WP Mainline Episode 14 – WPHunts, WP Podcasts, and Generational Knowledge Gaps

Speaker 1 00:00:19 Welcome everybody to episode 14 of the WP mainline podcast for Thursday, September 30th, 2021. I am your host. Jeff Chandler joined, uh, my, my favorite Canadian Mountie friend, Malcolm. Pearlstein welcome. How you doing, sir? I’m doing well and yourself. Yeah, I’m tired today. I I’m, uh, I’ve actually had a very good week, both, uh, mental health anxiety wise and production wise. In fact, uh, if I can publish something tomorrow, it will be the first week. First of all, week that I’ve been able to publish something on your site. So anything, I don’t think you’re going to have anything to publish about tomorrow. I think it’s going to be a really boring news day. Uh, I highly doubt that, but I am. I am, I am sleepy, but we do have some things to talk about. It’s about 9:00 PM. We’re doing the show on a Thursday, uh, Thursday evening, because tomorrow is WordCamp us.
Speaker 1 00:01:15 If you don’t have your tickets, they are still available. It’s a free virtual event. It begins at noon, 12 Eastern, I believe. And it goes all the way to about eight o’clock. So it’s going to, it’s going to be an all day thing. They’re actually doing this kind of neat thing where I think it’s during lunch, all these different WordPress contributors who play an instrument are going to get on a video call. There’s going to be, they’re going to either be playing music or they’re going to be together as a band. I don’t know what’s happening, but during lunch, there’s going to be some cool things going on with contributors and music. So definitely keep an eye out for that. And, uh, I’m not really one for virtual events, but for this one, I’ll make an exception. I’d like to just go there, hang out. And now I kind of made a joke today on Twitter that I was on my way to the hotel. And, uh, you know, if anybody wanted to catch an Uber with me at five 30 to grab some dinner, I think I made some people laugh. I made some people cry. I actually had somebody believe me and said, where’s the information on the website? And it’s set up. I’m sorry. I was just role-playing.
Speaker 1 00:02:23 I kind of fold some people, but a WordPress RPG, man. I don’t know. Has anyone thought about that yet? If you haven’t built that an RPG for WordPress, I dunno. I’d be super curious about what that would look like. Um, yeah, I looked over the list and I mean, I would love to kind of go through all of this, but I have a full day I’ve worked for, are there any sessions that really stand out to you as like, oh, I gotta be there for that? Uh, the learn WordPress, uh, one is something I’m looking forward to. I I’d like to learn more information about that. In fact, uh, next Monday I have a scheduled round table discussion with the folks involved with the learned dot WordPress project. So we’re going to learn more about that and I’ll publish that conversation next week. I would like to listen in on the conversation with, uh, Josepha Haden.
Speaker 1 00:03:09 Um, I like to hear what she’s got to say at the, at the end of the day. And let’s see, there’s probably one or two involving Gutenberg full site editing that I wouldn’t mind, uh, more than mine watching. I mean, I don’t know. I can’t see myself sitting in front of a screen the whole day. That’s just not going to happen. In fact, I I’m actually going have plans tomorrow to go watch some trains with my wife and smokey and that’ll be awesome cause we haven’t done that forever. Right. But I’m hoping with some VPN I’ll be able to, to, uh, actually tune into work camp U S all of the sessions, as far as I know are prerecorded. So everything is not live. People can hang out and even the present, the speakers can hang out in the live chat and actually answer questions and things that are popping up there.
Speaker 1 00:03:55 So that’s pretty nice. Um, but, uh, but yeah, and also, I, I haven’t, I haven’t attended, I haven’t attended a WordPress where camp us, or I haven’t seen any videos from it for two or three years, so I I’m due, I’m due to get back into it for sure. Yeah. You’ll have to let us know what your favorite things were and keep us in the loop on that and hopefully post something tomorrow about your experience. Yes, absolutely. And speaking of doing the podcast today, do you know what day it is? Malcolm? I didn’t even know this day existed until like everybody started talking about it today. Yeah. I mean, I, I work with tofa so I kind of couldn’t avoid it, uh, something about some podcast day, maybe. Yeah. Yeah. So today is international podcast day, which, uh, I guess where everybody is celebrates and listens to and searches out new podcasts.
