


<p id="06db4304-ce3f-49ab-8139-1ead494fb053">In August 2021, we saw this:</p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<img width="632" height="396" src="https://cdn.poststatus.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Untitled-3.png" alt="" class="wp-image-102294" /></div>


<p id="98afacc6-c804-4d41-92c7-0a0c1905ba0f">That 6.3% drop was then updated to 8.1%, and 12.0% the next week, resulting in this huge collapse:</p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<img width="340" height="159" src="https://cdn.poststatus.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Untitled-4.png" alt="" class="wp-image-102295" /></div>


<p id="bc800ebc-2939-4572-9182-bc7d520dc982">Just like that, we were in an even worse position than before the increase in active installs. Here’s the graph for the full year:</p>



<img width="752" height="429" src="https://cdn.poststatus.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Untitled-5-752x429.png" alt="" class="wp-image-102296" />



<p id="72150478-f82f-4a54-a5ea-d1c25c6bef66">Initially, I thought this was just a glitch that all plugin owners suffered from, but checking a few other plugins and then the WordPress Slack, I found out that it wasn’t a glitch:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>Recently, it was pointed out that the active install counts of several plugins appeared to be inflated artificially. When we looked at the raw data, we found that this was correct for roughly 100+ plugins; fake update data was being sent to us.</p><p>This is not unusual, it's happened before, although people are usually much more blatant about it, which is why it took a long time to notice it. In any case, we adjusted our stats mechanisms to ignore these, and so those 100+ plugins will have seen a drop of around ~8000 installs.</p><p>As the data was being faked before, this new count is more accurate. But it doesn't change the old counts, and we can't redo those counts as we don't store that raw data for more than 2 days.</p><p>So, consider the percentage drop today as an artifact of this adjustment. It's not a loss of users, it's an improvement to the data gathering mechanisms.</p><cite>Otto #pluginreview (<a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C1LBM36LC/p1629992898007900">August 26, 2021</a>)</cite></blockquote>



<p id="f8d12c42-31b2-4b4a-acb3-d4b010a35811">The details of the event weren’t disclosed but here’s what I understood: someone tried to inflate the number of their plugin’s user count and inflated a hundred other plugins too so theirs could stay hidden among the crowd. None of us were accused of anything, but it was shocking (and a bit devastating) to see that immense drop in the graph. Anyone looking at it might assume the affected plugins had become very unpopular. </p>



<p id="693e6d7c-3502-4c40-b6d1-95d27ff66b37">After some heated discussion on Slack, the final decision was to let the data and charts stand — and basically accept the graph as it was and still is. I still think it was possible to <em>flatten</em> the historical growth graph by changing the weekly growth rates. But all in all, it wasn’t worth fixating on the graph. We simply had to <em>suck it up</em>, for the lack of a better phrase.</p>



<p id="99c8c325-767f-4b66-b384-f0932ae228a0">I genuinely thought of shutting down for good before realizing that I could turn this into an opportunity to learn more about managing an open-source project with many users.</p>



<p id="12337833-6f11-46ec-bad2-dba8891fb571">Now, to the part of the lessons I learned.</p>



<h3 id="3496aa92-c627-48c1-bba3-dd6035ba8a27">Thoughts on the decline</h3>



<p id="0cb1b552-7bf0-4246-bdcb-c3a681cf08d6">If it’s not worth fixating over graphs and losing active installs, how come I’m writing a 2000-word article about it? Two things:</p>



<ol type="1" id="a4988440-cfd0-45b6-b615-d1eed38eb4a7"><li>I’m not giving up on a good open source project like Speed Booster Pack, and I’m still motivated to improve it even if its decline continues — although I’m confident the user base is going to start growing again at some point.</li><li>I’m now seeing this as a learning experience, both for myself and for developers with open-source software projects.</li></ol>



<p id="d8548cc4-7e5c-4af0-83ef-ce8b321bd316">With my expertise in web performance optimization, I’m earning well from <a href="https://optimocha.com/">Optimocha</a>. Even though my initial intention was to increase revenue using Speed Booster Pack as a marketing channel, building a solid community around SBP became its own priority over time. This is why I’m still pondering on the decline (without obsessing about it — no, really).</p>



<p id="5338b6a5-ca1a-42d8-9b2d-2e9ef488412b">Let me share my ideas on why a WordPress plugin might be losing users.</p>



<p id="73698359-d3f5-4453-8500-820ca64931bb">Basically, it should have more users deactivating the plugin than users activating the plugin. The causes might differ:</p>



<ul id="4ef452de-dca1-4d87-a797-d4ab7aa2cc0f"><li><strong>Buggy code</strong>: As recently as June 2022, SBP lost 3K users just because I hooked a function to <code>init</code> instead of <code>template_redirect</code>. Yep, something as simple as this could cause users to have problems and deactivate your plugin in response. Even if it doesn't break their websites, just having PHP notices could push away users.</li><li><strong>Bad user experience</strong>: Having a complicated interface for settings could cause users to give up trying. This is especially important for technical subjects like speed optimization. You might have to educate users with onboarding, extensive help sections, and even explanatory videos — which I’m currently working on for SBP.</li><li><strong>Failing promises</strong>: A plugin doesn’t need to have bugs to fail at fulfilling its promises. If an SEO plugin doesn’t help with SEO, users will switch to another plugin. You have to make sure users see the results they expect as soon as possible.</li></ul>



<p id="05738088-32c5-403f-acb8-724daf63a979">There might be other things that commonly decrease the number of active installs tracked at WordPress.org:</p>



<ul id="7c52a41a-b9f3-4913-9bac-a83f60735595"><li><strong>Websites with no visitors</strong>: As I mentioned before, active installs are counted when websites with your plugin check wp.org servers for plugin, theme, and core updates through WP-Cron. Since WP-Cron fires up when someone or something visits a WordPress site, websites with no traffic or with  <a href="https://kinsta.com/knowledgebase/disable-wp-cron/">WP-Cron disabled</a> won’t be counted among your plugin’s active installs. There's nothing you can do about this. It's likely a small number of not very active sites, but who knows? It's a known unknown.</li><li><strong>Not releasing new updates</strong>: Currently, WordPress.org warns users against installing old plugins if it’s not tested with the latest three major core releases. (This used to be two years). Similarly, a user might be put off if a plugin they use doesn’t get updates on a somewhat frequent basis. (I mean, would you keep using the same plugin if its competitors were releasing new features, but the one you’re using wasn’t?)</li><li><strong>Compatibility issues</strong>: It’s really important to keep yourself up to date with the WordPress ecosystem. When Visual Composer reigned over the theme market, plugins were forced to be compatible with it. When users shifted from Visual Composer to Elementor, plugins incompatible with Elementor lost their user base. Gutenberg is on the rise now, and full site editing might conquer the ecosystem in the not-so-far future. Make sure you test with real-life scenarios using popular (and trending) plugins and themes.</li></ul>



<h3 id="7b8c3215-ff6d-4cfb-b878-697245bbca6b">Final thoughts</h3>



<p id="3ab38093-37b6-4bba-bf63-6369b91b3233">I’m a proud person. I’m proud of optimizing over 500 websites with a 96% satisfaction rate in <a href="https://optimocha.com/speed-optimization-for-wordpress/">Optimocha</a>. Also, I’m proud of writing over 200 articles and tutorials about WordPress across the blogosphere. (Mostly <a href="https://tutsplus.com/authors/baris-unver">Tuts+ Code</a> and <a href="https://fuelthemes.net/author/baris/">Fuel Themes Blog</a>.) I’m very proud to have great relationships with clients, going so far that several clients have asked to invest in my work. And I’m proud to accept that I’ve made missteps and hurt Speed Booster Pack’s growth in the past.</p>



<p id="7f3894fb-a57a-46d5-9ccc-b8fda3740c91">But I’m not <em>accepting defeat</em>. Learning from my mistakes (which are more than a few) was the best thing that’s happened to me regarding my journey with Speed Booster Pack, which makes the word “defeat” unsuitable to define my story. It’s time for me to grow the business, be a better boss, maybe accept some of those investment queries, release the premium version of Speed Booster Pack, and publish the book about WordPress performance optimization that I’ve been constantly rewriting.</p>



<p id="8f8e88d0-7223-4054-9ed4-a961a2693f49">If you want three ideas to take away from this long (maybe too long) article, I’d recommend these:</p>



<ol type="1" id="f3d8b2d3-39b6-44c4-84db-072b4c0a65dd"><li><strong>Do NOT work on a project with no roadmap.</strong> Try to envision your project’s future, and don't stray away from the path you’ve chosen, even if that path has obstacles.</li><li><strong>Do NOT get down because of drawbacks, obstacles, and other negative stuff.</strong> Instead, study everything that went wrong and take steps to ensure you won’t encounter them again.</li><li><strong>Do NOT confuse failure with defeat.</strong> Failure stories, hopefully including this one, are almost always great to learn from.</li></ol>



<p id="5cbde316-a00d-436d-9c89-c21d26ce2fce">Cheers, <br />Barış Ünver</p>



<div class="wp-block-media-text is-stacked-on-mobile is-image-fill has-background" id="author"><a href="https://poststatus.com/"><img width="460" height="460" src="https://cdn.poststatus.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/1160221.jpg" alt="Barış Ünver" class="wp-image-102347 size-medium" /></a><div class="wp-block-media-text__content">
<p><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/barisunver/"><strong>Barış Ünver</strong></a> is a co-organizer of the <a href="https://www.meetup.com/ankara-wordpress-meetup/">WordPress Ankara Meetup</a> and has contributed to the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/">Polyglots</a> team. He's the founder of <a href="https://optimocha.com/">Optimocha</a>, a WordPress speed optimization service, and the owner of the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/speed-booster-pack/">Speed Booster Pack</a> plugin.</p>



