In this episode of the Post Status Happiness Hour, host Michelle Frechette interviews Marcus Burnette to dive into the many exciting features of WP World, a community platform designed for WordPress professionals. Marcus, the creator of WP World, walks listeners through its dynamic features, including customizable profile pins that reflect user specialties, a robust hosting review system, and privacy options for those who prefer not to share their location.
Top Takeaways:
- User-Friendly Features in WP World: Marcus Burnette highlighted various user-friendly features in WP World, such as the ability to customize profile pins based on user specialties and the option to hide locations for privacy reasons. This ensures the platform remains flexible and inclusive, especially for those who prioritize privacy or are digital nomads.
- Community-Driven Feedback and Development: Michelle Frechette shared how user feedback directly influenced the development of WP World. For example, her suggestion to add “accessibility specialist” as an option was quickly implemented. Marcus encouraged users to request features, showing that the platform is shaped by the needs of its community.
- WP World’s Hosting Review Platform: Marcus introduced a comprehensive hosting review system where users can rate various aspects of hosting providers, such as performance and security. This community-sourced rating system provides valuable insights for people choosing WordPress hosts and ensures transparency by preventing paid listings.
- Playful and Engaging Design Aspects: Marcus, as a designer, has adding fun products like the “Capital P, dang it” mug. He also shared how events like WordCamps feature their own unique ” u” mascots, contributing to the platform’s lighthearted and engaging atmosphere.
- Collaborative Community Spirit: Both Marcus and Michelle emphasized their close collaboration and support within the WordPress community. Their plans to meet at WordCamp US to further discuss ideas highlight the strong, community-driven spirit behind WP World and its events. They also invited the audience to connect with them and grab stickers at the upcoming event, showcasing their approachability.
Mentioned In The Show:
- WP World
- WP Coffee Talk
- WP Speakers
- Seriously Bud? Podcast
- Bud Kraus
- ChatGPT
- HeroPress
- Javi Guembe
- Topher DeRosia
- Elementor
- Do the Woo Podcast
- WP WonderWomen
- WP Career Pages
- WordPress.org
- Nexcess
- Katy Boykin
- Kadence Amplify
🙏 Sponsor: A2 Hosting
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🐦 You can follow Post Status and our guests on Twitter:
- Marcus Burnette (Creator, The WP World)
- 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. 📝
Browse our archives, and don’t forget to subscribe via iTunes, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, Simplecast, or RSS. 🎧
Transcript
Michelle Frechette: Welcome to Post Status Happiness Hour. We’re here today with a good friend of mine. I say that all the time. I have a lot of good friends in WordPress, but Marcus, you are absolutely at the top of the list. Marcus Burnett from the WP World and other places too. I mean, it’s not your primary job, but that’s what we’re here to talk about today. So I’m, I’m grateful that you’re here. How are you? Are you there?
Marcus Burnette: Yep. Sorry.
Michelle Frechette: Haha. It’s okay. I said, how are you?
Marcus Burnette: I am good and hearing double. I had the other window open with the video stream and so I had to shut that off real quick.
Michelle Frechette: No worries. That happens all the time. Um, I was on a stream the other day and somebody wasn’t wearing headphones and so everything was echoing back because I was hearing myself through there. It’s rough, it’s rough, but it, but it works out and it’s all good.
Marcus Burnette: I don’t mind hanging out with two of you, but when you’re saying the same thing with a three second delay, it messes up my brain.
Michelle Frechette: Discombobulating, absolutely, absolutely. And I’ve been on phone calls before where that happens for whatever reason through cell technology and I just have to not listen. While I’m talking. Otherwise, it’s really, I actually, I sang the national anthem at an event in a big indoor arena. And they were, there was no time to like, you couldn’t get there early in practice. So you just had to go for it. And they warn you in advance that you are going to hear yourself echoing off the walls, as you sing. And it did, and it was incredibly difficult to stay on and not, not listen to that. But anyway, that’s not what we’re here for today. We’re here to talk about the WP World. And so it’s good to have you here. Let’s do it. So tell us, I mean, I’ve talked to you about it a lot, but I think there’s a lot of people who haven’t. So tell us a little bit about why did you even think about the WP World? How did it begin? Okay. Um, I think it was a spreadsheet, but tell us the whole story.
Marcus Burnette: Um, yeah, so the WP World began as an idea, I guess, maybe a year and a half, almost two years ago. Um, but it was really kind of, uh, The idea wasn’t for the site itself yet. It was, um, you know, we had had some, some, I live in Florida in central Florida and we had some hurricanes and I wanted to check with folks in our space and make sure that everyone was okay. And so, um, I, had previously maybe a month or so before that put together a little WordPress site with some Google Map pins because I was trying to play with what does that look like? Can I power a Google Map with WordPress post types? Uh, so I, I pulled that back out, um, and started adding a few of our WordPress friends in Florida to it. And, um, just as a way for me to personally keep track of, you know, who’s around, who’s in the path of some of the storms and stuff. And, Um, so I added a few, a few folks that were in this area and then I started to think about, well, what if I open this up to kind of everyone to be able to add themselves to the map and really build out this community where people can kind of see where each other are and check on each other and, you know, in case of storms or whatever, but also just see who’s in their local area and get a chance to maybe reach out and meet up for coffee or, or whatever the case may be. So I polished it up a little bit and then, uh, made it live for, for folks to sign up for themselves and, um, just been trying to grow it ever since. So the, the goal of the site now is to connect people in the WordPress community, both in person and online with a, uh, Focus on the in person part.
Michelle Frechette: I absolutely love it. I’ve been, I know I wasn’t the first member, but I was among the first sweep of influx of people who signed up because it was so cool. One of the, I’m going to, I’m going to say. The only negative thing about it is that when you signed up so early, you have to keep going back and adding more to your profile, which is a good problem to have because you keep adding some pretty immense, um, incredible features. It kind of reminds me of an old movie. The Englishman who went up a hill but came down a mountain. Like you built this hill and now it’s like, you keep adding to it. It’s going to be a mountain that’s by the end.
Marcus Burnette: Yeah. The, uh, the, the profile editing page I think is due for a little bit of work now because I’ve added so many things. Just things that you can add to your profile to kind of tell people a little bit about who you are and what you do in WordPress. And so, uh, yeah, you’re right. There are a lot of things. I added one even today, so you’re gonna have to go back today, uh, after this and decide whether you want your WordPress photo directories to show the latest six or a random six.