Speaker 1 00:04:49 Uh, everybody celebrates the, uh, the podcast medium, I suppose. And on this day, speaking of tau for Daraja, he, uh, the, him and his wife who operate the hero press network of sites, uh, they launched a new site today called WP podcasts. So it’s WP podcasts that com and it’s essentially a directory of WordPress podcasts, active WordPress podcasts that are, that are going out throughout the community. So if you visited that site, you can search for your favorite show, uh, via text, or you can search for it via tags. There’s an actual, and the right hand sidebar. There’s a list of shows. Uh, and there’s a little number that actually says how many episodes, uh, that, uh, that show in particular has. And, um, my favorite way to browse the site is just to visit the podcast page, because it just lists the shows from newest to oldest, with an excerpt, from the show notes posts.
Speaker 1 00:05:47 And if you click on the listen to the episode link, it takes you right to that website where the show notes post is listed. And that’s where you can subscribe to the show, read the show notes, click on links, things that you’re talking about. Um, it’s pretty cool. I, I don’t know, you know, over the years, and we’re pressed, we’ve had websites like this come and go that kind of aggregate things together, whether it’s news or themes or plugins, but it’s been awhile since I’ve seen a, a podcast one, and there are a number of WordPress podcasts out there. So I, I liked the design of the site. It’s snappy, it’s fast. Um, in fact, uh, he added a couple that weren’t there. So there’s, I think there’s only like 3000 episodes. It’s three, three, that 3000 episodes of WordPress audio content you can listen to if you choose to do so all available right there. So, uh, that’s pretty cool resource.
Speaker 2 00:06:38 Yeah. One of my favorite parts is when you go to that all podcast episodes page, and you go to archive by month, you can actually kind of like scrub back in time to like 2012 and see how more and more podcasts have been kind of, um, adding episodes per month as we go along, um, September 20, 21, um, they’ve already found 107 episodes this month. Um, which I mean, amongst all the podcasts that they know about, which is a pretty impressive amount of episodes. If I, if I might say
Speaker 1 00:07:12 Indeed, indeed. Uh, in fact, I just, I thought, and I said this on the show. I thought that WP watercooler was the longest running WordPress podcast out there, but it’s actually the, uh, engineer we’re press engineer podcast by Dustin harlot, sir, he’s a, an he’s got over, he’s got over 400 episodes. It might be 500, but he’s been doing it for even longer than WP watercolor. So I was pretty impressed by that. And he just recently had his podcast. Where is it? Let me look. It’s the a w P engineer it’s in here somewhere. Uh, but it’s definitely one of the, one of the podcasts that’s been added, lot of episodes. Oh, there’s the kitchen sink WordPress podcast. That, one’s pretty cool that one’s with Adam silver, listen to that. But I got to say, um, and speaking of podcasts, do I listen to them?
Speaker 1 00:08:12 No. And the reason for that is because I don’t, I don’t do things. I don’t do things where I, my, when I listen to a podcast, I want my full attention to be on whatever it is they’re talking about. And when I worked at the grocery store at night stacking shelves, I could do that mindlessly that was mind numbing work, and I could concentrate and whatever the show it was I was listening to. But everyone says ever since leaving third shift at the store, I used to burn through hours and hours of podcasts. No problem. I just haven’t gotten into it. So, you know, what I need is like AirPods or those. So I have an iPhone 12 or iPhone 11. I have one of those. I have an iPhone and I think it have a headphone Jack. So I think what I ended up having to do, I think those air pods, I think your Bluetooth, you connect via Bluetooth. So if I get me a pair of AirPods, maybe I’ll have to wait until around black Friday, see if any were on sale. If I ended up getting me some of those, and I’m going to vow and make an effort to go outside, to walk more, walk around my neighborhood and listen to some more podcasts, get back into that. Cause I kinda, I kinda miss, I miss listening to all those podcasts.
Speaker 2 00:09:26 Yeah. That’s a good
Speaker 1 00:09:27 Way to be of WordPress content in audio form out there.
Speaker 2 00:09:31 I have to admit I’m bad about that as well. Um, yeah, I, in talking with,
Speaker 1 00:09:36 I mean, I mean, come on D do you see yourself saying, well, I got some free time here. I’m just going to sit here and listen to this show or this podcast.
