In this episode, Corey Maass and Corey Miller discuss preparing for WordCamp US and the upcoming launch of their product, OMG IMG. They delve into the latest developments and features of OMG IMG, including the creation of OG images and watermarking, making the product more appealing to users. They explore the potential impact of their product, discussing creative use cases and showcasing its value in enhancing visual content on WordPress websites. They share their excitement about using WordCamp US as a platform to introduce OMG IMG to a broader audience. As they plan their approach, they touch on strategies for marketing, user feedback, introductory pricing, and usability testing. The episode provides valuable insights into their journey of refining OMG IMG, from design templates to product launch strategies.
Top Takeaways:
- Product Development and Integration: Ongoing development of the OMG IMG plugin. Cory and Corey discuss the importance of integrating with popular WordPress plugins like Rank Math and Yoast SEO, emphasizing the need for seamless compatibility to enhance the user experience.
- Design and User Experience: They stress the significance of creating visually appealing templates for OMG IMG. They talk about the importance of providing users with pre-designed templates that require minimal effort, ensuring that the plugin offers value by simplifying the process of generating images.
- Marketing and Promotion: They discuss their marketing strategy for WordCamp US. They plan to distribute business cards, create a product demo video, and engage with the WordPress community. They also talk about the importance of building anticipation and buzz around their product.
- Feedback and User Engagement: They plan to provide users with easy ways to provide feedback, report bugs, or make feature requests directly within the plugin’s interface. This proactive approach to gathering user input demonstrates their commitment to improving the product based on user needs
Mentioned in the show:
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- Corey Maass
- Cory Miller (CEO, Post Status)
- Olivia Bisset (Intern, Post Status)
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Cory Miller: Make sure this gets through and I’ll start recording.
All right. Session 23 live because we’ve got a record of how many times we’ve met and that’s not the total total time, but at least we have some kind of record, but
[00:00:37] Corey Maass: right. Exactly. Yeah. The number of times we’ve been public or something
[00:00:43] Cory Miller: like that. Yeah. We have a little live journal, at least around number, um, gosh, we got to see next week.
We’ll be seeing each other in person actually six days probably, um, from now. So man, I, I know there’s excitement in there for me, but it’s starting to be like, okay, it’s coming. It’s a couple of days of work for me. There was, uh, I guess some conversation in club channel about, um, is it work or is it fun and all that kind of stuff?
My Lindsay was telling me about, and I was like, I know there’s so many people that look at those as like, oh, this is a cool quasi feel of a vacation. And I go, it’s never, none of these have ever been that for me. I don’t just got to go, oh, I’m just going to. There is fun, but for me, I’m like, it’s a couple of days of intense work.
Uh, how do you, how do you, I’m curious how you look
[00:01:43] Corey Maass: at it. Yeah. I mean, we were even chatting about this yesterday in the post status meetup for product owners and, um, it was somebody’s. Somebody’s first WordCamp US or something. It was nobody. It wasn’t anybody’s first WordCamp, but WordCamp US where they’ve, it’s what, 5, 000 people or something.
And, um, I’ve been to three of them now, I think, um, Dr. Scholl’s for sure. Um, so foot beds or whatever. Um, And, uh, uh, stay hydrated. And, but it’s, for me, it was, it’s, it’s a lot of fun. Um, I’ve, I’ve become less and less of a overt extrovert over the years. And so I will. Usually once or twice a day, like I’ll go take a walk.
Um, even if it’s inside just to like, and I’ll even like, often I’ll put on headphones or I’ll sit down and like pull out my computer, even though I may or may not actually be doing anything, but just kind of to like give signals to everybody like, okay, leave me alone for a minute. You know, um, and, and clear my head and, and stuff like that because it’s, um, usually what I end up doing or what I’ve done in the past is there’s, there’s usually somebody I, I tend to run into somebody and we, we get chatting and then, you know, maybe it’s lunchtime and so it’s like, okay, well let’s sort of stick together and then, and then I ended up sort of having a buddy.
