Post Status Happiness Hour Session Four

Transcript ↓

In this episode of the Post Status Happiness Hour, Michelle Frechette chats with Jess Frick to explore the latest advancements in the WordPress community, focusing on Pressable’s newly redesigned website. Jess provides an inside look at the new features and improvements on Pressable’s site, including its enhanced user experience and functionality. The episode also covers the Independent Plugin Alliance for WordPress (IPAWP), a new initiative to support smaller plugin companies, Michelle’s new role at Post Status Executive Director and some new things they are up to. The episode also teases an upcoming conversation with Doc Popular about his innovative work with WordPress on the Fediverse.

Top Takeaways:

Pressable’s Integration and Community Engagement: Pressable, as discussed by Jess, is committed to providing valuable hosting solutions and integrating with various community and plugin initiatives. Jess highlights how Pressable supports the WordPress community through partnerships and is open to exploring collaborative efforts with plugin developers, such as confirming compatibility and assisting with marketing strategies. This reflects Pressable’s dedication to fostering a supportive ecosystem for WordPress users and developers.
Pressable’s Role in the WordPress Ecosystem: Pressable is actively involved in the WordPress community, offering robust hosting solutions and working closely with other organizations and plugin developers. Jess Frick emphasizes how Pressable is committed to providing high-quality service and support, and how it engages with the community by being a resource for plugin developers and exploring ways to collaborate on marketing and growth strategies. This involvement showcases Pressable’s dedication to both technical excellence and community support.
Community Engagement and Support: Michelle and Jess discuss the importance of community support and engagement, highlighting how they’ve used platforms like Post Status and WP Coffee Talk to foster connections and growth within the WordPress community.
Focus on Inclusivity: The conversation emphasizes the significance of inclusivity in content creation. Michelle and Jess appreciate tools like Yoast’s inclusive language checker for helping writers avoid unintentional offense and promote better practices.
Learning from Mistakes: Both Michelle and Jess share experiences where they learned from mistakes and used them as opportunities for growth. Michelle recounts instances where she acknowledged errors in accessibility and inclusion and took steps to improve.

Mentioned In The Show:

🐦 You can follow Post Status and our guests on Twitter:

Jessica Frick (VP of Operations for Pressable )
Michelle Frechette (Director of Community Relations, Post Status)
Olivia Bisset (Intern, Post Status)

The Post Status podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis. 📝

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Transcript

[00:00:02] Michelle Frechette: Welcome to the show! It’s the Happiness Hour. So what are we doing? Spreading some happiness. How are you, Jess?

[00:00:09] Jess Frick: Oh, I’m so happy. How are you?

[00:00:12] Michelle Frechette: To be honest, and this is going to sound so schmaltzy, but, like, every time I get to have FaceTime with you, I’m happy. Like, I just. I appreciate our friendship so much and I love all the work that you do in WordPress. And so if we get the time to be on a call together, then that makes me happy. So thanks for being here today.

[00:00:30] Jess Frick: I feel the same way. I genuinely just love your heart and soul and spirit. WordPress. No, WordPress. You’re just. You’re a good egg.

[00:00:39] Michelle Frechette: Thank you. Likewise. For sure. And I always spend, like, at least the first five minutes of every call with you, like, looking at what’s different in your background this time. Like, I love how you decorate and all the stuff, so.

[00:00:50] Jess Frick: Thanks. Yeah. What’s new now is this guy. I am. This is my grandson. I am cat sitting right now for my son, who is up in Boston.

[00:01:02] Michelle Frechette: Oh, nice. And what’s the cat’s name?

[00:01:05] Jess Frick: The cat’s name is Kush.

[00:01:08] Michelle Frechette: Okay. Is there a reason or. We don’t talk about it.

[00:01:12] Jess Frick: My son’s a teenager.

[00:01:14] Michelle Frechette: Okay, okay, enough said. Enough said. Yeah. My daughter’s 32, and yet sometimes there’s, like, mom, there are things you don’t need to know. So it’s all good. It’s all good.

[00:01:26] Jess Frick: Yeah. Well, the excitement here, the cat has learned how to open the doors in the house, so.

[00:01:31] Michelle Frechette: Okay.

[00:01:32] Jess Frick: It’s an exciting day here at Casa Frick.

[00:01:36] Michelle Frechette: I guess it is.

[00:01:39] Jess Frick: What’s news with you, Michelle?

[00:01:41] Michelle Frechette: What’s new with me is. Okay, so if you’ve ever done an online event that was live streamed throughout the entire day, you know that for every track that you had, you have one giant YouTube video, because they don’t stop and start and stop and start. Right?

[00:01:59] Jess Frick: Yeah.

[00:02:00] Michelle Frechette: So we had Stellar Sparked about two weeks ago, and that was two tracks.

[00:02:05] Jess Frick: Congrats, by the way.

[00:02:06] Michelle Frechette: Thank you. It went really well. I was so happy. We had such great speakers. But I always think, oh, I can slice and dice these up into individual talks, add the bumpers and post them on YouTube. I’ll have it done by Tuesday. No, it took me two weeks. It took me two weeks to get through them all, but I got them all. The last one uploaded this morning, and I was able to send that out to all of my speakers so that they have those links to the things that they do. So that’s what is exciting in my life today. Also, if you see all the trash and stuff behind me, I can’t point the right directions. I’m having a new flooring put in today and new toilet put in in my house, and the trash is not done being taken out yet. So I usually have a more pristine background than this.

[00:02:49] Jess Frick: So it looks pretty pristine to me. Had you not pointed that out, I probably wouldn’t have even seen it. But now I have to ask the important follow up question, what kind of flooring?