Speaker 2 00:09:44 I mean, one of the advantages about podcasts and video, um, is that you can speed it up, right? So if you’re worried about memorizing the information, you can listen to it at 1.25, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5
Speaker 1 00:09:58 W w which quite a few people have already mentioned that they do with this show. And they said, I sound pretty good as a chipmunk,
Speaker 2 00:10:05 But I mean, like, it’s a great way to kind of compress the amount of time it takes to kind of get through some of this content. And I know a lot of people that do that and do it quite well. I just haven’t necessarily taken the time to do that. I think for me, I spend most of my time at my desk and I’m on a lot of meetings or I’m like, you know, checking out a YouTube video or a Twitch stream. I don’t necessarily think of podcasts as a desktop type activity. And I guess that’s kind of another barrier that I need to kind of work on. I don’t know. It’s interesting.
Speaker 1 00:10:36 I would, I would, I think if I got those AirPods, I listened to a lot more podcasts. In fact, it would probably get me to go outside more. I hope I hope it would. I don’t know. Maybe I’m stuck inside. I miss going to the park. I really do. Um, so next up is a website for the small fries out there in the WordPress space. It’s called WP hunts and it, its founder is Ben Townsend. And what this site think about, it’s a product hunt, but for WordPress stuff. So there’s, there’s kind of two different flavors of the site. There’s one for like WordPress business owners, developers, and there’s one for, for users. And the reason why Ben created this site is he said that, um, out of all the acquisitions that have happened as of late, he re he’s, he said this idea of WB hunts for a while.
Speaker 1 00:11:31 He says his issue is that developers have no real outlet. And as a user I’m missing out, she said, sure, you could put something onto the WordPress plugin and theme directories, but the chances of him finding it when it’s flooded with plugins and themes, they have a huge user base are slim to none. He says, what if there’s a particular maker’s product that’s perfect for my needs. He’s never going to know about it because the words, WordPress landscape favors the bigger, more established products, which in his opinion is inherently wrong. He says WordPress to him. It was always about enabling individuals, the freedom to create, to choose plugins and themes. And then when the boom time happened in the, the affiliate affiliate, spam blogs flooded the gates and kind of all hell broke loose. So WP haunts actually won’t have any affiliate links and registered users will be able to redeem coupons from those who have Lister creations and all the towns, and also made the decision to not allow products from Koch, canning our theme for us to be listed as they already have a large budget for marketing.
Speaker 1 00:12:35 Uh, one of the ways he plans on generating revenue for the site is to allow developers to come up with a fair price, how that’s going to happen. I’m not sure what what’s going to be involved in the negotiations there, but he did say that 5% of any revenue that the website generates will be donated to a big orange heart foundation. I think something like WP haunts could be beneficial, uh, to the WordPress scene, especially for people who want to support indie developer. You know, and it’s kind of funny that I mentioned indie developers because it makes me think that things have gotten so big now and with all these acquisitions and parent companies and satellite companies that now that, you know, there’s, there’s probably going to be some demand out there for indie developers. Maybe they want to use a product or something that’s not owned by a particular company or conglomerate that’s out there.
Speaker 1 00:13:25 Um, so I can definitely see something like WP hunts being beneficial to the community. Uh, you know, the first is for WP hunts to be successful. It’s going to have to gain a bunch of traction on its own to benefit the people who are listing their products there. And I thought it was kind of interesting where users, like when I do a review, they’re actually going to have to provide a screenshot of them using the product before the review can actually be, uh, published out of the site. I think it created, we’ll be able to have that power to publish a review. So, and the other thing about WP haunts is that, uh, as someone who’s been in the WordPress media space and has written thousands of posts about products and things that I’ve discovered, I’ve also received tons of emails through contact forms and kind of cold calls and things of that nature of different products and different services that people are working on.
Speaker 1 00:14:21 And by and large, I just skip over them because they either not interesting to me or the, I don’t think my audience, uh, has any as, as any need or use for them. So what WP hunts does is it kind of fills that void and allows the creator to kind of have more control over trying to gain that traction, that media traction, where they don’t have to rely on a hope and a prayer that somebody like Jeff Chandler over at WP mainline writes about their product, or it gets mentioned on WP Tavern. They can list it here. And at least being on this website and being listed, uh, gives you a chance, increases the chances of discoverability.
Speaker 2 00:14:59 Well, okay. Everyone. I know, I know Jeff is like making it seem like it’s this big deal and everything, but I think it has more to do with the fact that it makes his job easier.
