Dustin: [00:00:00] It's been a minute since I've recorded a podcast and there's all kinds of news to catch up on from the summer of 2024 right here on your website. Engineer podcast episode number 550.

Hello and welcome to another episode of Your Website Engineer podcast. My name is Dustin Hartzler and I think I remember how to do this. It's been a while since I've done a podcast. It looks like many, many months since the last time I've been on the microphone, but there is a good reason for that. There has been a lot, a lot of things that have been going on over the course of the spring and the summer.

And now we're getting into fall routines are getting back in set. And I wanted to jump on the microphone here and give you some news about things that are coming up, especially since I will be out traveling next week for WordCamp U. S. That wasn't necessarily my very first thing on my list today, but we'll start with that and I will be going to Portland, Oregon for WordCamp U. S. I'll be there all of next week flying out on Monday and then flying home on Saturday. So if you are coming to WordCamp US, please say hello. I will be [00:01:00] a volunteer or organizing some of the volunteers and being around the entire week. And so I want to immerse myself into the WordPress ecosphere again and get out there into the community and really drive some more passion for WordPress. Not that I've lost that in any way, shape or form, but some of the roles at work have changed just a little bit over the last couple of months.

And so it's. It's I have a lot of passion for like redoing some stuff on certain websites and just haven't done him yet haven't got to it. I remember back all the way early in 2024. I made the commitment and still working on it, but I made the commitment to work on and move all of my themes all of my sites into block themes here in 2024.

So we're still working on that. I've got a couple that are completely on blocks. I have a couple that I had to upgrade to PHP 8. 2 and those by default, just they went to a new theme because the old themes were outdated and archaic. And so I did that. And the three main sites that I'm working on two for my wife and one your website engineer, like I'm going to be working through that and restructuring that [00:02:00] and making sure that all the posts and pages have blocks and all that kind of stuff. There's just a lot of kind of behind the scenes housekeeping that needs to be done. So that is something else that's working on.

But I always get really encouraged and excited going to WordCamps and just talking to other people, learning how they're using the block editor, learning how they're using WooCommerce, learning how they're structuring their stores or maybe their e learning platforms and things like that. So that is a little bit behind the scenes of a WordCamp itself.

I'm excited because I'll be working with the volunteers, be in and out of sessions and just kind of hanging out with the community. So if you were there, look for me, I'll be in a volunteer shirt every single day. And yeah, I'm excited to meet whoever is heading out to Portland. All right. A few new things that I want to share today.

The first one being WP Tavern is I'm saying quote unquote alive. There is now postings over there by a couple of people WordPress news back. It's not as prolific as it once was.

With multiple news articles every single day, but there are some new articles that are happening. You can find those over at WP tavern. [00:03:00] com and some of the articles and things that we're talking about today are all from a WP Tavern. I do have a thing from the wordpress. org website. It's called a brand new way to learn WordPress.

So if you're brand new to WordPress, or maybe you're just discovering WordPress, or maybe you're not understanding how this block editor works or how to edit pages or posts and all that kind of things. There's a link in the show notes for an article back in August talking about the new learning pathways.

So there's four new learning pathways. One is beginner WordPress user. One is intermediate WordPress user and then beginner WordPress developer and Intermediate themes developer. So those are the four pathways you can go through and you can get guided lessons on each one of those things and talking through each of those things.

The beginner WordPress user one is a very basic. It gets started with getting started with WordPress, your intro to WordPress, WordPress essentials, hosting, installing a theme, things like that. Then gaining a familiarity with WordPress site, editing, content, creation, security, backups, SEO, and getting help.

And so those are [00:04:00] all there. They're all free to take. You basically just have to sign up for a course and that takes a wordpress. org username and password. Again, all of this is free, but you can go through and you can mark your way down going through the different tracks inside the different learning pathways for WordPress.

Another thing that happened over the summer is WordPress 6. 6 is out. I'm a little bit behind on that as they're working on WordPress 6. 7. I'll talk a little bit about that in a second, but basically the 6. 6, I'll talk all about that next week or the next time I record so that there's a dedicated episode for each of the different releases.

Let's see. Also in the news is a new Black Friday trends report. This is put out by WooCommerce. com and it basically talks about a survey that was done and just giving folks some information about getting ready for Black Friday. I know it's kind of silly to think about like we're in September and we're talking about Black Friday.

I mean, all the stores already have their Halloween candy out. So why not talk about Black Friday already? And so it looks like there's just some cool information about how to work through [00:05:00] getting ready for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, whether that be like site performance or marketing or different payment options on your sites, things to do now, things to do in the future.

Dustin: And so I left the industry report there that you can check out and you can spend some time reading through that. Let's see what else on my list. I wanted to let you know that I was on the Kitchen Sink WP podcast and that was episode number 550. And if you look at your podcast player right now, this is episode number 550. And so I started a couple years before my good friend Adam did, and he has been very consistent. He has done the, the most consistent thing in that I, I wasn't able to handle and do for 550 episodes.

I had a lot of breaks in between there and now we're caught up. And we'll see if I can keep up with his rigorous every weekly pace. But basically that is an interview with me. It is a 30 some minute interview and it talks about what has happened in the last 10 years. And so we've talked a lot about my journey at Automattic. We talked a lot about just like WordPress in general and just different types of [00:06:00] tips and tools and things that I'm using now that I wasn't using that many years ago.

So that is the podcast over there. There's a link in the show notes or you can head on over to KitchenSinkWP.com and search for me. It was my third time at being on the show. And the last one was 450 episodes prior. So it had been a little while since I had been over there on Adam show.

And then the last thing that is kind of in the big news category is I have transitioned to a different role inside of Automattic.

