#211 – Elliott Richmond on WordPress Content Creation, Education, and Pizza Plugins

Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress, the people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case, WordPress content creation, education, and the unexpected diversion into a pizza plugin.

If you’d like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast player of choice, or by going to wptavern.com/feed/podcast, and you can copy that URL into most podcast players.

If you have a topic that you’d like us to feature on the podcast, I’m keen to hear from you and hopefully get you, or your idea, featured on the show. Head to wptavern.com/contact/jukebox, and use the form there.

So on the podcast today we have Elliott Richmond. Elliott’s been deep in the WordPress community for over 20 years, developing since the early days, back when WordPress was yet to be forked from b2. He’s freelanced, built with multiple CMS systems, and has contributed creatively to the community, including releasing a WordPress advent calendar way back in 2013.

He is an active WordPress developer, content creator on YouTube, and unexpectedly a part-time pizza vendor running a thriving pizza business powered entirely by WordPress tools.

Many listeners will know Elliott for his technical videos, but today we discuss how WordPress has served as the glue for unexpected ventures, like scaling a local pizza business during lockdown, using WooCommerce, Jetpack, and custom plugins. Elliott’s experience showcases just how flexible WordPress can be, whether for websites, unique ordering systems, or even streamlining business processes for other niches.

Recently, Elliott has been asked by Automattic to create content around wordpress.com, giving him early access to features, and allowing him to share his workflow and insights with a broader audience. He talks about his approach to content creation, balancing scripting versus improvisation, and details his low tech kit from iPhone cameras to DIY lighting.

Throughout the episode, Elliott shares how community connections and feedback loops, especially via YouTube comments, shape his work, and he discusses the new opportunities for content creators within the WordPress ecosystem.

If you’re interested in WordPress beyond websites, curious about how to turn technical, know-how into educational video content, or just want to hear about WordPress powered pizza, and who doesn’t, this episode is for you.

If you’d like to find out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading to wptavern.com/podcast, where you’ll find all the other episodes as well.

And so without further delay, I bring you Elliott Richmond.

I am joined on the podcast by Elliott Richmond. Hello Elliott.

[00:03:35] Elliott Richmond: Hello. How you doing? Thanks for having me.

[00:03:37] Nathan Wrigley: You’re so welcome. Elliott and I have had a little bit of a chat prior to hitting the record button.

Elliott’s one of those people who has been in my world for many years, because I’ve been vicariously watching what, this is going to sound a rather sinister. I’ve been watching what Elliott’s been doing for several years. And we’ll get into some of that in a moment. It’s a pleasure to have you on the podcast anyway. I feel like I know more about you than you will do about me, that’s for sure anyway. But welcome to the podcast.

[00:04:08] Elliott Richmond: Thank you. Yeah, thank you for having me. I think if you put yourself out there, you are bound to attract stalking of some form.

[00:04:14] Nathan Wrigley: That’s right. Okay. I hope it doesn’t come across as that.

[00:04:18] Elliott Richmond: No, not at all. Not at all.

[00:04:19] Nathan Wrigley: But will you just give us a little bit of your background? Obviously this is a WordPress specific podcast, so you can dip into your early childhood if you like, but maybe if we constrain it to WordPressy things.

How long have you been using WordPress? What do you do at the moment? And then we can get into some of the fun things you’re going to be doing.

[00:04:36] Elliott Richmond: Yeah, sure. So I’ve been using, or developing with, wordPress for over 20 years. So pretty much as old as WordPress is, but I was developing before that, building stuff. I’m self-taught developer, but I was building stuff in the early nineties for bands and stuff that I was in, creating music and just putting stuff out on the web.

But then I realised, when I was working at an agency, it was a design agency, that there was definitely a market for the web effectively, but the company I was working for didn’t really want to get into it. So eventually when I went freelance, I was able to sort of self-teach myself all of the things I was interested in, which was web development. So I used all of the kind of CMSs like Joomla, Drupal, and eventually found b2 which was forked, ended up being WordPress.