Speaker 1 00:15:09 Oh, well, there’s that too. I’m I’m not going to lie. I would, I would definitely bookmark it and check it out every day. And if I see something that catches my eye, boom, I’m on it.
Speaker 2 00:15:18 Right. Exactly. And I think that is the advantage of any site like this. Um, you know, for me, when I look at product hunt, I’m looking for things that tickle my fancy and I go, oh, this is cool. And then I like share it with my co-founder at Preston, or I like share it with people at Canberra. And, uh,
Speaker 1 00:15:38 Okay. So when you, when you find those things that tickle your fancy yep. Would you have found them otherwise or was that for sure? And that is the beauty of product.
Speaker 2 00:15:48 Yep. Yeah. I don’t know that they could have ever gotten to me any other way. I would’ve, if they had had an advertisement somewhere, I probably would have been ignored it because, because of how it’s structured and because I’ve opted in to receiving this information, I don’t necessarily pay attention to it, like as detailed as I should, but I definitely scan through it when I received the emails or when I go onto the site. And, uh, I hope that this will do the same for WordPress stuff.
Speaker 1 00:16:13 Exactly. Me too. I, I, I want to be able to, to find out something I’d like to new plugin, a new theme, something that’s hosted on GitHub. And I kind of liked the idea of not having code canyon and, uh, being forced stuff on here. And it was a good choice. And I also think that all of the big shots, like I wonder what the criteria is going to be, that, that Ben will figure out for plugins. I wonder if, if a plugin is already hosted on the WordPress theme or plugin directory is, I wonder if they can’t be listed on WP hunts. I wonder if that’s going to be, be the case or if there’s some criteria like active install counts or something that you already have were being listened on WP hunts, wouldn’t be maybe as beneficial. Like for instance, you’re not going to see Jetpack on WP hunts. That just my sense. I think, I think, I think that completely destroys the purpose of what w WP Hans is all about. But, um, yeah, I would like to bookmark it, check it out and be able to write about new products and themes and services and different things that I found. Uh you’re right. Anything that makes my job easier. I’m all for man. No doubt.
Speaker 1 00:17:24 Uh, so let’s see. So, but it’s not actually launched it. You can actually sign up and, uh, and do anything. And he’s in the process. He’s in the very beginning stages of, uh, building the site and he’s got a newsletter sign, uh, that you could subscribe to if you visit WP hans.com and he’s already got a hundred people signed up, he’s already got people interested in this idea. Uh, so I’m, I’m happy for him. And I’ve got a, I’ve got to talk with him scheduled next week and, uh, who knows depending on that talk, I might maybe I’ll partner up with him on this. I don’t know. We’ll see.
Speaker 1 00:17:58 We’ll see. Let’s see. Uh, oh, I came across this interesting resource. It’s actually been around a long time, but for some reason I never knew about it probably because I wasn’t looking for it, but I happened to see Scott Kinsley Clark for another show. He shared a link on Twitter to a comprehensive spreadsheet that compares the various types of content type and custom fields plugins. Now it’s a, it’s a spreadsheet and it’s, up-to-date, it’s maintained frequently by Clark and Matt Gibbs. Um, and Clark recently improved the spreadsheet by adding plug-in icons and active installs. And now the plugins are actually listed by active installs now. And if there’s over like 93 different row rows of data that are compared between the various plugins, I mean, there’s 1, 2, 3, 4. I mean, there’s, I think there’s like a dozen or more plugins in this spreadsheet and it tells you there’s information.