Um, I’ve done this and, and it just sort of happened organically. Um, at least at a couple of them where it was like, okay, I’ve got, I’ve got somebody that I keep looping back to and like, we will go decompress or we will, you know, sort of help each other, you know, Oh, what do you want to do now? You know, so it’s like, you’re, you never end up standing on your own, but you’ve also got somebody to kind of like debrief with and, and stuff like that.
[00:03:53] Cory Miller: Well, you know, my cousin and I were actually talking about this this morning. Um, she was like, Okay, how are you going to take care of yourself next week? And I was like, Oh, gosh, because, um, I do drive a lot of excitement and joy from them, mainly because getting to hang out with cool people like you. Um, but the other side is like you were just saying, like a time to kind of downtime.
And, uh, Last year, just full disclosure, I think I might’ve told you this at San Diego. Um, and I’ve been to a bunch of these. Um, I was like, I’m going to skip most everything and just do the two things I need to get done. I always want to be available and out there.
[00:04:41] Corey Maass: And we are in a practice session. You forgot to hit record.
[00:04:48] Cory Miller: Uh, I think it was still, I think it was recording. I just didn’t have
[00:04:53] Corey Maass: it live. Well, it’s going to YouTube, so it’s fine. But anyway, sorry, you were saying do the two things you have to do. Yeah,
[00:05:00] Cory Miller: and I had my like work stuff. Okay. I mean, but I pared it down because I was just like, I can’t do this. I can’t do Two, three days of, you know, just nonstop extroversion and stuff.
And the most part I skipped a ton and I was in my hotel room and I really enjoyed it. Um, and then I came out for the things I needed to be there to do people. I needed to like have those really visual conversations. And I really loved it. So I was like, telling Kelly this morning, I said, well, I don’t know if that’s going to work for this one, but I, you know, where we’re at, the hotels are like, we’re a block or two away, which I kind of like to
[00:05:38] Corey Maass: love it.
Yep.
[00:05:40] Cory Miller: Now it’s at a one or two block walk and just ghosts.
[00:05:46] Corey Maass: I’m, I’m a big napper. I nap every day. So I have, and I’ve, I’ve napped in the weirdest places. I have no problem napping absolutely in public. Like I will just lay down in a corner as long as I’m not in somebody’s way or, or making people feel uncomfortable.
Like I will just go pass out, you know, 20 minutes, 40 minutes, a full sleep cycle, whatever. Um, but I, I know that that’s what I need. And if somebody, if somebody has. I’ve had people in the past view it as like unprofessional or whatever, like at jobs. And I’m like, you do it. You got to do you drink caffeine.
I take naps. Like you want me to be a fully functioning human being. This is what I need.
[00:06:26] Cory Miller: Here’s the beauty of you and I were our own boss. Like, Oh, I mean, no. And the other part of it is I’m way better when resting for those two properties. But that was the other thing I was like, uh, yeah, you can complain to yourself.
As your own boss, right?
[00:06:48] Corey Maass: Yeah, I was thinking about it recently. I don’t know. It’s, it’s most of the time it’s, it’s worked out fine. Like I had a, since my actual first job, first corporate job, um, it was at a Cornell’s medical college, which meant they had a library and I would walk into the library and pull a book or a magazine off the shelf, sit down in one of the like reading lounge chairs, open it on my chest and, and go to sleep, like pretending that I had fallen asleep, reading a book.
And then, um, We moved offices. And so we were in just like a normal office building and I would find a, I found an, an empty office and would just pass out on the floor and my boss knew. And he’s like, no, my, my uncle runs a factory in Thailand and. They have mandatory, like, I don’t know, after lunch or something, like the literally the factory shuts down lights off for 15, 20 minutes and everybody has to like, you know, put their phones down or put their heads down or whatever.
Like, I’m sure they, they can’t force you to go to sleep obviously, but everybody like takes a little mental break and it’s, and it’s company sanctioned. I loved that. Um, but yeah, I’ve got, I, my other big thing is, is I. Uh, a partier and a drinker. Um, and so I definitely have overindulged. Um, I tend to go a little crazy at.