Michelle Frechette: Um, it’s a, mine’s already set to random because I discovered that as I was walking through it about an hour ago.
Marcus Burnette: I put that in there earlier today.
Michelle Frechette: I liked it. That was pretty awesome. Um, and I also updated a couple other things like my, I have a brand new website, michellefrechette.com, which you If you look at it, cause it’s still a little bit, you know, finding its way. But I switched from MeetMichelle.online, which is just basically a link tree to put that on there. So I was able to update my, my profile there. And I already had marked that I was attending WordCamp 2024, WordCamp US 2024, but today I was able to check off that I’m also a speaker there. Because that’s something that’s happened in the last week. So I love that you can go in and edit things and add to, and you’ve got languages in there you’ve got, uh, if you’re looking for work, so I’ve seen people every week in your newsletter who are looking for work. So we know those kinds of people that might be interested that we might be interested in contract work or hiring. Um, yeah, there’s a lot to it. Rating your, uh, hosting companies. And adding, um, venues that are near the venues for WordCamps. So, like, for example, for WordCamp Rochester, I think it was last year, I went in and added some restaurants that people might be interested in going to, and Buffalo, and things like that. So, yeah, like, it’s crazy. It’s awesome. It’s almost like its own little online city. Maybe we should just called it like WP Cities or something.
Marcus Burnette: It’s definitely a little, definitely a geo city is nice. Definitely a little overwhelming. If you like, think about all of the different things in there all at once. Um, I think I am trying to just continue to add whatever I think is relevant to kind of help people connect with each other. Uh, I do need to find a better way. I think of reaching back out to people who. Were in the first, you know, handful of people that signed up that maybe now have missed out on updating two thirds of their profile, which was their entire profile before, but now there’s so many more things there that they need to come back and, uh, and add to it.
Michelle Frechette: Yeah, but it’s a, it’s a, like I said, it’s a good problem to have, right? It’s like, I have a pair of shoes. It doesn’t mean I can’t have more pairs of shoes. It just means I can make them better. I don’t know. I’m making up all kinds of weird stuff. Let me bring it up on screen and you can walk us through a little bit of what, um, the WP World looks like.
Marcus Burnette: Sure. Yeah. So just I’m logged out intentionally, so we can just kind of see. the, the view logged out at the moment without being signed in. Um, my goal for the most part is to have all of the information here that you would possibly need really without having to log in. I know that’s like not a great business plan to be able to just see anything that you possibly need to see without being logged in. But I really want this to be a resource for everyone. So, um, I’d love for you to create an account. There’s definitely some benefits to creating an account, especially when it comes to the actual connection part with people, um, and being discoverable within the site by other folks that are in your area. But when it comes to just looking at the data for like what people are in the site and the WordCamp events and all the different hosting information and all of that. You don’t have to be logged in to see any of the data. Now, again, you said you can, you mentioned that you can rate your host, your favorite hosting company. You do have to be logged in to do the rating. Um, you do have to be logged in for a couple of other pieces, but that’s the like interactivity piece. If you want to interact with the site a bit more, um, then signing up. Which is free and sign up for free. And, uh, then you can, you can do the interactivity piece, but, um, you can see anything there is in the site for the most part without having to log in.
Michelle Frechette: Which actually, if, if you were charging people for looking at things, if you’re charging people for being a member, that would make sense that you would put some things you would put searching functions, things behind a paywall. But the fact that the only thing that’s behind that registration is. Actually making changes to the site. So to your own, the things you have in, in your own profile and the ability to rate things and whatever, um, But there’s no paywall because even registration is free and even your continued subscription is free. So I think it’s perfect. It makes perfect sense that people could kind of check it out before they decide they’re going to give you their data.
Marcus Burnette: Yeah. And just so folks are aware. The site is free because of these fine people that are scrolling across the middle here. Um, and I’ll jump back up in a second, but they’re all listed down here at the bottom. They do have some really amazing sponsors for the site that have made keeping that free for everyone possible. So, um, if you do come and check out the site, do scroll all the way to the bottom and check out the, the sponsors there because they’re, they’re the ones making that possible.
Michelle Frechette: I really like that round logo.
Marcus Burnette: What’s that? Oh yeah.
Michelle Frechette: I really, I really like the round logo there.
Marcus Burnette: That’s WP Speakers is in here too. Yes. Thank you, Michelle. You are, you are one of the generous sponsors that are keeping the site free for everyone.
Michelle Frechette: It’s a good site to support for sure. So show us some of the features that I see, like, like, okay. That’s a lot of pins.
Marcus Burnette: Yeah, this is the,this is the 1600 plus, you know, right off the bat. You can see. How many there are 1, 600 so far. I know that the community is a lot bigger. So come on folks, join us. Join us in the site. But yeah, that’s a lot of pins. There’s a lot of people. Pretty decent chance that there’s someone somewhere in your area at this point. Unless you live in, maybe, Mongolia, up here somewhere.
Michelle Frechette: Yeah, I don’t see a lot of people probably in, um, Antarctica, so.
Marcus Burnette: No, not yet.
Michelle Frechette: There’s no permanent residence there, so.
Marcus Burnette: Yeah, so if I jump to, well let’s just look at a few things under, like, the community aspect of it here, just seeing other folks. So you can search by location, which, um, I envision, like, Let’s say I’m traveling somewhere, let’s say I’m headed to Chicago or something for the weekend, and I want to see, you know, what WordPress folks are in the Chicago area, I can just type in Chicago. And hit search and I can see, you know, here are the folks that are in the Chicago area, see if I know anybody, see if, uh, I want to reach out to anyone and say, Hey, you know, I’m going to be in Chicago this weekend, who wants to grab lunch or coffee or, or something like that. Again, the focus is primarily for folks to meet up in person. I think pre-COVID, we all met up in person a bit more, and I think that that helped with. Um, some of the unity across the WordPress space, and I want to kind of foster getting back to that and allowing people to meet back up in person more often. Or if I’m in the Chicago area and I see that there are 21 folks nearby and there’s not a meetup in Chicago, now I also know maybe I should start a meetup in this area. There seems to be a number of folks that are, you know, within, I don’t know, 80, 90 miles. That might be a little bit far for a few folks to drive, but you know, there’s a significant number of folks in a particular area and there’s no meetup or WordCamp, um, you know, that gives organizers the potential to say, maybe we should have a meetup here. Maybe we should have a WordCamp here. Um, so again, just trying to continue fostering that in person connection.
