Matt Mullenweg: 2020 State of the Word Q&A

Hello. How do you see

WordPress integrating with voice

AI and 3D publishing on the web

in the future?

>> Abha, thank you very much for

that question. I haven't thought

too much about voice AI or 3D

publishing, but the good news is

that I don't need to for it to

be possible. WordPress has so

many great APIs. I have seen

demos before of people using

WordPress to power content

embedded in sort of virtual

worlds or things like Oculus,

and I have seen people use

WordPress to build kind of like

-- kind of like a voice menu

system for I believe it was

Alexa. So I know it's possible,

but we're probably a few years

away from that being in core.

And if there's anything that

I've missed that I should check

out, please send it my way.

>> I'm Christina Workman from

Calgary, Canada. I'm a designer,

developer, enduser and

contributor. We saw with the

release of WordPress 5.6 that

over 600 people contributed to

track tickets and GitHub pull

requests, all mentioned by name.

As well as numerous volunteers

contributing in the support

forums and translating to make

5.6 available in 38 languages,

although unnamed. There's no

doubt these volunteers are doing

great work which is supported by

thousands of other contributors

volunteering their time outside

of core releases throughout the

year every year who don't get

any recognition outside of their

inner circles. Publicly

acknowledging the variety of

contributor roles available goes

a long way to increasing our

community's awareness that these

roles exist for them to

participate in. What plans are

there for recognizing

contributions made by those who

contribute to any team

throughout the year, even those

not involved in a core release?

Thank you.

>> Christina, this was an

excellent question, and I do

agree that recognition is a

fantastic way to get more people

contributing to the things that

we're doing. The WordPress

release post and of course the

core itself is probably better

at recognizing core itself and

contributors there than anything

else. One thing we did build to

improve this was the badge

system on profiles. So if you go

to profiles.wordpress.org/Matt,

you'll see there are a number of

badges there at the very top

that show all the different

things that I've done and

contributed to the WordPress

community. I think there might

be a bug there, because it shows

that I am a translation editor

and I am unable to speak any

language besides English. And

even English I struggle with

sometimes, so -- but I noticed

that on these badges, there's no

way to click on them and see all

the other people that have the

same badges. So that could be a

really nice start to having

pages that recognize folks,

particularly folks whose work

isn't just tied to a single

release within WordPress.org and

it could have some sort of

natural decay function so, you

know, if you haven't done

anything for an amount of time,

maybe you drop off the list.

That would be, I think, a very

natural place to start to add it

and we'll look into it.

Excellent suggestion and thank

you very much.

>> Hi, Matt. I'm Courtney

Robertson with the training

team. You recently shared an

article from ZDNet that

indicates an 834% rise in PHP

developer jobs since January of

2020. It's fair to assume that

some of that would be WordPress

developer-related jobs. W3Techs

indicates that WordPress powers

over 39.3% of all websites

online, surpassing 38.5% of

websites that have no content

management system at all. Given

those stats, what role do you

see for employers in the

WordPress.org ecosystem as it

relates to the

learn.wordpress.org website? How

do you think that the learned

platform can address hiring,

skills and ongoing professional

development needs?

>> Thank you, Courtney, for

highlighting those stats, and

also thank you for the awesome

WordPress swag you have in your

background. One cool thing about

this format is it's really neat

to see people where they are,

not just us all being in the

same auditorium. You know, for

Learn, I think the first step is

really just organizing and

getting really high-quality

educational material up there.

The equivalent -- like if you

were going to take a university

course on WordPress. How do we

walk you from just learning the

basics all the way up to being

able to be able to customize and

basically be a WordPress pro, so

you could build sites for other

people and be kind of like an

expert. Down the line, it would

be great if this platform could

have some sort of

self-certification or perhaps

even some sort of administered

certification that could show

people that, you know, you

mastered a certain skill. That

you, you know, went through --

either you went through lessons

or you didn't need to, but you

were able to, like, take a test

at the end and show that you

were competent in this. It

wouldn't be a perfect system,

but it could be a nice way for

people to learn more about

WordPress and hopefully as they

go through, since WordPress is

open source, improve the

materials as we go through it,

both from the point of view of

making it more intuitive or

easier to understand, and then

also translating, as well.

Because there is huge demand for

WordPress really all over the

world now.

>> Hey, Matt. Dan Maby here from

Big Orange Hearts, a charity

providing well-being and mental

health support for remote

workers. To support our mission,

we deliver events to help reduce

social isolation for those

working remotely. With more than

12,000 attendees through our

virtual event platform built on

open source technologies this

year, I wanted to ask about your

vision for events within the

WordPress community through

2021. As a regular WordCamp and

meetup organizer myself, I also

wanted to ask your thoughts on

responsibility towards safety of

attendees and fellow organizers

as we start to take steps

towards a vaccinated era. And,

finally, with virtual events

offering a great level of

accessibility for attendees, do

you see the potential for a

hybrid approach towards

WordCamps in the future? Thanks

for your time.

>> Hi, Dan. Andrea here. Thanks

for asking this question. It's

been inspirational to watch

WordPress community organizers

rise to the challenges that this

horrible pandemic has brought,

especially since so many of us

love this work because we love

seeing each other in person and

we know how powerful those

face-to-face, in-person

interactions can really be. And

like other WordPressers, I am

really eager to get back to

those in-person events, just as

soon as it's safe. All that

said, and as you point out,

moving all of our events online

has made them much more

accessible, especially to those

who either can't travel or don't

wish to travel to our in-person

events. When I think about our

return to in-person events, I

think that some sort of hybrid

element will be necessary,

especially in those first

stages. But I also know that

hybrid events are much more

expensive, and so yet again

we're gonna be hoping and

looking for WordPressers who

want to take the opportunity to

really look for innovative ways

to make our community events

accessible at scale. I don't

know all the answers here, but I

know that some of the smartest

people -- that I know, at least

--

are in WordPress, and I'm really

looking forward to work on this

together with the global

community team. I hope that's

helpful. Thanks for all that you

do for WordPress and the

WordPress community. I hope to

see you soon.

