WP Mainline Episode 2 – Coronavirus Is Officially A Pandemic

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In this episode, Malcolm Peralty and I discuss how the Coronavirus is impacting our lives. I also share how it’s impacting the lives of those in the WP Mainline community. We discuss the full-screen editor by default feature in WordPress 5.4, specifically how it was added to a release candidate at the last minute. Last but not least, we talk about one of the things I think Plugin developers are forgetting to test for when it comes to dashboard widgets.

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— Speaker 1 00:00:20 Welcome everyone to episode two of WP mainline for Friday, March
13th. Oh, oh, oh. That’s like from the green giant, it’s not really spooky unless you’re afraid of the
green giant or vegetables or whatever. I’m your host. Uh, Jeff Chandler joined by, you know
what, we’re two episodes into the new podcast and John has already found a way to ditch the
show. That is unbelievable. It’s unsure. I’m sure you’re crying in a corner. It’s so sad. Oh, well,
Hey. But uh, I have found a very suitable, uh, replacement, sorry, gen in the form of Malcolm
Pearl LT of press Titan. Malcolm makes a lot for joining me on the show today. Thanks for
having me. I appreciate it. Uh, so let’s see. The first thing we want to talk about is probably
something called COVID-19 virus, worldwide epidemic. Uh, it’s it’s gone crazy here in Ohio. Now
schools are shut down things, everything that involves people is pretty much shut down.
Speaker 1 00:01:18 Uh, what, how are you handling it up there in Canada? Cause I know,
uh, was it the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, his wife recently tested positive for it. How’s it
affecting your life so far? Yeah, that’s right. Um, you know, when the leaders of your country start
getting it and you kind of have to feel a little bit nervous, right? I mean, people are there’s rumors
that even Trump might have it, uh, in terms of kind of day-to-day life. Uh, you know, we have a
lot of the same problems that a lot of other places have. So like you go to the stores and for
some reason, all the toilet paper is sold out. Um, but beyond that experience yesterday, it just,
it’s crazy. Right. You know, it’s not one of those viruses or whatever that’s going to give you
diarrhea, but apparently that’s the stockpile that everyone wants to have, but I don’t know if
that’s going to be the new money or what, but, uh, yeah, I mean, it, it’s definitely changed a few
things for me.
Speaker 1 00:02:08 I’m, I’m fortunate. I work from home, so it doesn’t change too much, but,
um, my wife goes to school and she’s just been told that next week she will not be going to
school. Uh, the trip that I had planned to help one of our clients in a startup accelerator in South
Africa has been delayed, postponed, canceled, potentially. So I won’t be going on that trip. So I’ll
be helping out remotely, which is kind of a bummer. I was looking forward to seeing Cape town
in South Africa, but I don’t want to get trapped in some other country where I have no
connections and no resources. So kind of happy to be staying here and ride it out here with my
wife and my dog. Yeah. I’m, I’m essentially, uh, limiting our travel a little bit. Uh, I mean, I, I
already washed my hands a ton of times during the day.
Speaker 1 00:02:49 I’m pretty good with, I got hand sanitizer in the car and I’m always doing
those things where you use your elbows to open doors, or I use my pinkie to open doors if they
have handles on they, the wipes and stuff like that. Uh, so far so good here. I mean, we’ve, we’re
still running on our typical supply of toilet paper that we bought about two months ago from
Sam’s club. So we’re not in an immediate need of it, but uh, yeah. Uh, bounty Sharman, all those
companies that make paper products. I mean, they’re, they’re probably happy about what’s
going on with coronavirus, cause they’re probably making bank, uh, with toilet paper. Well that
beginning resting of toilet paper became the new currency fragile that you can’t get it wet, then it,
you know, it’s, it’s no good, but um, yeah, not now. Now the big thing is all of these people who
are, have been suddenly thrust in the position of working from home, who may have not, uh, had
to do that before.
