount on the
front end. It lowers the barrier of entry. You are rewarding them from the start. Whereas with an affiliate
program, you are rewarding somebody for literally putting a link on a page and making your customers pay higher prices.
So to me, it it just makes total sense, but it, you know, it's still a sticking
point for some. Well, that one does that one does sort of make sense. I I wouldn't understand why a business wouldn't do that. I mean,
one of the requirements I understood from influence WP, unless you've modified, is that you wanted the deals
to be as good as their affiliate or better than their affiliate program. So, if the the deal was if you are
offering a deal on the web to some other partner and it'll say it's 20%, all I all I ask is that you match it. I'm not
asking for special treatment, right? I just want customers, consumers that sign up for Influence WP when they hit that
deal that it works and that they know they're getting at least equal to the best deal on the web. I want people to
be able to trust these links that they hit. Okay. So, so what you're looking for is the best
deal that they're offering on the web, whatever they're equal to. Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, you want to be
equal to whatever the best deal they're offering out there on the web where it would be because I know there's there's companies that have varying levels of
deals at different places. Yeah, I'll give I'll give you I'll give you another example. I just this
happened this past week uh last week. Um they someone came to me, a partner, and
they said, "We can't do this level of discount anymore because our other partners are not happy because they're
not getting the same." And then I said, 'Well, this is what you go back and you tell them. Tell them you're taking their
affiliate commissions away and then and then you'll give them the same deal you're giving influence WP. See how they
react. And they said, "Yeah, they're not going to go for that." I go, "There's your answer." Yeah, you're paying your affiliates more than
I'm asking you for. So, it's a no-brainer. And they came back and they said, "This is like a big
company in WordPress, too, by the way." And they said, "Yeah." They go, "Nope, we're good. We're going to stay with
you. Keep the percentage." Well, there you go. Um, yeah. Um, yeah, that's what you want to do. But what
that says is I know that uh Influence WP has started to make lots of inroads all
over the place. I'm starting to see more and more more and more of it out there in my Twitter feed. Aside from what you
put out, I'm starting to see more from others, which is a good thing. Um, which
means you're starting to gain ground. Now, you've also mildly ruffered a ruffled a few feathers lately when you
uh introduced your weekly newsletter now that you're finding out how much joy a newsletter can be. And uh you know, the
unfiltered newsletter, it's really quite good. You do have a little differently than what I see a lot of newsletters.
You only if you're signed up for the newsletter do you get it. You don't have a web page that's got an archive of
them. What was the choice behind that? What what why did you go that route?
Well, when I first started InfluenceWP, one of the things, one of the pillars was a bad
actors program. I wanted to point out people that were doing people wrong in the WordPress space. Uh for whatever, I
just decided not to do that. I I just didn't want to do that anymore anymore. So, it's always been in the back of my
mind that I I feel like practices, maybe not specific people, but practices should be called out. In some cases, you
have to call out people. It's just the way that it is. I mean, you saw may have seen the other day I posted something and I literally had someone say name
names. So, when you see someone's telling you to name names, that tells me that people are open to that. So,
y in the unfiltered section of the newsletters, which as you said, you have to be a subscriber to get. I didn't want
to just come out and blast it all over the social medias, all of those things. I didn't want to do that. I wanted to
kind of It's not a way to get subscribers by any means. It's just I wanted to keep it um just within the
newsletter and and not blast it out to the world. If it gets out, it gets out. It's not I'll I would tell people right
now everything I said in nothing I'm hiding. No. Um, but it's um sometimes you just
need you just need to call people out on certain things and uh just since
starting Influence WP, I've ran across some not so pleasant individuals and not
so pleasant companies and um it's just amazing that when you try to help people
for free that they there's just that much animosity out there. Uh but it can be a tough it can be a tough slo.
That's for damn sure. All right. Well, let's uh change our focus here to the change log WP and let's talk a bit about
this because this one here is a unique idea. The thought had never occurred to me to try and collect the change logs
and I know how important change logs are to me as a person who manages, you know,
lots of client websites and I've got to go in and update a plugin. The change
log is the first thing I look at to see what's going to happen because everyone's, oh, just do your updates.