>> Hi, Matt. I'm Dave from

Belgium. Almost 15 years

building sites professionally

with ten years on WordPress

websites. Hope you're okay and

Happy Christmas in advance for

everyone listening. Well,

WordPress is in its nature a

very clean, no-overkill-on-

options kind of software, and

thankfully this created our

beloved WordPress ecosystem. It

also created momentum for page

builders like Elementer to arise

with enormous success. And the

reason for that is simple: The

user got all the options. Just

to mention a few to make my

question more specific, I'm

talking about layout, padding,

margin, desktop versus mobile,

and tablet and so on. Now, the

Block Editor is right now also

that kind of no-overkill-on-

options kind of software. Some

like that. I totally understand

that, but some don't. The

question is, how far do you

think the core blocks must go in

those kinds of customization to

please the mass non-tech

audience because if you look

back, honestly, that's what they

want, that's what they choose.

Or would you rather keep that

WordPress simplicity again to

leave the door open for the next

block page builder plug-in to

arise.

So how dependent on a

third-party layout plug-in do

you want the WordPress block

user to be? Thank you.

>> Hello, Dave. You bring up an

interesting point, which is that

we're trying to walk a very fine

line between creating something

which is intuitive and easy to

use, and also providing the

customization that people

clearly want in WordPress. While

also trying to do something

which has never really been done

before, which is provide a "what

you see is what you get"

WYSIWYG-style interface that,

again, is intuitive and easy to

use in lay out, but that also

creates really semantic markup,

structured data, and is fast and

performant.

I don't know if you've seen any

of the comparisons on the web

between WordPress with Gutenberg

versus other page filters or

other proprietary CMSs. That

page building and functionality.

Gutenberg blows them out of the

water. It is really fast, really

clean markup, really lean. This

is taking a little longer to do,

right, to do it right, it's

taking longer, but I believe

it's the right long-term

investment in both the future of

WordPress and the future of the

web. In terms of customization,

I believe there will always be

space for not just one plug-in

but many, many, many plug-ins to

extend Gutenberg. And that is

really the idea, that by --

where before we had, you know,

lots and lots of different page

builders kind of having their

own data structures, their own

way to do essentially the same

thing from a user point of view,

and themes would have to build

to one, SEO plug-ins would have

to build to each one. We're

trying to provide common rails

or framework that every vision

for how page-building could work

on top of WordPress can leverage

these blocks.

In fact, blocks are even built

so that other CMSs can leverage

them, too. So that is the path

we are on.

It's the way WordPress is going.

I believe it's the future. I

hope that as many people get on

that train as possible, but if

not, I do believe it is

inevitable.

>> Hey, Matt, this is Doc from

"Torque" magazine. I'm wondering

what features for core are you

targeting to make WordPress a

better headless experience in

2021?

>> First, I have to say, I don't

love the term "headless."

I like called it "decoupled

WordPress" because who wants to

be headless? But by and far, the

thing that's been driving the

most improvements to our APIs

has been our first-priority

usage of them. So, with

Gutenberg, built on and using

the REST API, and, of course,

our mobile apps, both Android

and iOS, you know, a million

active users, all running

through the APIs. So that has

helped expose a ton of bugs and

a ton of other areas where we

can improve it. I'm keeping my

eye on the GraphQL plug-in. I

think that that is an

interesting possible next step

after REST to support either as

a more official plug-in, or just

something that we point people

to because it seems to be doing

well. You know, I was actually

-- I don't think that a

decoupled architecture or

"headless" sites are right for

everything. I think they're

right in certain situations, but

as I am quoted with saying, they

are probably a regression for

many of the people adopting

them. I actually had a really

good debate about this at the

Netlifly JAMStack Conference

with Matt Billman, but I guess

it was too good because they

elected not to post it, but

perhaps you can track down a

recording or something, and hear

some more of my thoughts about

decoupled architectures and

WordPress there.

>> Hi, Matt. My name is George

Alger. I've been a WordPress

user since 2007, and I've been

watching State of the Word for a

number of years. My question has

to do with Gutenberg versus page

builders, and more specifically

regarding page load speed. I'm

wondering, as Gutenberg in the

future adds more and more

features, do you anticipate that

the page load speeds for

Gutenberg will also slow down to

support the new features? All

right. Thanks for all you do.

Bye-bye.

>> So, George, my name is Riad

Benguella. I am a developer on

the Gutenberg team. It's an

interesting question you bring

here related to performance. As

you can see with the different

WordPress releases since the

initial release of the core --

the Block Editor in WordPress,

the performance of the editor

have been improving, even if we

were adding features at the same

time. So, it's definitely a big

priority for us, and for the

front end and the page load

speed, we've been approaching

that in a few different ways.

The first one is the block

markup. We are trying to make

sure the block markup is as

clean as possible, and also the

interesting thing is that

Gutenberg brings semantics to

the content that is being

rendered. So WordPress can know

exactly what blocks are being

rendered, what assets they need,

what CSS, what JavaScripts they

need, and, in fact, recently, we

landed the pull request that

allows us to only load the CSS

of the blocks that are actually

in need in the currently

rendered page, and this opens a

lot of possibilities. For

example, in the future, we may

do the same for JavaScript and

lazy-load blocks. When we expand

that to full site editing where

a theme is basically composed

entirely of blocks, you can

imagine that the CSS and the

JavaScript provided by the teams

themselves won't be as necessary

as today.