[00:03:00] Michelle Frechette: Yeah. So it was just peel and stick over the old linoleum. So you probably know. I don’t know if everybody knows. I bought this condo from my parents, who were the original owners. It was built in 19. Oh, they moved in in 1988. They were the first people to live in this condo. And so all of the choice style choices that they made of are from 1988. So the linoleum in that bathroom, well, first of all, the walls used to be mustard yellow, was terrible.

[00:03:30] Jess Frick: It’s coming back in, like, a retro kitsch way.

[00:03:34] Michelle Frechette: Like, I could hardly use that bathroom because I felt so. Like it was so oppressive. The yellow. So it’s now white with the accent, wall of dark gray with my own original artwork in there. Photography in there. As I took a picture in a car wash of the windshield made of black and white, had it blown up and put that in there. So everything is really starting to match and look really nice. So today, some gray tiles went in like, it looks like wood. You know, like the wood tiles, like long slats. And I’m very, very happy with it. So.

[00:04:05] Jess Frick: By the way, if anybody is watching this who doesn’t know, Michelle is a yemenite, gifted photographer. So hearing that you’ve decorated other rooms in your house with your own photography just does not surprise me at all.

[00:04:19] Michelle Frechette: You know, I mean, it could feel a little self indulgent, but on the other hand, I spent a lot of time, you know, practicing my craft and taking photos that I love. So why not surround myself with the beauty that I like to. To photograph. So, yeah, like, these are all, you know, my work here and that kind of thing. So actually recently changed the aspect ratio or the, I don’t know, the zoom of my camera. So now you can see more. You can see all the guitars and the flute and the trumpets. You can see my jersey over here from word camp Phoenix last year that everybody signed. And my word right over the. I can’t point. We all know I’m so challenged. Right over the door is my WordCamp 2024 euro license plate that Google gave me. And that I had on my scooter. So. Yeah, so it’s coming together nicely.

Jess Frick: That’s awesome.

Michelle Frechette: Thank you. But the reason I invited you on today is because you’re doing some pretty cool stuff at Pressable and you recently had a redesign of your website.

Jess Frick: We sure did.

Michelle Frick: And I want to be able to, I wanted to like talk through it and tell me what you did and why you did it. And, and is it always dark or is there a light mode too? You know, all those things. I mean, I know the answers, but I want you to show the answers too. So let’s bring it. I’m going to add your screen so you can walk us through a little bit of what’s going on at Pressable.

[00:05:40] Jess Frick: Yeah. So pressable.com. for anybody that’s not familiar with us, we’re a managed WordPress host. We’re part of th Automatic family of brands, but we are more of a traditional WordPress host as opposed to what you’re familiar with WordPress.com. I gotta give them some love too, because they’re doing some interesting stuff over there. But you’re gonna find that Pressable is kind of more of the experience that you’re familiar with. Plus. Plus. And so we wanted to make sure our new website spoke to those that would understand our unique selling propositions. We’re not somebody that is going to be your first host. We’re who you move to after you’ve experienced other hosts. We’ve won awards for how beautiful our interface is and we’re really known for our support. It’s difficult to quantify support, but you know good ones when you get it.

[00:06:41] Michelle Frechette: Oh yeah, for sure.

[00:06:42] Jess Frick: And so we wanted to make sure our website was very sleek and modern and spoke to more of a WordPress professional. Now that said, people who own businesses that have serious websites on WordPress, they will absolutely find a home with us as well. And so we drew a lot of inspiration, honestly, from more high tech applications than the standard hosting aesthetic. And so you’ll see that in a lot of our typography, in our color scheme. You originally had asked, even though you know the answer, yes, it does have a light mode. Watch your eyes, everybody. Here it comes.

[00:07:23] Michelle Frechette: See, now I am a light mode person.

Jess Frick: Michelle!

Michelle Frechette: I am. Dark mode hurts my eyes. It just does. I have trouble reading it. And so I’m one of those few people that’s like always puts the light mode on. So I think it’s beautiful. The dark mode, it looks lovely. But if I was going to spend enough time on it, I am so happy that, that I can toggle it to light mode for myself, and I think that that is a truly accessible feature when you create a site that can toggle back and forth for the minority of people like me who enjoy the light mode better. But it is definitely a much more beautiful. It’s beautiful either way, but it’s a much more beautiful sight when you see it in dark mode.

[00:08:01] Jess Frick: Well, thank you for that. We actually drew a lot of inspiration from our WordPress hosting panel, which looks a lot like this on the inside. If I click here, you’d actually see a video of me walking through it. I won’t do it on the live, but I one of the things that our front end engineer Wayne, whose name’s right there, put a lot of effort into is making sure that all of our context is accessible. There are a lot of people who have perception challenges, be it color or contrast. And so our management portal offers not just light mode and dark mode, but also specific color perception changes. So perhaps you don’t see blue or red. Doesn’t render right for you. I’m sorry, render is the wrong word. Red doesn’t look the way to you that it does to everyone else.

[00:09:03] Michelle Frechette: Gotcha.

[00:09:04] Jess Frick: We have offered a lot of extensibility in that. And so for our website, this first version, you do manually decide whether it’s light mode or dark mode, but our next iteration is going to look to your device to see what your preference is, generally speaking.

[00:09:23] Michelle Frechette: That’s really cool.

[00:09:25] Jess Frick: Yeah. Yeah. It was important to us because honestly, we want everyone to sit at our table.

[00:09:32] Michelle Frechette: I love that. I love that I talk about the table all the time. You know, that, like accessibility and underrepresentation. So I love that. That it’s an open invitation to everyone.