Speaker 1 00:03:43 And there’s quite a few people out there that are experiencing what,
what it’s like to work from home for the first time. And then there’s a lot of people who are
struggling with it, a lot of different companies and people out there offering books and videos
and corals because, you know, in the workforce industry, many of us have been doing this for
more than 10 years now. And there’s a lot of people who are looking for advice and starting to
panic, not knowing what it is they’re supposed to be doing well. And then there’s also the people
that are trying to capitalize on this, right? People are seeing this as like the wonderful gold rush.
Um, all of us who have this knowledge, finding a way to be able to monetize it, —- to be able to, um, continue to bring in a decent income. Well, the economy does whatever it’s
going to do.
Speaker 1 00:04:25 I mean, one of the cool stories from Shopify is that they’re giving like a
thousand dollars to each staff member. They have like 5,000 staff members. That’s a $5 million
investment for work from home, remote work for their company alone. So the, the financial
aspect of this is, is not some small thing. And I’ve even seen companies like convert kit that
have a fund. That’s helping out people who may be in distress during need of, of picking up
some funds. There’s a lot of people who were going to be out of work, going to be looking for
money. I mean the financial impact on this, not just on the economy, but just in general, the
homes, the middle-class lower-class, uh, this is just, you know, like I said on Twitter the other
day that I recognize, uh, I recognize the kind of, sort of historical time that we’re living in right
now.
Speaker 1 00:05:16 This is one of those like historical blips of, you know, I kinda think back
to a Y2K, you know, that was sort of the, you know, sort of one of those moments that, you
know, well, let’s see what happens. I thankfully to really happen there, but this is a global
pandemic something I didn’t think we lived through. It’s a new disease. So it’s, it’s very
interesting to see how society is reacting around it, how different countries are, uh, their
approach to stemming the spread of the disease. And so far at the country, I live in the United
States as, uh, uh, the, the, their approach to this disease. So far, it’s like a joke to many others
who, who are in the outside looking in. Hopefully we can change that. But, uh, I mean, this is,
and I saw somebody on Twitter today mentioned that, uh, also mentioned the fact that this is a
historical time.
Speaker 1 00:06:05 And I think, uh, you know, whether it’s a journal or this is a good time
right now to, to reinvigorate your personal blog, if you have a blog down there for awhile, but
write about how you’re feeling, what you’re seeing, what you’re experiencing during this time
period. Cause I think it would be, you know, you want to remember it and you want to be able to
write down what you’re feeling right now, instead of having to possibly remember it years from
now. So it’d be good to kind of document your experiences that you’re going through right now at
this a worldwide pandemic. That’s a really good call to action and not, and I hadn’t thought about
that and you’re right. It is a good way to go. And it’s also kind of like a personal therapy too,
right? Because a lot of people are finding us very stress and anxiety inducing because it’s not
something that we’re used to.
Speaker 1 00:06:47 So I think that’s a great call to action. I mean, in terms of how this is
affecting kind of the WordPress community, that’s been really interesting too. Um, I know a lot of
businesses, a lot of small businesses, especially kind of in the WordPress space are kind of
freaking out a little bit because word camps were kind of one of their outreaches to get new
clients. And so they’ve kind of had their hands chopped off in terms of being able to approach
these new clients because there’s nearly two dozen word camps around the world that have
been either postponed or canceled with more kind of news coming in all the time about similar
events, um, not happening this year. Um, how do you feel about that? Uh, we’re we’re camp,
Chicago canceled, uh, word camp EDU officially canceled a word camp. I think that we’re camp
us has been canceled.
Speaker 1 00:07:34 If not postponed, I’d have to look that up, but it seems like all word
camps at some point now or later between now. And who knows when they’ve been either
canceled or postponed or like, uh, actually I just saw a word camp. Uh, was it Austin, either
Austin or San Antonio? I think it was Austin. Uh, they’re actually going to be doing a live they’ve
transitioned to a virtual event. So some of the work camps that have been scheduled for later on
this year are right now in the process of immediately transitioning over to doing something
virtual. And there’s a lot of, uh, people are looking up to, uh, uh, RSN on Twitter, uh, Brian
Richards, uh, wondering, because he’s been sort of the master doing this with a word set, she’s
been doing a virtual conference, couple words session, and he’s even done that sort of
internationally.