<ul class="wp-container-44 is-content-justification-left wp-block-social-links has-small-icon-size is-style-logos-only"><li class="wp-social-link wp-social-link-twitter wp-block-social-link"><a href="https://twitter.com/BarisUnver_EN" class="wp-block-social-link-anchor"><span class="wp-block-social-link-label screen-reader-text">Twitter</span></a></li></ul>
</div></div>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 21 Jul 2022 15:30:06 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Barış Ünver";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:42;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:66:"Do The Woo Community: The Future of Blocks with Birgit Pauli-Haack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"https://dothewoo.io/?p=72504";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:56:"https://dothewoo.io/future-woocommerce-wordpress-blocks/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:399:"<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack, a Gutenberg advocate, shares her insights into where blocks are headed with WordPress and WooCommerce.</p>
<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io/future-woocommerce-wordpress-blocks/">The Future of Blocks with Birgit Pauli-Haack</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io">Do the Woo - a WooCommerce Builder Community</a>	.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 21 Jul 2022 09:36:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:43;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:133:"Post Status: A New Kind of Default Theme, the Performance Team Gets Its Own Site, and the Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship Recipients";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32:"https://poststatus.com/?p=102263";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:51:"https://poststatus.com/a-new-kind-of-default-theme/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:15529:"<h2 id="h-this-week-at-wordpress-org-july-20-2022">This Week at WordPress.org (July 20, 2022)</h2>


<div class="has-background has-theme-palette-8-background-color wp-block-post-excerpt"><p class="wp-block-post-excerpt__excerpt">A new approach to creating the next default theme has been proposed. • Cache Audit and Site Health Checks • Full-Site Editing Program Calls for Testing Category Customization • Parsell Scholarship recipients announced.  </p></div>


<div class="wp-block-spacer"></div>



<div id="kt-info-box_03177a-50" class="wp-block-kadence-infobox"><a class="kt-blocks-info-box-link-wrap info-box-link kt-blocks-info-box-media-align-left kt-info-halign-left"><div class="kt-blocks-info-box-media-container"><div class="kt-blocks-info-box-media kt-info-media-animate-none"><div class="kadence-info-box-icon-container kt-info-icon-animate-none"><div class="kadence-info-box-icon-inner-container"><span class="kt-info-svg-icon kt-info-svg-icon-fas_paint-brush"></span></div></div></div></div><div class="kt-infobox-textcontent"><h2 class="kt-blocks-info-box-title">Doing the Default Theme Differently</h2><p class="kt-blocks-info-box-text">Twenty Twenty-Three will focus on Style Variations by stripping back Twenty Twenty-Two.  Opinionated sets of style variations designed by members of the community will be highlighted.</p></div></a></div>



<h2 id="h-news">News</h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2022/07/11/fse-program-testing-call-15-category-customization/">FSE Program Testing Call #15: Category Customization</a></li><li><a href="https://wordpressfoundation.org/news/2022/2022-kim-parsell-memorial-scholarship-recipients-margherita-pelonara-simona-simionato-and-pooja-derashri/">2022 Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship Recipients: Margherita Pelonara, Simona Simionato, and Pooja Derashri</a></li></ul>



<div class="wp-block-kadence-spacer aligncenter kt-block-spacer-_598f7a-1a"><div class="kt-block-spacer kt-block-spacer-halign-center"><hr class="kt-divider" /></div></div>



<div class="wp-container-43 wp-block-columns">
<div class="wp-container-41 wp-block-column">
<h2 id="h-accessibility"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/accessibility">Accessibility</a></h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/accessibility/2022/07/15/call-team-rep-nomination-july-2022/">Call for Team Rep Nomination – July 2022</a></li></ul>



<h2 id="h-community">Community</h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2022/07/19/deputy-organizer-training-vetting-wordcamps/">Deputy / Organizer Training: Meetup/WordCamp Application Vetting</a></li></ul>



<h2 id="h-core"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core">Core</a> </h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/07/21/request-for-feedback-feature-notifications-proof-of-concept/">[Request for feedback] Feature Notifications Proof of Concept</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/07/20/whats-new-in-gutenberg-13-7-20-july/">What’s new in Gutenberg 13.7? (20 July)</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/07/12/wordpress-packages-publish-to-npm-every-two-weeks/">WordPress packages publish to npm every two weeks</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/07/18/a-week-in-core-july-18-2022/">A Week in Core – July 18, 2022</a></li></ul>



<h2 id="h-design"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design">Design</a></h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2022/07/19/proposal-a-new-kind-of-default-theme/">Proposal: A new kind of default theme</a></li></ul>



<h2 id="h-docs"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/docs">Docs</a></h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/docs/2022/07/05/summary-of-docs-team-biweekly-meeting-july-5th-2022/"></a><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/docs/2022/07/19/summary-of-docs-team-biweekly-meeting-july-19th-2022/">Summary of Docs Team Biweekly Meeting July 19th, 2022</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2022/07/18/documentation-team-update-july-18-2022/">Documentation Team Update – July 18, 2022</a></li></ul>



<h3 id="h-support-articles"><a href="https://wordpress.org/support/articles">Support Articles:</a></h3>



<ul><li><a href="https://wordpress.org/support/article/read-more-block/">Read More Block</a></li></ul>



<h2 id="h-hosting"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/hosting">Hosting</a></h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/hosting/2022/07/01/plan-for-adding-webp-multiple-mime-support-for-images/">Plan for adding WebP & multiple MIME support for images</a></li></ul>



<h2 id="h-marketing"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/marketing">Marketing</a></h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/marketing/2022/07/20/agenda-global-marketing-team-meeting-20-july-2022/">Agenda: Global Marketing Team Meeting, 20 July 2022</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/marketing/2022/07/20/notes-global-marketing-meeting-july-13-2022/">Notes: Global Marketing Meeting, July 13, 2022</a></li></ul>



<h2 id="h-meta"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meta">Meta</a></h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meta/2022/07/01/exploration-improving-devhub/">Exploration: improving DevHub</a> (Developer Docs)</li></ul>



<h2 id="h-mobile"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/mobile">Mobile</a></h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/mobile/2022/06/14/call-for-testing-wordpress-for-android-20-1/"></a><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/mobile/2022/06/29/call-for-testing-wordpress-for-ios-20-2/"></a><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/mobile/2022/07/12/call-for-testing-wordpress-for-ios-20-3/">Call for Testing: WordPress for iOS 20.3</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/mobile/2022/06/29/call-for-testing-wordpress-for-ios-20-2/"></a><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/mobile/2022/07/12/call-for-testing-wordpress-for-android-20-3/">Call for Testing: WordPress for Android 20.3</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2022/07/13/mobile-team-update-july-13th-2/">Mobile Team Update – July 13th</a></li></ul>



<h2 id="h-openverse"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/openverse">Openverse</a></h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/openverse/2022/07/14/community-meeting-recap-12-july-2022/">Community Meeting Recap (12 July 2022)</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/openverse/2022/07/13/check-in-meeting-idea/">Check-in meeting idea</a></li></ul>



<h2 id="h-performance"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/performance/">Performance</a></h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/07/19/performance-team-meeting-summary-19-july-2022/">Performance team meeting summary 19 July 2022</a></li><li>FEEDBACK: <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/07/13/proposal-persistent-object-cache-and-full-page-cache-site-health-checks/">feature proposal for Audit Full Page Cache and Full Page Cache Site Health Checks</a>&nbsp;</li><li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/performance/issues/427">SVG uploads</a> (<a href="https://github.com/WordPress/performance/issues/410">earlier discussion</a>)</li></ul>



<h2 id="h-polyglots"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots">Polyglots</a></h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/2022/06/22/request-for-beta-testers-for-the-discussion-system/">Request for beta testers for the discussion system</a></li></ul>
</div>



<div class="wp-container-42 wp-block-column">
<h2 id="h-plugins"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/plugins">Plugins</a></h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/plugins/2022/07/05/proposal-for-a-wordpress-plugin-checker/">Proposal for a WordPress plugin checker</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2022/07/18/plugin-review-team-18-july-2022/">Plugin Review Team: 18 July 2022</a></li></ul>



<h2 id="h-test"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test">Test</a></h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2022/07/12/fse-program-pattern-and-template-part-usability-testing-summary/">FSE Program Pattern and Template Part Usability Testing Summary</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2022/07/12/week-in-test-11-july-2022/">Week in Test: 11 July 2022</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2022/07/11/fse-program-testing-call-15-category-customization/">FSE Program Testing Call #15: Category Customization</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2022/07/11/test-team-update-11-july-2022/">Test Team Update: 11 July 2022</a></li></ul>



<h2 id="h-themes"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/themes">Themes</a></h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2022/07/01/open-sourcing-theme-designs/"></a><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2022/07/13/themes-team-meeting-notes-july-12-2022/">Themes Team Meeting Notes –&nbsp;July 12, 2022</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2022/07/12/themes-team-update-july-12-2022/">Themes team update July 12, 2022</a></li></ul>



<h2 id="h-test-1"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test">Test</a></h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2022/06/30/hallway-hangout-discussion-on-full-site-editing-visions-and-plans-30-june/">Hallway Hangout: Discussion on Full Site Editing&nbsp;visions and plans&nbsp;(30 June)</a></li></ul>



<h2 id="h-themes-1"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/themes">Themes</a></h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2022/06/30/create-block-theme/">Create Block Theme</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2022/07/19/themes-team-update-july-19-2022/">Themes team update July 19, 2022</a></li></ul>



