As Corey Maass and Cory Miller move further into their experience of launching a WordPress product in public, they delve into the insights they’ve gained and the obstacles they are facing. Listen to their perspectives on building a community around the product, overcoming challenges, handling feedback, and implementing effective marketing strategies.
Top Takeaways:
- The Impact of Technology on Personal and Professional Lives: Technology has revolutionized various aspects of our lives, from communication and information access to work and productivity. This brings about the benefits and challenges of living in a digitally connected world, including privacy, cybersecurity, and work-life balance.
- The Role of Mindfulness in the Digital Age: Mindfulness practices can help individuals navigate the challenges of the digital age, such as reducing stress, improving focus and concentration, and promoting healthy technology habits. Integrating mindfulness into daily routines and setting boundaries with technology is more important than ever.
- The Need for Conscious and Intentional Technology Use: Being conscious and intentional about how we use technology, including being mindful of the impact of technology on our physical and mental health, relationships, and overall well-being, is critical. Being thoughtful about developing healthy technology habits, such as managing screen time, practicing digital detox, and being mindful of online behavior, can have a significant impact.
🔗 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
Session 8 Corey & Cory Launch a WordPress Product Live
Corey Maass: [00:00:00] Sort of summarize the, summarize what we wanted, all of the features
we wanted, where we’re at, and then what the next steps are. Okay. Because I think, I think the
power balance is about to shift the power balance. Yeah. Previously we were waiting for me, I
think we’re, oh, I think I’m, I think I’m caught up.
And so I think we’re stepping more into w you know, you being able to do stuff for, um, you
know, we can start working on marketing assets and the website and stuff like that because the
plugin’s actually worth talking about .
Cory Miller: Okay. Gotcha. Well, do you want to catch me up on where we’re at with the
product?
Then we can shift gears to what’s
Corey Maass: next. Yeah, so the good news is, [00:01:00] um, we had started with Featured
image and I had jumped over and featured Image was, uh, had a nice walkthrough or a nice
flow. Choose your image, choose your shape, do your cropping. There it is. Um, I had added a
bypass button, um, and then had started stubbing out settings, um, so that you could build your
own, um, presets or calling them your own shapes, basically.
Um, size, width, whatever. Um, and then I had jumped over to Media Library cuz that was the
other one that I really wanted, or the next one that I really wanted, again, as a non guttenberg
user. Um, And so had brought that up to speed. So it, [00:02:00] now, if you go into media
library, there’s now a second button at the top is the choice we’ve made thus far.
Um, so if you go to library Yep. There’s a critical error. Uh oh.
is that, um, uh, we need to start using Insta. Insta, wp,
Cory Miller: um, oh,
Corey Maass: this is just my, yeah, go to, um, go to Insta WP and do it. Spin up a site
they really want. Um, I mean they’re, this product’s amazing Anyway, so you just launch one
click.
Oh, you reach your limit. Do it in incognito. Okay.[00:03:00]
Hackers. Um, but they, they’ve actually offered us a, um, a test account for, um, for using to use
c WP for this product, for these kinds of demos. So,
or you can do that.
Passwords. I’ve memorized it. I’ve memorized it. I’m gonna hack your account.
No kidding. .
Cory Miller: Oh my God. Come on, .
Corey Maass: Seriously, just do, uh, incognito. You don’t have to do any of this. There you go.
Oh, but now you have to share that window.
Nothing [00:04:00] is easy. Um, but anyway. Yeah, so Well, you’re good. Well you’re setting that
up. Um, so media library, uh, doing two things. One is
cheeky boogers. Do you want me to just share? I can walk us through it. Yeah. Okay. Um, how
are they tracking cookies? Uh, into incognito. That’s, uh, they’re being very sneaky. I think.
Enter my name. I don’t want to one click log in. All right. So I’m gonna share my screen.
Cory Miller: Um, okay. I’m into, oh, okay. Well then go,
Corey Maass: Okay, I got the
Cory Miller: free account. There you go. You’re a hackers. Okay, yeah,
Corey Maass: go for it. I’m here. So, [00:05:00] uh, magic login. There you go. And then plugins
add new crop, express, crop of the express.
And this is something we need to start working on. There you go. Cuz we, we wanna be first, so
we’ll have to start doing some testing on that. Um, so did you notice we had 10 plus click on
view details?
Uh, we are up to over 10 active installs, 10 plus.
Cory Miller: Oh, is that why you were showing me that? I was like, oh man, are you having a
bad day? Cuz you showed me that like Active was like, yeah, but they have these gaps and
stuff. But what you were trying to say was the plus
Corey Maass: we’re over 10. We finally made it over 10.
That’s awesome. So yeah. So if you go to, yeah, so there’s now, uh, [00:06:00] settings, uh,
crop Express. Um, I put in just a little placeholder welcome. And what we’ve got here is identical
settings, but for all three instances of crop express, right? So you can crop, uh, your featured
image in posts, you can crop. There’s a block in Gutenberg and then media library.
So, um, all of them are, are identical. So click on media library, cuz then we’ll jump over to that.
Um, so you’ve got your presets. Um, so all of the default ones you can turn on and off and then
you can add your own. And then down below, uh, are the sizes and we just populate with some
sensible defaults, basically.
But you can say, uh, you know, make my image, um, oh, defaults shouldn’t say [00:07:00] max,
so I need to fix that. Um, but it’s the, if you upload a square, it’ll, it’ll automatically generate an
image that’s 2000 by 2000. Um, but if you up upload a rectangle one way or the other, The
wider side will be the maximum and the, and the smaller side will be the minimum.
Mm-hmm. , um, it took me a while to figure out what the heck they were talking about with Men’s
Max and default, but it’s that, so we need some, some happy text there to explain that. Um, and
then, yeah, so if you go back up to the top portion, portion in this page and turn off a couple of
these, the four threes or something, whatever, um, and then hit save.
And then if you go to media library or media in your menu, um, and if you click add new, it
automatically throws you back [00:08:00] to the media library, but with the crop Express open so
that you’re always using it. Um, which could be an option that we give. Um, and then, um, but,
and if you go to Media Library and say, Add new, there’s again, there’s a new button at the top.
Cory Miller: Okay. Can we go back for just one second cuz I wanna make sure I understand
this so that I could give feedback and help people. So yeah, of course. Okay. I think this is what
tripped me up and it’s probably, cuz I’ve got old, old school, Adobe Photoshop in mind. Mm-
hmm. . But we’re saying for all the image settings, like here is the preset ratios in a sense, but
it’s not just ratios, it’s like circles. It’s the preset what.
Corey Maass: Sure . Um, I’ve [00:09:00] gone back and forth between, uh, shapes and sizes.
So originally we were calling them sizes, but they’re not really sizes cuz that’s Yeah. Pixels. So
shapes, um, or preset aspect ratios is what they really are.
Mm-hmm. , I just, I worry that people don’t, that’s progress, right? Like that’s, that’s the most
correct way to put it. Um, but people don’t think that way. Mm-hmm. or like, again, using, using
one of my clients, uh, using my clients as an example, um, one of them this week, we kept
going back and forth unrelated to the plugin.
Obviously we kept going back and forth where, uh, she’s like, there’s a bug about uploading an
image. And I, I had it. Um, set so that they could upload, they should upload 16.9 featured
[00:10:00] images and, and she’s like, yeah, but what if it’s really tall? And I’m like, 16 nine is
16.9. And in her head, 16.9 and nine 16 are the same thing.
And Hmm. And that to me is like one, we, we can do some education, but two, you know, people
aren’t, uh, people don’t, aren’t nerds like me and thinking about 16 nine and nine 16 and yada
yada. So, um, yeah, I definitely think some video or a video that explains what any of this stuff
is. Mm-hmm. like I, maybe, maybe we’ve been taking that for granted, or now you and I on
session eight are, you know, in it, so we totally get it, but users may not, that kind of thing.