Michelle Frechette: And what happens if you click on one of those people?
Marcus Burnette: Yep. So if you click on one of the people that will take you to their profile, um, I don’t know what any of these folks have filled out on their profile currently, but we’ll click on one and head there.And see what we see. I’ve spent.
Michelle Frechette: We are streaming so it’s, it’s taking up a lot of bandwidth. I’m sure.
Marcus Burnette: It is. And it’s sometimes it’s gotta go out and fetch some stuff to, to kind of refresh. Um, I do have a lot of, a lot of pieces for the profiles that I’ve. intentionally made automated so you don’t have to come back and do everything. I mean, there’s a lot of profile information for you to come back and update. Um, but there’s also a lot that doesn’t need to be updated and we’ll take a look at it when we get there. But like WordPress.org badges come in WordPress, um, photo directory photos are loaded in any of the plugins or themes. If you’re a plugin developer or a theme developer are loaded in. And so all of that stuff kind of comes automatically. Uh, not as many to see on Brian’s profile here, so let’s actually hop back here. Let’s go see Michelle’s. You said you updated some stuff, so let’s go look at yours.
Michelle Frechette: Mine is pretty, mine’s pretty full, yeah.
Marcus Burnette: Give it a second to load up here too. Yeah, the streaming bandwidth is taking up some of the speed here, but, um.
Michelle Frechette: There I am.
Marcus Burnette: Yeah, so lots of things loaded in here.
Michelle Frechette: I added my first WordPress version today as well.
Marcus Burnette: Yeah. I have all of the, all of the releases that have ever come out, um, listed. So you can, I think I have dates in there. So like, if you’re trying to figure out when did I start using WordPress? That was probably around this date.
Michelle Frechette: That’s exactly how I found it.
Marcus Burnette: Yeah. Help facilitate figuring out which, uh, which version you likely started with. And then. These contributed WordPress releases, you’ve contributed to 5.6 and 6.4, those come in automatically, so you didn’t have to add those. Um, uh, bud, our, our buddy, Bud Kraus has a podcast called Seriously Bud? And, uh, he and I worked out a little bit of, um, me adding any of the podcast episodes that he does to the WP World. And in return, he’s adding the WP World links, um, in his, in his podcast episodes back to folks.
Michelle Frechette: Oh that’s cool!
Marcus Burnette: Anybody who’s been on the Seriously Bud podcast, I’ve added their episode link automatically. So no one’s had to do that.
Michelle Frechette: We can do that with WP Coffee Talk too if you’d like. We’ll talk later.
Marcus Burnette: Yeah, absolutely. We’ll get that going. That’s going to be a lot longer of a list since you’ve been doing that for a while.
Michelle Frechette: Haha that’s true.
Marcus Burnette: So go back and add a bunch, but yeah, I’d be happy to do that. Um, all of the events and we’ll scroll down and look at those in a second. You’ve been at 74 events, which is just an insane amount of events.
Michelle Frechette: It’s a lot
Marcus Burnette: Developed a plugin and contributed 324 WordPress photo directory photos. So those are all a little bit lower. We’ll just scroll down the page a little bit. Um, you’ve got all the different ways that you can be connected with up here. Um, someone asked me earlier this week, if there was a way for people to chat with each other within the site, whether there was like direct messages or any kind of chat window or anything. And they’re honestly, I mean, if you just even look at yours, so many ways that people can,
Michelle Frechette: Yeah.
Marcus Burnette: Um, connect with you on. all the different social networks, but even the different Slack Channels and Discord and all of that, that I didn’t feel like adding another way of connecting with each other and the site was necessary. Um, if you want to connect with Michelle, there’s,
Michelle Frechette: There’s a lot of ways to do it.
Marcus Burnette: 11, 11 different ways.
Michelle Frechette:How did you, when did you decide to add birthdays? Cause I didn’t see that before I added my birthday today as well. Was that recent?
Marcus Burnette: Yep. Birthdays was, um, what’s today? Last week.
Michelle Frechette: Okay.
Marcus Burnette: My birth, my birthday was exactly a week ago.
Michelle Frechette: Happy late Birthday.
Marcus Burnette: Thank you. I added it for my birthday. So I put my birthday in and then I just made it open to everyone to add their birthdays. No years, just month and day so people can say happy birthday or hopefully I’ll get to a place where maybe I send a birthday email happy birthday or something like that, but Um you know, while I’m, while I’m going along and we can look at this other page in a minute, I’m also trying to add some, some fun things into the site. And so like, there’s also a WordCamp WAPU page with all of these. We’ll look at that in a second, but there’s opportunities for fun, happy, delight, enjoyment type stuff. And so, uh, I think your birthday is probably one of those ways that I can add some enjoyment to the site.
Michelle Frechette: I mean I like my birthday. It’s coming up soon.
Marcus Burnette: Yeah. A little over a month. A little over a month away. Uh, yeah, that was last week. I added last week because it was my birthday and I wanted to add birthdays to the site, so I did.
Michelle Frechette: I love it. I love it.
Marcus Burnette: Um, yeah, you can get a general idea of where you live at the city level and then the folks that are near you. Um, Jeff is extra near you cause I can see him back there in the background.
Michelle Frechette: He doesn’t live on that sofa. But once a week we co-work. Wave Jeff. He’s got his. Oh there he is.
Marcus Burnette: Um, and then we can also check out the business directory in a minute, but businesses also show up if businesses have, um, physical addresses, then the businesses are also shown so you can see there’s actually a, um, a web agency that’s about 30 seconds away from my house that I didn’t know existed until they added themselves to the WP World. And they, one of those days I was checking my profile and I saw the name of their agency in the sidebar. And I was like, Oh, I’ve never even heard of that agency. I looked them up and they’re literally 30 seconds from my house.
Michelle Frechette: It’s funny. Cause I put the WP Speakers as Rochester, New York, cause that’s the biggest city nearby, but it’s actually Hilton.It’s right where I am. So nice. It’s my house. And then you got your badges, too.