<h2 id="h-training"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training">Training</a></h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2022/07/15/whats-new-on-learnwp-in-july-2022/">What’s new on LearnWP in July 2022</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/2022/07/19/proposal-to-merging-lesson-plans-video-tutorials-and-slides/">Proposal: Merging Lesson Plans, Video Tutorials, and Slides</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/2022/07/15/block-theme-development-course-update/">Block Theme Development Course – Update</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/2022/07/15/brainstorming-best-practices-for-hosting-online-workshops/">Brainstorming: Best practices for hosting Online Workshops</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/2022/07/11/exploring-wordpress-certifications/">Exploring WordPress Certifications</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/2022/07/12/community-course-creation-a-proposal/">Community Course Creation: A Proposal</a></li></ul>



<h3 id="h-lesson-plans">Lesson Plans:</h3>



<ul><li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/lesson-plan/%cf%85%cf%80%ce%bf%ce%b2%ce%bf%ce%bb%ce%ae-%ce%bc%ce%bf%cf%84%ce%af%ce%b2%cf%89%ce%bd-%ce%bc%cf%80%ce%bb%ce%bf%ce%ba-block-patterns-%cf%83%cf%84%ce%bf%ce%bd-%ce%ba%ce%b1%cf%84%ce%ac%ce%bb%ce%bf/">Υποβολή Μοτίβων μπλοκ (Block Patterns) στον κατάλογο.</a></li></ul>



<h3 id="h-video-tutorials">Video Tutorials</h3>



<ul><li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorial/wordpress-filter-hooks/">WordPress Filter Hooks</a></li><li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorial/horizontal-pyramid-gallery/">Horizontal Pyramid Gallery</a></li><li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorial/wordpress-action-hooks/">WordPress Action Hooks</a></li></ul>



<h3 id="h-online-workshops">Online Workshops:</h3>



<ul><li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=theme-development-workflows-for-different-types-of-developers">Theme Development Workflows for Different Types of Developers</a></li><li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=lets-code-creating-your-first-wordpress-plugin">Let’s code! Creating your first WordPress Plugin</a></li><li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=19634">[CANCELED – Moved to July 28] Theme Development Workflows for Different Types of Developers</a></li><li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=power-up-with-free-wireframe-templates-and-advanced-blocks">Power Up With Free Wireframe Templates And Advanced Blocks</a></li></ul>



<h2 id="h-wptv">WPTV</h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://wordpress.tv/category/year/2022/">Latest WordPress TV videos</a></li></ul>
</div>
</div>



<h2 id="5ftf"><a href="https://wordpress.org/five-for-the-future/">Five for the Future</a></h2>



<p>What's happening specific to Five for the Future? Provide your feedback on these posts:</p>



<ul><li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/five-for-the-future/issues/203">Noting milestones in contributions</a></li><li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/five-for-the-future/issues/202">Charting corporate contributions over time</a></li><li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/five-for-the-future/issues/201">New options in sponsored contributor profiles to show non-sponsored contributions too</a></li></ul>



<p class="has-theme-palette-7-background-color has-background">Thanks for reading our WP dot .org roundup! Each week we are highlighting the news and discussions coming from the good folks making WordPress possible. If you or your company create products or services that use WordPress, you need to be engaged with them and their work. Be sure to share this resource with your product and project managers. <br /><br /><strong>Are you interested in giving back and contributing your time and skills to WordPress.org?</strong> <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f64f.png" alt="?" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/article/contributing-to-wordpress/">Start Here ›</a><br /><br /><strong>Get our weekly WordPress community news digest</strong> — Post Status' <a href="https://poststatus.com/news/week-in-review/">Week in Review</a> — covering the WP/Woo news plus significant writing and podcasts. It's also available in <a href="https://poststatus.com/newsletter">our newsletter</a>. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f48c.png" alt="?" class="wp-smiley" /></p>



<div class="wp-block-spacer"></div>



<div class="wp-block-media-text alignwide is-stacked-on-mobile has-background"><a href="https://poststatus.com/"><img src="https://cdn.poststatus.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/vertical-post-status-logo-250.png" alt="Post Status" class="wp-image-85823 size-full" /></a><div class="wp-block-media-text__content">
<p class="has-text-align-left has-normal-font-size" id="h-get-ready-for-remote-work">You — and <a href="https://poststatus.com/business-membership/">your whole team</a> can <a href="https://poststatus.com/post-status-membership-club/">Join Post Status</a> too!</p>



<p class="has-text-align-left has-small-font-size"><strong>Build your network. Learn with others. Find your next job — or your next hire.</strong> Read the <strong>Post Status</strong> <a href="https://poststatus.com/newsletter/">newsletter</a>. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/2709.png" alt="✉" class="wp-smiley" /> Listen to <a href="https://poststatus.com/podcasts/">podcasts</a>. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f399.png" alt="?" class="wp-smiley" /> Follow <a href="https://twitter.com/post_status/">@Post_Status</a>. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f426.png" alt="?" class="wp-smiley" /></p>
</div></div>



<div class="wp-block-spacer"></div>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 21 Jul 2022 05:22:46 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Courtney Robertson";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:44;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:54:"Post Status: Post Status Picks for the Week of July 18";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32:"https://poststatus.com/?p=102269";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:54:"https://poststatus.com/post-status-picks-july-18-2022/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:581:"Your <strong>Post Status Podcast Picks</strong> of the week include <strong>Seeking Satisfaction</strong> with <strong>Victor Ramirez</strong> on the importance of networking, managing anxiety, and rethinking the way websites are built. <strong>WP Coffee Talk</strong> features the woman with the best personal Wapuu, <strong>Michelle Frechette</strong>, <a href="https://wpcoffeetalk.com/mark-westguard/">talking with</a> <strong>Mark Westguard,</strong> founder of the <strong>WS Form</strong> plugin about his work, the love and opportunity in the WordPress community, and more.";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 20 Jul 2022 21:47:56 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:10:"Dan Knauss";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:45;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:95:"WPTavern: Bright Mode: A New Block Theme with Vibrant Colors, Patterns, and Custom Block Styles";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=136338";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:103:"https://wptavern.com/bright-mode-a-new-block-theme-with-vibrant-colors-patterns-and-custom-block-styles";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:7687:"<p><a href="https://briangardner.com/">Brian Gardner</a>, founder of StudioPress and co-creator of the Genesis Framework, has a new block theme in the directory called <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/bright-mode/">Bright Mode</a>. The theme features a vibrant color palette with tasteful gradients, 14 beautifully designed block patterns, and so many fun variations tucked into custom block styles. </p>



<p>It&#8217;s difficult to nail down a niche for many block themes, as patterns and templates make them flexible enough to serve just about any use case. Bright Mode falls into this category. It could easily be used as a business or personal website, blog, or portfolio.</p>



<p>If you look closely, you can see subtle hints of Gardner&#8217;s trademark style. It&#8217;s forthright and minimalist with meticulous attention to typography and spacing. The colors are bright but harmonious and balanced, so it doesn&#8217;t preclude Bright Mode from use in professional contexts.  </p>



<img />



<p>Gardner has a unique perspective as one of the OG theme authors from the early days of WordPress theming when everything was just getting started. He helped kick off the commercial theme ecosystem with his Revolution theme and continues to bring that same trailblazing spirit to the new world of block themes.</p>



<p>&#8220;Last summer, I read an article written by Justin Tadlock about block patterns and the pattern directory (which was in beta at the time,)&#8221; Gardner said. &#8220;He linked to it, and I spent a few minutes clicking around. Finally, I saw a pattern I thought was cool and clicked the &#8216;copy pattern&#8217; button. I wanted to see how this all worked, so I opened up a post on my blog and pasted the code. Voila, there it was. At that moment, I knew—the potential of modern WordPress flashed before me.&#8221;</p>



<p>Gardner&#8217;s new theme makes use of patterns to define every section you see in the <a href="https://bg.design/bright-mode/">demo</a>. Bright Mode offers a colorful array of patterns that users can insert into their sites, including a cover image with heading, text, and buttons, multiple testimonials, different query layouts, and multiple footer and header designs. <a href="https://bg.design/bright-mode/">View the demo</a> to see them all in action with sample content.</p>



<img />



<p>Gardner is currently building more patterns to add to Bright Mode&#8217;s collection. He said the ones likely to come next are hero sections, featured boxes, call-to-actions, a link page, and portfolio patterns.</p>



<p>&#8220;I had spent several months iterating on the design for Bright Mode, so I felt the need to accomplish two things: Ship it and leave the door open to adding more,&#8221; Gardner said. </p>



<p>When you first install Bright Mode and click on Customize, it doesn&#8217;t look like the demo. Users would have to insert patterns to make it look closer to the screenshots. I asked Gardner about having patterns inserted in the home page by default to match the demo and he said it&#8217;s a possibility for a future update.</p>



<p>&#8220;As for inserting patterns by default, the only instance that might be useful is the Bright Mode home page, which is merely a welcome pattern, and then the grid loop below,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Of course, as I add more patterns, this could be part of an update.&#8221;</p>



<p>One of the unique features in this theme is the Headings block has a set of fun block styles that create a variety of color gradients for the text.</p>



<img />



<p>&#8220;Accessibility and color contrast were paramount with the design of this theme, so much that I even created the <a href="https://bg.design/bright-mode/colors/">Colors page</a>,&#8221; Gardner said. He aims to inspire more theme authors to make colors a consideration, given that many newly released FSE themes do not have any sort of intentional approach to colors. Gardner has identified a set of primary, secondary, and tertiary colors that are used in different block styles throughout the theme.</p>