[00:09:44] Jess Frick: Yeah. If. If our table is not suitable for everyone, then we still have a lot of work to do. And by no means are we perfect. It’s constantly evolving and we’ve got way more to do, but we’ve invested the time and effort into doing a lot of it so far. And I’m. It’s one of the things that I really love about our team. We really care about that.

[00:10:08] Michelle Frechette: So when. So I know in different places, site redesigns can be a quick thing or they can be an incredibly long process. When did you all decide that you wanted to redesign the site, and how long did it take you? Because I’m always curious about those things.

[00:10:26] Jess Frick: So we decided we wanted to do this last year, and we’ve been working on it for a very long time. Our previous website was not block based.

[00:10:38] Michelle Frechette: Okay.

[00:10:40] Jess Frick: We relied heavily on advanced custom fields, and it was a conglomeration of five years of incredible work on behalf of our front end engineer. But we decided we really wanted to eat our own dog food. We are firm believers that blocks are the way of the future, and so we wanted to go there. We actually even have some FSC involved, full site editing in some parts. Not everything is block based, but a lot of it is. And so for our use, but also performance, and again, accessibility, we wanted to really go all in on that, but that involves rebuilding a lot of modules and elements. And so that’s what took the most time. A lot of careful thought went into how we did that, and even things like our features page. I will go over here. So our features page now has kind of an all features situation, but we broke up all of our. Kish wants to be on the call. We broke up our features with our product. So, you know, there are lots of things that we offer to help you build, manage, collaborate, or automate. And so figuring out these funnels took a little bit of time. Building out the modules took more. So I will pick on this page just to click one of them. You know, one of the cool things that we did was we changed all of our imagery to really focus on what the product looks like. If you ever see any pictures of people, those are all in black and white, but our interface is always in color. To really let that shine through, because that’s what we’re focusing on. I mean, obviously the people will always be in it, but we really wanted to drive home how beautiful the product is.

[00:12:48] Michelle Frechette: And it really does make a stark juxtaposition or whatever you want to say. Contrast. I think also as you’re scrolling through, I’m noticing that there was an absolute attention to the color palette that was selected, so everything blends really well, and it’s very distinct.

[00:13:05] Jess Frick: Thank you. Yeah, we’re very excited about it. Obviously, plenty of room to grow when.

[00:13:13] Michelle Frechette: There always is, right?

[00:13:14] Jess Frick: Yeah. I will tell you one thing that I’m really excited about is we added a changelog, and this is something that we don’t often see in our space. But this is going to be a great opportunity for me personally to brag about the new things that we introduce. You know, a lot of times people will ask for roadmaps. I hope to be able to offer that in the future, but at least now, you know, the big things that are released, whether you want to be on our email list or not, to which people say, but what about your competitors? Then they know well, I should hope they do, right?

[00:13:50] Michelle Frechette: For sure.

[00:13:53] Jess Frick: So. Yeah. And we just continue to work through all of our pages. I’m very excited with the performance that we’re seeing. I think I can share that. Our conversions have increased since our redesigns. I’m very excited about that.

[00:14:14] Michelle Frechette: I love that. That the way it’s supposed to go.

[00:14:16] Jess Frick: Yeah, exactly. And most of our feedback has been positive. We’ve gotten some constructive feedback, which, you know, we’re grateful for.

[00:14:24] Michelle Frechette: Absolutely.

[00:14:25] Jess Frick: But overall, it’s been pretty positive.

[00:14:28] Michelle Frechette: Yeah, I love that. So if I can brag just a little bit. So I. And we didn’t clear this in advance, so I hope it’s okay that I bring up a conversation you and I had over a year ago. About a year and a half ago, maybe, but you and I had a conversation around Underrepresented In Tech and ways that all companies can do better. And you wanted. You want to pick my brain session.

[00:14:55] Jess Frick: Yes I did!

[00:14:56] Michelle Frechette: So you were like, I’m going to pick their brain. So you came and you met with me and Allie, and. And I was trying to think of ways that you could move more into, like, I don’t know, customer service or community service. And I, on the top of my head said, oh, you could build a speaker bureau or a speaker directory online and host it on principal and all these things. And you were like, I love that idea, but I don’t have the resources right now. We have so many irons in the fire. We just. There’s. We can’t do that right now. And so then I approached you later and I was like, so I gave you this idea, but can I take it back if you’re not going to do it? And you said, absolutely, and let us host it because it’s that good of an idea. And I appreciate what you did. And so wpspeakers.com, if you do scroll down, you’ll see one of our sponsors is Pressable. It’s because you are hosting this idea that we kind of came up with spur of the moment. Try it together. So, yeah, so. And I can attest that the interface is easy to use. I’ve. Do you know how many times I’ve used. Used the customer support at Pressable?

[00:16:04] Jess Frick: How many?

[00:16:05] Michelle Frechette: Zero. Because I’ve never needed it.

[00:16:08] Jess Frick: I love that.

[00:16:10] Michelle Frechette: It just does what it’s supposed to do.

[00:16:12] Jess Frick: Well, sometime, just for fun, reach out to our support team and see how long it takes them to respond.

[00:16:18] Michelle Frechette: Yeah, I’m sure it’s not very long at all.

[00:16:20] Jess Frick: It’s really not. And you’re not going to get, you know, somebody who is reading from a script or, you know, some kind of a chat bot running the first line. If you write us and you’re like, oh my gosh, I need help with this, you’re going to get a WordPress expert that genuinely cares about your success.