So, yeah, started seeing lots of communities popping up, meetups and I just reached out to people. And I’ve actually featured on WP Tavern before because of releasing an advent calendar I think it was, back in 2013, I think it was Christmas time. And it was basically just reaching out to other developers and asking them for code snippets. It was back in the day when WordPress was kind of, it was a blog but developers were using it in really creative ways like portfolios, and product databases where you had to use the category and tagging system to actually make things work, and then manipulate the templates.

So there was lots of code snippets sort of flying about. So yeah, I just reached out to community and got about 30 developers submitting code, and then just released them as advent calendars.

So, today I am still a developer and develop for WordPress, very passionate about WordPress. I’m a content creator, create stuff on YouTube, and I’m also a part-time Pizzaiolo. And if you don’t know what that is, that’s basically somebody who makes pizzas.

[00:06:22] Nathan Wrigley: I can’t ignore that, and we’re going to get into that in a moment. But I’ve been having people on a variety of different podcasts for over a decade now, and you are the first, actually, that’s not true. I was about to say that you are the only person that I’ve ever interviewed who’s actually used b2 prior to it becoming WordPress. You are not, because I interviewed Matt Mullenweg once, and of course he, along with Mike Little, definitely used b2 because they forked it to become WordPress.

But that really does give me an illustration of, you are right at the beginning. So you were one of the kind of founding members of the community, if you like, and goodness only knows, I’m sure you had no anticipation of what it was going to become.

[00:07:02] Elliott Richmond: No, not at all. Yeah, Kubrick.

[00:07:05] Nathan Wrigley: Old school. If you know what Elliott’s talking about, you can join the, what’s the word for somebody who’s been around in the community for a really long time? Well, anyway, one of those.

So tell us a little bit about the pizza thing. I don’t want to dwell on it for too long, if you don’t mind, but this is such an interesting little story. And curiously, it does have a WordPress spin at the end. So yeah, make sure to get that in as well because that’s fascinating.

[00:07:28] Elliott Richmond: Yeah, so during COVID, during lockdown, my wife and I just started a pizza delivery thing. Because all the kind of delivery shops were closing down and we have a community in our village and it was like, they’ve tried my pizzas before. So we thought, well, we’ll just roll it out and set it up. And people were saying, yeah, send me a pizza. So we thought, okay, well we can sell them to the rest of the community as well. And it was just going to be a temporary thing. Five years later, we employ five staff and it’s still going strong and we sell it as a licence to other people.

But the WordPress thing is, I mean in a million years I wouldn’t know that I’d be doing this five years later, but it’s all because of WordPress that has allowed me to do this. You know, it uses all WordPress products, it’s WooCommerce, WordPress itself, and some Jetpack stuff with the WooCommerce app. It glues everything together and it helps us to run a sort of micro business like that. And what has turned into a weekend, temporary thing has turned into a full-time business. So, yeah, it’s a, I don’t know if I can tell you any more about it really.

[00:08:28] Nathan Wrigley: Well, you can, you mentioned that you’ve got a plugin that’s coming out fairly soon, aligned with people who wish to replicate your pizza business, but in their own locale.

[00:08:40] Elliott Richmond: Yeah, so to just give you the bigger picture, my wife is kind of like a bit of a marketing guru, and she sees opportunities where I can’t see them. She sees all the blind spots. So this whole model can be replicated by anybody. She didn’t force me, I was willing to do it, but she made me film all of my steps to make pizzas. So if you don’t know how to make pizza, there’s a full course to make it. There’s a whole module of the marketing that we use. There’s all secret little tips in there about doing stuff on social media, which I don’t do. My wife does all that.

But I’ve developed a plugin that works with WordPress and WooCommerce and it stitches everything together. So it’s got an ordering system, it’s got a slot system, it’s got a time-based system, so you can only put certain slots within certain times, and then it’s got a radius distance. So if you were outside of that radius based on your postcode, you can’t order pizzas, but you can collect them. And we do get people collecting from miles away that were passing last year, and they’ve driven a hundred miles to come down for the weekend because they’re passing to pick up a pizza. Honestly, you wouldn’t believe it. But I think the furthest somebody’s come is something like 120 miles. It’s crazy.