They they let auto updates happen. Well, I learned years ago that you do not do that on an active site if at all
possible simply for the fact that even a company that you've come to depend on for several years of perfect updates
could have one update that has a code error that they didn't anticipate. or maybe somebody fixing the code took out
a semicolon and broke the whole thing. So it brings down and white screens your website. So the change log is important
that I can look and see, okay, what changes did they make? What did they adjust? What sort of things that happened? Now change logs vary in their
usefulness depending on who's creating them, but they're still helpful. So
where did this idea come from? What sort of brought it about? Yeah. uh running a WordPress agency
since 2016 uh managing multiple multiple websites uh you need the change logs are
so critical to know to systematically how to roll out updates the right way
you know whether it's updating your site first um updating you know like certain client sites that aren't like critical
and then you've got those client sites that you know that are super hyper critical you just doing those stage
rollouts change logs become super important for that you got to know what's in them, um, when they were
released, um, all of those type types of things so you can make educated decisions on when
to press, you know, press that update button, so to speak. Um, but, uh, so like if you're if you're
an agency doing website care like I am, you might have a tool that is centralized that gives you those, but
they don't there's certain like premium plugins and stuff like that don't always give you the change log. it'll literally
come back that tool and it'll say we can't we can't give you that information. Um, so what you're left to do is you're
you got to go out and you got to find the website for the plugin. You got to hunt down their change log and then like
what I do is I have like this whole entire folder of bookmarks for the plugins. But the problem with that is
then if you go and you add another plugin to your stack, you got to start the hunt all over again and hope that
you find it and bookmark it. And that's just one side of the equation. We're just talking about agencies. Like we could get into the the
professional that's not doing website maintenance. We can get into the DIYers that have no clue what a change log even
is. Yeah. Like there's so many levels to this.
There is. Now, with the premium plugins that you just mentioned and their change logs, yeah, I understand the pain of
hunting them down. Now you've started change log WP by tapping into the
WordPress repo for change logs. How are you integrating the change logs from
premium plugins into this uh system? So that that is what we are working on
right now to try to figure out. So you have some premium plugins that are
selling with one platform and then others are selling with another. Some are rolling their own and you have to we
have to get all of the use cases gathered up. We have to do the testing. We have to figure out how to get those
in to build the documentation to build those systems to see if we can automate any of it. So we are working behind the
scenes to find all of these individual use cases um as we speak to make to make
that happen. If that's my computer doing that. No, that was mine.
Okay. I thought I' I thought I had turned them off, but uh I didn't.
I usually turn them off. Now they're turned off. Now the notifications. Yeah, that's me because long as it's not me, I'd feel bad if it
was me. No, no, that's that's that's my system saying, "Hey, you've got emails." Yeah, I know I've got emails. Go away. I'll
look at them again. I'll look at them again in about half an hour or so. All right. So So you're working through
the process here of getting the change logs from all the premium plugins into everything. And yet there's multiple
areas you got to go chase these down whether they do them like I do I do mine
on the plugins I'm creating over I keep my change logs over on GitHub. There's some sources that you know you buy the
plug through Fremius and I'm not sure the change log I always find it over on the developers website.
Yep. And that's the sorts of things that I see the problems you have is most of them will be on a developer's website
and uh finding out if they've even got an RSS feed for their change log. And some of them do their change logs really
oddly where they've got the most recent changes but they don't have the whole
history going back. Like for instance, it's not uncommon for sometimes take two
or three weeks to do an update and unplug, but they've updated it three times, you know, and they so we've got three
change logs missing from it from the most recent and going forward. What how
is that sort of thing um giving you grief?
Um, I can't really speak to the premium side of things yet because it's still, you know, work in progress, but like the
the the free plugins, like if you go to change Log WP now and look at it, it's
like you said, you're going to see you're going to see some that have the full change log since the beginning of time, uh, some only have the latest,
like I'm looking at one now on my screen that's got like the last three. Um, so
it it's a thing. Um, but if you go I'm just clicking around them right now and
just kind of checking them out. Yeah. Well, I'm clicking I'm clicking through a couple here from the website for folks to take a look at here on
YouTube. Yeah. But I mean at at a minimum we need that most recent at I mean at an
absolute minimum. Um that helps greatly just having that last one. Um,
well, the last one's very important, but if you've if you if you've managed to miss a few versions of a plugin,
sometimes you'll want to know what they've done. Yep, 100%. Like I just clicked on one right here. It's beautiful. It goes all
the way back to 1.0. Um, the problem is with this one, there's no dates.