<img />



<p>&#8220;The primary, secondary, and tertiary colors pass both WCAG 2.0 level AA and WCAG Level AAA&nbsp;contrast tests for the following: Normal Text, Large Text, Graphical Objects and User Interface Components,&#8221; Gardner said. </p>



<p>Viewing the <a href="https://bg.design/bright-mode/styles/">Style Guide</a>, you can see the colors applied to buttons, quotes, and social icons.</p>



<img />



<p>Bright Mode offers multiple different style options within the Quotes block. They can be plain or have a colored background or a gradient background. Quotes with no background can also have a color gradient underline applied. The nice thing about this is that this can be changed on a per-quote basis and does not have to be the same for each blockquote. Users can have a lot of fun customizing their quotes with different designs.  A few of them are pictured below. When used sparingly throughout the site they are quite striking. </p>




<img />



<img />




<p>One of the aspects of Bright Mode that Gardner said he loves most about the theme is the way the Cover Block is used on <a href="https://bg.design/bright-mode/showcase/">single pages</a>. It pulls the featured image into the Cover block and also offers custom block styles for shadows and full-height options. (The fallback is just a black header with the title). &#8220;I feel as though this really presents what&#8217;s possible with modern WordPress.,&#8221; Gardner said.</p>



<img />



<p>After testing the theme, I was surprised by how many hidden gems there are to uncover in the block styles, and how much creative control users have over every aspect. The only thing I would change is ensuring the home page looks similar to the demo so users feel that they have a solid starting place without having to hunt down the patterns to reproduce the demo. Gardner has a talent for creating aesthetically pleasing patterns and in this case the more diverse set he is planning (portfolio, call-to-action, etc) would enable Bright  Mode to be used in more contexts.</p>



<p>Although many traditional theme authors still have some <a href="https://wptavern.com/wordpress-themes-team-contributors-get-pushback-on-proposal-to-improve-block-themes-visibility-in-the-directory">resistance to block themes gaining more visibility</a> in the Themes Directory, Gardner is privileged to have a day job as a Developer Advocate at WP Engine where he is paid to engage with the community and help users transition to the block editor and full-site editing. </p>



<p>&#8220;Essentially, keeping pace with Gutenberg development and what’s new with WordPress is what I get paid to do,&#8221; Gardner said. &#8220;So naturally, this makes it easy to experiment with themes (like we do with <a href="https://frostwp.com/">Frost</a>) and give back with resources such as our newly launched site for <a href="https://wpengine.com/builders/">Builders</a>. On top of that, I spend my free time at night and on weekends digging deep to see how far I can take things creatively.&#8221;</p>



<p>Bright Mode is the result of his personal explorations into what is possible with block theming. It&#8217;s <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/bright-mode/">available for free on WordPress.org</a> or via the Themes install screen inside the admin. More patterns, templates, and variations will be on the way in future updates to the theme. Bright Mode is among the first <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/tags/full-site-editing/">100 block themes</a> in the directory, a milestone WordPress.org passed today.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 20 Jul 2022 18:56:36 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:46;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:129:"WordPress Foundation: 2022 Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship Recipients: Margherita Pelonara, Simona Simionato, and Pooja Derashri";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:41:"https://wordpressfoundation.org/?p=278971";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:147:"https://wordpressfoundation.org/news/2022/2022-kim-parsell-memorial-scholarship-recipients-margherita-pelonara-simona-simionato-and-pooja-derashri/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:1409:"<p><a href="https://us.wordcamp.org/2022/2022-kim-parsell-memorial-scholarship-recipients/">This year’s Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship recipients</a> are <strong>Margherita Pelonara, Simona Simionato, </strong>and<strong> Pooja Derashri</strong>, enthusiastic WordPress developers, Meetup and WordCamp organizers, and contributors to the open source project and WordPress community. </p>



<p>These contributors share the passion of empowering people with WordPress. Whether helping women freelancers succeed in business (Margherita), contributing to the Diversity Speaker Training project (Simona), or being the Team Rep for the Training Team (Pooja), these women succeed in their community goals, and it’s an honor to award the Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship to them.</p>



<p>The WordPress Foundation created this memorial scholarship in 2015, to honor the memory of longtime WordPress contributor Kim Parsell.</p>



<p>This scholarship provides financial support to a woman who contributes to the WordPress open source project, who would not otherwise be able to attend WordCamp US. <a href="http://wordpressfoundation.org/projects/kim-parsell-memorial-scholarship/">More information on the scholarship, including past recipients, is available here</a>. </p>



<p><em>Thank you to WordCamp US organizer, <a href="https://meetmichelle.online/">Michelle Frechette</a>, for this post.</em></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 20 Jul 2022 16:38:40 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:12:"Cate DeRosia";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:47;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:69:"WPTavern: #35 – Akshat Choudhary on the State of WordPress Security";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:48:"https://wptavern.com/?post_type=podcast&p=136255";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:83:"https://wptavern.com/podcast/35-akshat-choudhary-on-the-state-of-wordpress-security";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:34757:"<p>On the podcast today we have <a href="https://twitter.com/akshatc">Akshat Choudhary</a>.</p>



<p>Akshat is the Founder and CEO of BlogVault, MalCare, WP Remote and Airlift. These WordPress plugins allow their customers to build, manage and maintain their WordPress websites.</p>



<p>He’s based in Bangalore, India and we begin the podcast talking about the state of the WordPress community there. We know that there’s a lot of WordPress products and services coming out of India, but are there events and meetups like we find elsewhere? We also talk about why Akshat sees it as useful to bring himself and other members of his team so far to attend WordCamp Europe. What’s in it for them and what’s their approach to the return on this investment?</p>



<p>We then move on to talk about Akshat’s journey creating products in the WordPress space. It’s interesting to note that whilst Akshat is clearly great at creating products people wish to use, he’s also willing to admit that much of his success can be attributed to serendipity.</p>



<p>We then get into a discussion of the security landscape and how the products that Akshat and his team make enable site owners to rest more easily. It’s all about backups, site monitoring and firewalls. We go into some of the technical details of how the products work and how they fit neatly into an agency wishing to sell care plans to their website clients.</p>



<p>Are there any downsides to adding additional plugins to WordPress websites and do we run the risk of thinking that if we’ve installed some security and backup plugins, then there’s nothing to worry about? Is this a sensible position to take?</p>



<p>It’s an educational episode with a warm and very amiable guest.</p>



<h2>Useful links.</h2>



<p><a href="https://wpremote.com/">WP Remote</a></p>



<p><a href="https://blogvault.net/">BlogVault</a></p>



<p><a href="https://www.malcare.com/">Malcare</a></p>



<p><a href="https://airlift.net/">Airlift</a></p>



Transcript<div>
<p>[00:00:00] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Welcome to the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley. Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress, the people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case, the state of WordPress security.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;d like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast, player of choice, or by going to WPTavern.com forward slash feed forward slash podcast. And you can copy that URL into most podcast players.</p>



<p>If you have a topic that you&#8217;d like us to feature on the podcast, I&#8217;m very keen to hear from you. And hopefully get you or your idea featured on the show. Head over to WPTavern.com forward slash contact forward slash jukebox and use the contact form there.</p>



<p>So on the podcast today we have Akshat Choudary. Akshat is the founder and CEO of BlogVault, Malcare, WP Remote and Airlift. These WordPress plugins allow their customers to build, manage and maintain their WordPress websites.</p>



<p>He&#8217;s based in Bangalore India, and we begin the podcast talking about the state of the WordPress community there. We know that there&#8217;s a lot of WordPress products and services coming out of India, but are there events and meetups, like we find elsewhere. We also talk about why Akshat sees it as useful to bring himself and other members of his team so far to attend WordCamp Europe. What&#8217;s in it for them, and what&#8217;s their approach to the return on this investment?</p>



<p>We then move on to talk about Akshat&#8217;s journey creating products in the WordPress space. It&#8217;s interesting to note that whilst Akshat is clearly great at creating products people wish to use, he&#8217;s also willing to admit that much of his success can be attributed to serendipity.</p>



<p>We then get into a discussion of the security landscape and how the products that Akshat and his team make enable site owners to rest more easily. It&#8217;s all about backups, site monitoring and firewalls. We go into some of the technical details of how the products work and how they fit neatly into an agency, wishing to sell care plans to their website clients.</p>



<p>Are there any downsides to adding additional plugins to WordPress websites? And do we run the risk of thinking that if we&#8217;ve installed some security and backup plugins, then there&#8217;s nothing to worry about. Is this a sensible position to take?</p>



<p>It&#8217;s an educational episode with a warm and very amiable guest.</p>



<p>Typically when we record the podcast, there&#8217;s not a lot of background noise. But that&#8217;s not always the case with these WordCamp Europe interviews. We were competing against the crowds and the air conditioning. And whilst the podcasts are more than listable, I hope that you understand that the vagaries of the real world we&#8217;re at play.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;re interested in finding out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading over to WPTavern.com forward slash podcast, where you&#8217;ll find all the other episodes as well. And so without further delay, I bring you Akshat Choudary.</p>



<p>I am joined on the podcast today by Akshat Choudary.</p>



<p>[00:03:52] <strong>Akshat Choudary:</strong> Hi, Nathan. Thank you for having me here.</p>



<p>[00:03:53] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> You are so welcome. We&#8217;re sitting in the Super Bock Arena, in a cavernous space underneath the arena. And we&#8217;re gonna talk today a little bit about Akshat, his products, why he&#8217;s turned up to WordCamp EU. First of all though Akshat just give us a little bit of a background. Who are you? Which company, companies I should say, do you represent?</p>