Yeah, so people have been in touch with me like from, last chap was in Norway asking about his, could he use it for his brother’s bakery? And I said, yeah, absolutely. So anything that’s got like a restricted delivery zone, and maybe you want to just do it at certain times, you can do it. But you don’t even need to use the slot system, but you can set the radius distance. So if you want to do local deliveries, you can set a four mile radius, five mile, ten mile, whatever you want to set. Anything is doable really. Yeah, you can use the plugin.

So that’s kind of like the freemium Pizza Pilot. And then there’s a Pro version that we actually will bundle with our licensees. And we’ve got, it’s not like a franchise, it’s, you know, they buy the whole model once, and then they get the plugin bundled in. And, yeah, I’m just kind of like fine tuning it so that I can manage it. So if pizza does take over my life, I’m still, got my foot in WordPress and developing this product. So I’m happy about that.

[00:10:37] Nathan Wrigley: That’s so interesting that you have WordPress as the sort of fulcrum of this entirely different side of your life, really. And it feels like it’s more than like a hobby project at the moment. It feels like it’s the underpinnings of a lot of what you do, albeit maybe the WordPress community don’t know about it.

But also curious that, and again, I might be reading between the lines, maybe you launch the pizza business and then kind of retrofit your procedures into your own dog fooding plugin, which now you are deciding to sell.

But the fact that the technology stack that you knew inside out was able to facilitate that, you know, and a website can handle things like geolocation, that a website can handle things like payment, and the ability to add ingredients and things like that. All of that enabled you to launch that business, which is just so interesting.

Because most people who use WordPress, I doubt ever have that experience in life. You know, maybe they’re building things for clients, or they try a little hobby project. But you’ve got, I don’t know, it just sort of perfectly slotted in and, well, serendipity seems like the right word. Everything just sort of seems to slot in perfectly, and how wonderful.

[00:11:46] Elliott Richmond: Yeah, I think it all kind of happened at the same time, because I just mentioned to Rachel about, you know, during lockdown these businesses are shutting down and people are going to pivot. Because I was talking to the WordPress community and they were talking about how their businesses were pivoting, like their restaurants. And I said, I could set this up as a website. So it all came together kind of all at once really.

One thing I’d have to say is that I like doing complex things with WordPress, and I’m really interested in the way that people do stuff with WordPress. So we have somebody that comes to our Meetup that is a gardener, and they come religiously to our Meetup. You’d think, well, why is a gardener coming to the Meetup? Well, it’s because they run their whole invoicing system and business, the gardening business, through WordPress.

So it’s like, oh, that’s interesting. So there’s so many different things you can do with WordPress. So the one thing I’m grateful for is all of my experience that WordPress has given me and the opportunities in terms of my career, being able to sell, you know, development packages to clients, and picking up complex jobs in that sense. Because without, it wouldn’t be the glue for the pizza thing, and it wouldn’t have happened that easily.

[00:12:49] Nathan Wrigley: Right. Genuinely, absolutely fascinating. I think we could probably do the entire podcast about that, but there is another story to tell. As I said, I’ve been looking at Elliott online for quite a while and then, I don’t know when it was, but it was certainly quite recently, we are recording this in March, 2026, quite recently that I learned that you are going to be working with Automattic. I don’t know if it’s for Automattic, but certainly for the wordpress.com side of things. I could spoil what you are doing and misrepresent what it is. Probably best to just hand it over to you, and tell us what this gig is, this project that you’ve got running through 2026.

[00:13:27] Elliott Richmond: Yeah, so I have to shout out to Michelle Frechette because she basically reached out to me and suggested an introduction with Stacey Carlson, who is Automattic’s Affiliate and Influencer Director. And she’s obviously picked up some of my videos and she just said to me that, do you fancy us sponsoring a video or two about wordpress.com and how I felt about Automattic products? I said, yeah, why not? I use them all the time, every day. So it’s definitely up my street.