Speaker 1 00:18:54 Like, is it free? Is that pay as a commercial only there’s an open source, uh, network wide content field and or fields multi-state support. There’s all kinds of good stuff in there. And, uh, Scott was telling me that the plugin authors have actually, uh, participated in making sure that this is up to date when it comes to their specific plugin in the, in the data that’s being compared. So very cool, uh, spreadsheet on a core resource. Um, in fact, it’s been there for years, but like I said, you know, it’s, I think it’s just one of those things that, uh, if you know, you know, and, uh, hopefully by writing the bat and sharing it, uh, more people will know about it. Cause it’s very cool to see this, uh, comparison tool. And Scott has been wanting to build a full blown website and create different filtering components and, and additional ways to search. But he just has a head of time. It’s not bad, uh, browse through the spreadsheet is a lot of data there
Speaker 2 00:19:53 Too much. Holy smokes. I look at this and my heart like speeds up. It’s like, wow, it’s a lot to parse. I almost wish that someone would come along and maybe use like gravity forms or something. And give me like a, choose my own adventure to get me to that, to the end result. Right? Like, cause you can see that there’s a whole bunch of options here that are like, exclusatory where it’s like, if you pick guests here or no, here, then you’re not going down this path anymore. And I’d love to have like a recommender tool based on this data. So someone build that, um, because it’d be, I think it would be super useful for people because there are a lot of options to do custom content types and custom field types and custom meta and custom whatever. So, uh, yeah, I, I it’s too much to parse in this form, in my opinion, like if I was just an end user and I came across a spreadsheet, I would just scroll down and really quickly and say like, wait, there’s no count of how many yeses there were like, like what is my quick one piece of data
Speaker 1 00:20:47 To kind of understand what I should pick. And they certainly do not do that in this spreadsheet. Yeah. I hear you. I mean, if you’re, I’m not the spreadsheet kind of kind of guy or person. So I mean maybe something I think had Scott been able to put this information together in a, in a website to use maybe actual custom fields to provide different ways of filtering and searching. I think that probably they could have created something like what, what’s your, what you’re wanting, but as, as exists now everything’s just in that spreadsheet and it’s either all or nothing. Yeah. Wow. So Helen, who Sandy shared an interesting article on Twitter that, and this article looks at the, uh, it was actually on a, on the verge and it looks at the generational knowledge gap between students who grew up using Google drive versus professors who use directory structures for storing and accessing files.
Speaker 1 00:21:42 Um, apparently saving files to folders and understanding how a directory structure works. It’s not a skill that much of the younger generation has and it’s giving professors, it’s making them go nuts because they’re having to teach what they probably consider basic computer skills to people who have no idea what it is they’re talking about. And one of the biggest differences that the article notes is that the, the mental model and, uh, while professors are used to storing things in directories and subdirectories, the younger generation is storing the files and to just one large bucket or into a, maybe two or three different buckets. And all they have to do is search or start typing a couple of keywords into the thing you’re looking for. And now whether it’s ILS or, or Google or some other type of software, usually the thing that you’re looking for shows up versus the method of clicking this directory, go into here, go into this subdirectory, having to remember all that.
Speaker 1 00:22:46 And then hopefully you get to the file that you’re looking for. And I thought not only was this generational gap interesting, but I kind of reflected into how I store files nowadays. And, um, I’ve, I’ve gradually moved to the, uh, the phase of, of buckets, you know, just put everything into a bucket. I’ve got documents, that’s a bucket, I’ve got a, the downloads folder, that’s a bucket, I’ve got a desktop folder where everything I want all the trash I want on my desktop, I put into a folder. So I keep the desktop neat. It’s kind of like sweeping the trash underneath the bed, you know, nobody’s going to see it. Um, but I, I thought it was, uh, I thought all of that was interesting. And then Helen kind of brings it back and says, it says that it would be really good for WordPress developers to really read and absorb the article and think about how things are currently approached in the UI of WordPress and explaining what WordPress is and how we can actually be effective in a mental model of apps and no file system.
Speaker 1 00:23:51 And no, and one of the things that has been requested both on this show and other shows regarding the media library is file structures, folders, directories. They, a lot of people who want that for the WordPress media library. And now after reading this article and look at how people are accessing files. Now, I wonder if the it’s just kind of funny to me, or kind of ironic that maybe the WordPress media library is now at a point where, because it doesn’t have files and directory structures that maybe it’s poised to, uh, kind of leap ahead in terms of how people access files and search form and whatnot. Uh, now if you look at the WordPress media library, you’ve got alternative text fields, you’ve got the title, caption description. Those are things that you can use to search for images in the media library. And I think that, uh, search is about as effective as you have fields and metadata that you can attach to a file, right? So if you take some of those things away, your search is not going to be as effective, at least that’s, that’s my understanding of it. Um, but what, I don’t know, what’s your, what’s your take on this?