Speaker —- 1 00:08:19 So like, he’s like the go-to guru right now. And how do you host a, a live virtual
event? Uh, but yeah, this is affecting businesses. This is affecting people who relied on these
word camps to have that physical interaction with people, that social interaction that they don’t
get maybe during most of the year. And now they’re going to be experiencing FOMO and you’re
just going to be even more isolation and, you know, virtual, uh, meetings and zoom and slack on
it. The only goes so far. It’s a totally different experience of being in the same room, being at the
same dinner table, having a meal, sharing it together. Uh, you just can’t replace that with virtual
tools. Yeah. And I think that kind of brings up the secondary call to action on this whole thing,
right. Is find ways to connect with the people around you.
Speaker 1 00:09:07 So you might not be able to, you know, be part of a word camp
community, but if you know a neighbor who’s a, you know, a parent with a young child or an
older family who are probably two at risk to be able to go out and socialize or go out and get
supplies on their own, make sure you kind of connect with your neighbors and, um, check in on
them and make sure everyone in your community is doing well. Tell you what I might, uh, might
ask my neighbor was getting he toilet paper. I might, I might trick them into telling me if he’s got
any toilet paper. And I think if he does, I might get to know my neighbor a little bit.
Speaker 1 00:09:38 That was great. Uh, so I have, uh, in the WP mainline forum, uh, I
posted this question out there. How are folks dealing with the Corona virus and Gary B who lives
in Ireland says that the government’s announced the closure of all schools, university as a
cultural institutions, mobile phone networks. Excellent. Went down briefly after the
announcement. He said that there’s panic buying at the grocery stores, which are leading to
short-term shortages of items like toilet paper, diapers, bread, pasta noodles. So it’s not just
happening here in the us. This is like a worldwide thing. And on top of that, uh, China has pretty
much been shut down. So once the next time we’re going to get cargo ships of toilet paper
shipped to wherever they need to be shipped. You know, Canada’s got lots of trees. We’ll, we’ll,
we’ll turn that one into toilet paper for you.
Speaker 1 00:10:25 Don’t worry, it’ll be fine. And we can ship them from Canada to the U S
via train. There you go. I’m liking this idea. Um, and then Gary goes on to say that he’s been
privileged enough to work from home. He’ll be fine. He says his main concern would be for his
grandparents who were living in a care facility. And we’ve already seen that at believes on
nursing home, up in Washington state where the virus spread. I think 10 people perished, uh,
within the nursing home. Those are, the people really are at the highest risk right now. Uh, if they
end up contracting coronavirus, uh, he says that, you know, one of the biggest issues of his peer
group is how they’re going to look after the kids while the schools are closed and childcare
facilities, things of that nature. Uh, Stephen Glebe, he actually lives down in Texas.
Speaker 1 00:11:10 He says that they’re being extra vigilant when hand-washing and going
in and out of homes, car stores, stuff like that. He says, fortunately, his household doesn’t work
or go to school outside of their home. So we don’t have to go out for lunch. And he’s thinking
about stocking up on a two week food supply. He’s not doing any handshakes at church, just fist
bumps, elbow bumps. And that’s even if they’re having church, actually I think many churches
have a spin, a couple of things on the, in the news about some churches willing to stay open.
And a lot of people have looked at that as a very crude way of, you know, there’s a pandemic
going around. Uh, you shouldn’t be having church just to pass around the hat or the collection
plate, which some people looked at is, is, is kind of icky. It’s still having church and Stephen
Cronin.
Speaker 1 00:11:54 He lives down there in, uh, somewhere, uh, New Zealand or maybe, uh,
no, actually around Melbourne Australia is where he lives. He says that they’re sold out of toilet
paper down there. Uh, they have been for a couple of weeks now. He says that things are
becoming real here. Now they’re canceling events. There are more and more cases in the news.