[00:16:39] Michelle Frechette: And I love like, so I decided over a weekend, like next week’s the week I’m going to start the site. I started building it on a Monday night, soft launched it in a public forum on Wednesday, and by Friday I had like 75 people signed up to be speakers. And all of it moved very quickly because I didn’t struggle with my hosting. Right. So like, that was an awesome part of the whole thing was just to be able to not have to worry, you know, the, all of the things connected the way they were supposed to. I’m just struggling with writing that name servers, that was one of them. All of those things worked through the way that they were supposed to. And yeah, it was just.

[00:17:18] Jess Frick:I gotta, I gotta say, your website’s pretty fast.

[00:17:20] Michelle Frechette: It’s lightning speed. It is very quick.

[00:17:22] Jess Frick: Look at that beautiful lady.

[00:17:24] Michelle Frechette: Aw. The one time in the last three years I wore makeup and there it is for my headshots.

[00:17:31] Jess Frick: And your hair is so purple.

[00:17:33] Michelle Frechette: So purple backlit and everything. But yeah, that was a lot of fun. But yeah. So thank you for hosting the site because I think it, I know even today, six or seven inquiries went through this site to ask people to speak at or to consider speaking at an event that’s coming up this fall, because I see what’s happening on the site. And so to know that it’s being used on a regular basis to serve our community, we don’t charge people to use it. It’s just a wonderful thing. So thank you.

[00:18:02] Jess Frick: And those are the ones that you can see.

[00:18:04] Michelle Frechette: Right. Right. Because people might reach out directly to one another without going through the forms on the site for sure. And I’m sure they do. Oh, I didn’t know so and so spoke this I’ll just dm them kind of thing.

[00:18:14] Jess Frick: So that’s a beautiful thing.

[00:18:17] Michelle Frechette: Yeah. Thanks. So put it back in dark mode so people can see. Cause that’s your favorite.

[00:18:21] Jess Frick: Here we go.

[00:18:22] Michelle Frechette: It does glow in a way, like really nicely, right? All the colors and everything. Really.

[00:18:27] Jess Frick: Yeah. I know that you don’t love it, but my goodness, I just.

[00:18:31] Michelle Frechette:No I love how it looks. I just can’t read for very long. That’s all white on black.

[00:18:37] Jess Frick: So I understand. I understand. We actually purposely didn’t use black black, right.

[00:18:42] Michelle Frechette: Yeah, but it’s almost like an eggplant or something. A dark eggplant. But when, when I first discovered Reddit had dark mode, because that’s the first time I ever knew anything like that, I switched it over and within 10 seconds I was like, oh, no, I cannot do this. It’s just one of those people that, it just irritates my, my eyes and my headache, so. But I think it’s beautiful and I.

Jess Frick: Thank you.

Michelle Frechette: And, and you don’t read a homepage like you read a book. It’s not like you’re there for 3 hours, so it doesn’t bother me. But I do like that it switches back and forth so that you can watch it or see it in the light mode as well. I think that’s an important feature.

[00:19:20] Jess Frick: Yeah. And I mean, again, looking at our blog, I could see sometimes when you are trying to read it, you know, for someone that has that perception challenge makes it very easy. Yeah.

[00:19:35] Michelle Frechette: So, like right now, if you switch this over to the light mode, that it’s, for me, much easier to read. The dark on the white background is much easier. Light background, yeah. Very cool. So for anybody who doesn’t know, this isn’t really a commercial per se, but still here it could be, right? You’re not sponsoring none of that. We just, like, I just using this happiness hours to talk about different people’s projects and businesses and so tell us about some of the features of Pressable hosting that you think would make somebody want to go from their first host to their next host.

[00:20:12] Jess Frick: Well, like I said, our support is truly incredible. I offer a sneak peek behind the scenes on this video on our homepage. So definitely go check that out. Our performance is incredible. I think you will find we deserve all of the top awards that we got in this past year’s review signal testing. We always win top accolades and for good reason. We are really, really fast, no matter how heavy a traffic load you throw at us. And I know this is getting like, super sponsor. Yeah, I’ll stop sharing. I can make it. There we go. Now it’s not a sponsoring.

[00:20:58] Michelle Frechette: There you go.

[00:21:01] Jess Frick: I think one of the things that I personally love the most about Pressable is just how easy it is to use, whether you’re building a new site or migrating into it. I feel like our ideal customer is managing a lot of websites or one big website, and there’s very little margin for error when you’re working like that. And so you need something that’s easy, powerful, works to your workflow. We have one of the most extensive API libraries I’ve ever seen. And we’re very public about all of the endpoints, so it’s very easy to figure out whether you want to work with us or not.

[00:21:38] Michelle Frechette: Nice and security wise, you feel confident about your security as well?

[00:21:43] Jess Frick: Oh, 100%. We’re part of the Automatic family. We’re built on WP Cloud, so at the server level it’s as rock solid as it gets on a first site level. We include premium Jetpack security, which normally would cost quite a bit of money if you want to have that. And so we feel that that is a great way to manage your site security. I know you’re from the ithemes now Solid Security family and I do. I think Solid Security is a great product. I love it.

[00:22:17] Michelle Frechette: It really is. Absolutely.

[00:22:19] Jess Frick: I still have it on one of the sites that I manage. Even though I’m obviously a Jetpack girl, I really do love how easy it is to toggle things on and off. They’ve got some premium features that they make very accessible to people who are not super technical.