So I put some stuff together and she basically just told me that the Automattic leadership team, which directly is Matt down, were broadly supporting content creators. So yeah, I was on board with it.

And my mind just went on overdrive. Basically, Stacey said to me, would you like to do this thing? And I was like, yeah. She said, okay, well, we’ll have a chat in a couple of days or whatever. And I was like, I put concepts together and I sent about three or four different ideas. And it was like, yeah, okay, let’s do this. And it’s basically how I use WordPress, what I did, the whole pizza thing, what I do from day to day.

And I put these videos together and then it created another opportunity and another introduction to a lady called Brit Solata, who’s head of Influence Marketing. Big inspiration for me is another guy called Jamie Marsland, who’s actually the head of the wordpress.com YouTube channel, because he basically raised his profile by using WordPress and turning hard concepts like using the Block Editor into really easy to understand videos.

And he had the genius idea of creating the speed challenge, which was kind of viral. Again, he lives down the road from me, believe it or not, less than five, six miles away. So there’s a funny story behind that. We’ve known each other for like 15 years, connected through social media and whatever channels there are that we used to use. And we actually met for the first time, face to face, at WordCamp Europe in Greece. And it always tickles me because the first thing he said is like, we’ve known each other for years, but this is the first time we’ve met, and we have to come over the other side of Europe. So it’s not great for our carbon footprint, which always makes me chuckle.

Yeah, he was a great inspiration. And since then we went out for a coffee or two and he inspired me really to start doing my YouTube stuff. And I think that’s really what got me recognised through Michelle, Stacy, and Brit. And then Britt suggested that we do something for the rest of this year. So I’m going to be doing videos about wordpress.com, what’s coming up.

WordPress has always been a moving target. It uses multiple different types of technology, right? So there’s always different things happening and changing. And with the advent of AI, there’s a lot of stuff coming into the whole project. So, yeah, that’s kind of where we’re at.

[00:16:09] Nathan Wrigley: I have a lot of questions around that actually. So the first thing I’m going to ask is, is the intention to make long form content, or are you hoping to make more short form content? And really behind that question is what you just said about the fact that WordPress is in a real period of flux. On the .org side, we’ve got WordPress 7 coming around, which is going to be transformational, but I also feel that any video that gets made to coincide with 7 is quickly going to go out of date because we’re in such a rapid period of flux.

So just conscious about that, really, whether or not the content that you are going to be creating, and forgive me for using this word, is more disposable, if you know what I mean? So the kind of content that you’ll throw together in the anticipation that in 4, 3, 2 months time, you might have to reshoot it again. So, yeah, just wondering what the constraints are on the kind of content that you’re going to be making?

[00:17:01] Elliott Richmond: There aren’t really constraints in that sense, but I think the whole nature of WordPress is ideal for that kind of scenario. So we are going to do long form content and then spinoff of that is going to be the short form as well, because you can just do that with the modern tech that you can use today anyway.

But yes, I think if you’re working in the Core team and you’re doing documentation, and it’s always been a thing, getting documentation out has always been a problematic thing. And if you’re working on something and you’re deep into it, it’s difficult to get that stuff out.

I think over the years it’s got better because you’ve got prominent people in Core, in the team, working at Automattic that are pumping stuff out. Justin Tadlock and the other chaps and Birgit is putting stuff out with Gutenberg Times and things like that. So it has got a lot better, but definitely there is an opportunity for content creators to fill a gap in terms of new things that are coming, what’s going to be changing.

And also the way that people consume that content because YouTube and all the social, other social platforms, not that they’re great, TikToks and all that, but there’s definitely an opportunity for that content to be absorbed by different people. So there’s definitely a gap there for content creators to make people aware about those changes and new developments that are coming to WordPress.

[00:18:22] Nathan Wrigley: I’m in the lucky position in that for this podcast there isn’t really a laundry list of things that I have to cover. It’s very much up to me what I wish to have on the podcast. So you are an example, you know, decided to do this, and here we are doing it.