Okay.
Cory Miller: Um, Okay. Can we spend just a little time thinking about that? Um, yeah, of course.
[00:11:00] How, how nor, because I saw this and I was like, man, I know you’ve got these
incredibly smart thoughts about all this, but I was like, okay, I’m trying to get my head around it,
but if I think of, maybe I just share what I think and then Yep.
You compare that. Help me, because I don’t know if my knowledge is ancient. Um, okay. So I
go, I need a photo for, or I, I know I’m gonna want a photo featured image, whatever that is.
Okay. And then I go, okay, how wide is my now featured image blows this out. But I just, I go,
how wide do I need the photo to be?
Like, for most of these, I think I’m just processing my way. And then absolutely. Tell me.
Absolutely. Keep going. . So I go, okay. My constant pain in the butt with WordPress for years.
Anything like this. Yeah. Is you’re constrained [00:12:00] by column width mostly. Okay.
Featured image. Image. Just like our post stuff. I hate it because it’s like, I don’t want post
billboards on top of our, our posts.
I want them to get to the post anyway, so thank you for letting me digress. . Okay. So I go, I’m
writing a post, I want an image for it. I either think featured type in like a big image that kind of
sets the tone, but to me, I’ve, I’ve always still gone, like it’s the post width. Mm-hmm. . Um, and I
don’t like the featured image issue there because in themes, for instance, like I’ll do an image
because.
I would do want to set a tone, but then it ends up in the featured and then a lot of themes will
pull that and it just looks wonky to me. Yeah. Like I haven’t thought about it, maybe thought
about it correctly, but I go, I want an image [00:13:00] and I default to width, like mm-hmm. , how
wide is, you know, the newsletter or the blog post or the theme that I have.
And then I kind of wanted to crop down to that specification appropriately for me. And
sometimes I just go, I just want width. And I’ll kind of adjust the height if I have a tool that lets me
do that. Um, like, I’m trying to think. When I was cropping in Photoshop, I would set, maybe we
could pull up photo.
I don’t have Photoshop, but I would go to their little cropping tool and go, I want it to be, what I
would do, Corey, is I would. Previously go it’s, I don’t know, four or 500 pixels is typically what
I’ve locked in my memory somehow is like most column widths for posts are four to 500 pixels
wide. Mm-hmm.
So I’d go and Photoshop, I’d go [00:14:00] to the crop tool, I’d have my image up, I’d go to the
crop tool and I’d say 400. And I would leave the height, um, uh, open. Mm-hmm. . And because,
you know, not every image does that. And then go, okay. Crop and save. Mm-hmm. , um, and
then upload to the, to WordPress. But again, I’m gonna acknowledge, I don’t even know if that’s
all probably the right workflow, but that’s how I’ve done it.
Yeah. You know,
Corey Maass: I, I think so. I, I think you’re right. Like one of my takeaways from that is,
I think we’re, we’re at a high level anyway. We’re making the same point that people don’t think
about aspect ratios necessarily as aspect ratios. But, you know, and talking about previously
we’ve talked about, uh, [00:15:00] consistency and that kind of thing, um, and, and making
images appear correct for your theme.
And so using featured image, you know, something’s popped into my head, which I think is a
neat idea. Um, featured image. So using featured image specifically, it’s like, how wide do you
need it? How wide does your theme want your image to be? And then what aspect ratio do you
want it to be? Mm-hmm. . So it’s like you’re, you go, you go look at, and we could do a little
video that’s like create a post.
Laura Ipsum post, add an image, even even publish it privately. And then go look at the image
and how it looks and you right click on it. Like we can give some instructions, but it’s like right
click on it, you know, how big is it rendering, [00:16:00] you know, and, and make your screen
the biggest. It it could, it can go.
So it’s like you, your theme is a maximum of 1300 pixels wide. And currently your design says
your image, your images go full width. So, so 1300 is the number you want. So width 1300. And
then we could e and we could do something, do a little UI in here that’s like, okay, here’s a
placeholder image, 1300 pixels wide.
You know, how much height do you want? That’s your aspect ratio. So click on 16 nine, right?
And it’s like, keep in mind, I mean, this is all education. Like I don’t, I’m not really sure how we
get there, but, um mm-hmm. , uh, but to say like, keep in mind, you know, on small screens, like
if you’re going 1300 wide, you don’t want to be, you know, 1300 tall and you really don’t wanna
be nine [00:17:00] 16 cuz then you are, you know, tw 2000 tall or whatever it is.
And it’s like, that takes, here’s why the re the reason is you don’t, you don’t want your reader to
have to scroll and scroll and scroll before actually getting to your words unless you do. Um, but
yeah, that’s, I think that’s something that, that we’re gonna have to
education too is, is a very grand word, but it’s like people don’t think about it. This much. Maybe,
you know, if they’re a writer, then they’ve never thought about it. They just grabbed a photo,
made it look cool. Mm-hmm. and uploaded. Mm-hmm. . And never thought other than like, do I
want a circle or not A circle.
Or there’s, I want a picture of a guy on a beach building a sandcastle and I don’t want the, the
shark in the background, so I’m gonna crop it.
Cory Miller: So I wonder, are there websites, [00:18:00] and I just happened to think of
beginner cause I know they do things really well. Like the final product, what mm-hmm. , see
how they do like this technically.
Is there feature featured image? Mm-hmm. . Um, is there any other sites, I don’t want to just
hone in on this, but any other sites you think do a really good job of using photos in their blog
posts that we could look at real quick? Be The reason why I say that is because mm-hmm. .
Final product is really kind of what we’re selling.
You know what I mean? Like what they’re trying to get to is we, we had that extended talk where
we said, you know, it’s somehow flavors up the content and kind of Right. You know. Um, do you
have anybody else you’d think I’d like that we could just kinda look and get some ideas real
quick?
Corey Maass: Uh, no, cuz I never go to blogs.
Cory Miller: Okay. [00:19:00] Well let’s use them real quick. So see, like, I don’t know if they’ve
tagged this as a featured image, you know, in WordPress mm-hmm. , but you go, okay, from an
SEO side, headline, gray headline music and WordPress. Two good things they’re gonna get,
then they’ve got enough text here. I mean, this is a great formula, WP Beginner, you know?
Yeah. Because yeah, they own all the WordPress search terms. Um, what about to, so yeah, so
intro, and then they give this little nice little thing. So what are they doing here? They’re
restating, restating the, the headline and then providing something that looks kind of nice. Like, I
think this adds value to the Post personally.
Corey Maass: So go, go to, uh, Freemius . They always have good blog posts.[00:20:00]
Go to any of them. Um, and so these, I think this to me is the more standard blog post format.
Click on any. Um, I like Zach, right? So big image in this case, they have the headline over the
image and then a blog post. And so I bet the, the background of Zach is the featured image.
Okay.
Entry header. Entry thumbnail,[00:21:00]
yeah. With a title overlay.
And their image is 1600 by 500. So an aspect ratio of 16 five. 16 five.
Cory Miller: So there’s a lot here that I really like. Um, like this is a nice looking featured
images. Mm-hmm. , they’re taking, you know, they’re really, I think this is gonna be important for
us if you’ll indulge me for a second. Mm-hmm. . Um, okay. So they’ve taken profile photos easy.
I don’t know if they’re creating this, like where are they getting, how are they doing all these, but
looks standard, right?
Like there’s the same character,
Corey Maass: their little robot is theirs, so they must have an illustrator who’s creating them.