So, which that is a real pet peeve of mine. And yeah, I always want the dates in there because
you have to have the dates. Yeah, that's the one interesting thing about change logs. There's been no consistency in how
they were how they were created and put together. It it it takes
three seconds to add the date. Just just add the date. Yeah. Well, takes three seconds or, you
know, like when I'm creating my change logs, I just I just copy and paste the previous the previous change to date and
then put in the latest information. So, if if you can type in 2.0, know you can
type in January 1st, 2025 or whatever it is or whatever it is that you do there.
Okay. So, for plug-in authors, plug-in developers out there that might be listening to show, what is the what do
you want to do to what's the pitch for them using change log to help build user trust with their sites, with their
plugins? So, there's a couple different things. you know, if this thing goes the way we
hope, you know, it's going to have a lot of eyeballs on it. Uh, people just perusing, seeing what's out there. U,
there's also kind of back to what I said, developers just want to develop. They don't want to. There's probably a
reason they don't put version numbers in there. Probably a reason they don't make them look pretty all the time. Or, you
know, you've got some websites out there that have gorgeous change logs. They put a lot of effort into them. Um, some
developers may not even want to be bothered and, you know, they just want a way for us to collect them and display
them for them. Um, so there's incentive there. We we have long a long-term plan
to do a unique service. Uh, whether that ever comes to fruition, but we do have a plan to help people display change logs
on their website in a in a pretty way. Uh, so that's uh coming hopefully in the
future. But um I would just say the eyeballs, you know, people are here browsing the site looking for change
logs and you know they click the drop down arrow eventually we'll say premium
you know what's out there. um just getting more eyeballs on your stuff. And
I if our copy on the website is doing its job, people new to WordPress, uh
yeah, I guess even people using WordPress for a while, they want to keep up with change logs, then there's
incentive to be listed here and be searchable and let people um add you to
their watch list and so they can keep track of what you're up to. So, I think there's a lot of value in it.
There is. And you even have a nice search function for hunting things down on it.
Yeah. And actually it it'll actually unearth things that you can't get from the repository if you want to have a
have some fun with it. Yeah. Well, there's lots of uh external tools to unear stuff from the repository
that you can't find in the repository. Yeah. It's a strange
phenomenon that's irritated me for years with the uh WordPress repo. Yeah. If and if you we're trying to be
uh to offer more more value to so if you go into like one of the change log listings you'll see on the right hand
side it kind of mimics the WordPress repository. What we're hoping to do is add things that you can't do right now
in the repository which is sort by um like last updated PHP requirements
tested up to those types of things. Oh those would be some nice sort functions.
Yeah. So it's just Yeah. So, it's just right now it's just the priority. We're working through the priority of things
and that's getting the the premium stuff in there. And then this whole the whole faceted and search system will continue
to evolve so we can unearth plugins easier for people, surface those plugins
easier and have better sorting and stuff like that than what you have we have now.
The building of uh change log WP must have been quite the feat to pull
together. Did you get much push back initially when you were trying to build this out and get it launched?
Push back from the community, community, developers, um WordPress,
anybody. Did anybody or did people people work to embrace it? Oh, I I've I think we've heard nothing
but really good stuff, especially behind the scenes. Uh I get emails all the time. Um how do I get my plugins in? And
I'm just we're it's we're trying. We're trying. you know what is what what platform are you selling on you know it's it's a it's an information
gathering uh problem right now. Yeah. But um the the response has been
great especially behind the scenes there's been a lot of good uh like on socials a lot of good interaction but
behind the scenes it's those emails that we're getting like hey we want to be part of this how do we become part of this
yeah so the reception's been great I have there I think on social media there was a couple people that kind of had
reservations about um especially on the premium side of things like how are you
how are you talking to our sites and things like that but we you know quickly said it's it's opt in like you it's
we're not scraping your sites. Yeah. You know you know so there's a couple of those outliers that we we squashed those
and said hey we're just trying to do the right thing by you guys here. We're not you know this is just a a feel-good help
help people project. Well that's the whole idea is you want
to be helping people and and helping bring more useful tools to the WordPress ecosystem. The WordPress ecosystem's
gone through a massive transition in this last year. It's been very interesting to uh see as I've
reintegrated myself back into it. Now, with with all of you got going on
here um and with WordPress itself bringing on their AI team for AI
integrations and stuff, how would you see Influence WP and W and change Log WP
futureproofing creators against that title wave? that's coming down the pike because that is coming. The the AI is
coming. We can't stop it. I mean, just this last year alone of usage has been incredible.