Or historically went a little crazy at these kinds of events. Um, and I’m sure people have stories about me. Um, I have, I certainly have stories about me, nothing too bad, but just getting to the point where I was not my best self that, you know, and it was late at night. Um, but I don’t, I mean, this’ll be my first COVID and.
I’ve changed in the last four years and calm down a bit in the last four years and so like I definitely expect to have some cocktails or some drinks, you know, or whatever, but I’m not. I don’t think it’s as in me to like rage, you know, No, that was for
[00:09:03] Cory Miller: my thirties. Um, I think a lot of people in school, within college did it in their twenties.
I did it in my thirties and, uh, yeah, no, I’m way more tame now. And, uh, in fact, I know, you know, we’re going to be at some dinners together. And I was like, Ooh, after that, I think I might go, uh, see if Lindsay just wants to go back to the hotel.
[00:09:23] Corey Maass: Yup. Yup. Exactly. And that’s. Like, unabashedly, you know, and, and I’m, I’m gonna, I’ll follow my nose like I, I always will, but it’s, I’m not like, there’s, there’ve been ones where I.
I don’t know, had, had specific agendas or I was more emotionally tied, tied up in it or something. And, um, but I like, and, but I’m going to be busy and, and I’m, I’m going to stay busy, but I’m also, like we said, like, I don’t expect to, to tie one on every night and, and I’m not certainly not trying to, I think that’s a difference, you know,
[00:10:02] Cory Miller: but you leave the asterisks, like, but I may be open to it.
[00:10:07] Corey Maass: Sure. I mean, if, if, you know, somebody’s like, hey, you know, we’re all gonna go to the secret rave and dance all night. I’m like You know, as long as you buy my plugin, sure. I’ll go with you. Hey, there
[00:10:23] Cory Miller: you go. Thank you for letting me digress. Um, so thanks for this. I know we’re going to do a lot more of it next week in person.
I’m looking forward to it, man. We have an agenda. Um, you have some plugin date updates. You mentioned, we have, uh, discussions around our strategy with WordCamp US. And then, uh, the third, if we can get to it is, you know, launch afterwards.
[00:10:48] Corey Maass: Right. So, um, yeah, so still chipping away at the plugin. Um, one of the big milestones for me was this morning.
I actually used the plugin on my music review blog and successfully made the exact image that I’ve been wanting to make pretty much since we built this thing. Um, I added a new template I call movie poster. So it’s kind of the picturing, uh, your, you know, the big image, the star war picture, the star Wars poster.
That’s got the, the montage of the different characters and then, you know, the headline at the bottom and information at the bottom. Um, so a simpler. Layout. Um, and that so it has lots of options. Um, just like the other, other one does, but it’s more of a vertical view and, and anyway, the, so I uploaded it. I, it, it made the exact image that I wanted after some tweaking.
And, and unearthed a couple of other, you know, not bugs, but like things I need to tweak. I was like, but this is really cool. Like it, it’s the first time that I’ve like, I’ve up, I’ve used the plugin on a couple of different websites now and made do with what we were offering. And the difference here was I went in with an agenda.
I knew what my, I wanted my image to look like and was able to accommodate it without. Bending over backwards or, or pushing the boundaries of what we’ve created. So that was really satisfying. Um,
[00:12:32] Cory Miller: is it live? Like where you’re talking about the movie, the music
[00:12:36] Corey Maass: poster thing. So the, so the new version, so the plugin updater.
Was, um, broken. It was not pulling new versions. So you currently, I think you’ve got it on a couple of sites. You manually need to install version eight is the new, Oh, Oh, eight is the new new version, but, um, I can actually share why not.
[00:13:03] Cory Miller: Right. But the movie poster version of, is that a template? Oh, good. Yes.
Yeah. So yeah,
[00:13:12] Corey Maass: I’m a visual. Right, exactly. So, um, so one of the things that I’m working on is the welcome screen, um, and tied into this, I’m going to have, um, so one, so we’ve talked about, um, an OG. Like the default image that we create is the OG image. Um, but I’m also trying to figure out one of the things that I, another killer and, and, uh, and the killer, um, feature, which is the taking a device image, which we showed last week or the week before of basically taking a screenshot of your homepage or whatever, wrapped in a browser or wrapped in a phone.