<p>[00:04:11] <strong>Akshat Choudary:</strong> Hi, I&#8217;m Akshat, I&#8217;m the founder of BlogVault, actually that&#8217;s the main company. And then we have multiple products. Some of you might have heard of BlogVault is our original product. And then we since then built Malcare. We are also associated with WP Remote, which is for agency, and we have a brand new product coming out called Airlift.</p>



<p>[00:04:31] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Oh, okay. Tell us what Airlift is.</p>



<p>[00:04:33] <strong>Akshat Choudary:</strong> So, you know, speed is such an important aspect of a website and making a website fast is, it&#8217;s a time consuming and often difficult task. So, we are using technology to make a website really fast with the click of a button.</p>



<p>[00:04:46] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> That sounds amazing. So there&#8217;s four products that you&#8217;ve got. Presumably you&#8217;ve come to WordCamp Europe to find customers, mix, network and all of those kind of things. So I&#8217;m gonna ask you a series of questions about that. Really, it boils down to this. What is the purpose? Why have you come all the way to WordCamp Europe?</p>



<p>[00:05:02] <strong>Akshat Choudary:</strong> It&#8217;s interesting that you mentioned that you&#8217;ve come for customers and acquire customers. And I remember the very first WordCamp I attended so many years ago, and I was in this mode of trying to acquire customers and it was miserable, like the worst possible experience. then I had to step back because WordPress and WordCamps are not, are not suitable.</p>



<p>The community, the event is not, it&#8217;s not your traditional trade conference. When you attend it to just be a part of the community and try and meet people, and over time you can connect the dots, looking back that it has worked out well. So today I&#8217;m here actually, to reconnect with all the friends that I have, after three years.</p>



<p>[00:05:41] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It is very much a social experience for you?</p>



<p>[00:05:43] <strong>Akshat Choudary:</strong> Absolutely. Yeah. And that&#8217;s the most important aspect of it.</p>



<p>[00:05:46] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> What is the main thing that you find yourself doing? So do you attend the talks and sit and chat with colleagues, or do you tend to find yourself on the hallway track, just chatting to random strangers?</p>



<p>[00:05:57] <strong>Akshat Choudary:</strong> Yeah. Hallway track, I wouldn&#8217;t even say chatting to random strangers because now so many of the folks are just such good friends. Yeah, we go back so many years, so. It&#8217;s mostly about just meeting them again and, hopefully finally in person.</p>



<p>[00:06:12] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Do you bring many people from your team or teams I should say? Or is it just you? Is that a difficult decision? Who gets on the plane and who doesn&#8217;t?</p>



<p>[00:06:19] <strong>Akshat Choudary:</strong> We try and have a couple of people join me. In fact, a few times I have also not gone and people from the team have come, so we do it on a, on a round robin basis. So we try and get the entire team to participate in the community and meet the different folks here. Because just again, sitting in India, it&#8217;s very difficult to understand what the community is about. Coming here and interacting and volunteering. Those experiences really give you a sense of what WordPress is about.</p>



<p>[00:06:47] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Just before we pushed the record button, I mentioned some of the things that we may be talking about, and one of them was the community where you are based. So, first of all, where are you based?</p>



<p>[00:06:56] <strong>Akshat Choudary:</strong> So I&#8217;m based in Bangalore in India.</p>



<p>[00:06:59] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> And tell us about the community that may or may not exist there.</p>



<p>[00:07:03] <strong>Akshat Choudary:</strong> So we do have a small community, but it&#8217;s not a very, very active community. And it also makes you realize that while Bangalore is the tech hub of India, you know, it&#8217;s called the Silicon Valley of India. And there are so many people doing tech and I&#8217;m sure there are a lot of people doing WordPress. But we&#8217;ve never really been able to kickstart a healthy community there.</p>



<p>[00:07:22] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Do you have any insight into why that is? Is it just that it just never took off or nobody took the responsibility to organize it?</p>



<p>[00:07:28] <strong>Akshat Choudary:</strong> It makes you appreciate the work that the folks who are building these communities are doing, because it&#8217;s a commitment. I think people spend a part of their lives to make this thing happen at each of these local chapters.</p>



<p>I guess, somebody needs to come up with that passion to make it happen.</p>



<p>[00:07:46] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So it is a different experience here than it would be over there?</p>



<p>[00:07:49] <strong>Akshat Choudary:</strong> Yeah. Significantly different.</p>



<p>[00:07:51] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> In terms of the event itself, what do you make of this venue? I mean, when I showed up and saw it, I mean I&#8217;d seen pictures, and I thought that looks pretty large.</p>



<p>That looks pretty impressive. And then when I actually got here, this is beyond anything I imagined. It&#8217;s truly enormous.</p>



<p>[00:08:06] <strong>Akshat Choudary:</strong> Yeah, it is an extremely large, really large venue. And I actually still didn&#8217;t know what to expect until I entered, and the organization is, the way they have organized it with one section going to sponsors another with the tracks, with the actual talks. It&#8217;s a very, very large venue and with a lot of space all around to meet people and to talk with people.</p>



<p>[00:08:24] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I was looking at a WordCamp and I can&#8217;t actually summon up which one it was, but it was a State of the Word address from. I&#8217;m gonna say it was about 10 years ago. I was watching the video recently and it looked like a cottage industry. It looked as if they were basically in a theater and the signage was all very thrown together. And you compare that to what there is out there, a few yards away from us, it&#8217;s Incredible how WordPress has grown.</p>



<p>And at the moment, as of recording this we&#8217;re in the low forties. So 42, 43% of all websites. You&#8217;ve obviously strapped yourself to the bandwagon of WordPress, which historically has been an amazing decision. I mean, I&#8217;m guessing that you&#8217;re just jubilant about that.</p>



<p>[00:09:08] <strong>Akshat Choudary:</strong> Yes, no, I&#8217;d consider myself extremely lucky. I wouldn&#8217;t say it was a, it was a well thought out decision as to, yes, I&#8217;m going to get onto this rocket ship. We are extremely fortunate to be a part of the success story that WordPress is.</p>



<p>[00:09:20] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Very recently, and I don&#8217;t know what your thoughts are on this, because it feels a bit like a Chicken Little story. Recently some statistics came out to show that for the first time ever, the market share for WordPress had actually taken a teeny tiny, nevertheless, a teeny tiny decline had occurred.</p>



<p>And there was lots of people writing commentary about this and saying, well, that&#8217;s interesting. Maybe the growth of a WordPress is over. What&#8217;s your thoughts on all of that?</p>



<p>[00:09:45] <strong>Akshat Choudary:</strong> Yeah, I think numbers, you know, they can be very confusing and especially the number around market share. It&#8217;s a lot of marketing more than anything else. So, when it&#8217;s going up, it sounds really nice and you know, 45%, but the way you calculate it. I think if you are today creating a business website, or if you&#8217;re creating a personal website, WordPress is the go to place.</p>



<p>You do have a lot of other technologies coming up. So you will see and you&#8217;ll see different things take off. Honestly, I tend to ignore it. I don&#8217;t worry too much about it. And also, I don&#8217;t worry too much about what&#8217;s going to happen with WordPress. So I think every technology has its own cycle it has to follow. And my favorite examples are like Nokia and Blackberry. Those were iconic, massive companies and they disappeared in five years. So when the time comes, it&#8217;ll come, and you can&#8217;t do really do much about it, but until then, yeah, until then let&#8217;s do the most of it.</p>



<p>[00:10:37] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, I think you&#8217;ve probably hit the nail on the head. Nothing is imutable. Everything in its time will cease to be as popular as it once was. Like you said, certain companies like Nokia, I don&#8217;t even know if you can buy a Nokia phone anymore, but certainly in the day they were the only things that you could buy.</p>



<p>Your businesses, the ones that you mentioned earlier, they fit into the sort of client side, client management piece, a little bit. So you&#8217;ve got the ability with BlogVault to be able to migrate your sites. And you&#8217;ve also got the ability to back them up and do security, and all of that Is that the bit where you&#8217;ve pitched your business? Are you sort of aiming them at agencies who are then selling that services, perhaps packaged up in a care plan or something like that? Is that where you are pitching?</p>



<p>[00:11:18] <strong>Akshat Choudary:</strong> Yes. So we actually have two segments of customers. And in fact, we are sponsoring this WordCamp under WP Remote brand, and that&#8217;s the brand which is targeted towards agencies. Where we take all our products, we are selling that product to agencies. And agencies then who have, which again, is something we have seen over the past few years, the concept of maintenance plans. So agencies manage WordPress sites for the clients, and then they, they use our products to manage large number of sites. And we make it really easy with the backup security, updates and more.</p>



<p>And our job really is to make that job easier. So if you&#8217;re running a business critical website, we make it easy to run that website and make the most out of it. And, we sell to two customer segments. You have agencies who are buying large number of sites, and then you have individual site owners, like small businesses or en enthusiast, so marketing teams. And they are buying it for small number of websites. So yeah, there are two customer segments essentially that we target.</p>



<p>[00:12:13] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> You mentioned security there. Since the last time I met you, which is probably three or four years ago, I think it was probably in WordCamp London or like that. Yeah. It seems like an age ago now. The amount of security news has been truly stratospheric. Every single week there seems to be something. Now whether or not that&#8217;s hype, or it&#8217;s written about because people are interested in, I don&#8217;t really know. I don&#8217;t really have any insight into that.</p>