Uh, the governmen —- t really hasn’t been taking it that serious so far, except they took a series of Tom Hanks. They
even wrote in the Wilson volleyball, how many, which is pretty funny, but he says as far as work
goes and vAuto, which is a company he works for and no company that we’re familiar with in the
WordPress space, he says that they’re totally worked from home, uh, uh, environment. He says,
there’s no change for him as he already works a home remotely and things nice is just basically
going to stay home most of the time, which is what most of us remote workers do anyways.
Speaker 1 00:12:46 So there you have it. I mean, it’s a worldwide thing and we’re, it’s, it’s
kind of, it’s very interesting how this sort of pandemic is kind of bringing us all kind of together
because, Hey, we’re, we’re all in this together. I mean, there’s, there’s no Corona virus, man. It,
it, it doesn’t matter your color, your race, your creed, your age. It doesn’t matter. You know, if
you’re human, you’re susceptible to getting it. So what, we’re all doing our part here with this
thing called social distancing, which I really didn’t have a problem doing beforehand. So I’ve
been training my whole life. So if you had a muscle for social distancing years would be huge.
You’d be like bodybuilder size. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, by the way on, I think it’s the, it’s the make
WordPress community website or possibly on a work camp, central website, there is a page out
there, uh, for word camp or meetup organizers that contains a lot of useful information about, uh,
you know, whether you’re in the midst of, of an event that you’ve already planned, or maybe
you’re looking to plan an event for later this year.
Speaker 1 00:13:48 So a lot of great information that’s being shared by some of the
community or Kim central community team members. So definitely check that out. I’m pretty sad
about Chicago. I haven’t heard anything about my local word camp where camp camp, but I
imagine no with that being, I think, uh, in April or may, it’s probably going to be canceled just
because at this point, at this point holding a word camp would probably come across too many
as just seen as a big, it would be irresponsible, right? It would be the organizers not doing their
part to maintain the health and safety. I’m not just the volunteers and the organizers and the
attendees, but everyone around that, you know, we’ve got to think about the bigger picture.
Speaker 1 00:14:30 So there’s, there’s all of that going on with the Corona virus. You know,
we’ll just right now, schools are closed. I think for two weeks, they’re going to tack on an extra
week in the spring break. So we’ll see you and we’ll evaluate, and there’s nothing going on at
sports. All the sports had been shut down, which is really impressive. And considering you want
to talk about economy and, and economic impacts sports professional, and that March madness,
which has now been done to March sadness, and you’ve got, uh, you know, the, the major
league baseball has been pushed back. And then you’ve got, it’s just, this is crazy, man. I don’t
know if we’ll ever see anything like this. And I hope we don’t ever see anything like this again in
our lifetime. And this is all just precautionary. I mean, right now, it may seem like, and that was
on, I was on this sort of on this side of the fence where we were canceling everything.
Speaker 1 00:15:18 And I thought, you know, what are we doing? This seems like an
overreaction, but in hindsight, I think we’ll look back on and say, no, we, maybe we should’ve
canceled a close thing sooner that maybe this is not an overreaction. This is what we should do.
This is what we should be doing and they’re doing it. Yeah. And I mean, if, if you’re missing out
on March madness, I mean, if you’re in the WordPress space, running their plugin madness right
now, they’re in the second round heading into the third round and about two and a half days. So
if you haven’t voted on that, um, you should definitely check it out. I always love the results of
the plugin madness, seeing who ranks higher. I wonder how they determine, um, the starting
selection. I don’t know, I’ll have to do more research into that at some point, but, um, there’s a lot
of plugins that you’ll recognize on there and a couple that I hadn’t tried before.
Speaker 1 00:16:04 So, um, I, I really think it’s a really neat thing that they do every year.
And I like, I like how they have that context b —- ecause it’s sorta reminds me of back in the day when weblog tools collection that used to have
a plugin contest. This is way back. This is, oh, gee, WordPress community days and eight. And
there’s a contest that mark held on there and the first place prize would get some money and
we’d get some notoriety. And I think there was a second or third place prize and mark and mark
was one of the judges. I was one of the judges. I think Ronald’s Eureka. Might’ve been one of
the judges. And, uh, that was, that was a good time. I remember the first big time plugin that won
first place on one ball toast collection that com had to deal with comments.