Um, which which AI specifically are we talking about? Creating websites, creating plugins.
I'm not even certain. I haven't even done I haven't even done the deep dive yet or the dive into what uh automatic's
doing with for the AI team that they brought on for WordPress. I'm not sure what they're doing yet. I know they
brought out something a couple of weeks ago, but I was so sidetracked in cro um
projects that I didn't have the time to look at it and so it got set to the side. But I know that they've got an AI
team to integrate AI into WordPress core itself.
I if I if I think I understand what you're asking, I would say that if influence if there is a reason for
influence WP and change log WP to never exist, then that means WordPress no
longer exists. Yeah, I think that's my response to that because if they're going to do something with AI
that eliminates plug-in creators, theme creators, well, theme creators probably coming before plug-in creators.
Theme creators are I think they're theme creators days are limited, I believe, myself.
I I do too. I do too. Um, but if if if their AI eliminates these product
creators, then yeah, change log WP goes away and influence WP goes away, but so
does the ecosystem. The ecosystem's gone. Like there's WordPress will be WordPress would be
gone if uh you eliminate the creators, the product creators. They they made WordPress. It was the whole reason why
when I was opting to create WP plugins A to Z, I had thought about themes and I looked at themes versus plugins and what
plugins were doing to WordPress and how they changed it. I've been working with WordPress since it was literally just a
blog. it could do nothing but blog. And when they introduced the custom post
types and people took that and ran, it became something more than what was
anticipated. And it's done nothing but extend upon it. And many plug-in developers have found other ways to hook
into the hooks of WordPress to there's some incredibly some incredibly
complex websites that are created on WordPress, but it wouldn't be possible without the plug-in ecosystem.
Yeah, I mean you look at uh automatic's new telix system AI system for creating
blocks with AI and le let's say that that is as successful as it could possibly be you still are
going to need product creators to do other stuff. So, I'll just say it again
like if Influence WP had to go away and change Log WP had to go away, that means WordPress is probably
not not I wouldn't say not in existence, but it's a shell of what it is. Like,
yeah, what we know it to be. Um, they'd have to bring every literally
everything inhouse and that's it. Like like that's the only way.
Yeah, it's not possible. The WordPress ecosystem has become too bloody huge. you you would lose all of those people
out there like me that are proponent like that are sticking up for WordPress trying to push it forward doing all
these you're going to lose all of those people doing that right uh that free marketing
that free marketing is what made WordPress so viable I was part of that marketing in the beginning I even had
courses that I taught the local uh a local night school yeah
yep everybody wins if with how it's going now as long as we just steady the course you you know, shore up some
things that have happened, keep the train going down the tracks. I mean, we we can keep it going. So,
well, let's uh let's give a shout out. Who do you think is one of the unsung heroes? We've talked off and off and on
through this about promoting people and promoting the the
small or the ones that are doing unique unique things. Who do you think would be
an unsung hero that's dropping knowledge or tools that deserve a little bit of spotlight right now?
Dropping knowledge and tools. Knowledge or tools? Knowledge or tools. They they don't always go hand inand
knowledge usually works out to be tools, but knowledge starts before tools are
created. It's gonna sound really cliche to say this, but it's there in Influence WP.
It's it's it's almost all of the partners are doing this. Like it's and this what's what frustrates me the
most. It's why I dropped that comment about podcasts. Yeah. The other day that stirred some drama is
there's so many people doing cool stuff that they're not being surfaced. Like there it's just I think I said this on
your show last time. It's just these echo chambers of promoting people that are inside automatic or that are in these inner
circles. And that's the problem. It's like, let's say you go on a podcast and some podcasts
give you a chance to talk about yourself, but they also say like you just did. Here's your chance to mention somebody.