Marcus Burnette: Yeah, then you have your .org badges, which, like I said before, get automatically pulled in, so you didn’t have to add any of these. Um, that gets pulled in from your .org profile. Um, your plugin gets pulled in directly from your .org profile. And then we have photos from the photo directory that you submitted. These are pretty, by the way.
Michelle Frechette: Thank you. Well, those were random because I just changed it to random. So if you hit refresh, it would be six different ones, right?
Marcus Burnette: Yeah, let’s hit refresh and see what we get. Um, yeah, I literally added that this morning because, um, even though one of the, uh, co-reps currently, um, it’s been a little while since I uploaded any photos. And I was tired of seeing the same six photos.
Michelle Frechette: So two of those photos are Taipei. Three of those photos are, uh, Torino and one is the car wash in the next town over .
Marcus Burnette: Oh, nice. Very nice. Yep. So little, little peek behind the scenes. You have uploaded 324 photos. I only grabbed the last 50, and then randomly picked 6 out of those, so that’s why a couple of these are shown again, they just happen to get shuffled around that way, but uh,
Michelle Frechette: That’s pretty cool though.
Marcus Burnette: But rather than grab all 103, all 324 photos, and then randomly pick 6 of them, kind of a resource hub.
Michelle Frechette: That’s pretty cool.
Marcus Burnette: Grab the latest 50 of them and then pick six randomly from there. So they’ll always be sort of recent photos, but with it set to random, you’ll see different six each time.
Michelle Frechette: I love that.
Marcus Burnette: Uh, instead of seeing the same ones. Yeah. Well, a little more fun that way, a little more variety than just seeing the same latest six, which is the default. So if you have uploaded photos to the photo directory and want to use. to be randomized. Go update your profile and change it to random. And they’ll, they’ll be randomized now. Um, automatically pulls in the latest three blog posts from your website. Um.
Michelle Frechette: I just changed that website today. So now there’s actually post there.
Marcus Burnette: Nice. If you, if you want it to, I think one of the options is for you to hide those. Um, I do have a handful of people that have messaged me and said, Hey, I have my website there, but my website isn’t all necessarily WordPress related content, so if people have like, fitness content or whatever, it doesn’t make sense for their profile. Um, and so, I gave them a checkbox to hide the posts if they don’t want to show their latest posts.
Michelle Frechette: That’s me in the sheep sweater in the middle picture, by the way. On the left.
Marcus Burnette: Oh, this one? That’s the Yeah, that’s like a pretty sweet sweater.
Michelle Frecehtte: Sophomore or junior year of high school. That’s a long time ago.
Marcus Burnette: Those are, that’s just sheep on there. I like it.
Michelle Frechette: It is. I’m going to have to write a couple more blog posts just to move that one off the page.
Marcus Burnette: Here’s your, your daily incentive to write more posts.
Michelle Frechette: Or change the featured image one or the other.
Marcus Burnette: Or change the featured image. And then one of the best sections of each profile.
Michelle Frechette: I love this.
Marcus Burnette: If you need a speaker, um, the content from this is pulled from WP Speakers, but then you hop back over to wpspeakers.com to actually connect with the person. Um, that’s intentional, but. A lot of the info or some of the info has been pulled over. So you get a general idea before you hop over to WP Speakers and reach out and say, Hey, we’d love you to speak at this meetup or Word Camp or whatever the case is.
Michelle Frechette: Exactly. That’s awesome.
Marcus Burnette: Your, your profile really is full of things. They don’t know, they don’t all continue this long, but, uh,
Michelle Frechette: Well, I will say too, that I want to say about, about my Hero Press article. I have since learned that saying like my tribe is, um, is not a good thing, right? So that’s, that’s, that’s language that belongs to the indigenous people.
Marcus Burnette: Sure.
Michelle Frechette: So I’m actually changing that article very soon to say I found my community. I got access to that today. So we’re going to see that be updated very soon too. In case anybody is like, how did you, why did she say that? Just wanted to put that on the record.
Marcus Burnette: Fair enough. Yeah. Things, things change over time. And the fact that you have access to go back and change it is great.
Michelle Frechette: Yeah.
Marcus Burnette: And when you do, this will automatically be updated.
Michelle Frechette: I love that too.
Marcus Burnette: None of this is hard coded in here. This is being pulled from, from the HeroPress site, um, for folks that are unaware of HeroPress, that’s a Topher DeRosha project. Um, there’s actually a bunch of sites under the Heropress network. Um, but these stories, the Topher is had folks write stories over the course of many years,
Michelle Frechette: 10 years.
Marcus Burnette: Is it?
Michelle Frechette: I talked to him today. He’s going to come on this show in November, I think, and we’re going to celebrate 10 years of his doing HeroPress.
Marcus Burnette: Yeah. Very cool. Yeah. There’s just tons and tons of stories about WordPress folks and how they, how they got into WordPress and some of the other parts of their personal stories. And so I wanted that aspect to be included here, too. But rather than ask people to rewrite those, I just connected with HeroPress, um, to do that as well. And to actually read the essay, you hop over to HeroPress and read it there, so.
Michelle Frechette: Makes sense.
Marcus Burnette: And then we get down to this insane list of events that you have been to, spoken at, organized, sponsored. Um, yeah, all the little icons have different meanings here, but look at that crazy wall of events.
Michelle Frechette: Isn’t that fun?
Marcus Burnette: It is fun. It’s fun in a couple of ways. One, it’s fun to look at that you’ve been to all of these events and just see where you’ve traveled, but also for you to be able to keep a list of how many events you’ve been to, where they’ve been, be able to click through and see information about those events.
Michelle Frechette: And believe it or not, there’s a couple missing, so I have to go and check a few more boxes, because I was, I’ve been at every single WordCamp US ever. And I don’t see 2016 on the list, so I’ll be updating that soon.
Marcus Burnette: Oh, yeah.
Michelle Frechette: I missed one.
Marcus Burnette: Yeah, it’s not, not there. Yeah, one of the fun things, too. Well, it’s a little harder to do with yours because yours is so big, but if you hover over the, uh, legend.
Michelle Frechette: Oh, that’s cool.