[00:22:35] Michelle Frechette: Yeah. When I first started building with WordPress, which was 2011, so quite a few years ago, I wanted to be able to adjust CSS and that was not built into the WordPress editor at that point in time. So I would add Jetpack back then just so that I could edit CSS because it was part of the Jetpack tool back then. I don’t know if you remember that. And so I would add Jetpack and also when all of a sudden everybody had a smartphone in their hand and our websites needed to be mobile responsive for any customers that I had at the time because I was freelancing back then who didn’t want to invest money to redesign a site into being mobile responsive. Jetpack had a way for you to display in a mobile responsive way just by hitting a toggle. And so, like, back in the day, it was like, it just saved me so much time and energy to do those things that I needed to do. Of course, now a lot of the things are built in into WordPress, which is great and part of core. And Jetpack has grown and found better ways to be implemented in your site as well. I mean, there used to be this, it’s so bloaty, it takes up so much space, and it did back in the day and that’s not the case anymore. And so it’s nice to be able to see how things have developed over the years because 13 years between my first site and today, that’s a lot of growth in WordPress. Right. So.

[00:24:05] Jess Frick: For sure. And that’s honestly what I tell people when they tell me they don’t like Jetpack because it slows down their site. When was the last time you used it.

Michelle Frechette: Exactly.

Jess Frick: Did it not work for you? Ten years ago.

[00:24:19] Michelle Frechette: It’s not different since 2015.

[00:24:21] Jess Frick: Yeah, it. They’ve done a lot to it. And I. On there, you know, there are mixed opinions on whether they should have kept it all as one or whether they should have broken it apart. I personally love the choose your own adventure aspect of breaking it apart into different features that you don’t have everything.

[00:24:41] Michelle Frechette: No, for sure. I think that’s, um. Definitely. I think. Yes, it’s absolutely. I’m trying to find a way to copy something I did, and it won’t let me. I was going to put in the. Was going to put across the bottom. If you have questions for Jess, comment in the chat and we’ll answer them. I think it’s in the chat, but I don’t know. People who arrive late see that. So if you do, if you’re watching and you have questions, let us know, because I cannot make it go across the bottom without sitting here and typing it out, and I can’t talk a type at the same time. Anyway. Yes, I think Jetpack has a lot of really good qualities now and to be able to use it, and I know that there are premium features and regular features and all of those things. So if you’re interested in exploring that some more, maybe we’ll get somebody on the show in a couple weeks or whatever to talk about Jetpack and how it’s changed over the years and what it looks like today versus what people’s collective memory judges it to be. Right, so all of that.

[00:25:33] Jess Frick: So, Michelle, I’ve got a question for you.

[00:25:35] Michelle Frechette: Uh oh, yes.

[00:25:37] Jess Frick: What is the one plugin that you put on every single site that you run?

[00:25:44] Michelle Frechette: The one plugin I put on every single site. Well, I have more than one that I put on every single site, so. But Yoast. I always use yoast for my SEO. It is, for me, the easiest. I learned it, I know how to use it. And the fact that they have an inclusive language add in to the free version of it, and the work that I do with under representation, I think is super important. And so that I use Yoast for that. And then I always use WS Form. I mean, even if all I’m doing is a contact form and it doesn’t need all of the, you know, of the opportunity that that WS Form comes with. I have a developer license there from my dear friend Mark Westgard.

[00:26:25] Jess Frick: I was gonna say, do we need to tell people like FTC guidelines that you’re work married to the creator?

[00:26:33] Michelle Frechette: His wife knows, too. It’s all good.

[00:26:34] Jess Frick: Yeah, it’s good work married. Not real married married.

[00:26:38] Michelle Frechette: Exactly. But yeah. So WS Form goes on every one of my sites as well. And then depending on, you know, what I’m doing, I use Kadence. I used to use another site, you know, builder, but Kadence, I love that it’s block based and you have so many opportunities to use it, so I use Kadence on all my sites now, too.

[00:26:56] Jess Frick: Yeah, without mentioning the site, but I can share that. Kadence graciously offered to a generous discount to a nonprofit that I was helping, and it produced the most beautiful site for them. I am just so thrilled with how that turned out, and it gave me an opportunity to see the Kadence team up close and just how much they genuinely care about people. And I did have to use their support for one weird thing, because, of course, you know, it’s me. When I get in there, I’m going to break something because I’m trying to just work it to the edge.

[00:27:35] Michelle Frechette: It’s harder to break hosting than it is to break your site, though. Let’s just admit that, right?

[00:27:40] Jess Frick: It’s true. It’s true. But, you know, I’m always trying to do things and, you know, you can’t get there from here. And their support was just fantastic. That also said, you mentioned Yoast, and nobody ever needs Yoast support.

[00:27:56] Michelle Frechette: Except you.

[00:27:57] Jess Frick: When we updated the Pressable site, could not figure out how to update our social image, and there was this weird, random cash that we didn’t know about, and Yoast support looked at our website and figured it out and found it and helped us clear it so that we could have our new social thing. Because looking at the front end, you would have thought that it was showing up everywhere and we just couldn’t get rid of the dang thing. Yeah, Yoast support again won my whole heart.

[00:28:30] Michelle Frechette: Yeah, Yoast is so community minded, too. I love how they lean into supporting underrepresented groups, how they often host the pride parties at big WordCamp events, and if I can brag for just a moment with Underrepresented In Tech, they used to sponsor some of Allie’s time when Allie was on the project, and then when Allie stepped back, I actually went to, went to Taco and asked him. I’m like, hey, I want to ask Sama to be my co-host and my partner in this project. But I’ll only ask her if she can do it during her work hours at Yoast, and so that this isn’t something she has to do on the outside, because I don’t want to fundraise, I don’t want to have to find sponsors to pay her time. And he came back to me the next day and said, go for it. They sponsor her time. Just like a lot of Automaticians are sponsored into community work, they do that with Samaz hours. And so every week that we record Underrepresented In Tech and the things that we do, like, we alternate the newsletter every other month, those kinds of things. She is able to do that during her work hours and not have to do that after time. So, yes, I’m a big Yoast fan. Not gonna lie. I don’t need to lie.