Speaker 1 00:16:45 And I think his comment plugin added the ability to like reply, edit some
like form stuff to the comments form, which I thought was really neat back in the day. So he
ended up picking up a couple, couple of Benjamins, I believe for, for winning that contest, how
things have changed. I mean, there’s probably a hundred, 200, 300 plugins that are added to the
plugin repository on wordpress.org every day now. So yeah, it’s a different world. Speaking of
plugins. Uh, so I’ve, I’ve, I’m still in the process of building WP mainline. Uh, it’s, it’s quite the
website, you know, I’m running into, I want this little piece of functionality or I’m trying to
accomplish this well, boom, I got them install another plugin. So I keep running into that. Uh, but
I noticed the other day I was logged into WP mainline via a, an account that had the subscriber
role.
Speaker 1 00:17:42 And I w and I was seeing things that I probably shouldn’t have been
seen. So, for example, and this is just, I’m not on these guys, but these, these are the examples
that, uh, I ran into, but, uh, give WP the nonprofit, the donations plug in, uh, when I was, uh,
looking at the backend, I was logged in as a user with a subscriber role and the left-hand
Edmund menu, there was a give WP, uh, menu item. And when you hovered over it, nothing
displayed, there was no some menu. So it’s like, well, why is it there? And then if you click on
the give WP link, it actually took you to the give WP webpage. I was like, oh, no, this is not good.
Uh, so I actually addressed, I went to, uh, to give WP folks and explain what I was running into
and they noticed it, they could replicate it, so that’s going to be addressed.
Speaker 1 00:18:33 So that’s really cool. And then the other issue was I’m using seriously
simple analytics for the seriously simple podcasting plugin. So I could see, uh, listens. I can
actually figure out now who the heck is listening to this podcast, which is pretty nice. And I found
out that, uh, as a user with the subscriber role, the dashboard widget, uh, show with the stats
shows up to, to those users. And it’s like, well, wait a minute. I think, uh, those users shouldn’t
be privy to that kind of information. So let me just file get hub requests. And they agreed that
whoops, you know, sort of something we over missed and it’s going to be fixed in the next
release. So that’s really cool. So I’m doing my part now, I’m already back in it contributing to
these various plugins, but it brings up the point that as I install more and more plugins, I think
one of the things that’s getting lost in the testing bits by plugin developers, especially if you add
dashboard widgets that display information such as stats or analytics, or what have you on the
site to double check how the dashboard looks with your plugin activated as a subscriber,
because by default new users in WordPress had the subscriber role, and you don’t want them to
be able to see things that they shouldn’t be seen.
Speaker 1 00:19:47 And I believe there is a, uh, you know, if user or has capability type of
check that plugin developers can use to make sure that if they’re a subscriber, they do not see
that dashboard widget. Yeah. I mean, it makes me wonder if eventually one of the big things that
word pressure do is kind of change the entire subscriber user experience because why do they
need to access the backend of WordPress at all? I get that it gives them the access to update
their user profile, but we can do that in the front end in a different way. It doesn’t need to be a
backend thing at all, in my opinion. Yeah. Basically when you sign up, I mean, it’s user profile,
and then I think you could select the color scheme of the Edmund bank and, uh, maybe some
language actions. I mean, there’s not really much —- back there, so yeah. I mean maybe at some point we’ll have to look into redoing that. So just
the account, just a thing out there for all your plugin developers, double-check how you, how the
site looks in, uh, in the subscriber role. It’s kind of enlightening. I think it’s something that’s
probably a lot more common than we think.
Speaker 1 00:20:58 No, I can only imagine installing the plugin that has a dashboard that
shows very important information that, oh my goodness. I never knew until I tested it as a
subscriber, that everybody could see them information. And again, and as you become more
experienced in WordPress, you forget about some of these things. Like I almost never check like
what a subscriber role can do on any of my sites, because I just assume that it has almost no
access, which is a horrible assumption. Uh, I found out in basically I was actually, I logged in and
I was testing something else. I think it was an email or registration or something else. And I
noticed these widgets. I go, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. What are these doing here?