So I think we have a big

opportunity here to actually

improve the performance of all

the WordPress websites and not

decrease it as we add features.

Thank you.

>> Hi, Matt. I'm Hitha from

India. I'm a project manager,

mainly working with a group of

WordPress developers. My

question for you today is a

simple one. In the recent

releases, we have a lot of new

features and advancement in

WordPress, but as an end user or

maybe a content manager, have

you ever felt like it would be

good to have a more modern

design for the back end, and if

it would have been good if we

had more customization options

just for the back end? Have you

ever felt so? Thanks.

>> Hello, Hitha. I'm Joen from

Denmark. I worked a little bit

on the Block Editor design.

Thank you for your question.

I'll try to answer it as best I

can. As you suggest, WordPress

has landed many features in

recent releases, but very few

changes to the dashboard

visuals. If you're asking

whether that's gonna change, my

answer is I'd like to see that

very much. One of the challenges

to making that happen is that

the dashboard as it exists has

been customized by a great deal

of plug-ins and developers, and

although it is complicated to

new users, the fact that it's

been unchanged for so long means

that it's familiar to existing

users. That means whatever

changes we make have to be

rolled out carefully and in

small iterations. But my hope is

that over time those iterations

can add up. For example, the

Block Editor, we have a new icon

set and a new set of components,

user interface controls.

Although technically

challenging, if we could roll

those out to the rest of the

dashboard, it would bring a

great deal of improvements to

both accessibility and visual

simplicity. So I'd like to see

that happen. You also ask about

customization options, and the

thing is, WordPress is a lot of

things to a lot of people, and

customization options beyond

color schemes might help tailor

the interface to each group. I

would suggest, though, that the

first step to take would be to

make general user interface

enhancement because that would

benefit everyone, but after

that, absolutely, we could look

at customization options. I hope

that answers your question, and

thank you again for your time.

>> Hey, Matt. Jeroen here from

Belgium. Thank you for taking

the State of the Word online

this year. I'm using WordPress

for all of the websites I

develop with my company Site

Fly, and I'm an active

contributor to the WordPress

project. You mentioned before

that in Phase 4 of the Gutenberg

project, that multilingual

features are coming to WordPress

core. I know this is in the

future, but is there any public

roadmap of all the features and

functionalities we want in

WordPress? And is it going to

include a language fallback into

core so we can configure

multiple locales and the

fallback when a translation is

not on wordpress.org?

Currently as a contributor to

the polyglots team, I find it

very difficult to translate

thousands of plug-ins and

themes, and I would love that

fallback to another locale would

be there before it goes to

English.

Currently, I'm using Preferred

Languages as a plug-in for this,

but it would be very cool if

this would be included in

WordPress core. Thank you for

answering my question.

>> Hello, Jeroen. I'm Matias

Ventura helping lead the

Gutenberg project forwards.

Thank you for your question and

for contributing to the project.

Regarding the roadmap, there is

a public roadmap published in

wordpress.org/about/roadmap that

has sort of like an overview of

the next immediate steps, and it

touches upon the four phases of

Gutenberg as well. And what it

doesn't contain, though, is a

detailed plan on Phase 4

specifically, multilingual,

because it's fairly further

ahead for us and we're in the

thick of Phase 2. However, like,

there has been some

conversations around the

implications of localization

and some of the multilingual

aspects, specifically around

patterns and block themes and

how those could be built in the

Gutenberg repository. Nothing

substantial yet, but if you are

interested in those

conversations, that's a good

place to engage with and start

looking at. But, yeah, like as

we approach -- as we get closer

to Phase 4, we will have a more

detailed overview of what's

needed, what requirements and

what we want to do. Regarding

the other topic about fallback

languages, that's a very good

point. For me, I'm very

sympathetic to that,

specifically because I speak variant,

but of the Voseo variant

That means that in most cases

I would benefit from a fallback to

Spain's Spanish

because there is not much

translations going on for you

I'm not even sure if we
have a locale, honestly.

so that's something that could

-- personally, I think it could happen

before Phase 4?

I think it could be, like,

a small step towards

a significantly better experience.

So it might be good to discuss it

before Phase 4.

But in any case, if that happens -- if it

doesn't happen before, it would

surely be a part of the phase 4

conversation. Thank you again

and hope you're doing well. Bye-bye.

>> Hello, everyone.

Good moring, Matt. This is Joe Simpson

in Castilla, California

in the Santa Clarita Valley,

just north of Los Angeles.

I'm the lead organizer for WordCamp

Santa Clarita online and I run

two WordPress meetups in the

area as well. As you can tell,

I'm a big WordPress fan.

I'm a big advocate for accessibility

as well, and I've done quite a

few events this year in that space.

What I wanted to reach out to you today

about was a matter

that's pretty important to me.

When we had our event in the spring,

we had volunteers from Bangladesh, we had

attendees from Europe, from

Africa, volunteers from South

America, and it opened up my

eyes to WordPress as a worldwide

entity and a community that's

global in nature, but my concern

was these online presentations,

these online events, Wordcamps,

workshops, et cetera,

I was really really wondering whether they

could be more accessible.

What is WordPress doing to make its

online presence more accessible

to everyone? I'm really big on

inclusion and diversity, and I would

love to hear what WordPress plans to do

moving forward with online events.

Thank you. Have a great holiday

and a good New Year, everyone.

Take care.