Um, and then the other killer. Feature that I really want to get to is, um, basically a watermark. Um, so that you can check, you can upload a logo. Like I’m still trying to figure out where and how you design the, the watermark. Like, is it another template or, um, or do we just give you a few basic options?
Upload your logo. Whatever, but to automatically, if you upload a featured image, that it would automatically put the watermark on your featured image, which I think is just. It’s so, so cool if we can get, get to that and I know we can do it. I just got to integrate it, but, um, but yeah, so, so adding some of those things to the, to the welcome screen, um, probably doing a bit more of a wizard sort of approach so that this walks you through, um, but for now, starting with.
Um, if we had a new, oops,
so creating an OG image, um, this one works really well with like Instagram and calling it movie poster. So this will be site wide. So it, by default, it puts your, because this is a site wide image, it puts your logo in the background. And then. Same content, you know, footer below, um, where this works really well.
It’s like, if you have posts, let’s add a new post. This is my post, um, uh, featured image of like, you know, your fancy background or something, um, and save a draft. If you come over to here and you say, create an image to like Instagram movie poster. So it puts it in the background with your content in front.
but still gives you plenty of options. So like you can, you can make it fade into the background. You can do, you know, again, that’s sort of the, the movie poster view, right. It’s like, so you’ve got this image, um, in the background. You can even play with things like, I just realized we could do this. Um, so if that was full, but you still did, I wonder if the gradient will work over the top of it.
But so you can, you can add some contrast like that, right? Like, so it goes light to dark. And so then you could, you can make your title white. So then it pops, you know, so things like things like that, whether, um. You can, you could do a lot with this. Um, and for me, like I have, um, my music blog is base tourist.
com and ages ago, I just started doing this, this format, um, where it was, it’s the, cause it’s, I’m, I’m reviewing music. And so that’s a terrible example. I’m reviewing music. And so. You’ve got like the the cover art of the music release, right? So it’s like the album art Um, but then I wanted it So that it, it faded into the background, but it was on my branding colors.
But then it said like the name of the release reviewed on base tourist. com. So that anywhere this was shared, that’s, you know, it’s clear. Cause this, I mean, basically the same concept of why we even built this plugin in the first place. Like I didn’t want to, I didn’t want a featured image. I didn’t want an OG image that was just the album artwork again, because there’s no context.
So I wanted, um. To always have the name of the review and, and the name of the website so that anywhere it’s shared. And this was, you know, pre previously I always had to go into Canva and update this. And now it’s just built into the website. Thanks to thanks. OMG. I M G you’ve, you’ve made my life better.
Um, but yeah, so this was kind of the, the next, the next template. And, um, so watermarking and then, um, As you and I have talked about the, the, not only do we have these templates, but basically saving presets for the template. So, um, so this kind of thing where you and I’ll go in and design a few beautiful ones and then, um, And then you can save it.
So you’ll be able to say, um, let’s save my changes. Why not? Um, I
[00:19:05] Cory Miller: love this movie poster
[00:19:06] Corey Maass: idea. Isn’t that cool.
[00:19:10] Cory Miller: And I really love the, uh, the way you’re doing reviews of albums and how you’re using this for that too. That’s it just. You know, we’re going in this general direction and you make these little discoveries that I was, I mean, you may not have, but I did.
I was like, because when you say that I go, Oh man, there’s those little pockets of things that people do with content publishing that, like, we met. That’s what that excites me because you might find something right in this as you like, I think I gave you the example long time ago. We’re doing pretty generic themes at iThemes at first, and I saw some keyword stuff.
I was like, well, what if we, I mean, this theme could be a real estate theme, right? This is early, but I, and we put it on there and people were like, they bought it, but only because it was. Specific to the and something like that just might pop up and I think that’s the serendipity of this is going general direction pop these things up and just maybe think like right there.