[00:22:00] But I bet some of this is probably just clip art,
but somebody’s taking the time to create these images. Yeah. Canva. P. Yeah. You know, some
other editor.
Cory Miller: Okay,
same here. Like, probably find the source to do that. Cutting. These are like screenshots, which
I think kind of might flow into your other project you were talking about, right?
Corey Maass: Ooh, here’s another good example. Um, go to, I’m gonna send it to in Slack.
What’s your name again? Just kidding. Bob
So this is actually really, I just googled for, you know, baking blog or [00:23:00] something, but
this is actually really neat. So this tape I, this jumps we’re jumped right into a category, but look
at the aspect ratio of these images. And if you click on any of them, they’re the. They’re the
same. And if you click through, they’re actually using the featured image, uh, to the side of the
title.
So like, here, here, I see it twice, go hit back once and click on the first one. There’s like swirly
brownies, which look very good. Yeah. Click on that. So there’s, there’s, you know, big brownie
image. Scroll down a little and let’s see if they use it again. I’m just curious. Yeah, so it does
repeat, but you see, it’s, it’s the, the coincidentally, I found a blog that has featured images that
are taller than they are wide, little unconventional, but again, an a, a different, a another
example of a [00:24:00] different layout.
Right. So you found, you went to WP Beginner. They use, it’s, it’s horizontal. And it’s in line. So
it’s gonna be smaller cuz it’s in that with it’s confined, confined by that column. Go to Freemius .
It’s, you know, 1600, it’s full width cuz they’re using it the way, um, I often think of a blog, they
want a big, big, big image that takes up the full header.
Um, and then found a cooking blog that does taller rather than wider, which I, I was sort of
including to just include, but coincidentally right away found a blog that does in fact do that. Um,
and so I think what, you know, what we’re really getting at is, uh, again, it’s the, you know,
you’ve selected a theme or you already have a theme.
How are the images being shown? [00:25:00] And so the, you know, the, let’s pretend that
Hummingbird High. Is, uh, an amateur blogger. And so they are new to WordPress. Um, and so
they install a theme and they add start adding recipes, and they’re just taking, like we’ve talked
about, they’re just taking photos off their phone.
So they don’t know. I think, you know, to your point, they’re like, I haven’t put in any posts yet. I
don’t know how big I need my images. Um, the theme seems to want such and such an aspect
ratio where I’ve read the, let’s pretend they’re even like, nerdy enough to read the docs. Do the
docs include any mention of here’s how big you want your images, that kind of thing.
And so yeah, there’s, there’s a need for. [00:26:00] Again, the, the most thorough process of like
AIP, post, add a fake image, even temporarily, see how it renders, and then tho that’s the
information you want. Um, and I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know that we can do that for
them because as we’ve shown, you know, if you’ve got a blog that, if you’ve got a layout that
doesn’t label your featured image as a featured image, like I have no way of going and writing a
little code that like goes and scrapes it.
Mm-hmm. and imports that and tries to import that information.
Cory Miller: So what if we looked at the, okay, yes, that is, um, all that stuff underneath all this
that someone would need to, if they’re really gonna do this at a high, high level, they need to
understand all that stuff. Um, you [00:27:00] know, like really what is your theme?
I think for the premise for this free one could be like, if I just look at WP Beginner, um, you want
to, the outcome is nice looking, um, scaled appropriate images. There’s an NCO side to it, but
like how do you get somebody, and this is bigger than the plugin right now for sure, but you go, I
think a huge win could be like this makes it easier to get nice images that kind of break up.
Mm-hmm. your post and show specific things. And if I just go default. Don’t worry about themes
so much cuz those could be specific integrations. Like Cadence has an integration builder.
Builder. Right. You know, specific for that. That could be all that paid stuff that we talked about.
Yeah. But if I [00:28:00] go, if we keep it the way it is now, which is in, well it’s either fit featured
image, which for sure has the theme stuff that you were talking about, where you go in post,
how do you create something like, like this is, these sites we’ve seen have for are formulas and
I’m trying to think through how we can get through the formula is an easy button to nice looking
blog post with some images appropriately sized.
Mm-hmm. , um, you know, like I’ve long admired what WP Beginner does cause they’ve got this
formula that works. Like, yeah. All this, every post. Not trying to, this is not a negative to me.
Every post is a very defined formula. Yep. Screenshots are in here, you know? Um, they do
have to create an image and then still get it in there.
So they, that’s part of their formula. Just like your, [00:29:00] the baking site with the brownies,
you were, you were pulling apart the tech specs for how they do all that. And it seems like, yeah,
so anchoring back, back in these presets is like, how do you just get somebody to, Hmm. Sorry,
I’m probably getting a little lost in my own thoughts here, but
Corey Maass: as long as you keep talking,
you’re good.
Cory Miller: Um. But you go, like when you buy, when you get a product or you buy a product,
whatever, you’re, you’re really buying whatever the result of it is, you’re actually not buying the
product, you’re buying this out, this outcome.
Corey Maass: And when you buy a piece of software and fire it up, you start hacking away at it,
Photoshop you, you’re create new and then, [00:30:00] and it, and it says, here’s some, here’s
some document sizes, but you know, here’s a thousand by a thousand, a white canvas.
And off you go. And then you’re like, well, but I really want, I wanna see my text options. I wanna
see. And so then you start playing with what menus to show or hide or you start playing with,
and that’s when you dig in, right? So, um, yeah, I, we, what would be great, and this is, this is
sort of what we’ve started with.
again, sensible presets I, or sensible, I mean, I, again, I’m calling ’em presets, preset aspect
ratios. So if somebody doesn’t go to the setting screen at all, they click featured image. They’ve
got six predefined aspect ratios that, again, are sensible. Um, and they’ve got, and, and they
don’t know anything about sizes, but we’ve put in some pretty [00:31:00] industry standard.
Mm-hmm. , safe for mobile, safe for desktop image size, men and Max. So we might be pretty
close to what you’re talking about. Mm-hmm. and maybe six isn’t the magic number. Maybe it
should only be Square Circle and 16, nine. And the other ones are. Extra. So maybe it’s too
many. We don’t know that yet, but,
Cory Miller: well, you know what, I lost track a little bit of the settings page because this was
intended for the agency, like mm-hmm.
I mean, you deliver, like, one of our thesis here was you deliver a client project. This really, like
the intention for the settings was for those freelancers, web owners, agencies delivering
products or delivering websites to clients. And then from that point, like I was trying to reconcile
the settings page with just [00:32:00] being a user, but that wasn’t our intention.
Our intention was give those tools to put in the little scoot in the little bumpers on the bowling
lane, right? Like that’s what the agency does pull, you know, Hey, were you, we, whatever
theme framework we use, we know it’s gonna be 69. You know, put the minimal X. Yeah. And
then when they do that stuff from the featured image, And, and the user starts using it, it’s
already there.
So we’ve, we’ve taken this thought of like, this is, to me, this is for an agency to ship better
guardrails for images for their client work. Yeah. So my question to you, I mean, as a, you’ve set
this up with the thought, I thought, you know, as a developer, right? So like, I, I’m not, but I go,
your mindset was to do, put these tools, settings in here for that technical person at the agency.
Yeah. Or we delivered it. [00:33:00] Make sure this is like, go through real quick and set these,
and that’s, that was our intention for this. Yep. So as long as it speaks to the, like, I don’t have to
note it, know it necessarily as a user, as long as the devs do. And if we check that box, I think
it’s, we ship it and we start talking about like, we, what we try to do is give a.