Marcus Burnette: It will highlight. So these are all 51 of the ones that you’ve spoken at. Here are the 14 you’ve been an organizer for, here two that you’ve volunteered, and the one sponsor, which is this upcoming WordCamp US.
Michelle Frechette: Yeah.
Marcus Burnette: Um, the sponsor one is new too. Marking the event is showing up, representing a sponsor.
Michelle Frechette: I’ll be adding a few more of those too.
Marcus Burnette: Yeah. That came out of a conversation, um, that I had at WordCamp Canada. Like what about going as a sponsor? Sure, let’s add that. So
Michelle Frechette: Awesome. I love it.
Marcus Burnette: I got it as well. And then we get down to the bottom again. But yeah, actually, your page was really great to walk through.
Michelle Frechette: Because I’m too busy.
Marcus Burnette: Just, yeah, just about everything you could possibly see. I mean, the only thing you don’t have, I think, is a theme that you’ve created, because that would be somewhere.
Michelle Frechette: I have not. Yep.
Marcus Burnette: That’s it. You’re going to have to do that, so you can just get a foot.
Michelle Frechette: We have some questions that came up before we move on to another page.
Marcus Burnette: Yeah.
Michelle Frechette: Let’s, uh, let’s, first of all, I want you to know that somebody’s already added themselves. Check that out. So you must, that number should have gone up by one now.
Marcus Burnette: Perfect. Thank you.
Michelle Frechette: Uh, Kathy Zant wants you to know, she says, happy birthday.
Marcus Burnette: Aw, thanks Kathy.
Michelle Frechette: James Lau says that the layout is very nice, and he does have a question. He says, uh, how is it built? Are you using block editor components?
Marcus Burnette: Good question. Um, the site is built with Elementor and a lot of custom code. Um, and a fair amount of that custom code is from ChatGPT, because I can develop some things, but I’m not a professional developer. And so I’ve definitely leveraged ChatGPT for a number of the parts that are in the site, especially things that are slightly more complicated. Um, like if I go to the
Michelle Frechette: It’s a good tool.
Marcus Burnette: Yeah, if I go to the Presser list, um, this whole like search area here, I’m sure I could have leveraged another plugin for, but I said, Hey, here’s the, here’s the content I have in this format. Can you give me, you know, a way to filter for everyone who’s looking for work? So now you can see, you know, everyone who’s marked themselves as looking for work. If you’re looking to hire, come check out this page and, uh, see what, what folks have to offer. These are the people that are currently looking for work. Uh, if you just want to see plugin developers or theme developers, you can filter by, by that as well. So pieces like that, um, I’ve had Chat GPT helped me with like the event list here has some nice filtering at the top. Once this loads Um, to be able to check out events by month by region and online, online events. That’s all sort of been worked out with some Chat GPT help, but yeah, um, Elementor is one of the great sponsors of the site and a tool that I have been using for years and years and years. And so when I started kind of working this out from its original prototype of Floridians to something that, uh, I wanted to open up for everyone. I definitely reached for Elementor to kind of build out the, the majority of the site. Good question.
Michelle Frechette:Yeah. Mohamed Atta says this is a really cool features. Great work. I agree.
Marcus Burnette: Thank you. Yes. And thank you for signing up.
Michelle Frechette:That’s great. So the businesses you were going to show us businesses next.
Marcus Burnette: Yeah. The business director has been around for a while. Um, but I just made it free, just opened it up for free for everyone. So, um, it’s grown in the, I want to say three weeks ago, maybe a month ago, it’s definitely grown in that time. So if you’re looking for hosting companies, agencies, plug in their theme developer or community type things, um, you know, like our buddy Bob with Do the Woo podcast and WP Speakers, these are all kind of community. Um, related businesses among other things, right? Because there’s some overlap for sure. But if you’re looking for an agency, you can head to the business directory and check out agencies. Like I said, if you’re looking local, these agencies will show up on your profile in the box to show you that they’re local, or if you do a search for a certain location, the proximity search, um, it wil also show the businesses local to those areas. But if location doesn’t matter to you, you know, a lot of our work is done remotely and the location is a little less important. Um, you know, you can come check out these, these businesses, these agencies that are, um, all over the world. And, uh, see what they have to offer.
Michelle Frechette: And you can see if they’re hiring. I like that too. So you can tell.
Marcus Burnette: Yeah, and also see if they’re hiring, probably create a filter for that, you think, right?
Michelle Frechette: Oh that would be a great idea.
Marcus Burnette: Filter by whoever’s hiring and get a, get a good picture of that. Yeah. Those, so that. Obviously shows a label here. Um, those also make their way into the newsletter. So I do send out a newsletter every Wednesday. Um, the time of the day varies a little bit depending on how busy I am. Um,
Michelle Frechette: I know that feeling.
Marcus Burnette: Yeah. But, uh, The, the newsletter itself includes like what’s new, not in WordPress, but with the WP World. Cause there are a lot of publications that do what’s new in WordPress and they do it well. I’m not trying to take that over. Um, so it’s what’s new in the WP World. And then. Upcoming events and people looking for work and companies looking for, um, to hire folks. So, uh, you’re automatically subscribed to that newsletter when you sign up for the WP World. Um, so you should see that in your inbox if you’re part of the site already, although you’re welcome to unsubscribe if you have too many newsletters in your inbox, which is also fair.
Michelle Frechette: I always read yours.
Marcus Burnette: Thank you. I try to, I try to keep it relevant and interesting. Like I said, there are a lot of people that do WordPress news well already. So that’s not what the newsletter’s intent is.
Michelle Frechette: And some of the things that the WP World supports are like the WP, um, Wonder Women have you as one of our staunch supporters over there. And I think, I think I have you. Yeah. My weekly tweet thread is also, uh, gives homage to the work that you’re doing as well for people who are looking for jobs. So,
Marcus Burnette: Yeah, we’ve got a little bit of, a little bit of cross pollination happening there. Um, I think WP. Speaker pages and WP Career Pages is also the sponsor for the section of the newsletter that shows who’s hiring and who’s looking for work. Um, so also a great, great resource if you’re looking for work is WP Career Pages. You and I have worked on some things together a little bit.
Michelle Frechette: We sure have. Absolutely. And, and you’re one of the, like, four people in WordPress that knows how to take my scooter apart and put it back together. Because you’ve had to do it for me so many times. In Montclair this year. But, um.