I don’t know how many people do reviews of CDs but you go, there’s something here. We may not even be thinking about.
[00:20:20] Corey Maass: And these are, and these what I’m, I’m, I’m excited for these use cases because these are, these turn into blog posts. These turn into case studies. These turn into, just as you said, it’s, it’s us getting on podcasts or getting, doing guest reviews or writing our own blog posts.
Um, And it, and it, it’s going to make, that’s, what’s going to make it click for somebody they’re like, Oh, images. Okay. Who cares? Featured images. I already upload my featured images. Oh, wait. Like now I get it now. I get why this is special. So, um, so yeah, doing, doing about going, going further with these examples, I think I’ll, I’ll work well for us.
So, yeah, that’s kind of the, um, plug in update for now, just chipping away at different technical issues. The one I discovered this morning is. Like what I just showed you, I, so you up, I, my workflow for bass tourist, I upload the album cover and then I used OMG, IMG to create an image. That imported that featured image, but put the title over it and whatnot.
But then when I clicked edit and save that as the new featured image, um, the problem is, is that when I then went to edit it, I’ve now got the OMG IMG image coming in as the featured image. So you have this, this wormhole. So I have to somehow store the original featured image so that that’s what gets pulled in every time.
Just little things like that, that we’re not going to discover until we’re actually using it. So. But it’s fun and boy satisfying, you know, to dog food, your own product. That’s where you, yeah,
[00:22:08] Cory Miller: that’s where the fun comes for sure.
[00:22:11] Corey Maass: Um, so starting to talk about WordCamp US, um, we, as, as we’ve talked about, we have these, um, beautiful new business cards that we will be handing out for teasing the product.
Um, and so we. Um, we’ll want to, as we talked about, we will be making updates to omgimg. co slash WCUS. Um, probably including a video, um, of ourselves at WordCamp US, which I think will be cool because it’s sort of makes it feel live. Um, um, but I’m also, I’ve still got it on my agenda to make a product demo video.
Of, you know, some picks, pick one full thread of what we just walked through. Like you install it, here’s a simple welcome screen. You know, here’s how you’d create the first image. Oh, OG image for your site. You added a post. Here’s how you’d add an OG image for your post. You know, just because I, you know, um, I think people, it, it won’t, it won’t necessarily be clear what it actually does.
And so I think in 60 seconds, like, like you said, you’re a visual learner. So you want to, you want to watch a little 60 second video and go, oh, okay, here’s, here’s clicking through buttons and here’s where we started. And here’s the, the thing we end up with at the end. Oh, the other thing is you should go look at the homepage.
Awesome. I added some color, did a little, it was like, it needs a little design. It needs something. So added some bright colors and curves and things like that. I like
[00:24:13] Cory Miller: that Twitter before Twitter after from slight boring, just like engaging integrations, you know, um, the integration sidebar real quick. I like this.
It’s really good. Um, so I’m sure there’ll be people from Yoast there. I know I own SEO side will be there. Um, I don’t know about the other four. I don’t know people from them, but uh, off the top of my head, but at just seeing this, when I happen to bump into them, it’s a note I can say, we’re
[00:24:53] Corey Maass: integrated. Yep.
We already work with, um, we’ve got the, the OG image. Integrated. And as I mentioned a couple of, of these sessions ago, um, it’s for most of them. We’re not there yet, but I will integrate with the search, Google search, meta image, whatever they call it.
But yeah, I just, I kept looking at the homepage and I’m like, uh, it looks too much, just. Blocks on a page. So I was like, let me put, let me give it some design.
So, um, but yeah, um, with 24 minutes left, um, anything else you want to talk about WordCamp us in particular, or let’s talk about the afterwards.
[00:25:46] Cory Miller: I think the after actually helps with the other part. We’ve got the base, all the things we kind of mentioned ready for the most part enough to have conversations.