Guard, I’m rehearsing some of this for a copy. Mm-hmm. , it was like, this is to give guardrails to
your clients for their images. Take, take it, take 30 seconds, you know, when before you deliver
the client and do these real quick, and then you’ll put the little bumpers on the bowling alley for
’em.
Corey Maass: Yeah. And I, I think I want to, the only, the only caveat or addition I want to add to
what you just said is that it’s not, let’s not say dev, right, because dev implies code is, it’s a scary
thing to [00:34:00] a lot of people, whereas.
Uh, you know, in my mind the, the word like there, there’s never been a good word for the
people who are WordPress pros who don’t necessarily write code or write a lot of code or write
custom plugins, right? So there’s still experts in my mind at some, at some time. Like 10 years
ago the word was, um, that I was introduced was implementer.
So it’s like someone who implements WordPress and WordPress tools but isn’t a developer,
right? But, so to me, this is like somebody who doesn’t even, doesn’t write code, but is setting
up a site for a client, installs their favorite theme, knows that the theme looks great with 16 nine
images. And so they’re the ones that are gonna go in and tweak these settings.
Um, and so, yeah, and, and I think the analogy of, there’s nothing that says. There’s really
nothing that [00:35:00] says you have to even touch that setting screen if 16, nine or circle
meets your needs. Um, and then the, and, but, but I agree, like the language could be a, a heck
of a lot friendlier. Um, and we need docs that explain it, right?
Um, and so that’s where like, I think, I think you come in and the kind of thinking that you’re
doing of, you know, the, the, the unknowledgeable, the as yet unknowledgeable user, you know.
So on that little welcome screen, on the settings page, it says, welcome, you know, watch a
62nd video that explains what the heck is going on here with 10 seconds.
That explains, you know, why image size and shape is important in the simplest possible terms.
Um, And then the other thing that just occurred to me is actually that, that you kind of alluded
[00:36:00] to is, uh, I don’t remember how you put it, but the, the idea of the sort of pre preset,
like, I’m, I’m way down, I’m close to the metal where I’m, I’m calling a preset, or when I say
preset, I’m saying preset aspect ratio.
But I, but you actually kind of alluded to, um, like a preset featured image or a preset something,
something, right? Mm-hmm. . Um, and I realized that like, again, what I’ve created I think is a
great, we’re still on version 0.0 0.3. Mm-hmm. , so I think it’s appropriate. Um, but, uh, uh, and
so, or what I’m say, sorry.
Um, we have the crop. That is identical in three different places. Right? Featured image. And the
likelihood is your, what, what The assumption that we’re going under, which I think is, is pretty
safe, is [00:37:00] you always, once you get rolling, you always want your featured image to be
the same size and shape. Mm-hmm.
So that mm-hmm. , all of your posts look consistent. Mm-hmm. . And the same might go for,
might not go for in, in post images, cuz you might want a smaller one shifted, left or shifted right.
You might want an infographic that’s tall and so you don’t necessarily want to be confined, but
here are some, some presets that, you know, look we like, you know, getting a level deeper with
design is you often want.
Your images to be similar throughout a website, the same way you want fonts to be. Similar
throughout a website, you want colors to be similar without throughout a website. So, you know,
in a perfect world, not that you shouldn’t sometimes break the rules, but you often want, if your
featured images are all 16, nine, you know, [00:38:00] design a a design guideline might
encourage you to have 16, nine images elsewhere.
That’s a little digression, but I think that’s true. And then taking this even further, if you go to the
media library, uh, again, right now for the sake of simplicity, I’ve got the same settings and the
same UI applied to the media library, upload a 16 nine image. But here I actually see, uh, a
different, or I’m envisioning a different UI that says, Upload a featured image, which uses the
settings from the featured images.
But we could also include things like upload an image for Twitter, upload a, you know, and this is
where a preset comes in, right? Upload, you know, a circles a circle, but upload a, and this is, I
think what, going back to, uh, the, [00:39:00] the little, um, sticker mule menu that we were
talking about where there’s sort of these predefined touchpoints.
And so, yeah, so it’s like you’re, you’re in a post, you’re writing a post. And we also, I think we
are spending a lot of time, we are being very word pressy. Um, and it might be to our detriment,
um, we are assuming anybody is actually writing a post. And I even saw a headline I think this
morning that was like, should WordPress get rid of the blog?
You know, it started as a blog, but should we, should it actually get rid of the blog focus
altogether? Because most people are using it as a C M S and building pages more than posts.
Mm-hmm. is, is the, was the hypothesis. But anyway, uh, you know, feature image images still
applies to pages. Um, when you’re writing a page, you know, we say in post [00:40:00] image,
but an in, in page image, so we’re not thinking wrong.
But, you know, thinking of WordPress as a c m s, you’re like, you build a page, but then you also
need an image for two, an OG image, open graph image for social, you might want to da da da
da da. And this is where we were talking about, you know, what, what you really need is an
image crop so that no image gets uploaded to WordPress incorrectly.
Mm-hmm. , right? And that’s where, uh, I, I’m, you know, again, I, we’ve sort of talked about it
and you kind of alluded to it a minute ago as like, within at least media library to have a, you
know, what kind of image do you want to upload an image for Twitter? Okay, well that needs to
be this size, the shape. I wanna upload a header for Facebook.
Or, you know, it’s like, I mean, these are bad examples cuz you’d upload those to Twitter or
[00:41:00] to Facebook. Um, but it could also be, uh, you know, it doesn’t even necessarily get
up, get saved to your media library, crop in image for Twitter. Download it and now, now post it
to Twitter. Crop an image for Facebook.
Now post it to Facebook. Do you wanna also save this in your media library?
and that’s where we kind of end up taking over. You know, it’s like media library bec, you know,
becomes, uh, Photoshop within WordPress. Okay. Now that’s interesting. Um,
what kind of image do you want to create today?
Cory Miller: You said something that was really interesting to me, um, that stuck out and it’s like
the c m s conversation. Hmm. Is it just the c m s or, you know, [00:42:00] do we, so I was trying
to find this blog site to see how they did it, but you go like, but there are people that still use
publishing their WordPress is their publishing tool.
Um, and I think of that like your client’s content journey clients mm-hmm. and. They’re using the
blog side. And I go, that was a helpful distinguishing for me is like if you just using the c m s, our
image is gonna be static. For instance, most cases, like you’re not gonna do a lot of image
manipulation.
You may in turn, uh, initially, but we’re turning over to people that are pushing the publish button.
Like you have a newspaper or a magazine client, for instance. They are like, they’re in the
business of publishing. Yeah. Steady content. And that just made me think about the use case
again, is I still think the settings [00:43:00] conversation is great because a lot of these people
are gonna have agencies build the site because they.
To do the publishing really fast. So we’ve given those tools to the setting, they’ll look over here.
It’s like I went to moz.com just to see how they use damages. Oh, sure. I went to HubSpot, like
the bakery site. Oh, HubSpot. Yeah.
Corey Maass: Since they’re big on SEO and, but I bet. But they do a lot of content.
Cory Miller: They’re publishers, um mm-hmm.
which is really interesting. That aligns with where WordPress is, you know? Yeah. Okay. Let me
find, try to find,
I, I think this is important. This isn’t wasted because it’s, um, we’re drilling down closer to
really crystallizing who, yeah. Who, who, yeah. Okay, so [00:44:00] lemme just go back. Okay.
So they’re obviously using, this is probably, Well, hope has their own thing, but like they’re using
some image to draw some interest to the,
Corey Maass: so up top you’ve got four, three. I’m just, I’m gonna keep nerding out about this
cuz it’s like, this is what people aren’t seeing.
They’re, they’re seeing but not absorbing right? Is Right. On that previous page, you had four,
three images and square images, and then you drill, drill down and what would be, you know, a
primary image at the top again after the paragraph? Looks like it’s about four three. But it, but I,
I, I liked your WP beginner example.