What what they're often doing is mentioning somebody that's sitting right next to them on the podcast like
it. So my answer to you is there are a lot of people doing really really cool stuff
that they're just not being surfaced. And that's what I am trying to do. It's what I am trying to ruffle some feathers
and get more people to do that have a way bigger platform than I have. Um, but
the sad thing is like if I had to just answer your question with a real person, yeah,
it's going to be somebody that's already so built up, okay, by the inner circles and like I don't
want to do that because we already know who they are, right? It's the AI team. It's the it's the the performance team
with the Google folks that are now in WordPress, you know, building the all of that kind of stuff. And it's it's all
these people that keep getting the shine, which they so rightly deserve, but there's a lot of other people that need it, too.
Um for the reasons we just said, like the product creators are what makes this thing go. We should embrace them more
and spread the word more. Um if it if it's not influenced, if you don't want to uplift influence WP,
that's fine. Like let's find something else to to to make that happen. Um, but
I've already built it, so that's partly what I that's partly what
we try to do here at WP Plugins A to Zed. And I've made that my goal throughout the entire time is always
finding the new plugins. For a long time, our show only featured plugins
that were just released, had less than 10 10 installs. Sometimes we end up with
some that have more, but a lot of times most of what we showcase here is about
the new developers and such. And yeah, the the post you made that brings us around to talking a bit about the
podcasting field in WordPress and what it is and where it's at right now. It is
a lot of people that are stuck in echo chambers and they're not breaking themselves out of them completely. A lot
of them they've established their brands, I guess, and that's where they
stay focused and they often have the same guests on over and over again instead of reaching out to all the
smaller people to say, "Hey, why don't you come on here and talk about it or trying to get out like I've been
reaching out to much in the same way that you had to with WP Influence. I've had to I had to
reach out to multiple places. I'm starting to get people reaching back out to me for interviews, which is nice. It
does saves a ton of work when they reach out to me versus me having to figure out how to contact them because some people
make contacting them so bloody hard. Yeah. Yeah. I think you I think you
already have, but like it just goes without saying like anybody you see roll through Influence WP, hey, just just
tell them like let's do this. I mean, I I think they would all jump on the chance to talk to you. Yeah. Well,
because of the tweet you put out, I managed to find three people that were lesser known to reach out to off of
there. Um, because you managed to because you managed to ruffle some feathers and you popped a few things on it and uh out of
this out of this thread that came out. I thought it was rather comical when Jeffro uh commented that don't make him
come out of retirement because he was the show that started just before me
and he was he was I didn't know that. Yeah. He started his he started WP Tavern. He created WP Tavern originally.
Yeah, I knew that. And he kept it going for several years until his life changed and he had to put
it aside. Yeah. Yeah. And and because he built such a
reputation, Matt bought it up and it uh turned into what it is now, which
unfortunately it's mostly hardly anything comes out of there anymore. Yeah. When he said that, like I didn't
even need to go look it up. like I knew WP mainline like came to mind instantly. Um because that is like yours. That's
the type of podcast that I you got me into loving podcast. It was hey you know
you could have sponsors but they are like behind the scenes that you go to the website sponsors are listed there.
You know maybe a small little mention but it's like let's get into the meat and potatoes. Let's let's talk about
something meaningful. Um, that's why I loved that podcast and that's why I loved yours and that's why I love yours
and it's why I loved like WP Water Cooler. I was sad when that went away because they had that same format like
let's just get to the heart of things. Let's get to the meat. Um, I find myself now like I'm I've I'm
not even kidding. I think I told you this before we hit record. I've been deleting podcasts. Like I just can't do it anymore. It's I I tried to resolve it
by putting people on playing it at 1.3 speed, but that is it's like anxiety.
Like it's just people talking way too fast and it's like that didn't work. So like all I got to delete it.