>> Well, first of all, Joe,

thank you so much for your

contributions and leading by

example, which is, well, many would say

the only type of leadership

I do believe that as

anxious as I am to get back to

our in-person events, I do

believe that much like your

experience of hosting a, you

know, a more local WordCamp and

people from all over the world joining,

I think if we can move more and more of

our community engagement to be

really rich and interactive online,

we get the benefits of the metaverse,

right? That people can choose to

represent themselves however

they like or not. They can be treated

for their -- and perceived by their

contributions, their words,

how they participate.

Not necessarily who they are,

where they're from or any of that.

You know, when I first got started

contributing to open source,

I didn't have any of the background

or there wasn't really a community

in Houston where I was

or anything like that, to see.

But I appreciated so much

that people would look at,

for me, my code and say,

okay, this isn't just some young kid

in Houston who is not a real engineer,

They were able to look at it for

its own merits.

And I think that, you know,

almost 20 years later,

we can do so much more

than that in terms of

creating a truly, truly

inclusive community.

The other thing that's really,

really important to me there and that

I do see demonstrated throughout WordPress

but I just want to emphasize it again,

is what you mentioned, that idea of

always being welcoming, always being

kind, always being friendly,

particularly as more folks from

around the world get involved,

it's important to remember that

not everyone's first language is English.

and so there might be communication

barriers or misunderstandings.

And so just -- we have a saying within

Automattic that I think is fantastic

for any sort of distributed work or

collaboration, and it's a

different kind of "API"

It stands for Assume Positive Intent.

Find that if you can --

this isn't something you can ask of anyone else,

but if you can remind yourself of it,

it allows you to see other people's

interactions through a lens which,

allows you to put your best foot forward

and allows them to

regain their best foot, if they

didn't put it forward,

probably on accident with whatever

interaction or communication it was.

So, I keep all those things in mind.

Just to recap, more and more online.

Again, leaning way more into the

online education, online engagement,

online mentorship, online –

you know, everything.

Which is kind of funny because it is

a little bit back to our roots before we

ever had events

Remembering that great ideas,

great contributions can come

from everywhere and anywhere,

and then making sure

that people regardless of where they are,

the background, the language they speak,

their economic ability, anything,

feel fully included

in the WordPress community.

Everyone has a place here.

We are trying to democratize publishing

and commerce. We are -- and

democratize means it's for everyone.

It's not just for the few, or the elite,

or the technical.

That's our mission.

It's a lifelong mission.

We'll never be perfect,

and I plan to keep working on this

the rest of my life, and I hope that --

to see you and others alongside

in that mission

for many years and decades to come.

>> Hi, Matt. My name's Laura.

I am a member of the WordPress

community in Montclair, New Jersey,

and I have used WordPress

every day of my life

since January of 2006.

So I'm a really early adopter and

a longtime user. I'm also somebody

who doesn't code. I'm a content

creator, and I love doing that

and getting all kinds of

messages out there in the world.

Primarily I've created content

for non-profits, for

entertainment industry websites.

So I guess my question to you, Matt, is,

when I go to WordCamps,

I frequently don't see a lot of tracks

for fellow content creators like me.

What could you say to the folks who are

running WordPress events, specifically

WordPress meetups and WordCamps,

that might encourage them

to embrace content creators

and think about creating more

tracks for users that were less technical?

>> Hey, Laura. I think this is

an excellent question and one

that's really important to me.

I think that content is the thing

that gives your website power

and meaning. It's wonderful to

have a well-built, well-constructed,

well-designed website,

but if you don't have anything for

your users once they arrive,

I'm not certain that your website is

really doing its best job for you.

And so to encourage event organizers

to embrace content creators and

make sure that we have provided

content for them to up-level their skills,

I think the thing that's most important to

remember is that writing for the

internet is a specific and

different skill.

It's not the same as technical writing,

and it's not the same as writing prose.

So when we want to have

very good websites that are

engaging to our audiences but

still get the point across,

I think the only way to do it is

with excellent content, no matter

how that looks for you,

and the best way for us to help

WordPressers do that is to

provide training through our

WordCamps, meetups, et cetera.

>> Hi, Matt. I'm Lax here.

Using WordPress more than ten years.

And congrats for

growing up to 40% of the web.

That's nice.

So my question for you today is,

do you have any plans to optimize

WordPress performance?

I mean the self-hosted WordPress.

it's like, you know,

we have Jetpack, we have caching plugins,

but I found not only me,

my clients, and I see

bloggers and everyone struggle

with the performance,

and also like optimizing the database

queries -- like, to get a simple

tag or category, we are running

too much of subqueries, right?

I'm sure you are a programmer

yourself, so you might have some

plans for the future. And good

luck with our motto, like

democratizing the web. Thank

you.

>> Howdy, Lax. You hit on one of

my favorite topics, which is

performance. I was really

excited that we were able to get

some performance improvements

into WordPress 5.4, as I talked

about in the talk, but there's

always more to do. That's the

beautiful thing about

performance, is it can always be

better. For the issues that you

describe, I would encourage you

to perhaps check out a different

web post. If you're running into

that frequent of performance

issues, there might be something

where, you know, they have you

on a server with too many other

clients or they don't have SSDs

in the servers or whatever it

is. But any modern performant

WordPress web post, primarily

the ones we recommend on

wordpress.org can really handle

a ton of traffic to even an

un-cached, unconfigured site.

That's always great. In terms of

things in core that we could do

to make it better, our queries,

I do believe they're pretty

optimized. They run in a lot of

places, but who knows, maybe a

new future got introduced, maybe

something regressed. So,

please, if there is something

out there that you have noticed,

either open a track ticket or,

you know, share it with someone

or if you, you know, debugging

queries is actually one of the

ways I learned the most about

programming and engineering,

just spending hours and hours

inside the mySQL command line

was -- was actually an amazing

sort of way I developed as a

developer and progressed as a

developer. So it might be

something -- you can discover

something new within WordPress

that then could save millions

and millions of server hours

someplace. So, let me know what

you find or let me know if that

-- if you make a ticket there.