Same with HubSpot, is that they’re just, they’re just, they’re essentially just putting images in line
and just like a magazine. So you’re reading a magazine and they might have a big pretty
picture, but they’re, um, you know, throughout an article they’ll have [00:45:00] photos.
So like,
Cory Miller: huh, good
Corey Maass: God. Okay. I go to like rolling stone.com.
Like go to a publisher. That’s interesting. Whoops. Yeah,
so those look like four, three images and then some square images. Just scroll down a little
interesting that this layout is almost identical to, um, Huffington Post , or not Huffington Post, uh,
the Atlantic. If you go to the Atlantic , it’s almost identical. Um, but anyway, there’s another
example. So [00:46:00] like we get into actual news sites, so they’ve got those look closer to like
16, nine.
Um, yeah, go back to Rolling Stone. I don’t need to see Huffington Post homepage. That’s too
depressing. . Um, but click, click into, click into any one of these stories. And here’s a pretty
typical layout. You know, there’s that featured image again, and then the story below it, and
then, but I bet they have images within, I guess this one’s just a short story, but anyway.
Yeah. You think this is four 30? It looks pretty close. I mean, I’m eyeballing it. Yeah. But,
but also, but I guess close enough that if somebody who isn’t rolling Stone wanted to create
their own website, they’d be like, okay, every time I in. Insert an image into a story, [00:47:00] I
will use the four three. Like we, so we, you know what, what, I guess I never finished the
description of the, the new version is we have settings and we also now have a block, a
Gutenberg block.
Yeah.
Cory Miller: By the way, you snuck that in on me.
Corey Maass: Yeah. So, so we now have, we’re, we’re, we’re pretty close to like feature
complete, right? So we have fe you can crop a featured image, you can crop, um, a Gutenberg
block and you can crop images going into the media library. Um, and so I think, you know,
again, I, uh, I th we’re focusing a lot on settings, but I think that there’s a good chance that most
people, your average person, will never need to go to those settings.
The likelihood is that most will, uh, so I called it cropped image because I think most people are
gonna look for image. So it says, select, select an image to crop, and then here’s our presets.
And so I think what most people are gonna do is [00:48:00] they’re like, they will decide, they will
choose four, three, and then, and then every time they do this again, they will choose four three.
Like, that’s how most people use these kinds of tools. Like they, they do something once or they
learn, click, click, click. They don’t necessarily think about optimizing their clicking, and so they’ll
just choose four, three every time. If it looks good, the first.
Cory Miller: So question about the four three. So we’ve just said this is probably one of the four,
three and 16 by nine, you already know this, but four three was a lot on these sites and that
typically, like I’d look at beginner and all these others, and I go, it’s four three, like in the, in the
vicinity, right?
So how did you determine what this with is?
Corey Maass: Uh, so that is what’s set by the, on the settings page. I’m not saying go there, but
there are, [00:49:00] um, some common sense defaults. So it’s at least a thousand wide and it’s
less than 2000 wide. So if you tried to upload something that was off of your phone, high res,
you know, 8,000 wide, it would bring it down to 2000 or something.
But you also, if you tried to upload just an emoji, it would make it. Bigger, unless you said
bypass.
Cory Miller: I see. Okay. So the rationale, so we’re picking four, three, and then we’ve got these
bigger bumpers. So like this mm-hmm. , if we, so this image is actually whatever the settings
are a thousand wide. So it’s technically bigger than it needs to be because of the settings. Mm-
hmm. . But that probably has advantages, I’m guessing, [00:50:00] for.
Corey Maass: For and for responsive. Like, I’ve actually built sites before that. So, you know,
when you think about responsive and I, I know I’m devving out here, but, um, no, go for it.
You’ve generally responsive. You’re thinking mobile phone, you’re thinking tablet, and you’re
thinking desktop. Right. And uh, I’ve actually seen sites where, uh, on desktop we had multiple
columns of content.
So the images were a third of the total width of the site, which, which didn’t go edge to edge on
the screen. So an image was never more than like 800 wide. But then if you looked at it on
tablet, it, it went to a one column view images over text and, and not multiple columns of
content. And so suddenly it was 10,000 or it was a thousand wide, uh, or, you know, [00:51:00]
the size of my iPad here with right.
And so it actually went wider on mobile. And so a lot of people will be messing around building
their website on their desktop computer or on their laptop, and then eventually they’ll look at
their phone or they’ll look at their tablet, um, to do, to test it, and the images will actually go
wider. Um, and so it’s not a bad thing to have an image that’s, again, it’s if it’s compressed,
which is a whole different conversation.
Um, and not, if it’s not four megs and 8,000 pixels wide, it’s okay. That. A little too big cuz
browsers will size things down. Um, and better that than then it’s the, then it’s 800 and gets
upsized to be 1200. Cuz that’s when it looks bad.
Cory Miller: Gotcha. Okay. I’m, I’m much more understanding this now and it makes [00:52:00]
sense, um, because it’s okay to have like a thousand, whatever the default settings are Yeah.
Because you’ve got these benefits, but it’s not like an 18 meg file. Exactly. You know? Exactly.
But it, it’s, it’s in the window of like being quality image and you can set those differently if you
want.
Like in the setting. Yeah. So that’s, that’s great there. Yeah. Um, I gotta tell you, I think right here
you’ve nailed it. , like we’ve got the Gutenberg block. Mm-hmm. . All right, magician, how’d you,
how’d you get this done? Have you been working on this ? I think you told me you were gonna
work.
Corey Maass: No, no, no, no. We, so we, you know, early days when you and I first started
talking about this, um, I hired a couple of different developers, one who helped me out with
featured image and one who helped me out with block.
Um, and they got me [00:53:00] pretty close to the block working, but I couldn’t, I hadn’t
wrapped my head around. Uh, everything else that I’ve subsequently wrapped my head around
by building it for featured images and building it for media library. So then when I went back and
looked at, uh, what he did for the block, I was like, I literally copied the code from Featured
Image.
And so it took 45 minutes or something because he had already done the, the tricky part. And I,
again, have learned a lot more in the interim time. So, uh, so yeah, it was, it was, uh, too big of
a lift early on, but coming back to it, it was almost easy. So, yeah. Um, for me, I want to. See if
[00:54:00] I can, cuz again, I, I’m using, um, the classic editor.
I wanna see if I can overwrite the featured image for that. And then we’re pretty close to, um, I
guess we need the media, like if you click on the add, add image button, you know, in the
classic text editor, um, you know, there’s a couple of, of little things, but they’re not, they’re not
insignificant, but they are not like modern WordPress.
So we’re, we’re in pretty good shape. But yeah, I, I definitely would love your input. Like things
like, don’t call them presets, call them preset aspect ratio. Mm-hmm. , um, um, and start thinking
about the, you know, the happy text, the explanation text, the, um, do you upload one of your
broken images again? Yeah.
um, You know, and, and docs and, and welcome text. [00:55:00] And, and if we start talking
about, um, a little video for, um, you know, to put on that welcome screen, like that’s, that’s
where we’re at. Like starting to actually make this, uh, friendlier and, and more clear. I like your
guy.
Cory Miller: Okay, now I was just playing with that. Yep.
That’s awesome man. I think this is a game changer. I think this right here could be the v1, like
in this, you know, that’s where we started from a long time ago. We just weren’t there. We
needed some time and space to like be able in opportunity obviously to do this, but like that right
there. Hits my original.
Holy crap. Can we have this? Can I have this? Mm-hmm. , I want this thing [00:56:00] because
Yeah. That’s super cool. But now some more, I, I heard what you were sayings like more all text.