But I did wonder if you were, you know, you mentioned some names there over at Automattic. I don’t know if there’s going to be some things that they will require you to do because that’s in line with what .com has just released or what have you. Or if you really are, you know, the reins are off, do what you like Elliott and just make sure that you post us and tell us what’s going on.

I’m imagining there will be some sort of guidance and, okay, this thing’s about to launch, it would be really welcome if you produce the piece of content explaining why we’ve done it, and how it works and so on.

[00:19:03] Elliott Richmond: There’s no guardrails in that sense. It feels very fluid and flexible. Yes, there are kind of like things, we’d love you to do this, and I’m more than happy to do that because it’s definitely on my street anyway.

The products that are sort of being talked about are products that I use every day, so it has synergy, you know? It’s not like I’m having to do something that I wouldn’t be comfortable doing. It’s stuff I love doing and I love teaching other people anyway. So in terms of that whole community thing, I think when communities come together, the most I get out of it is actually learning from other people, not just teaching them.

And actually just by teaching somebody, or telling somebody about something, they give you feedback and the feedback loop there is super important, especially for a project like WordPress. Without that feedback loop, potentially, it’s not going to be a thing that anyone will use anyway. So just by doing something with the community or publishing something is useful feedback.

There may be something that is sort of created and developed that I don’t necessarily agree with, but I can still put it out there, say whether I like it or don’t like it, and then ask somebody, you know, what’s your feeling? Have you used it? What’s your feedback? Get some comments. That is feedback. And that’s how you improve things.

[00:20:14] Nathan Wrigley: YouTube is a phenomenal feedback loop actually. I mean, I know you’ll probably be getting feedback from within Automttic and what have you as well, but I long for the comments on a WordPress blog to be like the comments on a YouTube video. It seems that everybody’s quite willing to get the keyboard out and hammer out thousands of replies on a YouTube video. It really does capture that.

And so, especially if during the content you provoke the audience to comment, and to give you feedback, because you may well be making another piece of content, which will be guided by the comments and what have you. I think it’s amazing for that. And kind of like pretty, pretty untapped. Usually when you watch content, it is just, okay, I’ve decided what I’m going to do. There it is. It’s an isolated, atomised piece of content. But the idea of going and asking for, what shall I do next? Or something akin to that is really great. And I hope that works out for you. I fully anticipate that it will, because like I said, the comments are usually fairly voluminous.

[00:21:09] Elliott Richmond: Yeah, it’s interesting because some of the comments actually inspire you to create your next piece of content. So it’s always good. Sometimes it is difficult because you can see that it’s negative feedback. But actually I think that negative feedback is a positive thing because you can respond in a positive way. Or you can just take that feedback and then feed it back into the ecosystem and that’s how things get changed. So any negativity is a positivity in my book.

[00:21:35] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, nice. I think you have to armour yourself with things like that when you go on social media and post content, don’t you? Because it doesn’t matter how perfect it is, and how well aligned it is, there’s always somebody lurking somewhere who is willing to derail your day with a comment like that.

Are you going to be doing this then on official, so you’ve made the content, you’ve created the video, and yada yada. We can get into the process of that in a moment. I’d be kind of interested to know what you do. Are you going to be posting this on official WordPress channels, or is this that you are being hired to create the content and then put it out on your own channels? Or is it, does it come with the official stamp of the wordpress.com YouTube channel or something like that?

[00:22:13] Elliott Richmond: No, it’s on my channel for my audience. So I’m free to do whatever I want really. I can do my own stuff but there is a, kind of an agreement we have to meet certain months and content that will be aligned with whatever’s happening at wordpress.com or at Automattic. But yeah, there’s no restriction. It’s kind of on my channel to my audience.

[00:22:33] Nathan Wrigley: Is it very much then going to be YouTube, like screen shares of the kind of things that you’ve been doing with a code editor or in the backend of WordPress, or a plugin that you’ve installed and have played with or what have you? But obviously on the .com side of things as opposed to the .org side of things.