The after part would be the good finale like in blank, we’re going to do this. Expect this next week. So the
[00:26:03] Corey Maass: hope right is we, we’ve got
500 business cards,
little product endorsement for this to print. They got them to me ahead of schedule. They look so good. I wound up going with the curved corners. Um, one, cause I, they’re a little friendlier, but two, they were also on sale. So it saved us like 20 bucks to, to have them be even nicer. Um, uh, and they, they just, they look good.
They feel good. Um, so I’m excited. Hand those out like crazy, plenty of white space as you requested. So, um, we can, you know, you can write notes on them, stuff like that. Um, So yeah, we’ve got 500 business cards. Ideally we give, we each take a box and give them all away. Um, ideally. At least a few hundred people, maybe all 500 sign up for the beta list.
Um, so we had talked about having you and I have a, we’ll coordinate, we’ll have a little page that just has an email input. So we can, we can take people’s email addresses or just hand them. Like I, what I always like to do is just hand somebody my phone and be like here. Type your email address is certainly quicker than trying to spell it out, that kind of thing.
Um, so get people onto our beta list. And then, um, in my mind, a couple of days after WordCamp US, sending out a first email, because I don’t think we have yet. Um, I’m just saying like, okay, Hey, thanks. You know, most of you have joined because of WordCamp us, you know, here’s, here’s a timeline, you know, here’s the product, here’s the page, the WordCamp us page, Corey and Corey’s intro, a little product demo, you know, because you signed up you right now, you’ve, you’ve got access to early pricing.
Um, and then we kind of pick, pick a timeline.
[00:28:21] Cory Miller: So I’m thinking of timeline. Um, like to say, Hey, we’re saying August 2023 on the page. Um, here’s the question I really have about that is what do you think we need to do technically with the product? What kind of workload does that look like? And what’s realistic to put the launch? Um, because I, I know we still need to really nail these templates.
Cause if we can, that feels like that magic thing. When we melt nail a template, where they go with little effort, I can get that. And it’s way better than what we’ve done now. Okay. Here’s my money. Um, so with that being said, what do you, you know, I know the next week probably afterward camps can be shot.
Right. You get back after being away for four or five days. Um, I know you’ve got a lot of stuff going on to, um, I almost, I don’t want to put it off too much. I want to keep, keep the anticipation, but almost go like, God, the week after see. It’s with the 24th week we get back is the last week in August, and then we’re bumping up.
We’re
[00:29:45] Corey Maass: in September. Okay, I’m changing the
homepage right now.
Summer 2023 September 2023. Yeah, I think I’d say September,
save done publish their launching September 2023 because you’re right in my mind it’s two weeks. It’s two weeks after that gives everybody a breath, including us. It, it lets us send out. A couple of emails, I think one shortly afterward camp us one a week later saying, okay, we’re launching next week. One on the day, you know, like doing that kind of, I don’t, I don’t feel like either of us or the, uh, okay.
You know, this, this sale, I mean, well, I think we will put a limit on it, but it’s like doors open in 90 minutes. And then another email doors open in 60 minutes. It’s like, we don’t. We don’t need to go crazy, but an introductory price for a limited time, which will be a week or two weeks or something not crazy.
Um, you know, but we don’t want these prices forever. Um, but yeah, it, it feels like to me, my gut says opening, opening the doors a couple of weeks afterward camp us is, is about right. Um, and I think, uh, I think it. We really only need, I’ve got a couple, again, a couple more features. I’m not trying to add the kitchen sink, so to speak.
Um, but then like an afternoon or, or a call or two, uh, like this, where you and I go through and like, we have quiet creative time and we share our screens, but you know, we, we. You know, make, make them either, either we go find some examples and recreate them, like the slides that you collected or things that we’ve bookmarked, or, you know, we just kind of go crazy.
Like, let’s make one that’s rainbow. Let’s, you know, or like maybe a template, a preset that, that highlights each setting or something, you know what I mean? Like some way to quantify it, but not, so we’ve got a bunch, but not. But they’re actually worth, I think the hard part is going to be doing a bunch that actually look different from each other.
As it would be very easy to be like, here’s one with a red background. Here’s one with a blue background. And it’s like, but they’re the same.