Speaker 2 00:25:10 So one of the things I thought was kind of funny about this is that, I mean, a lot of us and maybe by default as well, WordPress actually does store things by year and month in terms of image uploads or file uploads. Right. But it’s an abstraction that we don’t really present to users all that often, and it doesn’t even need to necessarily exist on the computer file system. Like you have the option in WordPress to switch it to just be like one directory and all your stuff goes in there. Um, but the, I think the, the idea of being able to like call out or make something more important, even if we don’t talk about it in a hierarchy structure, but just kind of being able to kind of say like, this is something that I use often. And so I want to kind of keep that where I can see it is a missed opportunity in the WordPress media library.
Speaker 2 00:26:00 And I think that’s where a lot of that folder and file structure comes from is that that need to be able to kind of find certain assets in an easy and quick way. I don’t necessarily think that we want to like organize everything, but I personally feel like my brain is much more of like a, you know, tax file, uh, like cabinet than a like scattering of random stuff all over my room. So, uh, I, I need that sense of organization. I need that sense of structure to keep my sense of organization going, because without that sense of structure, I mean, I look at my downloads folder and I just want to cry. Um, so then I, you know what I mean, like I move it into like folder compartments, like this is what I downloaded and why and what for kind of thing. And, uh, it helps me be able to refine those, those assets again, where my downloads folder is just this like stressful anxiety ridden list of files that, you know, who knows what like random dot text actually is or something.
Speaker 2 00:26:59 Right. So, or why I downloaded it. So I don’t know. I think that, I don’t know necessarily that it’s as much as a generational gap. I think that it has, like, if you did the same test with Android users versus iOS users, I’d be interested to see if like, you know, or, or windows versus Mac. I think you’d see that like windows users kind of tend towards the, the folder structure because windows as an operating system tries to push you in that direction. And Mac probably tends towards that, like single directory structure, because Mac tends to push you towards that direction.
Speaker 1 00:27:31 Well, all I know is that on the bottom left-hand corner of my screen, it says type here to search the window search bar. And that’s where I go first, unless it’s on the desktop or it’s, it’s a subdirectory deep. I almost never because having a search, for example, maybe a certain game I have installed through steam, right. It’s very difficult to find. So I have to type it in there and it takes me right to where I need to go and look at that it’s like six, seven directories deep that I would’ve gotten lost, trying to find, I, I searched for everything, my downloads folder. I know what you’re saying. You’re saying that I’m lazy and I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna clean up and I don’t want to store stuff and things that, you know, I get it, but Hey, it works for me. And until, until that time, I look at my downloads folder and I’m scrolling and scrolling, I’m scrolling. I’m like, man, I should have named that file better.
Speaker 2 00:28:23 Yeah. Or how long ago did I download that a week ago? Or was it
Speaker 1 00:28:28 More than one or did I move it?
Speaker 2 00:28:31 Yeah, I don’t think it’s a generational thing. I’d be interested in seeing more studies, um, to like determine whether or not it actually truly is a generational thing or an experiential thing. And again, all of this kind of wrapping it back into WordPress, right. Is like, um, you know, what users is WordPress trying to serve the best or what type of people, like what persona of user is WordPress trying to serve best and is the software doing that? And I mean, we could dissect every piece of software under that understanding. Um, but the media library is always an area that I think could use more work. I think it’s an area that’s kind of being left behind in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1 00:29:10 Absolutely. I agree with you. There was a couple of years ago, there was a presentation, I think at WordCamp us where they actually looked at different media libraries, different UIs across from, I think there’s like flicker was in there and a couple other photo apps in the WordPress media library for all intents and purposes was pretty good compared to what was out there already. It was, it was very surprising actually, but that was a few years ago. Things are changing. Things are evolving. I know why don’t we just turn a media library and a blocks there. You that’s in blocks off everything.
Speaker 1 00:29:46 Uh, so last weekend was pretty fun. The web three WP, Y pu um, NFT collection minting process was open up fee to the general public. And I was on the web three, uh, discord server. And that was pretty fun. There’s a lot of people who are minting various watt poos. Uh, some of them were, were cool looking. Some of them were kind of boring, uh, but you know, it’s all on the, beauty’s in the eye of the beholder, right? Is that how you say it? Um, I wanted to participate in the experiment, but, uh, I attempted to purchase F E T H that’s ether from the cryptocurrency and I hooked it up to Metta mask, which is my wallet. And my bank said, no, no, no, we’re not going to let you do that. Then my bank marked my charges for ETH as fraudulent and actually froze my accounts.