So if you have been following my journey for years, I was in customer support for a long time. I did a stint with the developer in an apprenticeship type program. I went back to happiness and support him and work there. And then recently I was in on a team that was working with customer growth or how we can help customers grow their stores and having one on one conversations with them in a video chat and just really getting to know the customers and seeing where their pain points are learning more about our product and where the limitations and what not are.

And over the summer, too, I also applied for it kind of the same time I was moving to this other team. I applied for a Customer Success Manager role at Automattic, and [00:07:00] that is inside the WooCommerce division, and I successfully got that. And I am in my second week at that role as of this recording and what that means is I'll be building relationships with customers and trying to advise them on their needs.

So if you come to WooCommerce and say, Hey, I'd like to move from Shopify or I am a big business and I'm running into these problems. How can we fix them? Those are the types of folks that I'll be talking to and really trying to drive adoption to WooCommerce and to WooPayments and help them from churning to other places and keep them, you know, happy and satisfied and very much into the WordPress in the WooCommerce ecosphere.

Also in this role, I'll spend some time like really diving in and seeing what the total cost of ownership is between different platforms. And so if you were coming from a Shopify to move to WooCommerce, like what does that look like and how much money is that in a yearly basis or what are the recurring fees?

I mean, luckily a lot of our WooCommerce things are free. You know, WooCommerce is free. WooPayments is free. There's lots of free plugins that you can use to extend your store, but it's not the case when you're working with Shopify, you know, there's [00:08:00] different plus level and there's different plans that you have to kind of understand and see what that total cost of ownership is, especially to migrate a site from one place to another.

There's lots of headaches. And so it's more in a advising role in a technical than actually doing the technical work, but also with the 10 years of experience of WooCommerce in support, I get to flex that knowledge of like, Oh, yeah, this might be the right solution or Oh, you'll need a little custom code to do this or things along those lines.

That's kind of what the role is going to entail. And so I'm really excited about this. I am so pumped to be able to work on this and work with our high value merchants and then folks that are really on the fence on does WooCommerce make sense? How much customization is needed? Can somebody without any technical information just use WooCommerce?

Things along those lines. And so that Is kind of what I'll be doing in my day to day job. And I feel like I'm going to have a lot of different learnings that come from this, whether it be, oh, I'm learning about this plugin that I've never heard of, or this payment gateway I've never heard of, or like these integrations between WooCommerce and this other thing.

And I think that might be a good place to jump back [00:09:00] in and share these learnings on an upcoming podcast episode.

So that's kind of the news that's happening around here. The summer was great. We ended up taking a vacation to Alaska and spend some time out in Alaska and Canada in the Seattle, Washington area, which was just awesome. And it just, oh man, it's, it's mind blowing to see mountains and glaciers and crystal clear lakes, and then you come back to Ohio and it's nothing but a dead grass and a flat land.

And so that's what it's like here. This part of the world in September of 2024, but that's what I wanted to share with you today. Just a little update about what's going on and when I'm coming back and things along those lines. And I don't know how regular I want to still do like plugin reviews and talk about the different things, like the things that I'm actually learning and using.

So I, a couple of sites have e learning built into them. And which is the best solution? Is it LearnDash? Is it Lifter? Is it Sensei?

I want to share about the transition from a old school theme and move it into a block theme. So what does those, the old storefront moving into a block level theme? Like, what does that look like? What, how much time and effort and energy is [00:10:00] that? What type of automations can be set up to manage a WordPress site?

So I'm really excited about the plans and kind of my future here at Automattic and some of the things I'll be diving into and learning from customers. And I also have some sabbatical time that's coming up in the next couple months. And so really diving in and working on some of those projects of converting a website into a block editor site.

And there's just so many things that are going on in so many like. I don't know if you've ever done this before, and this is maybe this is just me, but like I know that I've got a project, and I know that I want to move things to a new. I want to move this particular site into a block style editor website, and I know that it's gonna take hours to do, but also I need to do updates now, and so I spend the time now to get it into a state where it's actually usable or add new products or add, you know, something, and it's like, well, those are awesome.

That's time that I could have spent on the other thing, you know, moving it over. And I don't know, like, there's just a lot of, I feel like there's a lot of optimization that can go with using a block theme. There's a lot more that my wife can do on the site with her being able to use WordPress and use the block style theme instead of some of the custom coded stuff.

And I [00:11:00] also think there's a lot of speed improvements and enhancements that can happen when it's moved to a block style theme. So I'm going to try to document all of those things. I'm going to try to share my learnings. And like I said earlier in, I think I've forget what episode it was. It was like 2024 is the year of block themes and that was the one that I'm going to be working on and that is kind of my big project for the rest of the year along with 19 other house projects and all kinds of things during my quote unquote sabbatical time, which is gonna be just relaxing from not having a day job, but doing all the things that I've ever wanted to do. Again, never will get through all of it, but that is kind of the plan and that's what's happening here over at your website engineer headquarters.

If you are heading out to WordCamp US next week, please let me know. I'll be out there. You can send me a tweet or an X or whatever that is. I'm @DustinHartzler over there. You can send an email to Dustin at your website, engineer. com. And again, thanks for continuing to subscribe.

Even though the podcast feed has been kind of light over the last couple of months that I want to be back. I want to see if I've got the time and the resources to do that. The kids are at school. And so hopefully I can [00:12:00] squeeze some time in each week to, to bring you more content and more learnings about what I'm learning in WordPress and WooCommerce and the whole digital eCommerce space.

And so that's what I want to share with you today. Take care and we'll talk again soon. For more great WordPress information, head on over to yourwebsiteengineer. com