[00:32:42] Cory Miller: Yeah. I think the, here’s the design. How do we make it plug and play in the plugin is the way to go, you know, because I, we didn’t create Canva, Canva already exists, Photoshop already exists, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s a template.
It’s. Minimal effort. That’s the value prop. So I think if we go from design and you make it work where it’s almost fill in the blank to get result, that’s our prop right there. Um, so, and I, I don’t think it’s a ton. I think it’s, you know, a couple, but that’s our value prop. That’s easily, yes, here’s my 50 bucks.
You know,
[00:33:38] Corey Maass: I’ve so a few yeah a few handsome examples. And so I think we’ll draw from, we have that og image gallery bookmarked let’s see if we can find a few others. Yeah, og image doc gallery. And we’ll see if we can find a couple of others and be like, okay, you know, like you did a great job distilling down many of them in, in the Google slides that you created.
So it’s like, we need an image on the left and text on the right. We need, you know, the watermark to be able to place somewhere on most of these, which is why I’m chasing that next. Um, you know, but, uh, because enough of them overlap, we, some, you know, some of them are. Yeah, we’re vertical, which is why I created the movie poster style like image above or image behind and then text, um, well, to do to do a few of those
[00:34:39] Cory Miller: using again we kind of use processes like a base.
Live example in your music site and different things, but I go My update is we should be going live today tomorrow on our new site. And When we come back from WordCamp us With the new design and everything That’ll be the fertile ground for us to build some templates because we’ll have we can go back to content And play with actual content and I really still think high, high level of confidence from that past live content for the post test will come up with some really good templates because if it works for that.
We’re off to the races. So all that’s a good news. By the time we get back, that’ll all be there. And then we can refresh to it and go use a little of our creativity. And okay, how would we want this to look like and start designing those templates for other people using StingerBear.
[00:35:47] Corey Maass: Yeah, that’s kind of why I was anxious to get it on my music blog and then have it working and it’s like, okay, so now, because it’s I don’t, I don’t, I don’t want to be right clicking and editing the HTML or anything like I want to be, you know, right now and, and I’m also creating the lorem ipsum template over and over and over again.
Um. While I’m developing stuff, it’s like, okay, no, I need, I, I want, um, you know, what is it, wheels on the wheels on the road or whatever. Like, I want, this is, this is what, when I click publish, this is going to be live. This is not test stuff anymore. So it’s like with post status, it’s like same thing like the image that I generate and once I hit save, it’s actually live.
So it, we can’t keep. You know, so if there’s a bug, if you can’t, if there’s some reason you can’t hit publish, then you come back to Corey and you say, okay, whoops, we’re missing this. Or, you know, this isn’t working or whatever. So, yeah. Yeah. So I
[00:36:53] Cory Miller: think that’s our plan. September launch, um, get back first session is looking at those templates with the fresh post edit site and any other sites we want to play around with, and we do have the base with some of the slides we’ve already done.
Um, and like, okay, how can this look? Close, not pixel perfect, but like nice. Um, and then do three or four of those maybe tops and color good. Because then it’ll be the working on our site. Um, that’ll be a showcase for us. I think that’s a good goal right there. And for launch and everything that’s the overall win right there.
[00:37:44] Corey Maass: And we talked about an introductory price, the, the business card offers an introductory price, um, which we can offer, um. We’ll do a little promo. I mean, I started, um, I’ve been, um, using the OMG IMG Twitter account that I created because there’s, I find there’s still a lot, a lot of WordPress people on Twitter.
Yeah. So, um, trying to get engaged with them. Um, I’d queued up a whole bunch of tweets as, as I did the integrations, it was like at rank math, we now integrate with you at Yoast. We now, you know, so some sense of. You know, talking to people and getting, getting, because it’s, what is it? People have to hear your, hear your name seven times before they remember it kind of thing.
Um, and we’re going to have the big t shirts and stuff like that. So it’s like, I want. Hopefully, you know, I’m not saying we’re creating a buzz before we go, but there’s some familiarity with some people. Um, and then, um, but yeah, an introductory price doing some promo on Twitter post status, you know, wherever we, we think we deem appropriate.