I'll make sure to bump it with

the developers and that it gets

the proper attention.

>> 2020 brought new and

unexpected challenges, and I'm

proud to be a part of a

community like WordPress,

willing to step up, act quickly

and offer solutions in times of

need. Which emerging web

technologies are you most

interested in following in 2021

and how would you like to see

groups like MSP Media within the

WordPress ecosystem innovating

and solution-building using that

technology?

>> Hi, Meg. First of all,

congratulations for getting

SchoolListIt in the Call for

Code Top Five. I believe the

WordPress power tool to make it

the furthest. I know that wasn't

easy, so congratulations on

that. In terms of emerging

technologies, more broadly, I'm

excited that 2020 looks like

it's a year when more mainstream

adoption of cryptocurrencies is

really coming to bear, and that,

to me, you know, as someone who

is a big supporter of open

source and cryptocurrency is

kind of like open source applied

to money, the finance system.

Excited about that. Still very,

very early days. Probably, like,

you know, we're 10 years into

something that's going to take

30 years to happen, but it's

exciting to see steps. Closer to

home in the WordPress world, the

most emerging technologies --

not new, but they'll be new to

us when we adopt it for Phase 3

of Gutenberg will be Web RTC,

which is essentially like a way

for browsers to connect to each

other in a peer-to-peer fashion

that we can use for real-time

communication, so, for example,

the real-time co-editing that we

want to put into Gutenberg, and

we want to do it without a

centralized server so that, you

know, clients will be able to

connect to each other directly.

A little simpler, and I guess

don't know if you'd call it

emerging, but it's something we

need to do a lot better at, is

native development. So both the

mobile apps on iOS and Android

and native desktop apps for

WordPress, I think have a lot of

potential for just creating a

really slick, highly integrated,

ultra-fast application-like

interface for WordPress. We've

got the APIs for it now. We've

got some good starts, including

some of the code that's based on

Calypso, which is the

open-source React framework that

runs with WordPress.com. So

there is some good stuff there,

but I would like to see a lot

more, so, thank you for your

question.

>> Hi, Matt. I'm Michelle

Frechette, Head of Customer

Success at GiveWP, volunteer for

WordPress and Big Orange Heart,

and podcaster at WP Coffee Talk.

We've seen the WordPress

community grow and morph over

the years and it's been amazing.

This year changed a lot of the

way the community meets and

interacts due to the pandemic.

Some of it has been

heartbreaking, like not meeting

in person, but so much good has

come from it, too, like people

connecting from outside of their

areas on meet-ups, online

conferences and more. My

question is, what do you see for

the future of the WordPress

community as we move forward in

still uncertain times? What

initiatives should we be looking

forward to and what kind of

support can we expect for our

communities? Thanks for

providing the online State of

the Word and an opportunity to

contribute with questions.

>> Hi, Michelle. Thanks for

taking time to send in a

question. Andrea Middleton here.

Gosh, the changes that we have

weathered this year have been

immense, haven't they? I agree

with both the heartbreak and the

unexpected benefits that you

pointed out. When I think about

what the future holds for of the

WordPress community, though,

especially as we move out of

2020, but potentially into more

uncertainty, I'm really

optimistic. I know that

WordPress enthusiasts are

incredibly resourceful and

resilient in the face of

adversity, as we've proven this

year in many ways. The

initiative I'm most excited

about moving into 2021 is the

Learn WordPress platform, which

formally launched this week.

This on-demand WordPress

training platform has the

potential to build more bridges

and paths to WordPress and

success in WordPress than we've

ever seen at a time when more

people than ever are looking to

move their businesses online or

shift careers and become

WordPress professionals. I hope

to see a great deal of support

for this effort from

WordPress-based businesses as

well as individual contributors

who want to help others to help

WordPress as they themselves

have been helped. The support we

in WordPress provide to each

other is all about how small

kindnesses build into great and

interdependent, powerful

organizations. And I don't see

that changing any time soon.

Thanks so much for asking.

Talk to you later.

>> Hello. I'm Milana, a

freelance WordPress developer

based in Serbia and also an

active member of the

documentation team, and that is

the subject of my question

today. So as I see it, there are

two major problems which are not

unique only to the documentation

team. All teams seem to be

suffering from same conditions.

So the first one is we are

heavily understaffed. We don't

have enough active contributors

to cover all documentation

areas, and the second one is we

don't collaborate enough or at

all with other teams. And this

goes that far that sometimes we

don't even know who is the

person doing documentation for

release team, you know, the dev

notes. Also, there was this huge

gap between Gutenberg and the

documentation team and it's

getting bridged this year, but

it shouldn't even happen with

such a project as Gutenberg is.

And I'm not saying that anyone

here is doing anything wrong. We

all do as much as we can. I'm

just stating how it is. So, my

question is, how can we, as

global community, recognize this

need to connect teams, to work

more closely with each other? In

documentation team, we are

working right now on two big

projects, external linking

policy and documentation style

guide. Now, these will have

impact beyond documentation

team, and I'm not even sure how

many people are aware of the

fact that we are doing it. So,

from my perspective, WordPress

as a project is getting more

complex, and the way we were

doing things in the past and the

way we are doing things right

now is not sufficient anymore.

So, I guess it comes down to

rethinking what is the role of

making teams in WordPress

project.

[ Sound effect ]
And how can we improve our

activities to make our work more

efficient in this situation that

we are all in, that we don't

have enough people and we don't

communicate. We need to

communicate more. So what is

your opinion on that? Thank you.