These shouldn’t be here. So I kind of came across by happenstance, but I’m like, yeah, this is a
good reminder to plugin developers.
Speaker 1 00:21:41 And I’m also had other people train when that’s, what did it, they’ve also
noticed this same thing with, uh, it being sort of forgotten about in the testing process for playing
developers. I have no doubt. Uh, um, uh, with regards to WPP line, uh, recently caught up to the
forum. I’m still working on, uh, amping up the forms with the, uh, the BB press toolbox plugin I
recently purchased, which contains an onslaught of modules and stuff that I can configure. So
I’m still working on that. Uh, I mean, I’ve been so busy. I haven’t been able to write any posts for
the site, which is like, wait minute, isn’t that why people were, you know, they want to see me
right in my opinions and all that. So I’m still working on that. Uh, it’s, it’s crazy to be back in the
saddle of wearing many hats and, and doing this and doing that. And it’s like every time I think
I’m just going to go right into content writing mode. No, I don’t install a plugin and configure it for
this and do this and do that. So hopefully we get, try to get out of that and due time I’ll get out of
that time. I’m sure. I don’t. I think one of the latest posts I did on your phone was, Hey, by the
way, you need to do a better about page. So here at another plugin or, or like Adam,
Speaker 2 00:22:51 I noticed that timeline black came from a plugin.
Speaker 1 00:22:55 Of course, they’ll do all the extra blocks come from plugins. That’s it’s
weird that no, I kind of find it funny, weird that like a timeline block, wouldn’t be one of the default
ones in a, in Gutenberg or the post editor. But then again, you know, it’s one of those, I guess ed
use cases or edge use cases, type things. So I could see how it’s plugging material, but I bet
you eventually something like a timeline box probably going to be built in. Well, I mean, with the
quick changes they’re making to WordPress 5.4, maybe you can get it in before they finish all
the release candidates. I mean, we’re going to have full screen mode by default, which I’m sure
will not drive any of my clients nuts when it happens. I’m going to have to write some code and
inject it in all those sites to make sure it doesn’t do full screen by default because they don’t
know how to change it.
Speaker 1 00:23:37 And I’ve already seen that a whole bunch of people have made YouTube
videos on how to change it back, but my users are not going to go seek out those videos. Yeah.
So what happened actually? So I believe it was WordPress 5.4, our C1, uh, Matt mulloway
announced a change. There was a change on the make post talking about how Fullscreen
editing was going to be. The default can be turned on by default now. And, uh, mammo. He
came out and said he actually initiated this change. It was something that got lost between
everything that went on and he came back around to it. And he says that if things don’t work out,
that it’s possible, it could be reverted in March if it needs to be reverted. And the feedback there
is. So there’s a couple of things revolving around this change. A it’s doing a release candidate,
which at that point, WordPress is supposed to be, the version is supposed to be finalized.
Speaker 1 00:24:27 This is what you’re going to get. This is what Wo —- rdPress would be like if it was released, that’s the whole point of a release candidate. So now
there’s questions up in the air as to what the heck does a release candidate mean, and, you
know, dissolve the philosophies of, of what the release candidate release process has been
established. All these using WordPress, or we’re throwing that all out the window. Uh, so there’s
that. And then there’s the change of so late in the dev cycle of this is a substantial and
user-facing change. That’s going to impact quite a few people. Now I know that used to VOC
weighed in on this is that he wasn’t too happy with the change. Some others are, are fine with
the change. I have not actually tested it out yet, but I am not one of the full screen editor types of
people.
Speaker 1 00:25:12 Now I have tested it out. And one of the things I will say is plugins like
Yoast, SEO, plugin adds an extra area of information on your normal Gutenberg window. And
you can have plugins that will add custom fields and all these other things. And eventually you’re
publishing space on your WordPress host is like a liner too, right? Cause you gotta go into the
options anyway. So disable all of those additional blog like areas on your WordPress publishing
screen. When you have it in full screen, it’s not such a big and Camino. It’s not such a big issue.