Um, and then I also want to, you know, kind of like you, you very rightly pushed hard for feedback opportunities in crop express. Um, so that’s one of the other things that I want to make sure we do. Early, early on is like, I’m thinking about even putting in on our pages in the WordPress admin, having the little, like what people are used to now, the little beacon and the bottom right of like, talk to us, you know, not obviously not.
Taking over the admin or doing anything inappropriate, but just like on every, on every one of our pages, one click start typing. And we’ve already, you know, if you’re signed into WordPress, well, you’d have to be signed into WordPress, but assuming the email address is correct, like we’ve got your email address, um, You know, we even know what page you’re on.
We can include some stats in the emails. And so it’s like, send us, send us an email right away. Like if something’s broken or, you know, feature request or whatever it is, because that’s going to be a big one. Because we are using some, some of the libraries we’re using are not the most stable things I’ve ever worked with.
And we’re using lots of different browsers on different machines, platforms. Like if it doesn’t work somewhere, we, you know, if it doesn’t work on Safari, I mean, I’ve tested that, but as an example, like we need to know right away that it doesn’t work on Safari or IE 7, you know what I mean? Um, And then I also think that that’s good opportunity for, I really want to start collecting, um, testimonials, other use cases, um, you know, if somebody, somebody who has a new site starts using it, let’s put them on the homepage, you know, um, or get testimonials from them and get them a backlink.
Dig it. Cool. But yeah, I think, well, like I’ve, these are all sort of, because it’s a few weeks away and I tend to struggle with things that aren’t in front of me right now. Um, yeah, me too. We, you know, at some point let’s sit down and make a list of all this kind of stuff, you know, figure out timelines. Um, so that, you know, the, we, horse horses before carts, um, you know, all the way through launch and that kind of thing.
I think this is
[00:41:57] Cory Miller: a good draft plan though for the three steps or so.
It’s good. And, you know, my focus has been okay that that crystal value, or enough that sparked the value or like, Oh yeah, that’s cool. It’s such a visual thing. And that’s that temple work I think will be our best work, using live, live site to come up with that, seeing where we’re at that too. And, um, I know you’re always working on like odds and ends on the plugin anyway, but that’s what I’m excited about getting to is right there.
That because that, that’ll be the crystallization. We’ve done so much of the marketing talk was so good. Um,
some of the best work I’ve been a part of with marketing because you’re like, you see the before the after. So, right.
[00:42:53] Corey Maass: I don’t know, friend back to it, back to it. We have a plan. Um, I’m arriving Tuesday night. Um, so I’m around for Wednesday, Thursday before WordCamp US even starts. Um, although I’ve already got Wednesday night, I’ve already got two parties that I’m going to, uh, a breakfast date.
Um, You know, you’re, you’re going to various parties that I’m sure I’ll tag along to, um,
[00:43:29] Cory Miller: Friday and Saturday, um, dinners really, but, uh, um, we eat in Wednesday. We’re going to keep a low profile Wednesday and do some touristy things Thursday. And, uh, but if you’re, we’ll be talking anyway, but. Probably doing real informal, uh, dinner y stuff.
So, like, in a small group, just people that are in.
[00:43:55] Corey Maass: Well, and, and, if, I haven’t looked at our, our views, but, um, I want to promote this video, uh, on Twitter and stuff like I usually do, and if people actually watch all the way to the end, I want to say, like, you know, come find us, we will have the, um, OMG IMG t shirt.
At least I will. Corey has to wear post status at least 50 percent of the time contractually. Um, but, um, I will be my. Oh man, we should have, the shirt should have said I’m with OMG IMG and with an arrow pointing or something. Um, but, uh, but yeah, as you’re, if, if anybody is watching this, uh, and you know, you see, see me around, come grab me, or if you want to go talk product or talk about, uh, WordPress or life in general, you know, that’s, that’s half the fun of WordCamp US.
So, um, reach out. Same. All right, my friend. Back to it. I’ll talk to you soon. See ya.