Marcus Burnette: Happy to help.
Michelle Frechette: I appreciate that. It’s one of the things about our community that I love is that if you have a need, people are willing to kind of step in and help you out. And the only way I could attend was, so I texted you and I’m like, is there any chance that if I stay at the same hotel as you guys, you’ll help me with my scooter? And you were like, absolutely awesome than I’m coming.
Marcus Burnette: Of Course. Of Course.
Michelle Frechette: So it worked really, really well. Um, one of the things that I love is I call what, what I call gap filling projects. So WordPress.org has a lot going for it. Our profile’s there, you can put a lot of stuff into them for sure, but you’re limited in what you can put in. There has to be part of what’s happening at wp.org, right?
Marcus Burnette: Yep.
Michelle Frechette: I can’t put in there a lot of, I mean, I could put in my bio, but I couldn’t connect to a lot of other things. And so the WP World I think fills a gap of connectedness and building that community even more. WP Speakers does that. Um. I’m going to forget all of the different things, but, um, Javi Guembe has, um, WP Talk. I think it is? Where we can learn foreign languages from each other. And, you know, I have the WP Career Pages and other people have done things that are similar. Why is it important for you in particular to build projects that really help our community and fill some of those gaps?
Marcus Burnette: Yeah. Again, it comes down to the mission of the site, just being connecting people with each other. Um, That has been the goal from day one, and continues to be the goal, and anything that I add to the site gets added through the lens of, will this help the community connect with each other? And there are things that we can do with the WP World with WP Speakers and, um, you know, all our gap filling projects that, um, may or may not be possible to do in the official channels on WordPress.org. Um, case in point, you know, the, I pulled up the WordCamp US, um, page in the WP World and, uh, all the side events here listed. Now the WordCamp US does have some side events listed, but there’s also specific criteria for getting them listed and, um, there’s not a great way to have ones listed that are invite only that then shouldn’t show up or should show up, but shouldn’t have registration access and all of that where. Like, I don’t have those constraints at this site, um, because it’s my own project, and so, literally anybody who wants to share with me that they’re having some sort of gathering, whether it’s a big party or just, you know, a small meetup, we have, um, a few, like, there’s a, which one was just added? The Presser Herf, which I didn’t even know what a herf was.
Michelle Frechette:I don’t either.
Marcus Burnette: I found out that it’s a gathering of people who enjoy smoking cigars and just chatting. And so they’re getting together on September 19th to just hang out at a cigar bar. And some of those are, you know, that size, small, everyone show up, you know, you pay for your own drink or whatever. But if you want to hang out with 20 people, 30 people come do that, up to, you know, some of the, here’s someone who wants to get together and go watch a soccer game in Portland, so they wanted the side event added so that they could invite people to come watch a soccer game together, and then you have some of the larger ones, like you said, an A2 and Cloudways they’re throwing these, you know, much larger parties and offering drinks and snacks stuff.
Michelle Frechette: Stellar WP.
Marcus Burnette: Yeah, Stellar’s on here too.
Michelle Frechette: I saw that. Yep, I saw that over the list. Yeah.
Marcus Burnette: Um, I didn’t wanna, I wasn’t sure what you were, what you were offering and not offering, so I didn’t want to commit you to anything , but yeah, stellar Stellar’s having a happy hour on the 19th as well. Um, but just being able to you know, add those sorts of things, um, resources for people. I also added a calendar that you can subscribe to. Um, that’s not something that .org is ever, I don’t think, going to include. Um, it’d be difficult to keep up with. It’d be difficult for, I mean, organizers and, and have so much on their plates already that adding something like that just doesn’t even make sense. It’s the, They’re already working way harder than, than they, than they are probably physically capable of doing sometimes, um, they’re, they’re done and exhausted by the end of these, which is, I love that. I love that they’re doing that work, but to pile additional things on top was just unreasonable. So I can step in and help and fill those gaps, like you said. And if somebody wants to add the schedule to their calendar for the week, they can easily do that. So,
Michelle Frechette: And to be fair gap, like. To identify gaps is not a negative thing, right? It just means there’s room for more things and more projects that we can all contribute to the community, even if it’s not unofficial something that’s happening within WordPress.org.
Marcus Burnette: Yeah. And, and sometimes though it’s unreasonable to, to expect those things to even be added to the plates of people who largely volunteer their time to do these things. Um, they’re already doing so much that. I’m not filling a gap that I think they should be doing. It’s here’s me finding a way to contribute additional to the community that just doesn’t even make sense for them to take on.
Michelle Frechette: Yep. Absolutely. 100 percent agree with that. I also love that the countdown is showing me that I better start packing soon.
Marcus Burnette: I’m a last minute packer.
Michelle Frechette: I am too.
Marcus Burnette: I have a checklist.
Michelle rechette: Uh, I need to make the checklist ,
Marcus Burnette: But I usually, oh, two days. I think I should pack now, even though I’m gonna be gone for a week, I give myself two days to make sure I have everything I need.
Michelle Frechette: So today I messaged you and I said, oh, I think this, this. I would love to suggest a feature. I sent it to you via DM and then. Within five minutes, I found that there is a place when you’re logged in to request a feature. So I filled out that form as well. So you wouldn’t have to, you’d have it all in one spot. Not suggesting that it has to happen, but it’s like, Oh, this would be a nice additional thing to have in there. So, um, so I did fill out that form, which is pretty cool.
Marcus Burnette: I did not see that come in yet. However, I’ve already gone and done it.
Michelle Frechette: Oh, okay. So you know what it was because I messaged you, but then I was like, I should, what I’ve discovered, I was like, oh, I should go through the official channels and not expect people to remember what I DM’d them about. But, um, but yeah, it was part of the Presser Profile.
Marcus Burnette: Yep. So as part of the profile, if you, there’s a section in here where you can kind of choose your specialties, um, as a person in the WordPress space. And When you choose those, one, they get listed on the site so people can see, but two, whatever the, the top one is that you choose, which, you know, it’s, it’s sort of asked to be in an order of most relevant to, to not as relevant, I guess, uh, whatever the top one is also. Changes your pin on the map. And so while the majority of folks all have the little W for their spot on the map, um, you know, the people who have changed that get a little, get a little different custom pin. Um, so what you asked me for was to add accessibility as one of the options and I’ve added accessibility specialist.