[00:29:47] Jess Frick: And the inclusive language tool is just so smart. It really so forward thinking.

[00:29:53] Michelle Frechette: Yeah, I agree 100%.

[00:29:55] Jess Frick: It’s gotten me a couple times, and I feel like I’m pretty self aware of these things, but you just. You don’t know what you don’t know. So it’s nice to have a checker to help you.

[00:30:04] Michelle Frechette: Yeah. I’ll be honest and say it’s never caught me, but that is my. That’s my niche. So if it catches me, I’m going to be surprised that I missed something. But I still haven’t turned on on every site. So just to make sure that I don’t miss anything or type something that I didn’t know could be offensive, you know, that’s the most important thing to me, is it’s not necessarily that we intentionally make mistakes. People who intentionally seek to hurt others with words don’t use the. They don’t use that part of Yoast because they don’t care if they’re offending people. But people like you and me, we do care, and we never want to unintentionally offend somebody. So if it does catch something that we write, that makes us stronger writers and bigger allies in the community, which I think is a good thing.

[00:30:45] Jess Frick: Well, now the conversation is evolving, and I like where this is going. You know, I think if more people were willing to be wrong, we could all grow a whole lot.

[00:30:56] Michelle Frechette: Absolutely.

[00:30:57] Jess Frick: You know, it’s. It’s a little nerve wracking to have something like that running on your site because you’re like, oh, my god, is it gonna just be, you know, nagging me the whole time? And the reality is, no, I mean, if. Yeah, you’re trying to, you know, be inclusive with your language and your word choice. No, it’s not.

[00:31:14] Michelle Frechette: Absolutely.

[00:31:15] Jess Frick: But we don’t know our blind spots. You know, going back to that call that I got to have with you and Allie, the pick your brain session. I told you on the call. I don’t know what I don’t know. So, can you help me figure out how to get there in a way that is as inclusive as possible.

[00:31:31] Michelle Frechette: Yep. Exactly. Which it’s. I love when people reach out for help, right? It’s great if we have the capacity to help others and the willingness to do so to help others grow because they’re seeking to do better. Like, there’s no better way than that, right? Like, I remember wishing school would be over, right, as a kid. Like, it’s not 2:00 yet. And now I’m like, oh, man, I take a class. Like, oh, it’s almost over, but I still want to learn more. Right, because we understand the acquisition of knowledge differently as adults than we did as kids. But, yeah, when people can reach out to you and they want to do better, like, why not help people and share what knowledge you have? And you did say, like, the willingness to make mistakes. And let me. I have publicly commented about when I’ve made mistakes before. And so, like, almost two years ago now, Kathy Zant and I started WP Motivate, our podcast. And the first episode, we were so excited. We were like, I pinged her in the morning. I’m like, hey, do you want to do a project with me? I want to do something with you. She’s like, yeah. What do you want to do? I’m like, let’s do a podcast. What do you want to do it about? Let’s just talk about motivation. Okay, let’s do it. What do you want to do it? Let’s record it today. We built it. Like, we literally recorded it Friday morning, built the site over the weekend, and published our first episode on Monday.

[00:32:49] Jess Frick: Just to be clear.

[00:32:50] Michelle Frechette: We’re not. Did I. And we use Kadence because it already had a theme built. So, you know, it was. It was a low lift, but it was still a lot of work over that weekend. Did I remember to do a transcript that first episode? No, I did not. Did I get called out publicly on Twitter? Because here I am talking about inclusion, and I forget to do a transcript. Yes, I did. And do you know what I could have said? I could have said, well, I didn’t have time. I didn’t have the money. I didn’t have the energy, which all were kind of true, right?

[00:33:21] Jess Frick: Mm hmm.

[00:33:22] Michelle Frechette: But what I said was, oh, my god, I made a mistake, and it won’t happen again. And so we went back and put a transcript for that first episode. We’ve never published an episode since without a transcript. Fast forward to, like, earlier this year, because I continue to grow and make mistakes, of course. I put on a newsletter for Underrepresented In Tech, which is, of course, about inclusion for all people. And we messed up. Like, the links were not. They were not good links. They didn’t describe what was being opened. Like, click here is never a good thing, right? You want people to understand what they’re clicking, not having good alt tags on the images in those newsletters. I got an email from a blind woman who reads our newsletter who was disappointed in us. And it wasn’t like she wasn’t angry. She was like, I’m really disappointed that y’all talk about inclusion. She didn’t say, y’all. That was me. But you talk about inclusion. In case y’all think she’s from the south. She’s not. She’s not even in America, I don’t think. But anyway, talks about inclusion, and we aren’t practicing what we’re preaching. And I said, you are absolutely correct, and I am going to learn how to do these things better. I already knew alt images, right? Alt text for images. But I hadn’t learned really well at that point how I should structure links. And so I did the research, and the next time we put the next issue out, I messaged her. I said, it’s not your job to evaluate and review us, but if you. I hope that you notice that I’ve done better work on this one. And if you have any feedback, I welcome it. And she’s like, wow, you hit it out of the park. Good. I grew. Did I talk about that on social media also? Yes. Because I am not a perfect person, and I want other people to know it’s okay to make mistakes as long as we’re using those as opportunities to learn and do better.

