Title of Session: Can WordPress become the household name it deserves to be?
Facilitator: @dtsears
Notetaker 1: @mikachan
Notetaker 2: @jessibelle
From the session schedule:
WordPress is the internet’s best kept secret. What would it take for WordPress to be able to raise awareness about itself and elevate the value of the ecosystem, while being thoughtful on behalf of the community that surrounds it?
Key Points
- We began the discussion by highlighting important historical events, starting with things that have encouraged market adoption, for example:
- When Movable Type changed its license
- When Custom Post Types were introduced
- Adding import/export functionality
- Ability to make multilingual sites
- Amount of developer support, so easy for new users to pick up
- We discussed the importance of WordPress being a household name, including the why and the how. Some highlights include:
- WP levels the playing field for small businesses to have the same good quality websites as larger companies. The most important people are the people who don’t have big budgets.
- The flexibility of WP means that it’s unlikely to be stopped by new trends.
- Brand awareness – it is not self-sustaining and is sustained by the extremely active community.
- Expanding the reach of WP – Lack of next-generation WP users. Explore the social side of WP – make it a social network? Connect things as part of the open web rather than the closed web. Elevate WP to provide exposure to content.
- WP not seen as serious career option, but for some people its the beginning of their career.
- We concluded by discussing current challenges and the next steps
Action Items/Next Steps:
- Ideas to address different audience segments:
- Audience segmentation – create the top 8-10 audiences (developers, small-business, enterprise, marketers)
- Group the audiences into categories (end-users, makers)
- Segment messaging to those categories (lots of different pathways)
- Tutorials need to be updated. Being out-of-date and inconsistent puts new users off and breaks trust. Backwards compatibility with tutorials – can we mark them as deprecated? Use Playground to keep tutorials up to date.
- Teach new translators using better tutorials.
- Make the process to update docs content more obvious. See Mozilla onboarding for documentation.
- WordPress.tv – alleviate this tool we already have. Surface video content in the WP backend, along with docs and other content.
- Use WP Playground more in tutorials
- Improve onboarding on all levels (new users, new contributors). See Mozilla onboarding for a good example.
Raw Notes
Historical events from journey so far, starting with market adoption:
- When Movable Type changed its license
- Intro of wpadmin / 5 min install
- Intro of multisiteMultisite Multisite is a WordPress feature which allows users to create a network of sites on a single WordPress installation. Available since WordPress version 3.0, Multisite is a continuation of WPMU or WordPress Multiuser project. WordPress MultiUser project was discontinued and its features were included into WordPress core.https://codex.wordpress.org/Create_A_Network.
- Combatting the myths around WP
- When Custom Post Types were introduced
- Shopify becoming extendable
- Adoption in different markets and different segments – not just a blog
- Start of the indie web
- Adding import/export functionality
- Strategies for youth teams and young adults to use WP
- Best viable option
- Intro of WordPress.comWordPress.com An online implementation of WordPress code that lets you immediately access a new WordPress environment to publish your content. WordPress.com is a private company owned by Automattic that hosts the largest multisite in the world. This is arguably the best place to start blogging if you have never touched WordPress before. https://wordpress.com/ and the confusion around WordPress.com vs .org
- Has increased adoption but increased confusion
- BlockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. Patterns Library
- Code editor for themes and plugins
- Size of the ecosystem especially when migrating from other solutions
- Block editor / Intro of GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/
- General users don’t know what a CMS is – but people know Squarespace etc, which increases WP adoption
- Ability to make multilingual sites
- Amount of developer support, so easy for new users to pick up
- Enterprise – features focused on enterprise
- Backwards compatibility
- FFTF
- Open architecture of the project from a technical standpoint
- Because we started with extensibility at heart, that encouraged others to extend
- The ability to talk to other contributors via in-person events, and the investment from the project in the community
Why is it important for WP to be a household name?
- Giving people a voice
- No reliance on proprietary software
- Giving people a means to support themselves and their communities
- Changed the course of people’s lives, and working with people whose lives it has also changed.
- Self-sustained community. Easy to get into for both developers and non-developers.
- The ability to learn and expand, WP is not limited.
How can WP become a household name?
- We want other people to want what we have.
- WP levels the playing field for small businesses to have the same good quality websites as larger companies. The most important people are the people who don’t have big budgets.
- To help people understand their digital options.
- The flexibility of WP means that it’s unlikely to be stopped by new trends.
- WP guides developers through open sourceOpen Source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL.. It’s important to let people know of what WP is capable of.
- The brand is the default first choice but is not glamorous.
- Brand awareness – it is not self-sustaining and is sustained by the extremely active community.
- WIllingess of certain companies to invest in open source.
- Expanding the reach of WP – Lack of next-generation WP users. Explore the social side of WP – make it a social network? Connect things as part of the open web rather than the closed web. Elevate WP to provide exposure to content.
- WP is the biggest CMS – but it also excites people on a different level, it’s an active part of their lives. Scale is not always the answer – is there a risk of growing too much? How to scale while preserving the values? Empower people in the backend. Use the platform to actively speak to users on the update page.
- Most people have heard of WP, but are confused if its right for them. Onboarding form for contributors = onboarding users in general. Help people understand how to think about WP.
- WP not seen as a serious career option, but for some people its the beginning of their career.
- Future generations want more privacy online – away from social media – private communication, private blogs, and private photos.
- We could introduce public stats to show where style variations are being used, similar to Pexels/Unsplash stats (TrelloTrello Project management system using the concepts of boards and cards to organize tasks in a sane way. This is what the make.wordpress.com/marketing team uses for example: https://trello.com/b/8UGHVBu8/wp-marketing., etc).
- People need to see the people involved in WP – where’s the opportunity to invite college students/youth?
- People perceive WP as very technical – can I actually DIY this? Improve messaging around WP being accessible to all. Improve this image to developers as well.
- WP is often seen as just a blog. Not clear to users what they can do. WP = PHPPHP PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. https://www.php.net/manual/en/preface.php., not JavaScriptJavaScript JavaScript or JS is an object-oriented computer programming language commonly used to create interactive effects within web browsers. WordPress makes extensive use of JS for a better user experience. While PHP is executed on the server, JS executes within a user’s browser. https://www.javascript.com/..
- Use language that welcomes all technical abilities.
- Difficult to get people to understand the concept of open source.
- For many languages, there are no translations for docs. Everything is in English. People avoid upgrading, because instructions are only in English.
Challenges:
- How can we address increased translations? More translators? How can we help empower the local communities? Could we start a mentor system between different local communities? Organised process for content to be translated.
- WP is too generalist – how do we address the different segments?
- WordPress.tv – the platform encourages content in many different languages
- Tech English is not as well known as English – educators should speak slower to aid understanding, and include captions. Moving slides more slowly.