Michelle Frecehtte: Thank you.
Marcus Burnette: So it shows you the little pins. In my case, I have community at the top here, so that would be the pin that shows for me on the map is the little community pin,
Michelle Frechette: That’s at the top of mine too.
Marcus Burnette: But these are, these are drag and drop, so you can kind of put them in whatever order you want.
Michelle Frecehtte: Oh, that’s cool.
Marcus Burnette: There you go. I think you’ve asked for a number of features that were great additions that I’ve implemented, I think. Should not sharing location was one of them too.
Michelle Frechette: That was the biggest one. Yeah, at the very beginning, there are people who don’t, who, because they’ve been stalked in the past or they have Ex’s or whatever reason, don’t want to show their location, but still want to participate. Now you can turn that off. I think that’s great. Or people who are just digital nomads.
Marcus Burnette: Yeah. Who may not have a permanent location and not want to update their location details 12 times a year.
Michelle Frechette: Exactly. That’s great.
Marcus Burnette: Because they move around. Yeah, like you can, you can definitely check. I prefer not to share my location and then you just don’t have a map section on your profile, but you can still use the rest of the site as you normally would.
Michelle Frechette: Exactly. Well, along the idea of feature requests, we do have one in the chat, which is that there should be a part for WordPress related memes and jokes.So will you get right on that?
Marcus Burnette: I will think about how that might be incorporated in a fun way. I’m not sure exactly what that would look like, but, uh, I’m open to it. That’s for sure.
Michelle Frechtte: Mohammed, you can also always put that as your, um, profile image if you wanted to override the gravatar
Marcus Burnette: Yeah, you could. Over here you can choose your own profile photo and that’ll override whatever you’ve chosen or yeah, it’ll pull in your wordpress.org profile photo or gravatar photo if you have them set But if you upload your own photo, that’ll override anything else Yeah, we didn’t check out. I’m gonna go here just because it’s a fun page to look at.
Michelle Frechette: Oh, yeah
Marcus Burnette: Here’s one of the one of the fun bits many many WordCamps have their own version of the the WAPU mascot and so anytime I add a camp, if I can find a Wapu for it, I’ll add it and that populates this page.
Michelle Frechette: Oh, there’s Rochester.
Marcus Burnette: So, yep.
Michelle Frechette: Awesome.
Marcus Burnette: Not sure what’s happening with these. Not loading in.
Michelle Frechette: I don’t know, but I made the Buffalo one. Do you see it there?
Marcus Burnette: There’s so many.
Michelle Frechette: Holding the giant chicken wing.
Marcus Burnette: Where was it?
Michelle Frechette: One more, there it is, on the right hand side.
Marcus Burnette: Not a, not a cartoonized chicken wing, but a true to life, realistic chicken wing.
Michelle Frechette: I went with a photo, yeah, I thought that would be more fun. A different, anyway.
Marcus Burnette: Yeah, I think it might be the only realistic image. Although this, the WordCamp Europe 2021, I think is like a hand drawn.
Michelle Frechette: A plushie or something, yeah.
Marcus Burnette: Yeah.
Michelle Frechette: Interesting.
Marcus Burnette: Anyways, one of the, one of the ways that I’m trying to make sure that there’s some fun things happening, these all show up on their, the events list too for each of the events. If they have one, they kind of peek out.
Michelle Frechette: Oh, that’s awesome. I think that page might be the only page with more Wapus than my bulletin board.
Marcus Burnette: Yeah. It’s, it’s giving it a run for its money. I don’t know if it’s quite surpassed your bulletin board yet, but it’s giving it a run for its money.
Michelle Frechette: I definitely collect a lot of pins, that’s for sure. Awesome. Well, anything else that we should see? We got a few more minutes. I just want to make sure we haven’t missed anything that you want to share.
Marcus Burnette: Um, yeah, I think the only other one, we didn’t really look at the hosting page. Um, this is not new, but one of the newer pieces of the site. Uh, if you have, um, you know, opinions, which a lot of people do about their hosting provider or hosting provider that they’ve used in the past. Um, here’s a great way to let people to let people know, uh, coming to any one of these and. Let’s see, I’ll just pick one, not at random. We’ll go with Nexcess. Uh, you show up here, there’s kind of a breakdown of different pieces of the rating. It’s not just one overall rating, but if you hit rate, you get a again, this is one of those that You have to be logged in to do, um, to rate the hosts. The, the camps have these as well. If you go to one of the events, you can, uh, after it’s over, come back and rate as an attendee, as an organizer, as a speaker, I think, or no, attendee, speaker, sponsor. Um, and that way going forward, you can kind of see. How did this go for that event? Was, did people generally think it was a worthwhile event? There’s also a breakdown, right? There’s a number of different things that I’m asking you to rate. So it’s not just give me one overall rating and that encompasses everything, you know, you rate it and it’ll figure out the overall ratings for you. But there’s also information for, each of the hosts, you can visit the website, see their benchmark. This is a newer piece that I’ve added from, um, WP Hosting Benchmarks.com.
Michelle Frechette: Oh nice.
Marcus Burnette: All of these hosts are listed in there with more stats about performance and security and all of that. Most of the content on these pages has been given to me by the hosts themselves. Um, WP Hosting Benchmarks is kind of a third party performance and security, um, not rating, but benchmark site. So if you want to get some more information about that, each of the hosts has a hosting benchmark link. Um, but then you can read about the hosts here. And, and rate them. And then on the hosting page, get a overall view of how people feel about the different hosting companies.
Michelle Frechette:That’s awesome. And if somebody is a hosting company and they’re not on the list, how do they get on this list?
Marcus Burnette: Yep. I think. Uh, there’s a contact down here. Um, if you want to be listed on this page, I just hit contact at WP World and let me know, or go to my Presser profile and choose one of the 27 ways that I have that you can connect with me.
Michelle Frechette: You have as many as I do.
Marcus Burnette: Yeah. There’s. My page is nice and long too, but yeah, there’s, there’s lots of ways, but, um, officially you can contact me through the site and I’ll add you, there are some criteria down here, um, about this is not just for the hosts themselves trying to determine whether or not they should be listed on this page, but also kind of, you know, some more information for folks who are trying to determine, you know, why these, these hosting companies are on this page. There is a rubric and some, some other ways that this list was compiled. Uh, and my, my hope is that this becomes a really great resource for people looking for great WordPress hosting. And it’s all kind of community sourced. Nobody on this page pays me to be on this page or anything like that, and it’s all, all the ratings from people who have created accounts on the WP World and come over and rated it.