<p>Obviously the market share of WordPress paints, a bigger target, you know, 42, 43% of the web people are gonna invest time into figuring out what&#8217;s vulnerable there. Have you noticed that? Is that a trend? Do we need to be more concerned this year than we were last year about the security of WordPress? And do we need to have things to mitigate? Obviously I&#8217;m sure you would say yes, because you&#8217;ve got all the solutions provided for that, but what&#8217;s your thoughts of the state of security in WordPress?</p>



<p>[00:13:03] <strong>Akshat Choudary:</strong> Yes. So, I think the security is obviously a moving thing and there&#8217;s never, there&#8217;s no such thing as absolute security. Right. So it will never be in a state where we&#8217;ll be like, okay, fine. Everything is secure. Everything is good. You&#8217;ll always need to be wary of it. And especially when you look at something like WordPress, which has such a thriving ecosystem around it. So then security is not limited to one small thing, but it&#8217;s spread all over the ecosystem, right?</p>



<p>So every aspect of it needs to be secure, and which becomes so much more difficult to do. As you have more plugin, more themes, and as this ecosystem also expands it adds a lot more complexity to the whole WordPress security concept. So that&#8217;s, that&#8217;s very, very important to understand.</p>



<p>In fact, if you go back to Windows, days when Windows was considered extremely insecure and while Windows also had its own challenges, a lot of the security challenges came from drivers and all the stuff that you were built using on top of Windows. That&#8217;s a similar concept or we can draw similar analogy to WordPress.</p>



<p>So while WordPress, the core itself gets more and more secure over time, and we have seen that evolve, and I think there&#8217;s so much noise around, you know, like people get offended like, oh yeah, WordPress is insecure. No, no WordPress is actually secure, but then the plugins are insecure. But you open a website, you go into the WP admin and you see they have 20 plugins and there&#8217;s somebody willing to add a 21st plugin because you need to get something done.</p>



<p>So at the end of it, when you&#8217;re using WordPress with all these plugins and yeah, I would venture to guess that what, some of the reasons why some of the biggest websites use WordPress is also because of the plugins. Because it gives you that flexibility. So there&#8217;s always going to be more plugins added to websites, more complexity added there. And that means security is always going to be a challenge. You can&#8217;t take it for granted.</p>



<p>[00:14:40] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> What with 50,000 plus plugins in the repository, plus all of the commercial ones, which are countless, I&#8217;m sure there&#8217;s a number equal to that, possibly bigger. How do you even begin to keep on top of that? Is this just a case of your reading other blog posts about security and your getting information from databases? How do you on the BlogVault side of things and the Malcare side of things, how do you know what needs to be patched and when it needs to be patched?</p>



<p>[00:15:09] <strong>Akshat Choudary:</strong> So we do keep a close eye on what&#8217;s happening in the security space. Our approach to security is not to be on top of everything that&#8217;s happening in the security. We look at it from a first principle perspective. As to how do sites really get hacked? What happens when they get hacked? What causes them to be hacked? What do vulnerabilities look like? So not specific vulnerability, because there are so many plugins.</p>



<p>And you&#8217;ll see this so often, you know, you&#8217;ll see a vulnerability getting declared. Suppose a vulnerability gets declared today. You&#8217;ll see that it&#8217;s been exploited for years before that or months before that. So declaring vulnerability versus where with announcement is made was the actual exploit. So that, that we believe is not the right way of securing. So we don&#8217;t really try and be on top of every single news. Obviously we do it out of interest, but not as a mechanism to secure websites. So we take a more fundamental approach as to why do websites get hacked? What happens when they get hacked and then try and patch it or try and secure it from that principle.</p>



<p>[00:16:05] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay, let&#8217;s drill down into that a little bit more then. So what does that mean? Because, it may be confusing to people listening. So if you&#8217;re not finding the vulnerabilities and setting up. I presume there&#8217;s like a firewall piece in all of this. So tell us about that, how it works, how does it stop traffic getting into the website?</p>



<p>[00:16:21] <strong>Akshat Choudary:</strong> This is actually a very, very fascinating topic and this is something which is close to our heart. And, I would venture to say, I mean, like we know that things can be improved significantly, and we are far from reaching the final vision. We can always, we can see month by month we are moving towards this final vision.</p>



<p>So WordPress security, again, there&#8217;s so much noise out there, you know, and I may dare to say there&#8217;s a lot of snake oil being sold also. And that just makes it so much more difficult because you will find some of the most credible people out there, unfortunately spreading misinformation, not willfully. Just because the whole space is so noisy, and so confusing..</p>



<p>Having said that, we believe firewall is one of the best ways of protecting a site. Let&#8217;s look at like different ways sites get hacked and there are numerous. I&#8217;ll just take a few examples to show you what happens. For example, one type of exploit, and this is actually happens much more often than you would think, is it lets you change the URL within the database of the site.</p>



<p>And it&#8217;s actually a very simple operation. One way you can block it is you look at any request that caused that specific operation to get updated and just block it out. If it is not done with appropriate privileges. And that&#8217;s one example of how you can mitigate an attack type. So that just shows you that that&#8217;s one way.</p>



<p>There are others. Like we, we know the famous OS SQL injection attacks, which try and exploit vulnerabilities while accessing the database. There&#8217;s a whole amount of literature out there as to how to block SQL injection attacks and we can tap into those rules to block out SQL injection attacks. So as soon as you do that, you have saved yourself from a whole bunch of vulnerabilities that affect a lot of websites.</p>



<p>[00:18:02] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Just before we keep going, I&#8217;m curious because a lot of people who listen to this may have only a glimer of an understanding of how WordPress works. So, how does a firewall in fact work? How do you get in front of things before it hits the website and sniff it and say, okay, this is clearly not supposed to happen. Let&#8217;s just drop this. Let&#8217;s make this not happen. How does that even work? What&#8217;s the process that you are interrupting that would normally happen if there isn&#8217;t a firewall there?</p>



<p>[00:18:26] <strong>Akshat Choudary:</strong> All right. So firewall again, there are multiple types of firewalls and multiple levels at which firewalls get deployed. You have cloud based firewall, something like Cloudflare or a Sucuri, which is a very popular WordPress plugin, WordPress security. solution. They have, basically they have a cloud based solution where when someone visits your website, it reaches their servers first. And then it passes through their firewall servers.</p>



<p>Ours is more of a plugin based solution. So, we attach yourself inside your website through a plugin. And what we do is we, and there are multiple ways of doing it, but, depending on the type of hosting you in, we&#8217;ll be the very first set of, scripts or code to load even before WordPress loads. What we are doing is common with, Wordfence does also a similar takes, a similar approach.</p>



<p>Right, so every request is then parsed. Identified. We classify the request as to look at all the parameters that happens in the request. We classify, what looks like a good request versus a bad request based on rules. And we have a whole number of rules, which evaluate, and we see, okay, that looks funny. That should not happen. That looks like a SQL injection attack. That looks like a XSS attack. And we identify using patterns. And then we block them.</p>



<p>There are some more complex ones. Like the one I spoke about where a URL gets updated. There we actually sit deep inside WordPress and we let WordPress load. But in case an operation to modify WordPress takes place, which it should not happen normally, then this piece of code will kick in. And that&#8217;s the advantage of having a plug-in based solution because, you now understand how WordPress functions and then tap into that knowledge.</p>



<p>There are other solutions, maybe like a Cloudflare where they don&#8217;t really understand WordPress and they have taken a more of a generic, good, best practices of blocking attacks. And they&#8217;re also effective. But I think when you understand WordPress, when you understand this application so well, you can do things in a manner which, yeah which can improve the security of a WordPress website.</p>



<p>[00:20:32] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> You mentioned that you&#8217;re getting in the way sometimes, you&#8217;re the first thing that&#8217;s happening and so on. People, again, listening may thinking, oh, okay, that sounds like an extra step. And if there&#8217;s an extra step, is that gonna slow things down? Because there&#8217;s something that&#8217;s got to be inspected before it&#8217;s passed through the firewall and allowed to happen. Typically, are you pretty confident about if you put these things in place, you&#8217;re not really gonna see a significant drop in the amount of time it takes to get the first bite or whatever.</p>



<p>[00:20:57] <strong>Akshat Choudary:</strong> Right, we take a great deal of care to make sure that it doesn&#8217;t really slow it down. But again, you need to go deeper into how WordPress functions and you realize that there are so many layers to what causes a WordPress site, what impacts the performance of a WordPress site. And you will see that the PHP pieces and especially the kind of operations we deal with is multiple order of magnitudes faster than the slowest operation, which might be a database query. And while a WordPress request is served. There are numerous database queries being made.</p>



<p>So in comparison to that, this might be, so if that takes a thousand milliseconds, let&#8217;s assume, this operation might take one millisecond, two milliseconds. So it just dwarves in front of everything else that&#8217;s happening. Obviously we need to always make sure that this thing does not exceed one or two milliseconds or a few milliseconds, but the difference is so large that you will never notice the impact of it.</p>



<p>And again, there&#8217;s so much confusion around it. That having a working model around this is not straightforward, and it&#8217;s very easy to be like, oh, this will slow down my website, but how will it slow down what&#8217;s happening? And that complexity is, I think the communication around that has not been great.</p>



<p>[00:22:08] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Another concern that people may have is because you said, your setup, it has to make judgments about whether this should be passed through or not. This is malicious, or this is not malicious. How easy is it for that system to fail and throw false positives and to erroneously apply the ban hammer to things which should be allowed to pass through. Typically, I&#8217;m guessing that, you get better at that over time.</p>