If, if I, if I may though. So is the, em the image is cropped right here. Mm-hmm. . But there’s
white space. So is this the block takes up the whole thing.
So we, we would, we can’t do like Right. Justified or something like that.
Corey Maass: What? Right. These are things we need to, to work on. Okay. Add, yeah. These
are, and I, and the truth is, is, is I need more real world usage. Mm-hmm. and people telling me
what they need for me to know what to add. Okay. I mean, the, I think, you know, the, the easy
analogy is if you go at a regular image block,
Good luck figuring it out, cuz Gutenberg is confusing [00:57:00] as heck. Not that I’m cynical.
Um, but you’ve already got, uh, yeah, alignment. Um, what’s the little triangle next to it?
Oh, those filters. Mm-hmm. . So there’s, you know, like that’s where, you know, if people are
using them, if they want them, we can start adding stuff like that. And this is where, what we’ve
talked about, like we can, you know, we can start messing around with other stuff if, if people
want them, um, people need them.
You know, we’re, we’re still currently at version 0 0 3, so,
Cory Miller: okay man, you can get lost in these settings. They’ve added a lot of the settings it
seems. . Mm-hmm. . So would we be able to take, I think somewhere along the way, you
mentioned you [00:58:00] looked at a current block and saw some opportunities here, but would
these, taking this block with some of these things like the filter, um, would be, we’d be able to
hook into that.
I mean essentially like fork? Fork.
Corey Maass: Yeah, I think so. I think so. Or ex extend it basically.
Yeah. See there’s your aspect ratios.
Cory Miller: This must have got a big update or I’ve never looked at it.
Corey Maass: Yeah.
And you know, and part of why it was, I loved your idea of. Doubling down on featured images is
none of these are available and, and are not at, at least as far as I know and are not available in
media library.[00:59:00]
But, so maybe we should do a session where we like, walk through these and, um, yeah. Begin
further. Seriously.
Wow.
Cory Miller: Okay.
That’s, yeah. We de I, I, I for sure need to do this because I had no
Corey Maass: idea.
People at watching are gonna be like, uh, yeah, it’s been there for six weeks.
Cory Miller: Now that, oh, you have to upload the image first. Okay. Or you have to get the
image.
Corey Maass: Sorry. Yeah. I think, I think especially, I especially think the alignment [01:00:00]
stuff, because that, that to me is version one, right? Like, you need an image, you need the
image to behave the way you want. Yeah. Shift left, shift right. Whatever. Um, and then getting
into this kind of stuff is, is gravy and is a rabbit hole.
Oh yeah. Like, you know, we can start again. I, I, I like that we set up a request for feedback.
Um, It would be nice if we started getting people using it cuz then they’d be like, oh, the default
block has such and such. Three, two, why don’t you have three, two, and go, okay, so let’s go
add three, two as a default preset aspect ratio.
And you know, or hey, we, you know, why doesn’t the image shift left sh you know, uh, or why
can’t I set widths? Okay, great. We’ll go add that. Mm-hmm. . [01:01:00]
Cory Miller: Okay. Maybe I need to play with that a little bit more. Um, yeah. Now, but standing
now you don’t wanna like best, uh, that we don’t have at the moment, but alignment, we’ve
already talked about that.
Having that, that’s, that’s pretty cool. Cause you can go over here. Right, exactly. You know, all
that stuff. This is incredibly compelling to me. Um, because it’s kind of your way like. You know
how themes do this with your color settings. Mm-hmm. , but having some, I don’t, this is just a,
this is a pretty cool way to Dr.
Like, this is just this boring image just done with a little filter. Mm-hmm. , or they call these filters,
duotone filters. Yep. The filters are really interesting to me because you can make it like, it’s not
gonna be just another stock. Yours. Yeah. You kinda make it yours. Um, but I think now with the
Gutenberg plug, man, that’s the, [01:02:00] that’s the feature.
Um, I could get us to more installs. Um,
Corey Maass: I agree. Um, I don’t, I don’t know that I’d, I’d be curious why that’s not the right
word. How the core team and, you know, 500 volunteers, et cetera, landed on Duotone. Um,
mm-hmm. rather than something else, because it’s, you know, WordPress is at the whim of the
people who, who are involved.
So it’s like, did they ask for this? Did they want this? You know, did somebody like me come
along and go, oh, this is a neat thing, let’s add it. And everybody was like, yeah, it’s cool. We’ll
add it, you know, or people using it. I, which is, and that’s of course the black box, black box part
of WordPress is [01:03:00] we will never have any idea whether people are actually using
Duotone filters, um, et cetera.
I know that’s a bit of a cynical approach, but it’s like, I want to, I wanna make sure that we are
focused on. We want our own bumpers because it’s, you know, this is, this is the slippery slope
that I often fall into. It’s like, I trusted my gut when you were like, I need a circle. And I was like,
yeah, we need a circle.
But I don’t, my gut doesn’t jump when, when we say duotone filters unless, yeah. You know, but
unless we have compelling evidence that people are using them.
Cory Miller: Yeah. Well I think though the, the single po single block, the, the, the crop to image
block could be really that ticker for, uh, um, getting those active installs.
Um, and now we [01:04:00] need to switch to, I wanted to make sure we talked to that side
because, uh, you surprised me with it. I saw it in there and I was waiting. I was like, no, let him
talk about the settings. You’re like, go. Featured image or whatever, and I was like, I really want
to click on GI Berg Block by White
Corey Maass: Um, well, and that’s, I really, yeah. Uh, the block I think will evolve unto itself. It’ll
have those settings, right? Because your, your media library, even your featured image doesn’t
have left or right. A line, like that’s up to your theme, how it’s being used. Um, so, so the block
will start to evolve with additional settings.
Whatev, and we did, again, my gut jumps. Yes, we need alignment for sure. Um, you pointed out
yourself, you’re like, I uploaded a Lego man and he’s always aligned, left, like, that’s useless. So
immediately we need those, we need alignment. Um, and then I also want to start [01:05:00]
evolving the idea of, again, media library presets, meaning, you know, what kind of image do
you want to upload?
And, and again, and I, I start to get really excited about the idea of images that aren’t even
stored in the library. You’re going to, like media library implies, or we are taught by WordPress
that this is where we store images for WordPress. But why isn’t it just called media? And why
isn’t a place where you can go and edit an image and download it and it, and it has nothing to
do with WordPress.
And that’s exactly the, the sticker mule conversation we had. Mm-hmm. like utility, go to media.
Yeah. It’s a utility to go to media. And it’s not a media library or it’s not just a media library. It’s a
place where, you know, you can edit an image and then download it. So it’s like, yo, you just
created a post for.[01:06:00]
You know, a new post about the brownies, the brownies images image is already in there. Now
you need to create an image for Twitter, you need to create an image for Facebook, you need to
create a square image for Instagram. So jump into media, grab that image that’s already in the
media library, edited a bunch of times, maybe put a title over it.
Download the result. Again, doesn’t get uploaded to Media Library necessarily. And then now
you go over to your socials, or go into Buffer or whatever tool you use for scheduling your, you
know, multi broadcast to all of your socials and upload the appropriate image for each one. Mm-
hmm. . And that also diverges us from Word.
which I think is important, especially now seeing the default image. Like you said, I didn’t realize
half that stuff was in there. And so we are starting to overlap with them, [01:07:00] which I don’t
want to do. Like, what’s the point? If it’s built into core. I mean their, our original thesis was
within media library image cropping is awful and I’ve maintained that.
It still is. But if you can crop an image as quick as we can inside of a block, then, then maybe we
don’t need a block. What’s our differentiator there? But image manipulation elsewhere within
WordPress. Like right now, I would absolutely argue that our featured image handler is better
than the defaults.