[00:35:14] Jess Frick: For sure.

[00:35:16] Michelle Frechette: I feel like I’m on my soapbox right now.

[00:35:19] Jess Frick: I saw it going there. I’m like, okay, let’s light this fire. Let’s do it.

[00:35:23] Michelle Frechette: Absolutely. So, yeah, no, it’s definitely a good thing. I think that we do a lot of good work in Underrepresented In Tech, and for other people to reach out and win a pick my brain session and grow from that was just an amazing opportunity.

[00:35:38] Jess Frick: So many good ideas came from that.

MIchelle Frechette: I’m so glad.

Jess Frick: Now I have to ask Michelle, how’s it going as CEO of Post Status?

[00:35:47] Michelle Frechette: Yeah. So I’m the executive director over at Post Status.

[00:35:50] Jess Frick: Executive director, sorry.

[00:35:52] Michelle Frechette: That’s okay. Yeah. Cory’s still the owner, and we have investors as well. We just got a new sponsor this last week, so I’m excited about that. So Omnisend is coming on as a sponsor.

[00:36:03] Jess Frick: Oh, Omnisend. Good.

[00:36:05] Michelle Frechette: Yep.

[00:36:07] Jess Frick: They are sponsoring everything .Every time I turn around, there’s somewhere else.

[00:36:10] Michelle Frechette: So they are also sponsoring WP Coffee Talk. So, like, there’s a lot of things that they’re getting into the ring with. I think it’s great. So, yeah, you’ll see that in next week’s newsletter, you know, talking about them and getting them added to the website and all the good things, and it’s great. I love to see that kind of growth. I love to see those kinds of opportunities for people. This year we’ve also, well, part of last year into this year, we added monthly Meetups in three different areas. So we have a Meetup for professionals, for product owners, and for agency owners. And we do that every month. Three, three, three separate ones on three separate days. And you’re welcome to attend all of them or one of them or, you know, whatever combination you’d like. So it’s. It’s been fun. It’s been fun to do those things, to do some writing on the site and to think about what the next steps might look like for Post Stauts. So. So we’re in lots of conversations about how we want things to grow. And I guess you’ll just have to wait and see what’s coming down the pike because I don’t have anything I can share at this particular moment in time, but I am very excited about it. Thank you.

[00:37:12] Jess Frick: Well, you are well known for your love of community, community building, community engagement. What do you see for the future of the Post Status community?

[00:37:24] Michelle Frechette: Yeah, my goal is for it to grow. I think right now it’s on a little bit of a plateau. And so we’re trying to think through how we can be a better resource for the community and facilitate those conversations that are both easy and hard for people. So that if, you know, people want to be able to reach out to other owners of companies and things like that. So, for example, I work with Corey Moss on a product that he and Cory Miller started. OMGIMG. And we’re trying to think of better ways to do marketing from a grassroots kind of level for plugin companies that don’t have a lot of dough yet. Right. Like we haven’t earned a lot of money yet, so we can’t really just turn around and put nothing into marketing and advertising. And so in the last two weeks, we decided to create the IPAWP and treating it like an IPA beer kind of craft beer idea. It’s the Independent Plugin Alliance for WordPress. And so ipawp.com is right now it’s just an interest form, but over the next few weeks, you’re going to see it grow into something where small businesses will be able to do some community marketing with one another. So I shout out your plugin. You shout out my plugin. We talk about ways that we can help one another grow without anybody having to put money into a pot. Right? So it’s just like, if you qualify, you get to be part of this. It’s all about community, it’s about sharing. It’s just one more way that WordPress community can help each other do better in this.

[00:38:55] Jess Frick: Gosh, I love that. And coming from a hosting perspective, I have to believe there’s a cool way for us to help too. Like we can confirm, yes, your plugin is fully compatible here. You’re not going to have any weird. Things, like one thing that we sometimes see in hosting, if a plugin will have one site license, sometimes it won’t work in a staging environment.

[00:39:16] Michelle Frechette: Oh, yeah, exactly.

[00:39:18] Jess Frick: So we might work with the plugin provider to whitelist our staging URL’s.

Michelle Frechette: Yeah.

Jess Frick: So people can do it that way. I’m so sorry. If you could hear my dogs.

[00:39:31] Michelle Frechette: The fox running and everybody on the horses behind, like chasing. I feel like I’m in Bridgerton or something.

[00:39:38] Jess Frick: I love it on Google Meet and Zoom, you know, you could have a literal atomic bomb going off in the background and they’re just going to see the lights, they’re not going to hear it. And on Streamyard, it’s like full 4k, like Dolby.

[00:39:54] Michelle Frechette: That’s what it is.

[00:39:57] Jess Frick: They’re quiet today, too.

[00:39:59] Michelle Frechette: Yeah, they just sense it. They’re just. It’s going off of our excitement and enthusiasm. They’re just picking up on it.

[00:40:05] Jess Frick: They’re. They’re very excited about this IPA idea. They want to know if they need an IS. Is it 21 and up or. You know.

[00:40:12] Michelle Frechette: It’s not actually.

[00:40:14] Jess Frick: It is not, good.

[00:40:15] Michelle Frechette: It’s actually for, you know, newer plugins and smaller companies so that you can be kind of a newbie.

[00:40:22] Jess Frick: I love that. That’s an interesting dovetail, though. Back to Post Status. You know, how do you think. Do you think Post Status has a role in welcoming people who are newer to the community?