Um but it's just it now it's when I don't do that it's just fast forward and it's like fast forward fast forward fast
forward fast forward. And I know people have to pay the bills. I'm not yeah against that. It's just I think there's
other ways to do that. There are other ways. One of the one of the great ways um like there was mention
about people like sponsors and whatnot. It's like that I went down that route once before with my show um getting
sponsorships and dealing with sponsors I found to be not worth the headache
involved and then I flipped to the value for value model. In other words, if I
was giving value, audience gave me value back. They either promoted me or helped
us out like we used to have till I let the show mostly die back. People used to
provide artwork for us and links to stuff and people referred new plugins to
us. And then of course there were the people out there that gave us cash which was a nice thing. That was some validation of it. And the value for
value model is the one that only is truly the only one that works in podcasting. Podcasts eventually die out
if they're dependent upon sponsorships because their content gets stale and
like your case, they're like, you know what, I I just can't handle this anymore. And it's gone from their app and they're no longer listening to it.
Yeah. Um I had some I'd have to search for it now. Um, I had some followup
people that were like post, you know, following up on my post and one of the things that I responded to said was if
people there's different sponsorships level, right? There's um, I've got a budget. I need to spend
my money. I'm just going to give it to some podcaster. Okay, there's that. There's there's the friend of the show that, you know, wants their logo, all
that. There's then there's there was another one. There's like a three levels, right? The but the problem
becomes then is if you are getting sponsorships just because someone has a budget to spend or they're a friend of
the show, where's the incentive to change to keep like to keep the format fresh or to
uplift um smaller players in WordPress or to
um maybe have some spicy takes, something like that. Like like where's the incentive to do anything other than
what you just do every single episode? There's none. There's you already have your money. Yeah.
So now a year down the road so and so is like, "Okay, I'm I'm even tired of this
podcast." Like this is ridiculous. Like dropping sponsorships for whatever reason. Then they're like, "Uh oh." Like
maybe all along we should have been, you know, doing different doing this differently.
Yeah. Uh you had you had mentioned you'd mentioned something about the numbers the you know people asking about the
numbers of downloads of a show coming directly from a podcaster knowing full
well how the system works. Nobody knows what their numbers are. I don't care how much they pretend they do. What they do
know is the number of file downloads from their from their stuff but they don't know if people actually listen to
it because there's a lot of people that are on Ghost. It's like even me on my
podcast app, it's a ghost app sometimes. It's like I'm not listening to shows for a few weeks, but yet the shows still
download to my app automatically, but I didn't listen and I go back to it, it's like I don't want to listen to these back episodes and delete, delete,
delete. But yet those numbers were counted as downloads. And that happens across the board. Um
Oh, I didn't think of that. Yeah, it happens across the board for listeners. And so nobody really knows
their li their their listenership. The closest they can get is if they've got a really good newsletter going and they
send out x number of subscribers to a newsletter that tells them how many people are subscribed to their
newsletter and getting information. That's a little closer to a real number.
But the reality is it's like tracking the numbers online of traffic to your
website. Are you counting the bots? You know, because there's that other that's the other thing that happens,
too, is bots will come in and download it to pump the numbers. Look, it's the most downloaded show ever. Yeah. You had
10,000 bots come in and download a thousand shows each. So, it's like,
so, go ahead. Yeah. Sorry. So, that begs the question then. Influence WP reaches out to
hypothetically get a sponsor. Mhm. What could you possibly give them a a
company then to convince them to sponsor you as far like because if you don't
have the numbers that pretty much tells me that it's who you know, right?
Yep. That's that's what it tells me. That's often what it is that like numbers on the internet people I have
all kinds of numbers. We've got everything. It gives us a an idea on what's happening. And Blake here had a
comment for us. He's mowing the yard equals podcast time. The only time he listens to podcast. Thanks, Blake.
Greatly appreciate it. Appreciate you listening to the show here, too. Is that the the Blake that I think is?
That's it. Blake Whittle. Hey, Blake. Yeah, we were talking about you earlier.
So, yeah. So, yeah. So, that makes me think like that makes me think then if if if we don't have
numbers to show where are these sponsorships coming from, why? Yeah. I just I don't really
understand the inner workings of it. It just seems to me like it's I don't want
to use it's seems rigged. Seems rigged. Well, it could be. You could look at it in that aspect, but it's also the aspect
of all right. So, somebody with X premium plugin, they want to try and
increase their downloads. They go through podcast and they think, "Okay, this podcast talks about a lot of stuff.