And same with media library still. Mm-hmm. . Cause that, that’s that original crop. That’s awful.
So these are the things that we need to, to balance. Yeah. I,
Cory Miller: I mean, I still think the image blocking burg, the, the crop tool is just, I don’t, I don’t
even know how to use it. Right. [01:08:00] Um,
Corey Maass: yeah, yeah. I’m not, I’m not necessarily saying we, we rip, you know, I’m not
gonna go rip it out in version 0 0 4.
Mm-hmm. , but I don’t wanna, we don’t need to recreate that, which WordPress already does.
That’s silly. Yeah. Um, because, and, and I mean, to be like, there, there are plugins out there
that do core features better, and we can still do that. But that, that’s, that, uh, the me, the margin
is thin. The, the margin of value that we add is thin if the features are already there, whereas not
jumping over, having.
Create a post, a story, a page in WordPress, and then jump over to Canva to create your social
images. To me, the margin of value add is much larger. Mm-hmm. . So,
Cory Miller: yeah. I, I was just trying [01:09:00] to think about, you know, you look at,
you look at, like some of the sites we just looked at and you go, there’s a formula here for how
to create a good image. And
I would think like, like showing w beginner, for instance, they’re gonna need Camba or some
photo editing, graphic design software. Um, but there’s this case potentially for the output you
want is something like, like I just went to Medium for a second. And was kinda looking at a
couple of the articles.
Cause I go, you know, high readability, beautiful design, um, very standard. And, you know, I’m
looking at all these posts here and they all have, you know, an image and we know, we know it
would be better if you had the image. [01:10:00] Um, my, so I’m just kind of keeping thinking
about what’s the three value proposition, what’s the paid value proposition on this?
Mm-hmm. and what’s our space for this? Um, but I do think, like, here, here’s the, here’s one
part. There’s all, there’s this image block within Gate Burke and you go a lot of stuff, a lot of
people have thought through those things. A lot of options. Most people won’t even touch ’em.
Mm-hmm. , you know, um, just, most people won’t touch ’em because it’s too deep of tools.
But what, what are you really wanting? , you want a post that looks nice? Mm-hmm. like
attractive and the images help supplement the story. Mm-hmm. . Um, so I’m just kind of think
there with our angle, like we’re here and just kind of continuing to look at where, what’s our
angle for all this? Until we, until we kind of go, okay.
I think this is it. [01:11:00] Like we knew the agency settings case, we got that, we got the block,
then we discovered this other thing. And um, I just keep trying to think through like, if we can get
enough of a pattern of people that have this, have a problem, we can, it’ll really help us
crystallize the all this stuff.
Because you continually say, this is what I love working with awesome developers. We could do
that. Oh, by the way, I already did it. Here it is. And um, now we’ve got enough ingredients I
think. We need to nail that use case where, right.
Corey Maass: Yeah. We’ve got, we’ve got screwdrivers, we’ve got a hammer, we’ve, we’ve now
got the tool belt.
What the hell are we gonna build? Literally
Cory Miller: any, yeah, exactly. We need a person. I wrote this down as you were talking. I was
like, we need a person, you know, the, the, [01:12:00] the user in client, whatever that is, and
whether they want it, you go, I want it to speed it up, what I’m trying to do. Mm-hmm. Like if we
just looked at, because for the publishing conversation, you’re like, what do you really need?
You need to be able to get your content. You’re gonna do the text. That’s your thing when you’re
looking for the images. You want something that kind of fits a formula, like the WP beginner
formula medium, Moz, I looked at Moz, the bakery site. You’re like, that’s a, that’s a formula, a
pattern for how to do content.
So, mm-hmm. , some of this comes into the finding, but like I go, like that duotone use case, I’d
go, why not make every image of Duotone? It’s just something different. You know what I mean?
Like it’s something unique. So I might think through, and where I go back to my past is I like to
use templates for those things.
Mm-hmm. . [01:13:00] So I’m trying to keep that in mind for our product or what we’re doing is
the outcome they’re trying to get is really something that, like you look on medium and you go,
some people don’t. By and large, this just really works. It looks like a clean site. The images are
plusing, the value of the content, which I don’t ever do.
Um, We talked about the four threes, like that seems the standard in a lot of these posts. So I’m
really thinking for that user, the publisher user, um, and trying to build that case for the product
of what we’re doing. Um, mm-hmm. , because like I, I think about the filters and I go, um, I told
you, we, we talked about my cartoon app,
I’m like, now the problem when I write content is I don’t have an image in mind. Mm. So finding
an image is pain the butt, like, let’s put down, we have discovered a [01:14:00] problem. It is
finding, creating sourcing images that are good is a big problem. We haven’t, we haven’t, we’ve
just identified it’s just a problem.
We’re over here. Um, but like I go, if we had, it’s like Instagram. I can take, okay. I’ve got a
camera in my pocket, carry with me all the time. My iPhone, it lets me take pictures. What did
Instagram did? Make them look a little better. Mm-hmm. , you know, just a little bit better. And
that’s, that’s something in this where I think that this is what pulls me back to the duo turn thing,
is it doesn’t have to be due to, it’s just the, a aspect of Sure.
You know, how do I look like it’s not stock
Corey Maass: or Well, and that’s, it’s not, I mean, that’s why AI is, is going running rampant, is
that people are like, I can now generate original art without paying for it, or paying nominally for
[01:15:00] it that nobody else has over and over and over again. Yeah. And that’s why people
are over the moon.
You know, obviously there’s no substitute for hiring a photographer to take pictures of products,
people, things like that. But if you need a. Abstract picture to just kind of add that compelling
human visual element. You’re like, generate a picture of I’m writing a post about coffee, so
generate a picture of a guy on a horse drinking a cup of coffee, you know, I don’t have to spend
hours.
The, the image will come to me and it’ll be unique and literally nobody else will have that.
Whereas, you know, the sites like stock, whatever, the stock photo, stock image sites historically
would charge you more. You could go buy an image, you could pay, you know, a thousand times
more for them to take it off the site to guarantee that nobody else ever used it again.
[01:16:00] Right. Um, that’s not a, that’s not gonna be an issue for much longer, you know?
Cory Miller: Um, it’s not Will it? Okay. So something you said, I wrote down here, I was like,
nobody else has it. See. Like we, we are looking at the, I’m gonna share my screen again. Do
you have a second to keep talking about
Corey Maass: this? Yeah, let’s
Cory Miller: go 10 more minutes.
Um, okay, so Rolling Stone. I don’t have a, the Desi design ability, I don’t have the resources to
create this, this thing now with ai, is there that opportunity That’s mm-hmm. . That’s, that’s really
interesting. But that’s a sidebar. Yep. But like, you think about this now, for now, when I look at
this site, I go, this is thoughtful.
Like this is unique. It’s interesting. Like this, Ima I didn’t even read what this is, but I [01:17:00]
was like, it it fits, you know, the, the case and cuz what you’re trying to, I’m sorry, I’m just trying
to keep talking about the use case. Here is what you’re trying to get is. , you know, back to
beginner, like, hey, nice sight, nice clean, clear side design.
They’re trying to get you to the content. So they’re doing a great job with SEO here with the
intro, restating what the headline’s about. Then they use the image, which I think is clever. Like,
I don’t like the featured image going outside of the post because it just fills out a whack for me.
But I’m like, this is interesting.
They have given an image that probably, you know, uh, this has SEO in it, you know? Mm-hmm.
, I, I, I would guess, look at this. They’ve restated, they’ve restated again, the headline.