Michelle Frechette: That’s awesome. Uh, you have another question here, which is, did you face performance issues with this large amount of data?
Marcus Burnette: Um, yes, there’s a lot going on in here now. Um, I will say that I think, so I’ve upped my, my server level once or twice just to kind of help keep up with, uh, with the amount of data and having to pull it into different queries and stuff. I do think that at some point here in the near future, I’m going to have to a month or two, kind of re evaluating the code that ChatGPT has given me, um, and try to clean some of that up to be more efficient. It’s one of the things I appreciated being able to leverage ChatGPT to create some of the features that I wasn’t able either wasn’t able to create or would have taken me three weeks to do when I could do it in a couple of hours with ChatGPT helping me. Um, but what it’s not necessarily great at is giving you the most efficient code. So either I’m going to go back through and look at the code and see if I can make it more efficient or I’ll pit a couple of machine learning sites against each other to see who can come up with the most efficient. You know, take ChatGPTs and plug it into cloud or whatever and see if it thinks that the code could be written more efficiently. Um, or I would solve, you know, but we have plenty of developer folks. Maybe I’ll steal somebody at a WordCamp US and see if they would look over a few snippets of code and give me their, give me their opinion on what they think or how it could be better. So yes, with that amount of data, you do start to run into some, some performance stuff, but I think most of that has to do with code efficiency and not necessarily WordPress or the amount of data that’s in the site. Cause there are enormous WordPress sites that run just fine. And so I know it’s definitely possible. I think I just need to do a little bit of code rewriting.
Michelle Frecehtte: I’ve never had anything even be slow. Um, I think things are slower when you’re live streaming cause you’re using a ton of your local bandwidth, but, but I’ve always had no difficulty accessing anything on the site.
Marcus Burnette: Yeah, there’s that too. Mohammed said, yeah, I can’t imagine server costs. It’s actually not, it’s not enormous. I’m it’s, I’m not running Facebook over here. Um, and the sponsors that I have on the site more than cover the costs that I need to run the site. So I appreciate them immensely.
Michelle Frecehtte: Absolutely. Um, any other questions? So we’ve got just a couple minutes left here. If you have a question, put it in the chat. Um, anything else that we haven’t looked at? Oh, show your shop. I, my mug is in the, is in the washer, the dishwasher. Otherwise I would have pulled it out. Just been drinking fake coffee. Cause I can’t drink coffee this late of the day, but I do own one of your mugs.
Marcus Burnette: Yeah, this is, um, just one of those other fun places. I occasionally will get, I saw I’m a designer first and then I’ve added development over the, over the years, but this is just kind of a fun place for me to explore design ideas. Um, I, if I come up with something in the shower or while I’m sleeping and think, Hey, that’d be a fun t shirt or mug or whatever, then, uh, you know, I’ll hop on and add it to the store. So there’s not a ton of products in here currently. I don’t know, 20, 25, something like that. Um, did you see your mug? There’s your mug.
Michelle Frechette: I do. There’s my mug. And it’s the bigger one, so it holds more coffee, so I can get through my day. I like it.
Marcus Burnette: All the coffee.
Michelle Frecehtte: Capital P, dang it.
Marcus Burnette: Yep. Capital P, dang it mug.I’ve had a few people order that one.
Michelle Frechette: Yep.
Marcus Burnette: This isn’t a, this isn’t a huge moneymaker for the site. It’s just a playground for me to get my silly design ideas out somewhere.
Michelle Frecehtte: I love it. I think it’s good. I like that. Learn empathy deeply. Also. That’s pretty cool.
Marcus Burnette: Yeah.
Michelle Frechette: Very, very cool. Well, thank you so much for spending some time today. I really appreciate it. I’ll take this off the screen and just put a couple of things on banner wise for any, anybody who wants to sign up or is looking for more information, The WP dot World is where you will find this. I know there’s other URLs that’ll take you there too, but that’s my favorite one, because it’s very cool.
Marcus Burnette: I just, it’s just the wpworld.com that I felt obligated to also get just in case, because if I just tell people it’s at the WP World, that’s where they likely will go, the wpworld. com, but it redirects you to thewp.world.
Michelle Frechette: It’s a cool URL and we pay more for it. So we’re going to put it out there. Right?
Marcus Burnette: That’s right. That is the, that is the main one.
Michelle Frechette: Exactly. Uh, we don’t have a show next week, next week I will be at WordCamp US. So we’re going to skip a week after that. When we come back, I’m going to have Katie Boykin from Kadence, um, talking about the Kadence Amplify event that’s coming up in October. So make sure to join us for that event. Uh, Marcus, thank you so much for being here today. Really appreciated you taking the time. And, uh, we got one more comment. Cool stuff. Thank you both. You’re very welcome Mohamed. Thanks for being here today. Appreciate that.
Marcus Burnette: For anybody who’s going to be at WordCamp US next week, I’ll have some WP World stickers with me. So come find me and, uh, I’ll give you a sticker.
Michelle Frecehtte: Yeah. And I’ll have my Michelle Wapu ones.
Marcus Burnette: Yes!
Michelle Frechette: So I will, uh, I’ll have those with me. If anybody wants a Michelle Wapu sticker, I will bring those along as well. Um, thanks again. I’m looking forward to seeing you next week. I know our paths are going to cross more than once. I think we even set aside some time to actually sit and chat for a change. Um, which will be nice to make
Marcus Burnette: Yep. I wanted to make sure we do it.
Michelle Frechette: Exactly. We always say we’re going to, and then we just never get the time.
Marcus Burnette: There’s so many people. I wanted to make sure that, I wanted to make sure that we, we made time to hang out with each other, so I scheduled a spot with you.
Michelle Frecehtte: Yeah, I’m very much looking forward to that, thank you. Um, everybody else, we will see you, if we don’t see you at WordCamp US, we’ll see you on the, on the other side of things, um, next time, but have a great day, and thanks for joining us today on the Post Status Happiness Hour.