They reach they seem to reach a lot of people. They're talked about online regularly." And that's where it is. And
if they reach out to podcast and say, "Yeah, well my numbers, what is my numbers?" Well, my YouTube numbers are
minuscule, you know, so I don't have a YouTube numbers. It's like we get a few people live. We get after show uh views
of it, as many as 78 to 100 views of the show afterwards. My podcast itself, like
this is recorded and sent out into my podcast feed. That number there pumps up. I know I've got at least 3 to 500
subscribers, but some some weeks I'll see as many as 1,500 downloads of my show. You know, at one point in my
history, I would see 3 to 4,000 uh downloads of my show. You know, I'm my
numbers have been building nicely in the last year. they were down as low as like 50 60. Um that about this time last year
when I decided to make this show more vibrant and do these long form
interviews with people such as yourself that helps give them more information and reasons to listen to the show. It's
like and for those that have listened this far in the show, you guys have just gotten some of the spicy stuff and a little bit of inside baseball for it.
Yeah. I mean, what we really need is we we need better analytics. We need how
long like, so yeah, you have 500 downloads for your podcast. How what's the listener time? Like if your podcast
is 60 minutes long, but they're only each person is averaging five minutes listening time. That tells you you have a problem with
retention. And you're not holding the attention of these people. Your app downloaded it. They they don't
really care what you're saying. Um, I mean, man, if you could dive in and see when people are fast how like people are
fast forwarding like, oh my god, some of those numbers are starting to appear if people are using podcasting
2.0 apps and but certain podcasting 2.0 apps
track that information and pass that information back. I'm not sure which ones. I haven't dug into that. But the with
all of the new podcasting 2.0 stuff, I don't have it all attached to my podcast
yet. But once that information is going to that information will start to appear in the next few years as far as I know.
So there there is some things that are out there.
Yeah, it's great. I mean, I'd love to see it. I think of like uh I think of like newsletters. Yeah, great. You have 5,000 subscribers, but if like your
click-through rate is Yeah. min minuscule, those numbers don't mean anything. So
u I just I don't know. I just feel like the podcast thing is we need more insight. I need more insight as to
what's going really going on. But yeah, on the newsletter on the newsletter side there, I was dealing with uh a person that I've subscribed to
the newsletter for a long time. They were for a long time she always made it so people clicked in the newsletter to
go see the whole newsletter on her website. Then she stopped doing that, started feeding it in, and then she started wondering why her click-through
rates had dropped dramatically. and she didn't take into consideration that part
of the click-through rate of a newsletter is the automatic downloading of images to um an email client. I have
my email client set up so no images are downloaded in any email that comes down.
So what happens I get a newsletter. They don't get notification that I actually read it. I'll I might read the text and
if I think the images are useful I'll then download the images but probably a good 75% of the time I don't. So they
don't get a notification that I clicked on that or read that that newsletter. And that's where part of the newsletter
problem comes in is you might be getting this low thing, but is it truly low or
are they just not allowing images to auto download to their email app,
whatever it happens to be. Yeah. And I know a lot of them default to not
downloading such as Google and and Outlook and others. They just they the
default setting is to not download images because once upon a time that was a source of spam and a source of
headache to your to your uh computer. Yeah. All those things. I don't know. I
this the spicy the spicy side of me just wants to keep coming out. But I just whether it's newsletters or podcast, I
feel like it's I feel like it's just it's who you know. Maybe maybe it's who you met at a word
camp. I I have not I haven't gone to one yet, so I don't have that facetime.
Um but it's I just feel like it's not the numbers. It's something else that's c you know making this
happen the way that it is. But oh yeah, it's part of the it's part of the reason I just said forget it. I I am not I'm
not doing sponsors. I'm just doing all this with my own money, my own time. I'm not I'm not doing it. Like
it it's I don't know. I don't want to be sound sensitive, but it's like it's it starts getting hurtful after a while
when you give something this much time to a project for a year in WordPress and people won't even like won't even
entertain it because you are not so and so. Yeah, I've been there, done that, seen that one. Seen that one down. Seen that
one a few times. I've even I've even seen one of the most fantastic uh membership plugins ever created. I saw
the guy and I would talk to him back and forth until he finally just abandoned it and walked away because he got treated
so poorly in the community. Well, the along those lines you were
talking about like the unsung heroes and all that people doing good stuff like the I had another post. It wasn't really
spicy but it was got some traction was mental health and behind the scenes there's product
creators that are talk were talk like they're talking to me about it. It's a problem. It's Yeah, it's people wanting to pay nothing for
plugins. It's people u being rude to them on support. It's it's the race to the bottom. It's the
it's the the being like held down um not being given a fair shot. Like
people are struggling. Um and it's it's it's out there. It's sad. Um,
on that on that on that one thought about people not wanting to pay for plugins and we'll probably close out
with this little bit. It was the GPL issue because you made mention about
hating GPL plugins. In other words, the ones that have been nullled, not I mean all WordPress plugins are GPL just so
people know. I had to wrap that one in my head a few times before I understood what was meant by it.