>> Hey, Milana, it sounds like

you have two big questions, and

I have two big thoughts about

them. Firstly, on the question

of recognizing how connected we

are, I agree. WordPress teams

frequently don't understand how

connected they are, a little bit

because it's hard to know how

your actions affect others when

you just barely have enough time

to focus on the contributions

that you want to make to the

teams that you're participating

with. Myself, I think that

sharing the internal workings a

bit better from my side can help

us all to know who we might need

to collaborate with during

projects, and I'm working up a

podcast for 2021 to share

bite-sized insight for

contributors who want to know

more about how their

contributions fit into the

larger picture. But I also

understand that part of the

solution is getting more

contributors into the space, and

I don't necessarily have a

solution for that outside of our

in-person events, which, of

course, in 2020 we haven't seen

a lot of. But it does kind of

lead us into your next question,

given that WordPress is so

complex and there aren't enough

people, not enough

communication, what can we do? I

have been on the more-

communication bandwagon for a

long time. But I actually think

that one of our short-term

problems as a project is how to

take our efficient communication

and make it more effective. I'm

gonna quote for you now the 19th

lesson from The Cathedral and

The Bazaar, our kind of source

material for things that we've

learned about open source in

general. To quote it, it says,

"provided the development

coordinator has a communications

medium at least as good as the

internet and knows how to lead

without coercion, many heads are

inevitability better than one."

And later in the document, later

in this -- in this piece of

writing, it's noted that open

source at scale can't

necessarily function very

effectively by constantly having

chaos all the time. It's hard

for human beings to work in that

sort of space, and so I think

that one of our short-term

questions for the project as a

whole is to make sure that when

we ask people to communicate

about what they're doing, why

they're doing it and where they

are doing it, we have made sure,

as leaders in WordPress, that

the plans for the product are

clear, so that everyone makes

good use of their time.

>> Myself, Monika, I'm working

with WordPress since 2015 and

regular contributing to the

WordPress. My question is about

the automation testing in the

WordPress ecosystem. As we know,

people are very much concerned

about the securities and the

other issues before upgrading to

the new version. So what are the

things we can implement in our

WordPress ecosystem to deliver

100% security? So, basically,

what are the automation things

we can integrate in our

WordPress ecosystem? Thank you.

>> Hi, Monika. I'm Jonathan.

Thank you for asking this

question. Security is always

evolving and changing, and

moving targets are very

difficult to reach definitively.

It's also a process that

unfortunately cannot be 100%

automated. Everyone needs to

learn to practice a

security-first mindset, but,

thankfully, there are some tools

that can help us in our

projects. For example, the

WordPress security team has

several automated testing

processes behind the scenes.

Every change to WordPress core

is run through these processes

to protect against known

security vulnerabilities. The

processes are continually

changing and expanding as new

security issues are discovered

and fixed. I'm being a little

intentionally vague, because

often security practiced will be

tailored to a certain project or

organization. Being ambiguous

will help you keep your project

more secure. There are also some

code analysis tools like the PHP

code sniffer that can be used to

identify potentially insecure

code in your project. Adding

these tools to your project and

requiring them to produce a

passing scan is a great way to

ensure the quality of the code

that you release. In WordPress

itself, several user-facing

features have been introduced in

the last few major versions that

make it easier for site owners

to be more aware of their site

security. The most recent one is

the ability to opt in to auto-

updates for plug-ins and themes.

Turning these on is a great way

to make sure your sites are

running the latest and most

secure code automatically, all

the time. Site Health is another

great example of a user-facing

tool. There are over a dozen

security-related checks included

in WordPress core by default,

and when they don't pass, site

health educates the user and

provides them with a recommend

way forward to fix the issue.

Any plug-in and theme can add

their own test to Site Health.

If there are any

security-related checks specific

to your project, adding them at

Site Health is a great way to

make a site owner aware of a

problem automatically. A few of

the tests check that you are

running secure versions of tools

installed at the server level.

Using PHP as an example, you

could set up an email alert

whenever a new version of PHP is

released. This would help you

automatically become aware of

security releases so you could

reach out to your host and

request that they update you to

this new version. Because of our

strong community, we have the

opportunity to work together to

continue educating site owners,

users and developers about

security best practices. If

everyone is more aware of

insecure practices, the entire

ecosystem will be elevated as a

result. I hope that that's

helpful and answers your

questions, and thank you for

choosing WordPress.

>> Hey. My name is Robert

Anderson. I am a WordPress

co-contributor living in Sydney,

Australia. Seth Miller wrote in

with this question: As Gutenberg

becomes more modern and feature-

driven, how do you approach

onboarding of new contributors

and other curious types - think

novice theme developer - to look

into block building with the

existing complexity of WebPack

and other build tools? Great

question, Seth. Thank you for

asking it. So, before I get into

the meat of Seth's question,

there's two quick things that I

want to note. Firstly, one of

the aims of the Block Editor is

to make it so that users can

create really ambitious websites

without having to be a theme

developer. So as an example, if

you insert a custom HTML block

and then save that as a

reusable block, you've more or

less created a new block without

having to write a single line of

code, which is really cool.

Secondly, tools like WebPack are

totally optional. Developers can

write a block using plain old

JavaScript that all web browsers

will understand, and, in fact,

if you load up the Gutenberg

handbook, you'll see that all of

our code examples there come in

two flavors, ESNext, which has

all the bells whistles,

including React's JSX, and ES5,

which doesn't. But, yes building

blocks and working with React,

is a lot easier if you are able

to use React's JSX syntax, so

setting up some kind of build

tooling is often worth the

up-front effort, and, yes, I

100% agree that this is very

challenging and can be pretty

off-putting to new developers.