<p>[00:22:29] <strong>Akshat Choudary:</strong> It does happen, but it&#8217;s fairly rare. So again, pattern matching is not an exact science, right? It&#8217;s like finding, you know, on a street finding a, a rogue character or a thief by looking at typical characteristics. Yeah, that does happen, but it&#8217;s fairly rare and we try and take a lot of steps to always improve our rules around it. And it&#8217;s a work in progress. I wouldn&#8217;t say it never happens. I almost think that nobody should promise it that way.</p>



<p>[00:22:54] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So four products in the suite. You&#8217;ve got WP Remote, Malcare, BlogVault, and&#8230;</p>



<p>[00:23:00] <strong>Akshat Choudary:</strong> Airlift.</p>



<p>[00:23:00] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Airlift the brand new one that you mentioned at the beginning. All kind of representing security and client management and what have you. Tell us about what you&#8217;ve got planned? If we were to come back, WordCamp Europe, what may we see? What exciting new things have you got up your sleeve?</p>



<p>[00:23:16] <strong>Akshat Choudary:</strong> First we are heads down focused on these four things and they&#8217;re each actually very big products just by themselves. Our overall aim is to keep doubling down on these and spend a lot of energy making them perfect. When I started BlogVault a few years ago, I thought it was like a six week project. And even today I&#8217;m finding ways of improving it. So at least we want to make sure that we are focused on these four things and making it work seamlessly and just keep improving it, because it&#8217;s a very time consuming process to build a great product.</p>



<p>[00:23:46] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah. So the roadmap is more about getting it more refined rather than adding feature upon feature upon feature?</p>



<p>[00:23:52] <strong>Akshat Choudary:</strong> Yes, it&#8217;s always about, and that&#8217;s my learning over time, that you need to focus on just improving the functionality, existing functionality instead of adding new things. And it&#8217;s so easy to, you know, as builders, it&#8217;s so easy to get distracted and be like, oh, well there&#8217;s this nice little shiny thing a customer&#8217;s asking for it. Let&#8217;s just build it out. Which is almost how Airlift got started, because we also had so much to do on Malcare and WP Remote, BlogVault. But we are like, okay, that looks like an interesting problem, which we can solve. But hopefully we are going to be focused only on these four things.</p>



<p>[00:24:22] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, it does feel as if there is quite a lot of that. What I mean by that is that features get added year on year. That seems to be the email that comes through is that we&#8217;ve got this great new feature. That&#8217;s why you need to check us out. It&#8217;s quite an interesting and different approach for you to reject that and say, actually the product that we&#8217;ve got is pretty solid. We just wanna make it more solid and there probably won&#8217;t be a great deal of new features going in, yeah.</p>



<p>[00:24:43] <strong>Akshat Choudary:</strong> Yes, and you know, customers, the best customers, really value quality over the number of features. So the, the best website they want, like, okay, fine. I need it to be as reliable as it gets. And that&#8217;s actually been the biggest selling point for us. And, it&#8217;s easy for me to talk about it like this. The thing is the monkey in the head is always like, let&#8217;s chase this new feature. But the learning is that you need to keep improving it. And the best customers, the people who pay us the most people who, who we want to put on the website, you know, on our marketing site, like the logos, they want the most reliable, the most efficient, the best product out there.</p>



<p>[00:25:19] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Just before we wrap it up, a few minutes ago, you said something about the fact that you thought that, maybe it was BlogVault, I don&#8217;t know which one you were working on, was gonna be a six week project. So let&#8217;s rewind. Akshat, your life to that moment where you thought you were gonna build it and to where you are now and how life has changed. It must be quite an exciting thing to look back on. You&#8217;ve had a really remarkable journey from building a product that you had no particular expectation would take off. And then it really, really did take off and, and here we are now sat in a room in WordCamp Europe in Portugal, 2022. It&#8217;s been a very good journey.</p>



<p>[00:25:53] <strong>Akshat Choudary:</strong> Absolutely. Like I just look it, I consider again, and I have mentioned this so many times to different people, is I consider myself extremely, extremely fortunate. Especially like we spoke earlier, the WordPress bandwagon, the, and if I may call it that, but the success story of WordPress. I was so lucky to latch onto it at that point of time and just grow with it. And I&#8217;ve grown as a person also through this journey. Because the person I was then versus the person I am now are vastly, vastly different.</p>



<p>[00:26:23] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Mmm. Akshat Choudary we&#8217;re gonna end it there. Thank you for joining us today. I really appreciate it.</p>



<p>[00:26:28] <strong>Akshat Choudary:</strong> Thank you, Nathan.</p>
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Here is Donna reading her own story aloud.




<p>At the age of 62, I finally feel like I’ve found success, and I hope I wear it well. It doesn’t wrap me in the look I’d imagined, however. It feels like quality material, sure, but not ostentatious or high-falutin’ or fancy-pants. (Well, maybe there’s the occasional fancy-pants aspect of it, which I’ll be sure to mention at the end of the story). </p>



<h2 id="h-what-is-success">What is Success?</h2>



<p>One of the definitions that Merriam-Webster presents for the word “success” is “<em>the attainment of wealth, favor, or eminence</em>.”</p>



<p>My definition of success has always been to live free of poverty. I don’t ask much of success. Just the vision of a life without the constant weight of poverty wrapped around a person’s neck is enough for me to define that life as successful. But of course, there are many ways to define success, and I suppose that makes a big difference in how people view their own lives.</p>



<p>I’m a late bloomer to my version of success, although most people would have assumed I’d been this successful for decades. </p>




<blockquote>
<p>But in every way, WordPress is at the heart of my newfound success, regardless of how or when it happened. </p>
</blockquote>




<p><a href="https://donnacavalier.com/one-womans-journey-towards-wordpress/">I’ve told parts of my story before</a>. In that telling of my tale, what you won’t find is any indication that I was poor &#8211; miserably poor &#8211; throughout most of it. For years, I’ve joked to my family that I’m great at becoming “industry famous” but terrible at earning money at it. At one time, I was one of the premier Cold Fusion developers in the world, though I doubt CF’ers would remember me all these years later. After that, I was a well-known SEO, although I went by a “forum name” at the time, so my name now isn’t recognizable except to those I’m still friends with. And while I wasn’t necessarily ever WordPress-famous, I wasn’t invisible in the community either. </p>



<p>The main reason I was industry famous each of those times was that I spent a lot of my time in the forums or communities where everyone hung out. In my time there, I gave back every chance I got. I’d generally learned my craft from those same types of communities, so once I had obtained valuable knowledge, I answered questions and helped people learn there. Eventually, I would end up being a moderator in most of those communities.</p>



<p>So if success is defined by <em>eminence</em>, as Merriam-Webster suggests, or the level of recognition you get from your peers, or the amount of respect you earn from those you mentor, then I was very successful throughout much of my adult life. </p>



<h3 id="h-eminence-does-not-equal-wealth">Eminence Does Not Equal Wealth</h3>



<p>Despite that version of success or what I called “industry fame,” I could never afford to use any “pro” plugins or tools that weren’t free. </p>



<p>I’ve never owned a copy of Photoshop in my life. (I take that back. A friend gave me a nulled version once &#8211; a really old version &#8211; but I was too paranoid and “law-abiding” to ever use it). Even though my job as a web designer pretty much required the use of Photoshop, I had to settle for <a href="https://gimp.org">Gimp</a>. Priced at somewhere around $600 (if I remember right), Photoshop was about $599 too expensive for me. If a client handed me a .psd file, I’d ask industry friends who owned Photoshop to turn it into a format I could import into Gimp. Of course, that meant there were many Photoshop files I couldn’t work with at all if I needed to access some aspect of the file that Gimp didn’t support. In those cases, I had to turn the job down.</p>



<p>SEO was made more difficult without money to spend. Paying even $20 for an SEO tool that would make my work easier was never an option. If it wasn’t free, it didn’t happen. Occasionally, I’d get lucky and win the use of a tool during an online giveaway. You have no idea how excited I’d get when that happened. It always felt like I’d won the lottery.</p>



<p>I did attend as many SEO conferences as I could over the years. Industry acquaintances who believed I needed to be there generously paid for some of those conferences. I am forever grateful to those people. Some I managed to scrape up enough money to attend, especially if they were reasonably close to where I lived. </p>



<h3 id="h-where-did-i-go-wrong">Where Did I Go Wrong?</h3>



<p>So why was I so poor? Why did my version of success elude me for so long? I’m not sure I know all the reasons for that, but I’d like to share some of the reasons that I do know. Some may be helpful to anyone in the same situation; others were personal and unique to me (perhaps).</p>



<p>Let’s start with the most obvious.</p>



<p><strong>Imposter Syndrome</strong>. I did graduate from college with a B.S. in English Education. Back in my day, women were expected to do “women’s type of work,” such as teaching. I really wanted to study Computer Science, but the head of the CS department told my mom that it would probably be too hard for me, so Mom convinced me not to do that. (My mom loved me very much, and I’m sure she thought she was saving me from failure or something, but she was wrong to not trust in me). I graduated and never worked as a teacher a day in my life. (At least not in a formal school situation. Most of my life has been dedicated to teaching others how to do things, however). So instead of teaching, I moved to California, worked as a data entry person for years, and slowly began to teach myself how to code. In those days, we didn’t have an internet filled with free courses to learn from. I would occasionally find an old “How to code in Fortran” book, or something similar,  in someone’s garage sale. But no matter how much I learned, I was always missing some sort of fundamental knowledge that I assumed had been taught in formal education. And I always knew I wasn’t as good as all those people who had that education. That prevented me from ever trying to apply for “real jobs” in the IT or future web-related industries. </p>



<p>Why else did I take so long to get to this level of success? A few reasons:</p>