But was that the Was that the the newsletter this week? Yeah, it was the newsletter this week talking about that. But what happened
was it led me down a route of doing some research real briefly and I found
something really surprising to me coming from well a site
that I really had some respect for is WP Mayor and they had an article in there
talking about the GPL abuse and all of these different websites that are
nulling plugins and what stuck out to me that I thought was wrong on the aspect
is they're telling about how bad it is or whatnot and then they go down and list them. And one of the websites they
actually gave a discount code for people to use to go sign up to it. And I'm like, what?
Why would you do this and then encourage people? Here, here's a discount code. Go sign up and get these n plugins.
That can't be that can't be. Is that really true? Here, I'll bring it up for you. Oh my gosh. That That's next level.
I I don't I don't talk about things that I don't have some proof on. Uh, I was being rhetoric. Oh, yeah. I knew I trust
I trusted you, but I was just like, that can't be true. Yeah, you should be able to see the shared screen. So, yeah. Yeah, I got it.
It's right here.
That's unbelievable. Yeah. So, that one there is like really It's actually It's actually kind of believable.
Well, that it's very believable, but it was like really I Yeah. I don't know what level of spice
you want me to take this, but this is this is a this this is a passionate passion of mine.
I've had I've had the same problem over the years because I inherited a couple of websites over the years where people
had used null plugins and the reason they came to me is because they were hacked. And it's like once I found out,
it's like, okay, this is why. and they had to pay me a decent sum of money to basically
undo all the damage to their website as I work hard to keep from using the swear
words. Yeah, it's it's it so yeah, we could we we we could do a whole show
on this topic alone, but it's also it's an education thing. people. What you just showed me on your screen
is what I'm so passionate about that that they are that they are soliciting that
they are not only not educating, they are encouraging the use of those sites.
Yeah. And people wonder why this stuff is happening. It's like Yeah. And that was the one like WP Mayor
is a really good website. Had a nice pod have a nice podcast, but that one surprised me. If you have the platform that they have,
they should be leading the charge. in the education space for this. With a little luck with a little luck
and some effort over the next year, this platform will be a lot bigger. So,
it's gotten it's gotten bigger in the last year and it's going to continue to grow because I'm looking hard to bring
in the people who will encourage the conversations around WordPress that have
not happened like they should. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, at any rate on that note there, I think
we're going to wrap it up, I'm going to give an opportunity here where you can tell people where they can find you and
the links to the websites that we've showcased here, WP Change Log and Influence WP will be in the show notes.
Also, where you can find uh Ryan, all the links will be in the show notes where you can find him on social. So
take it away, Ryan. Yeah, InfluenceWP uh influencewp.com.
If you want uh to buy anything software related in or around WordPress, visit
there first. See if you can save some money. Uh changeelogwp.com
to find your favorite plugins or plugins that you are potentially interested in
and you want to track the progress, see what's going on. Changelogwp.com and just go add those plugins to your watch
list. There we go. Well, thank you very much. Don't run away on me. I'm going to play the extra credits here and I will be
right back with you. Reminders for the show. All the show
notes can be found at wp plugins az.com. And while you're there, subscribe to the
newsletter for more useful information delivered directly to your inbox. WP
Plugins A to Z is a show that offers honest and unbiased reviews of plugins created by you, the developers, because
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X at WP Plugins A to Z. John can be reached directly through the website
wppproadz.com or email him at johnwpro.ca.
Amber can also be contacted through the website at wproz.com [Music]
or email her directly amberwpro.ca.
Thanks for joining us. Have a great day and we'll see you next week.
[Music]