Broadly speaking, I think that

there's two things that we can

do to make this easier: Tooling

and education. On the tooling

front, we now have some really

neat tools that make getting set

up with block development a lot

easier. The first, which is

developed by the core team at

WordPress, is WordPress/scripts.

This is a npm package that hides

away all of the complexity of

webpack and gives you a single

command that turns a source

directory of JavaScript, which

has all the fancy syntax, into a

build directory of compiled

JavaScript. The second,

developed by the WordPress

community is "create-guten-block."

This one gives you a

single command that instantly

creates an entire block plugin

for you. It does all the work of

configuring the build

environment and generates, like,

the necessary PHP to load things

into WordPress. It's really

quite straightforward. On the

education front, we have some

really great tutorials in the

Gutenberg handbook which cover

how to get set up with block

development using WordPress

script and you can see them at

wordpress.org/gutenberg/handbook

and, lastly, the WordPress

training team has just recently

learned learn.wordpress.org

which is a new home for video

workshops about WordPress. And

one of the video workshops there

by Jonathan Bossenger is all

about how to develop a block, so

definitely check that out and

definitely watch that space. I

hope that was helpful. I hope I

answered your question. And

thank you for choosing

WordPress.

>> Hi. My name is Sudar Muthu.

I'm from a city called Chennai

in the southern part of India.

I've been involved with

WordPress for about 15 years

now, and for the past six years,

I've been working as a full-time

WordPress developer. In short,

WordPress is what puts food on

my table. So here's my question.

So, it's been about 17 years

since the first version of

WordPress has been released, and

all of us know where WordPress

is there right now. So my

question is, where do you see

WordPress in the next 17 years?

Thank you.

>> Sudar, 17 years is such a

long time! Sometimes I feel

amazed that I've been doing

WordPress for this long. I think

my hope is the same as many

others in the WordPress

community, that by 2037 we've

gotten the vast majority, maybe

as close to 100% as we can get

of the web on open source

software. I'd love to see

Gutenberg used not just by

WordPress, but by all of its

competitors as well, by everyone

who is accepting text in a box

on the internet or on native.

I'd love them to build on

Gutenberg Blocks, because then

that allows us to work together

on something that we all used to

have to rewrite and recreate a

million, million times, and I

believe that's how humanity

moves forward, is when we

collaborate, not when we

compete. In terms of, you know,

freedom and the open web, it's

hard to imagine what

technologies will be relevant.

One thing I always say within my

company at Automattic is that

the particular change will be

impossible to predict, but the

fact that change is going to

happen is inevitable. It is 100%

certain. And so as long as we

can stay adaptable, flexible,

not become too ossified in our

beliefs and always keep that

beginner's mind, the ability to

learn new technology. I've been

really, really impressed,

particularly in the past year or

two, post-Gutenberg, how so many

folks across WordPress have been

picking up JavaScript. You know,

taking where they were probably

PHP pros and JavaScript novices,

they've really invested the time

to become incredible JavaScript

developers, and now the entire

WordPress community is

benefitting from that. There

will be new generations of

technology. I imagine 17 years

from now, there will be

something after JavaScript that

will be the most important thing

to WordPress. I don't know what

that will be yet, but I'm

looking forward to finding it

out, and I hope that you're a

part of the journey as well, so

see you around.

>> Hi, my name is Tobi or Tobi

Ffjellner, as my handle is here

for WordPress. I'm one of the

people in the biggest

contributor team, polyglots. We

have almost 60,000 people who

have contributed at least some

translations to WordPress to

around 200 different language

versions, and out of those,

between 40 and 60 are actively

maintained, so that you can use

them right now if you want. And

a lot of people do that. 55% of

all WordPress sites around the

world that we know about use

some other language than U.S.

English. My question is about

multilingual WordPress. It has

been mentioned a couple of times

that in a future phase,

Gutenberg will cater for

multilingual content. I would

like to suggest that we already

now make decisions on what

storage structures we are going

to use and procedures, and

perhaps even already now go

forward to make WordPress

multilingual. There are already

solutions, and we could probably

reuse some of those, and by

doing this we open the

possibility for a lot of new

solutions to come up that could

support procedures around

translation, handling the

multilingual content, and so on.

And that part is where Gutenberg

actually would need to develop

something, but for the storage

procedures and so on, I think

we're talking more about PHP

development, where we could

reuse already existing plug-ins

to a large extent. Thank you.

>> Tobi, thank you so much for

your question, and, of course,

thank you for your contributions

for -- with translations and

that entire polyglots team. Much

love to the polyglots team. I,

like you, am very anxious to get

multilingual into Gutenberg,

whether we do it as part of

core, as part of an official

plug-in, TBD, but part of the

reason we made it Phase 4 is I

know that we can only do so many

things well at a time. And it is

supremely important that we

really execute super well on

these first phases of Gutenberg

Blocks. That's why also, even

though I'm super excited about

it, we haven't officially

started anything with the

real-time co-editing yet, for

Phase 3. If we don't get Phase 1

and Phase 2 to be the best

experiences in the world for

editing, bar none, of any open

source, any proprietary

competitors, any builders, Phase

3 and Phase 4 just won't matter,

right? Because it just --

WordPress won't be relevant a

decade from now. So I do believe

that that is the most important

problem that we're facing. And

part of why, even though we do

have a wide breadth of

contributors, and like you

mentioned, some plug-ins that do

solve multilingual already, I

don't want to dilute sort of the

core contributors' focus away

from the initial phases of

Gutenberg, because that's just

how important I think they are.