And so it definitely gives more room to breathe for some of these other plugins that you might’ve
have activated and added. Um, I still think that adding it at such a late time is not ideal and not
walking users through this process is not ideal, right?
Speaker 1 00:26:00 Like, I mean, basically what would be nice is if on WordPress 5.4, the
first time a new UI, like any user loads up a published post or publish page screen, it points does
a little thing in the top corner saying, Hey, this is full screen mode if you don’t want it. Yeah,
exactly. Just click this little button right here and we’ll disable full screen for you right now. Right.
And go back to the way things normally are really kind of walk them through these things
because a lot of the users, as much as we, you know, we talk about democratizing publishing,
right. And that basically means getting rid of the barrier for entry, which means that all these
non-technical people are using WordPress, millions of them. And the thing that they hate most is
change. I mean, some of these people are still using old versions of windows, you know, clinging
onto their windows, eight license or whatever.
Speaker 1 00:26:43 They don’t want change. And it’s, it’s, it’s horrible and it’s annoying for
the wind. Right? Exactly. There, I still have clients that, you know, fight tooth and nail. They’re
like, I hate Gutenberg. And it’s like, when’s the last time you tried it? Oh, when it first came out.
Well it’s like, maybe you just try it again. No, I’ll never try it. I’ll switch to another publishing
platform before I use Gutenberg. So I mean, these are the kinds of users that they kind of have
to not necessarily not necessarily teach all the way, but at least kind of placate a little bit and
help them understand that this change could be beneficial.
Speaker 1 00:27:16 Absolutely. I think, uh, they’re at the five point, I think release candidates
two or three, you know, release came out, uh, three days ago. Okay. So there we go. So it looks
like, uh, everybody’s gonna get to experience this whole full screen editing mode pretty soon.
And uh, let’s just sit back, grab some popcorn and watch the forums light up. Yeah. So for those
that don’t know what 5.5 0.4 comes out March 31st. Ah, okay. So still some time. And then, uh,
we’ll cover this probably next week, but there was a post released, I believe today that talks
about the goals and, uh, the different things scheduled for, I think the final version of WordPress
to come out. That’s the last major version of WordPress to quilt later this year, which includes
some pretty hefty goals. One of them being full site editing, and I’ve seen some feedback on
that, that those are some pretty lofty goals that are set forth to have completed in WordPress by
the end of the year.
Speaker 1 00:28:15 So that’s something we’re going to look into and we’ll cover and talk
about next Friday, uh, with that. Uh, anything else that’s kind of caught your eye welcome into
WordPress space. Huh? The big one that I’m dealing with right now is we’re a WooCommerce
4.0 is landed. Um, it’s a, it’s a —- pretty major update. It’s a very feature filled. It looks gorgeous. I can’t wait to get home. So
one has the actual new admin scheme they’ve been working on, right? Yeah. Yeah, it does. And
it looks really good. Um, and it gives you a lot of information that you had to kind of dig around
for before and it really kind of presents it in a really nice way. So, uh, if you haven’t switched over
to WooCommerce 4.0, you should probably look into it. If before you update, please great a
staging site and test it first.
Speaker 1 00:29:00 Um, we’ve noticed some plugins don’t work well, some WooCommerce
add-ons don’t work well with this version of WooCommerce. Not everyone is tested to make sure
that this upgrade works for them. So if you’re, you’re using some kind of payment system that
might not be like Stripe or PayPal or, or the more common Stripe or PayPal add-ons, it might not
work and you might not be able to accept payments anymore. And that’s kind of important in a
store. So, um, test on a staging before he released it live. Yeah. I think I’ve seen some feedback.
I think in the WooCommerce advanced WordPress Facebook group, where some sites, they
upgraded to 4.0 fine. Other sites got blown away. You and with the WooCommerce store, I think
the first and most important thing you should be worried about is backups. I mean, that’s your
source of income, that’s revenue.