Speaker 1 00:30:43 So I, after cussing at my bank and being upset because I wasn’t able to participate in this experiment, then calmed down and realized that my bank was just doing what I would want my bank to do. Uh, keeping me keeping me safe. So I contacted my bank the next day and they, and they said, well, did you try and do this? Did you train me? And I said, yes, yes, yes. So they said, okay, you’re not going to have any more problems doing this. So immediately I tried to purchase ethic again through wire, which was the service and it still didn’t work like it. I don’t know what the problem was. So, uh, folks have recommended that I go through like Coinbase, which I think is a, is an exchange, but you, it creates a, you give them money, but you got to wait a period of time.
Speaker 2 00:31:26 Yeah. And it’s just more trusted by banks because it’s a, it’s a known and managed company. Um, and it actually is more regulated than a lot of the other companies in terms of buying cryptocurrencies. And so it’s just a, kind of a safer approach, more trusted approach for banks. Um, so that’s why that recommendation price coming up a lot.
Speaker 1 00:31:45 And even though I didn’t get a chance to meet a wide pool, uh, one of the Inc my kale for he donated the white poo to me. So I actually own my first NFT, my first wild pu uh, he’s got like a gray hat and he’s brown. He’s got red shoes with a gray background and I like gray. So it’s kind of the red shoes make them pop. So he’s mine, he’s my wild pool. Um, uh, the special edition WP mainline while poo was minted. So that’s cool. So that’s out there. Somebody owns that. And I got in touch with the person and said, Hey, anytime you want to sell this thing, you put it out in the market. And let me know. I want to get through steps and buying my own poo. Uh, but so with that, I mean the, uh, the event went off pretty well.
Speaker 1 00:32:27 I think they’re up to 400 or five, at least 25% of the collection has been minted. Uh, so there’s an, a doing pretty good there, but I wanted to, uh, the other day I published some of my, I had some observations about these NFT things. And, uh, I I’ve noticed that, you know, there’s this very stark contrast right now where people look at NFT and it stands for no fricking time. Or you look at it as a joke, or they have no idea why people are buying JPEGs, where they can just right. Click, save image and boom. They have the image, you know, there’s a lot, there’s a lot of that. People are like that. And then on the other side, there are the people who understand about the prominence of an item in the blockchain and how that ownership is taken care of and the decentralized nature of everything and the cryptocurrency and whatnot.
Speaker 1 00:33:16 But I’ve now I look at these images and these GPA’s and this artwork, and I’m like, man, you know, I’ve got all this photography and stuff sitting around. It’s collecting dust. How about, I just meant those as NFTs, put it on the NFT markets, such as open sea and see if somebody who can’t can’t buy them. Well, you know, it doesn’t work that way. It’s NFTs. You know, when you start looking into listing them, there is a, you gotta have F Ethereum in your account, uh, to start the process, you need to pay gas fees, listing fees, transaction fees, possible royalty fees. I mean, you could end up going broke before, even get a chance to sell what it is you want to sell on the NFT market. And sometimes, you know, you were talking about like $80 up to a couple of hundreds of dollars.
Speaker 1 00:34:06 And so if you don’t have something, a piece of artwork, digital art and everything is kind of centered around digital artwork right now, it’s probably going to change revolve for time. But right now it’s all about digital art. If you don’t have something that collectors want, or that will sell, you’re just NFTs. It’s very easy to throw waste your money. It’s, it’s, it’s an investment thing. It’s funny money. You gotta have, you gotta have money, or I should say, you gotta ha yeah, you gotta have money, but you got to spend money to make money with this NFT stuff. And, uh, for those out there, like for someone like me who looks at these things and says, man, I, I can make a quick buck, or maybe I could just sell this or the, sell this and make a couple ads and turn it into a couple of thousand dollars. No, that’s not the way it works. So, um, it’s not a get rich quick scheme, uh, at least as far as I can tell. And like I said, it’s dangerous, you know, you could be, you could get into it and you might see something you like or this collection, and you might experience FOMO if you’re missing out. But, um, it, it’s, it’s a quick way to lose a lot of money if you don’t know what you’re doing.
Speaker 2 00:35:07 Yeah. I mean, I totally agree with you. One thing though, that I’d be interested in kind of hearing your perspective on is, um, how do you feel like cryptocurrencies or the blockchain or, um, NFTs might play a bigger role in WordPress? I mean, Twitter is talking about allowing people to put the NFTs and the proof of their ownership of the NFT as part of their like user profile image. Um, how until maybe like Gravatar or something allows for something similar.