Now, that said, much like

Gutenberg has innovated in

plug-ins and then it gets later

adopted and merged into core,

there is nothing stopping, I

think, you know, more innovation

or more investments happening in

the plug-ins. In fact, I think

it's interesting that the

plug-ins can take various

different approaches with

regards to data storage and we

can see which works the best and

what scales, and the pluses and

minuses of each. My hope is that

down the line, much like the

page builders are coalescing

around sort of Gutenberg as --

and Blocks as page building,

kind of primitive that they all

build on top of. My hope is that

using learnings and hopefully

contributions from all of the

folks currently during

multilingual plug-ins right now,

we can figure out what is the

sort of 20% that gets us 80% of

the way there and create a

common framework that all of

them build on and then, you

know, much like we are with

Gutenberg Blocks, that Rails

will, you know, work well with

every other plug-in and theme.

So that is the hope, that is the

plan. 2022 is what I am

personally hoping to begin

working and focusing on this.

That also gives me a few years

to learn another language. Thank

you for your question. I'll see

you around WordPress.

>> Hi, Tom. I'm Otto. You wrote

in with this question. It reads,

sorry I can't make a video to

ask my question, but what I

would like to ask is what you

think about plug-ins like

Wordfence and Security Ninja

which recommend removing version

information from WordPress

headers and changing file

operations for certain files. If

you agree with these

permissions, then I wonder why

they aren't implemented in the

WordPress core. Or if you

disagree, then why are these

plug-ins allowed to remain in

the plug-in libraries and

charged for making changes that

are not recommended by

WordPress. That's a good

question, Tom. Well, removing

version information is often

referred to as a security

measure, but on the whole, it is

kind of an ineffective one. You

see, the thinking is that

hackers search for versions in

things like the HTML of the site

before they run scripts on it,

but history has shown that to be

rarely the case. The most common

problem faced by sites is

essentially bots and scripting

attacks. From these kind of

automated attempts, the failed

cases don't really matter, so it

doesn't save a hacker any time

or effort to have sophisticated

code to check versioning first.

So, by and large, this kind of

thing is the same as hiding the

login screen. It's not for

security, it's mostly for

vanity. The problem really with

calling these kind of things

security measures is that users

who don't understand security in

the form of layers of protection

will think that doing these is

the only security they have to

have. I've seen people use bad

passwords simply because they

assume the login screen couldn't

be found in the first place.

Doing such things like removing

versions or hiding logins or

anything like that isn't

actively dangerous or harmful,

it's just not the first thing

you should be doing to improve

the security of a website in

general. So in that respect

they're allowed in the plug-in

directory the same as anything

else is. I mean, plug-ins are

allowed for people who want to

do such things, even if that

isn't the majority of users. I

mean, that's what plug-ins are

for, after all, it's to

customize your site the way you

want it. As for whether they can

charge for making changes, all

plug-ins on wordpress.org are

free. Any charges made by

plug-ins such as pro versions

that are sold elsewhere is sort

of outside of our purview. So in

that respect, I would say I only

use free plug-ins, so there's

probably a free plug-in that

will make the changes you want.

Thanks for your question, Tom.

Appreciate it. Hope that helps.

>> Hi, Matt. I'm Winstina. In

2017, I presented at Wordcamp

U.S. on how cities and towns can

work with their residents to

sell locally online. My question

for you is this: What more can

Woo achieve beyond the freedom

of empowerment and expression

for all to sell digitally?

Essentially, what's your vision

for Woo democratizing commerce

during this pandemic and beyond?

Thanks.

>> Hi, Winstina. My name is Paul

Maiorana. I'm the CEO here at

WooCommerce. Thank you for your

question and thank you for

everything you do to support

local businesses. We share that

mission, ultimately. So your

question couldn't be more

pertinent in a year like 2020

that has brought such hardship

to small businesses.

WooCommerce powers over 2

million stores on our platform,

and we take that role really

seriously.

One of the things that we've

been focused on this year, we

know that WordPress and

WooCommerce can often be - or

require a little bit of

technical knowledge, or even

just some courage to kind of get

up and running with if you're

less experienced with the

platforms.

And this year, especially this

year, stores may not necessarily

have the budget to go out and

hire that additional help. So,

we've been focused this year on

empowering merchants to be more

self-sufficient and removing

many of the obstacles that a

merchant might hit in getting

their store online and then

running and growing that store.

We've been focused on our

on-boarding for one,

streamlining the setup process

in configuration for Woo, such

that you can get to that first

sale that much more quickly.

We're redesigning the navigation

around WooCommerce to make it

that much more intuitive, again,

for folks who are maybe less

experienced with WooCommerce and

WordPress.

We've been investing big in the

Block Editor and bringing new

product blocks into WooCommerce

to enable our merchants to be,

again, more self-sufficient in

the way that they merchandise

their products and not have to

be reliant on a developer to

implement those promotions. And

we also know that it's not

enough to just get a store

online and kind of, you know,

operate the store. Our merchants

want to grow, so we need to help

them reach their customers, so

we've also been investing a lot

in improving the marketing

solutions that are available for

WooCommerce to help our

merchants grow their stores. So,

I hope that's helpful. Thank you

for contributing to WordPress.

>> Wow, that was a lot of

questions and answers. I really

appreciate everyone from the

community who helped answer the

questions. As always with

WordPress, these things are so

much better when we work

together, and it was exciting to

me to be able to do a

distributed and virtual version

of what happens sometimes at

Wordcamps when I'll pass the mic

to someone, usually in the front

row from the WordPress

community, who knows so much

more than I can and can answer

the question so much better. So

keep an eye out for these

recordings and captions and

more, which will be on

wordpress.tv and the WordPress

YouTube channel. With that, I

bid you adieu. Thank you so much

for tuning in. I am so

appreciative to the WordPress

community this year for being

just a place of stability and

strength. I really love and

appreciate you all. Thank you so

much and see you again online.