Speaker 1 00:29:48 You don’t want to go offline. And if it does, you want to be able to
immediately restore a copy. And then like you said, you got to have a staging environment.
You’ve got to be able to push updates to an e-commerce platform on a staging environment, see
how things interact, see how things work out before you push it live. Uh, you know, if it’s just like
a WordPress blog, you could probably get away with not doing all of that, but he will commerce.
Yeah. I think, I think you’ve got to up your game in terms of how you handle updates, you know,
your eventually going to have to have like a WP main line, a swag shop or something, which
means you’re going to have to install with commerce and get your feet wet in that.
Speaker 1 00:30:29 Well, I was actually thinking about some things I could do on the site to
sell whether it’s services or some other things I’m like, no, maybe I could get by with like a blue
commerce where I don’t have to actually sell physical products, but I could sell maybe like VIP
passes to the form, you know, or a sponsorship or some other type of deals. I mean, I guess
we’ve commerce is actually pretty flexible to where you don’t just have to stick with physical
products, obviously. It’s true. Yeah. So I don’t know. Uh, no, just pay me the plug and I got on
the, can’t see, he’s like face palming really hard right now. Don’t touch your face. Jeff spread
cold that’s right. State things that made me touch my feet. I mean, unbelievable. So if I installed
WooCommerce commerce, I’ll probably, uh, uh, uh, the WooCommerce junction in the w
mainline forums. I’ll be populating that with a lot of questions and frustrations and I’ll get bombed
up into grade near to help me out because he just, he’s the WooCommerce guy. Yeah. Shout out
to Bob, by the way. Thanks for your, um, uh, post and shout out to the EWP line forums. That’s
very nice. Yeah, you’re kind of, yeah. Uh, let’s see. Other than,
Speaker 2 00:31:44 Uh, there’s nothing really out there. Um,
Speaker 1 00:31:48 There’s a lot of conversations on Twitter. I think people are just so knee
deep in the whole coronavirus thing and working from home and it’s kind of up ended a lot of
people’s lives and they’re suddenly having to shift around and do things and reschedule things
that it’s, uh, I wonder if it’s Friday and I think a lot of people are tired. They’re there. The news
has got to him, the coronavirus has gotten to him, but you know, it’s very nice to see that the
community is rally together and we’re trying to help each other out. And that’s what the whole
darn thing of, of what community’s all about. So it’s very nice to see, um, with that, I guess, uh, I
don’t have any other updates or any other news topics related. That’s pertinent that I want to
bring up, you know, I’m good as well.
Speaker 1 00:32:30 I, I, uh, I appreciate you having me on, I appreciate you being here.
Sure. So that’s, uh, I’m going to publish a show notes on a WP mainline. Of course you can
subscribe to this podcast. In fact, uh, I’m still working —- on it, uh, feeds. I still got to submit the podcasts to stitch your iTunes, all those sites. But if you
actually go to, uh, WP mainline that time and you click on the podcast, link up the top of the site,
uh, you’ll actually see the, the, the podcast feed and somewhere in there, uh, I believe you’ll be
able to subscribe to it if not, I’ll work on it, I’ll get this straight now. So that it’ll go right to your
favorite pod catcher, whatever that may be, I’ll get that handled. Uh, so with that, uh, thank you
very much for listening to the show.
Speaker 1 00:33:14 You can follow me on Twitter at Jeffrey, J E F F R zero, or I’d rather you
follow WP mainline, uh, because you know, that’s the whole purpose of the site and I need you
to follow me, get those numbers up. Right. So I look important for the site looks important on
Twitter or whatever, but, uh, how can people follow you Malcolm? Uh, the best way would be to
go on Twitter and use, uh, at find purpose or feel free to email me directly
malcolm@presstightened.com. All right. So everybody, and I hope you had a safe way. Please
stay safe out there and wash
Speaker 0 00:33:45 Your hands and we’ll see you again. We’ll talk to you next Friday
afternoon.

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