<ul>
<li><strong>Under-charging</strong>. Hand-in-hand with imposter syndrome, not charging enough money for services provided was very typical for me. </li>
<li><strong>Only Serving Poor People</strong>. Just like under-charging, I rarely tried to acquire big, well-paying clients. Of course, my imposter syndrome drove that decision to a large extent, but my own keen understanding of how difficult it was to find success also caused me to have an overwhelming desire to help others do better than me. I jumped on the chance to help someone make their dreams come true, even if they only had $100 to start their business (or less). I would work for peanuts if it meant I could help someone else that didn’t have the means to get help elsewhere. So while imposter syndrome primarily drove those decisions, my desire to help others drove the rest of the way. I had all the knowledge needed to help them learn what they needed to know to succeed, even if I wasn’t succeeding myself.</li>
<li><strong>Relationship mistakes</strong>. When a personal relationship would go bad, I would leave with pretty much the clothes on my back, just to get out of a bad situation without any hassle. Instead of taking the few “valuable” things I might own with me, I would let the abusive partner keep it all. That would mean starting over every time—new furniture, new TV, etc. I could never get ahead because I was always losing it all.</li>
</ul>



<p>There were a few short, successful moments in all those years. Occasionally, I would land a decent client that would pay the bills for a couple of months, and each of those rare occasions would give me the incentive I needed to continue on. I also managed to create a few decent blogs and affiliate sites that I sold for BIG MONEY ($10,000 or so). That was huge and definitely worthy of the “success” label. But that money didn’t lead to more success. Those sales just allowed me to climb out of the abyss of debt I’d gotten into by then.</p>



<p>And here’s the irony of it all. I had a few clients that I helped make LOTS OF MONEY. Millions, even. And while one of those clients paid me well for about a year (and by well, I’m talking about $2,000/month), most of the time, I got paid a few hundred dollars for my time and advice. </p>



<p>So there were ups and downs in the money-earning game. The ups encouraged me to continue, the downs were the day-to-day reality.</p>



<h2 id="h-and-then-came-wordpress">And Then Came WordPress</h2>



<p>My journey with WordPress didn’t immediately bring success, but it made my life of poverty incrementally better with each passing year. Although WordPress initially made my own sites easier to manage and much more engaging, I quickly realized that WordPress was the key to me being able to create websites for others &#8211; and charging for it! I soon realized that I could make a better and steadier income by designing WordPress websites than I could at trying to get SEO clients. Of course, WordPress and SEO were co-partners in my career for quite a few years. I could design a site, add in some SEO services, and offer a nice bundle to clients. </p>



<p>I STILL had the problem of under-charging. That didn’t magically go away overnight, unfortunately. But instead of having maybe 3 or 4 clients a year, I began to get maybe 1 client a month. Small job or not, my income was becoming steadier, and that made a difference. I was poor still &#8211; but less desperately poor.</p>



<h3 id="h-as-an-aside">As an aside: </h3>



<p>In the midst of one particular bad relationship, I decided to &#8211; finally &#8211; utilize my writing skills and write a novel. I imagined this would be the ultimate residual income, right? Write something once, and then live off the sales forever. That might work for the Anne Rices or Stephen Kings of the world, but the reality for people like me is that each book sold nets me around $2, so selling a few hundred (which is typical) means I’d still be poor.</p>



<h3 id="h-back-to-the-wordpress-story">Back to the WordPress story…</h3>



<p>With WordPress, I was able to lose my imposter syndrome. I had the same level of WordPress education as everyone else who dived into learning it. They didn’t get “formal education” in WP either. I was playing on the same field, and that gave me the confidence I needed to excel. To be fair, I didn’t need a formal education for either Cold Fusion development or SEO. And yet, for whatever reason, WordPress helped me see that I belonged in a way that those other platforms did not. I don’t know why.</p>



<p>All of my other issues took longer to shed. I still felt the need to work with mostly poor clients. I still felt scared to seek out the large clients. But gradually, very, very gradually, those issues started to fall away, like shedding bits of old skin. </p>



<p>And to make everything better, I LOVED working with WordPress. I LOVED letting my creativity flow when designing a site. WordPress made my work fun, so even if I wasn’t making a lot of money, I was at least enjoying what I was doing.</p>



<p>Over time, some of that “fame” began to translate into money. I finally allowed myself to take some risks and actually apply for jobs that I would never have applied for in the past. </p>



<p>If you take nothing else from this story, I hope some of you at least take this to heart.</p>



<p><strong>TAKE THE RISK</strong>. Apply for the job or attempt to get the bigger client. Of course, don’t apply for something you know absolutely nothing about. For a job position, don’t assume that you won’t get the job, even though you have the skills and knowledge needed. Instead, give it all you’ve got. Create a kick-ass resume that you edit and refine until it’s perfect. Write a cover letter that showcases why you’d be right for them. Go into interviews prepared. Anticipate questions you’ll likely be asked, and plan out your answers. Be prepared, and take.the.risk. The worst that happens is you’ll not get the job, but you won’t be any worse off than you are right now.</p>



<p>I mention this specifically because taking the risk (twice) is what led me to finally be able to say, “I’ve made it.” I’m a success. </p>



<p>The first time, I noticed a job opening mentioned in a Facebook group for the WordPress plugin I used for every site I designed. I knew the ins and outs of this plugin better than most. The job description sounded perfect for me (documenting the plugin). My first thought: “Wow, this would be perfect for me.” My second thought: “I’ll never get the job.” My third thought: “Oh hell, Donna, just apply for it. Why the hell not?”. I applied. I got the job. My life suddenly changed. I was no longer living in poverty, but I was still very low middle class, I’d say. Everything was still paycheck to paycheck, with nothing left over to either save or spend. But stability had been achieved.</p>



<p>The second time, I received a LinkedIn message from someone who worked at Automattic, suggesting I apply for a job with them. I. WAS. FLOORED. What??? Automattic? THE Automattic? My first thought: “This would be a dream come true.” My second thought: “There’s no way in hell they’d hire me.” My third thought: “Oh hell, Donna, just apply for it. Why the hell not?”. I applied. I got the job. I AM NOW SUCCESSFUL. Bonus: I get to work with amazing people.</p>



<p>My journey to success took way too long. I hope yours is much, much shorter. Hopefully, something in this story might give someone the push they need to shed some of their old skin, let some of the issues holding them back fall away, leaving them with a tiny bit of confidence to take a risk. To trust just a little more in their own abilities and help them realize they have something valuable to offer. To get the bigger client. To charge a little (or a lot) more. To apply for the job.</p>



<ul>
<li>WordPress doesn’t force you to go to college.</li>
<li>WordPress doesn’t require previous experience.</li>
<li>WordPress opens doors for everyone.</li>
<li>WordPress is fun.</li>
<li>WordPress can be your ticket to success.</li>
<li>WordPress was my ticket to success.</li>
</ul>



<p>So I promised I would share some of the fancy-pants bits of success that I’ve obtained. I’ve acquired a lovely home and a nice car. Those are definitely signs of success, but there is one thing that I would truly consider to be “fancy-pants,” and I allowed myself to indulge in it. It was tough to consider myself worthy of spending money on such an item, but I did it.</p>



<p>I used to say that the first thing I’d get if I ever won the lottery would be a live-in, full-time masseuse. I didn’t win the lottery, but I am successful, so I did the next best thing.</p>



<p>I bought myself an expensive massage chair. Yeah, the kind you see in malls? Only this one is even fancier and pantsier than most of those! Specifically, I got the Real Relax Massage Chair, Full Body Zero Gravity SL-Track Shiatsu Massage Chair Recliner with Heat Body Scan Foot Roller from Amazon. It cost me $1600 at the time, though it’s now listed at $1799. I use this daily to relax, de-stress, and work some soreness out of my muscles. </p>



<a href="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/image.png"><img /></a>



<p>I still wear jeans or leggings, and mostly conference swag t-shirts, so the way I “wear my success” doesn’t look much different than the way I wore my poverty. But there are signs that I’ve made it. My house. My car. My massage chair. That’s fancy-pants. That’s my version of success. And WordPress is the reason it all happened.</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://heropress.com/essays/success-looks-different-on-everyone-i-guess/">Success Looks Different On Everyone, I Guess</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://heropress.com">HeroPress</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 20 Jul 2022 13:00:24 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Donna Cavalier";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:49;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:82:"Do The Woo Community: dev_life snippet: A WooCommerce Project Delivery Process Tip";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"https://dothewoo.io/?p=72446";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:61:"https://dothewoo.io/woocommerce-project-delivery-process-tip/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:394:"<p>To optimize the WooCommerce site project process, consider two to five days frames. Here is why.</p>
<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io/woocommerce-project-delivery-process-tip/">dev_life snippet: A WooCommerce Project Delivery Process Tip</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io">Do the Woo - a WooCommerce Builder Community</a>	.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 20 Jul 2022 09:37:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}s:4:"type";i:128;s:7:"headers";O:42:"Requests_Utility_CaseInsensitiveDictionary":1:{s:7:"*data";a:8:{s:6:"server";s:5:"nginx";s:4:"date";s:29:"Wed, 03 Aug 2022 03:27:28 GMT";s:12:"content-type";s:8:"text/xml";s:4:"vary";s:15:"Accept-Encoding";s:13:"last-modified";s:29:"Wed, 03 Aug 2022 03:15:12 GMT";s:15:"x-frame-options";s:10:"SAMEORIGIN";s:4:"x-nc";s:9:"HIT ord 1";s:16:"content-encoding";s:2:"br";}}s:5:"build";s:14:"20201216210718";}