[00:40:38] Michelle Frechette: I think that’s something that we are looking at right now. Right? Because Post Status is a membership community. So, you know, there is a membership component to it and you do have to subscribe for that. And so I love that sometimes people want to do gift subscriptions to people and make that possible. Now my cat’s in the background investigating the toilet box with a new toilet. She’s trying to figure it out. It’s just. And yours is sleeping, so there you go. But, yeah, so I think that definitely it can be a place of welcome, but it isn’t just like a free for all, open to everybody. So you do have to be invested in your, in your career or your, or your business, depending on the kinds of membership you’re looking for. And I don’t think that’s too much to ask, quite honestly. Right. So a couple hundred dollars a year to be able to have this and be part of it. So, yeah, it’s one of those things that we kind of wrestle with here and there to figure out what’s the best way for us to position ourselves within that and then work from there.

[00:41:38] Jess Frick: I feel like, and I hate to use the word gatekeeping, but I feel like when you put, put some of the best stuff on the top shelf, yes, it does prevent other people from getting to it, but that also keeps it for those that might not be around that day. I feel like in a private membership community, you can have conversations that you wouldn’t have out in public.

[00:42:04] Michelle Frechette: Yeah, I feel like we’re even at a public golf course. You have to pay to play. Right. You can’t just walk in and play golf. You don’t necessarily have to have a membership, but you have to pay to do that. And so it’s like, yes, you can use the resources, but it’s not a free community to join. So. And I’m okay with that. I think that that’s a good thing.

[00:42:26] Jess Frick: I can’t tell you how many times I have used Post Status to connect with others in the community as opposed to social media, you know, any of the given networks, because it’s just as easy as opening up a DM with a fellow member and, you know, saying, hey, I’m having this trouble, or, hey, can you help me with this thing? And we’re always so quick to respond to each other because everybody has Post Status on their phone and computer.

[00:42:54] Michelle Frechette: Yeah. And it’s not like not everybody has DM’s turned on in other places. So even if you’re following somebody on, let’s say, Twitter, doesn’t mean you’re able to connect with them directly there without doing it publicly. Right. But you can’t turn off DM’s in Slack as much as maybe you’d like to block somebody now and then, but it’s not possible. So you can ignore it, but it’s there. So that’s right. So you have the opportunity to connect with people, which I think is a good thing. I love that. So I reached out to you last week and was like, hey, you want to come on the show? We could talk about your new website at Pressablel. So.

[00:43:29] Jess Frick: It’s true.Although we do have each other’s phone numbers, too. So there’s that. haha.

[00:43:36] Michelle Frechette: We do text now and then, don’t we?

[00:43:38] Jess Frick: We do, we do. Although I feel like we’ve gotten busy.

[00:43:42] Michelle Frechette: It’s been a crazy year. For sure. For sure. Which just means that I need to text you more because obviously it’s something that we fell away from. So let’s do it some more. I’m not putting my phone up. I’m not putting my phone number on the screen for everybody to text me. But Jess, I will text you more, I promise.

[00:43:56] Jess Frick: For a good time call.

[00:44:00] Michelle Frechette: Exactly.Well, let’s wrap this up a little bit just to bring it up on the screen again. If you’re interested in more information, pressable.com or if you’re part of Post Status, just DM Jess and she will set you up with all of the demos or whatever else you need and answer your questions for sure. And even Jess doesn’t know this, but next week. Okay, first of all, a little bit of a setup. We started having this, the Happiness Hour on Wednesdays when Twerk magazine stopped having their social hour on Wednesdays. And so I felt bad that we didn’t have this venue, this opportunity. There was a gap in the community for that. And so I reached out to Doc Popular and I’m like, hey, I want to do this, but I don’t want to do it if it’s going to make you feel bad. He’s like, go for it. He is my guest next week.

[00:44:47] Jess Frick: Oh, my gosh.

[00:44:49] Michelle Frechette: We’re going to do.We’re going to talk about the work he’s doing right now with WordPress on the Fediverse.

[00:44:54] Jess Frick: Yes.

[00:44:54] Michelle Frechette: So I’m need to do a little research this week on exact. I mean, I understand from a very, very far away, distant idea what the Fediverse is, but I’ll be doing a little bit of research so I can ask him good questions next week. But yeah, I hope people will tune in next week and it’ll be me and Doc Popular talking about the Fediverse. He’s been doing some pretty cool videos so if you haven’t seen them yet, check those out. He’s on TikTok and I’ve seen him on Twitter and in Mastodon and all the places. So that will be a lot.

[00:45:24] Jess Frick: He is a gifted storyteller.

[00:45:27] Michelle Frechette: He is an amazing yoyoist. If you have never seen him play with a yoyo, I am sorry. He probably wouldn’t like it if I said play with Yoyo. If you ever see him show off his yoyo skills, he is on TikTok for that too. It blows my mind what people can do with a yoyo and string. So there you are. Next week, Doc Popular. Jess, thank you so much for being here today and sharing what is going on at Pressable and with you. It’s always a pleasure to see you and I’m so grateful for your time today.

[00:45:56] Jess Frick: I’m so grateful for you. Thanks for having me. Let’s see if I can get my computer to do it. There we go.

[00:46:03] Michelle Frechette: I got two. Wait, did you ever do two and get the.

[00:46:07] Jess Frick: I have. I love this. But then there’s also the lasers if you want to. There we go.

[00:46:13] Michelle Frechette: Oh, let’s see. Now people are just watching us be silly.

[00:46:16] Jess Frick: I know.

[00:46:18] Michelle Frechette: If you’ve been here today. Thanks. Thanks for listening. And we’ll see everybody next week with Doc Popular. Thanks again, Jesse.

[00:46:24] Jess Frick: Thank you, Michelle. Bye.