Speaker 1 00:35:41 I think that would be cool. I, in fact, one of the next experiments that web three, what three, what three WP I found get it right? One of these times, one of the experiments we’re working on is utilizing blockchains and perhaps NMT is maybe not NFTs for WordPress contributions or contributors. So I’ll be very interested to see, uh, what comes to that. There’s also this idea of using the blockchain to create digital swag. You know, maybe if you attend a work camp in person, then you can mention NFT or, or there’s an NMT that’s specifically for that event. And you get access to what you can get it towards your wallet if you pay for a ticket and attend the event. So, and then you’d be able to show that possibly on your WordPress seller profile. So you have all these different badges, but then you could see NFTs or other things through the blockchain that you also own. Um, it’s I mean, when he started talking about ideas like that, where like swag and different pins and different messages and coupons and other things that you can attach to these smart contracts, it gets it’s right for innovation, for
Speaker 2 00:36:53 Sure.
Speaker 1 00:36:55 And I’m very curious to see how, how the WordPress project takes advantage of all this stuff. If it does at all, you know, you’re going to meet people, you’re going to need systems and people in place to, to build and do all this stuff. So that’s one of the problems of open source and there’s never enough people. There’s never enough time. There’s never enough people pointing into a direction that you should go.
Speaker 2 00:37:21 Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1 00:37:23 Uh, so let’s see. Other than that, um, that’s about it. Uh, as far as the news go, Hey, nothing got acquire that I know of this week. So, you know, there’s that, um, yeah. That’s is there anything, anything you want to say or get off your chest before we wrap it up?
Speaker 2 00:37:48 No, I, I, uh, you know, I think, uh, as I said last week, I hope to echo this weekend and maybe every week, as long as you’re not saying it, um, if, if you want to support the show, the best way to do that is to go to WP mainline and subscribe for $49 per year. That’s it under 50 bucks for the entire year, 12 months of Jeff Rowe. And I, um, as a rail fan and go ahead and do that right away and, uh, help the show kind of continue to be successful. And I, uh, I look forward to doing many more of these episodes and trying to convince Jeff to do a whole diverse podcast series and interviews and everything, but we can’t do that unless we, uh, keep him fed and keep them hydrated. So, um, subscribe today, everyone.
Speaker 1 00:38:30 Yeah. Special shout out to, uh, I don’t have their off hand, but there’s three Justin Ferriman, uh, uh, news. There’s two others that subscribe to the, uh, to the website today and thanks to their subscriptions, I’m able to send forward a payment for my car. So maybe they’ll stop calling me and asking me where their money is. Yeah. We don’t want
Speaker 2 00:38:55 Jeff’s legs to get broken
Speaker 1 00:38:57 That’s for sure. Yeah. I mean, it’s oh man. So I, I, they help, they, uh, they they’re supporting me and they help Miami a little more time, but, and, um, next week on the, on the show, of course, we’ll have a wrap up and do a review as best we can as to what happened at WordCamp us. But I do want to talk next week about something that came up today in Twitter about news websites who owns them and trying to make money and trying to make a living doing these things called news websites, which I’m sort of trying to change the narrative now that it’s not just about news. It’s more like it’s more like documentation documenting things, being sort of like a historian and being able to do that every day. And boy, I, I, I’m almost going to get into it right now, but it’s the end of the show, but that’s something I want to, I would like to talk about next week in more detail. Cause I have some things I’d like to say about it. Be a hot topic. That’s going to do it for this episode of the WP mainline podcast. You can find the show notes for this episode and all other episodes on WP, mainline.com, just click the podcast button and everything will be right there for you. And you can follow me on Twitter at Jeffrey, J E F F R zero in Malcolm.
Speaker 2 00:40:15 You can follow me on Twitter at find purpose. And, uh, I am working at Preston as the co-founder
Speaker 1 00:40:22 Prestige
Speaker 2 00:40:24 And, uh, also at Canberra creative. So you can find me there.
Speaker 1 00:40:29 Awesome. Awesome. So until next week, uh, enjoy with us. If you happen to see it, we’ll talk about it next week and I have a safe weekend. So as long as everybody