Corey Maass: Yeah. Well, and that’s that also, that image is [01:18:00] gonna be, um, usable
for social. Right. If picture that as a, as a Facebook post it, it says their headline right int it.
Cory Miller: Okay, now, now, now you got got me something here. Okay. So may not go
anywhere, but the social share side, you’ve done all of this work to create some kind of content
and that social share, like our stuff from post status. I hate it because it’s not something we don’t
have set up. Right? You know? But what you want is, I’ve just done this cool post here that
hopefully is of interest to you and you’re using the image in social to pull somebody into it.
It’s kinda like this, almost like this. Well, or who is the
Freemius or are they, there [01:19:00] you go. Like if you look at this from a social Sears
standpoint, it’s probably more interesting. Visually, you can kind of say, I see Covid and I see
some kinda like weird things around it. Mm-hmm. , right? But I go, it’s something to do with
Covid, like from a social share. That’s pretty good.
Like that’s what you’d want represented out on social is it’s uh, it’s the product packaging to say,
there’s something in here I want and to go get it. We talked a little bit about that yo side, but
man, all of that social sharing stuff is just a mess. Like when I post my, I should do it here when I
post my, let me show you something.
If you have a second. If I go into to Slack and I’m gonna, then I’m gonna try to share this so you
can see it. Okay. Maybe this has [01:20:00] been fixed, but this thing right.
This, this little snippet that’s now fixed. I don’t, oh, it’s cuz I clicked the social share stuff. But
see, like when you do
any day now
Okay. Anyway, it doesn’t look good. Like it’s, it’s not, there we go. Yeah, sure. Okay. So
somehow this, this has attached to the homepage, right? But the idea that you want is, it
represents that f. Social share, whatever the image thing, whatever we titled it, feature name or
whatever it is, like that, whatever [01:21:00] this, I don’t know if it’s graphical or whatever it’s
called.
But, um, what you’re trying to do when you post that to social is show this effect of what, like, w
if you beginner on different things, designs, like here’s something to show you see, show you
what this post is about. That’s an interesting angle, but I, I don’t know where it goes from here,
but like,
Corey Maass: so like here’s, here’s a tool that I’ve been playing around with lately is, uh, so
Twitter has introduced cards the same way that Facebook a while ago introduced their open
graph. So you come here and you plug in post status and you say preview card. Card preview
has moved to tweet composer . Okay. Uh, but we can do tweet card preview banner bear.
So if I [01:22:00] plug in post status, they built their own preview. There you go. So like, that’s
what it’s gonna look like on social.
And these are the tools, you know, that are becoming more and more prevalent. And it’s like, so
in Yeah, in Yost, using them as an example, and I think the other SEO plugins have this too, is
you, you know, you, you set your featured image and it will automatically suck in your featured
image as the OG image, but you can also set a different one.
And so you can go and, and so like, I actually wanted to do just what you said, um, previous and
go to their blog and pick a blog post. . And so like this is, uh, I’m breaking their site, [01:23:00]
so they’ve got an image in the background. This is text, you know, an H one or whatever. But,
um, you know, VVA is so phenomenal with social media and stuff like that, that I bet if I take this
U R L and I plug it in here and I hit enter that he’s created.
Yeah. See, so he’s created a custom image that is that same background image, but has his
little photo in it has a title, you know, and this is all one image that is been generated Canva,
somewhere different from, you know, the, the title up here. Whereas this is all actually H T M L
element.
Yeah, food for thought and, and actually a conversation to take offline, um, is there are features
here that, um, [01:24:00] overlap with other stuff that I’ve been working on. And so maybe it’s,
maybe we wanna wrap it all in together, or maybe this is a different kind of like the, you know,
we keep talking around ai, but we’re just not, that’s not the product we’re building this year, let’s
say.
Unless it, it, it’s the on unless we get to the point where it’s the only thing we can build. Right.
Um, and so it’s, maybe it’s something like that or maybe it’s the direction that we we’re, we’re
talking about, I dunno. Mm-hmm.
Cory Miller: Yeah. Now you got my mind rolling.
Corey Maass: Yep. Um, I gotta get. Okay. I do think that we need bringing, bringing you way
back down . Um, I mean, and I’m not picking on you, both of us, like these are our
conversations, but [01:25:00] um, I think having you go through the plugin and just saying, look,
we need, this needs a little design or this needs some intro text, or what the heck is the word
preset mean?
Um, would take us pretty far. Cuz right now we do have a very developer friendly product. And
so me going in and just changing some labels and things, if that makes it 20% more usable,
which I think is true, um, then, then we’re gonna be better off. The other thing is the Readme
needs updating now because we have a block.
We have featured images, we have. Media library. We have some basic settings. Okay. So let’s,
you know, I, I, I think we’re having, in a good way, we’re having all of the different company
meetings in one . We’re having the executive level discussions, [01:26:00] which are arguably
way more fun, but we also need to be having the, you know, low level mm-hmm.
dev, you know, dev conversations to make sure that we keep moving, moving what we’ve got
forward, um, in a, in a practical sense. Mm-hmm. .
Cory Miller: Yep. Okay. Well I’ve got down here, review the plugin. I’ll do a video on that, walk
through several things and just note stuff.
Corey Maass: Hi puppy. Um, your background changed. How did I take this long to even
notice?
Cory Miller: Yeah, I know, right? I got the fancy new sleeper.
Corey Maass: So it’s so respectable now. Don’t go that far
Cory Miller: yet. . I do. I think, I think, I’ll tell you what, I need a big poster right over there. Yeah.
Um, yeah. Looking respectable, man. What can you say?
Corey Maass: I’m proud of you, buddy. Thank you, . [01:27:00]
Cory Miller: Um, and then I’ve got the read me file too.
Um, to go back to Yeah. And I
Corey Maass: think that for me, like we now have Yeah. Read, read Me as you, um, or us like
we, we did it together last time. We can do it again. Um, I, I guess what I’m envisioning right is
we’re, we’re pretty close to feature, complete, um, Or something that’s actually usable. Like I’m,
I’m on the verge of actually installing this on my client’s websites.
I’ve got it on some of my own cuz I’m willing to muddle through the things that were confusing
or, um, you know, or, or not clear or, um, that’s redundant, um, or not what I needed. Whereas
now I’m like, okay, my clients have to upload a 16.9 featured image every day and currently they
have to go use a separate tool.
I’m ready to install this [01:28:00] plugin cuz it actually does what I need. Um, and so I wanna
make sure that we are. Product complete. So Dev builds the features and then we as a team
have complete the product. And then frankly, we can sit on it for a long time and keep having
more of these conversations or ex, you know, start from there.
It’s like we’ve built the dock out into the lake and so then we can start dipping our toe in more,
but mm-hmm. , we’re, you know, we’re out there, we’re in the world. Um, and, and people, other
people can use the dock too. I feel like right now we’ve got the, uh, the, the janky, uh, we’re, it’s
a, it’s a wooden pallet floating on empty beer cans.
And so we wouldn’t allow our loved ones to go use it to get out into the lake. Yes, I’m running
with this metaphor. You know, we’re close to having actually swimming built a reasonable dock.
Um, you know, that’s safe enough for our, for children to [01:29:00] use that kind of thing.
Cory Miller: You’re swimming with that metaphor.
Sta. All right. Thanks man. Um, okay. Yeah, I’ve got my team marching items. Thanks for
keeping us grounded. Let me, uh, float in the atmosphere a little bit. I, it really is for specific
reasons cause I know when we go Got it. You know, like right there and, and some of that’s
validation, but just a little bit more clarity on how, who is gonna value this and is it the right thing
for what they need.
Um, but Okay. Thanks dude. Thanks for jumping on today. All right.