[00:22:47] Elliott Richmond: I don’t want to give too much away, but I’m given kind of a little bit of early access to stuff that, I found it difficult to find it but it is available, you can get to it, but I needed some pointers. But it’s going to be a mix of technical stuff. You’ve seen my stuff, I’d like to get technical content simplified and I use graphics. And, I mean, if I look at my first stuff, it was nowhere near as polished as it is today. but I like to use animation.

There’s difficult concepts to get over, especially with templating and patterns and template parts and things like that. And if you can simplify that to users, to use this stuff with more knowledge. But there’s also stuff about AI that’s, I mean it even confuses me today, like MCPs and, what’s that? And it’s like large language models and things like that.

So there’s complex stuff that I’m really looking forward to getting my teeth into because I can try and simplify it. And that’s what I like doing in terms of like graphics and analogies. And hopefully it makes sense to people.

[00:23:46] Nathan Wrigley: So it’s going to be, I guess the one word that maybe I would encapsulate it as is educational. The idea is that you come in, learn a thing, or multiple things, and then go away. It’s not just that, oh look, here’s the latest new feature that’s shipping. It’s more, look, here’s the feature, but also here’s how you get to it and how you navigate it and what it does. And if you want to implement it, you must do this, yada, yada, that kind of thing. So educational.

[00:24:12] Elliott Richmond: Yeah, absolutely. There’s lots of other things happening as well that are specifically for developers and not necessarily for wordpress.com. But yeah, engineering those things and putting those together to make something work in the way that you want it to, there is a technical barrier to that. So if I can simplify that and help others to get up and running, then great.

But there’s things like Xdebug that are not enabled by default in the Studio app that I think are really useful. Now I’ve used Xdebug for debugging my code for many years and I honestly cannot do without it. And I didn’t even know it was there, you know, that’s how hidden it was, until I saw a tweet like the other day, and it was, I think it’s recently been rolled out, but I’m like, I am itching to do a video on that, so that I can just let people know how to use it and what it’s beneficial for.

[00:24:56] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, you strike me as the kind of character that’s not going to be short of things to do content about. It’s more, which comes first. And I think that’s such a nice gig for you as well, in that you’re obviously a very curious individual. You know, you’ve been making videos for, this is going to come out the wrong way, but, you know, for no reason, if you know what I mean? You know, there was nobody prodding you with a stick saying, Elliott, we need another video now because you’ve been paid for it.

You were doing it because that’s something that you found enjoyable, and you like the experience of doing all of that. And then somebody comes along and says, you know what? I think we could well do with paying you for this. That must have been kind of, almost manna from heaven in a way.

[00:25:34] Elliott Richmond: Absolutely. I mean, I feel so fortunate. I’m so grateful to Michelle Frechette for reaching out to me and making that contact because, yeah, I mean, it’s right up my street. You’ve seen, I’ve got guitars around the studio and I think it’s like, I’m the sort of person that I think it’s good to learn something new every day, regardless of what it is. And yeah, you have to be intrigued by something.

And particularly with code and technology, it’s changing all the time. You can do things in different ways. Very much the same as just fingering around a fretboard and trying to find that lick, or that nice harmonic tone that you never found before. And you think, ah, I can do this. I’m going to show my bass player that I can do this, or my guitar player, or whatever. You know, it’s a bit like that.

And you get excited about the littlest things that maybe are not so exciting to a lot of people, but they are to me, and that’s why I do it. And if I can just impart that on somebody, that’s a bonus to me. And I do get that feedback on YouTube. So I’m always so grateful when I get positive feedback like that. So, yeah, long may it continue. And I’m not going to stop doing it because I find it fascinating and I really enjoy it.

There are many stages to doing a video. You have to figure out what you’re going to talk about, the script, which I didn’t used to do. It was just kind of like, I know this thing, so I’m just going to jump on. But I now script things, break things down into concepts, and then know when I’m going to do some motion graphics. Then I do the headshots, and then I do the editing.

And when I’m done editing, I’m not done editing in like one day, I just do a couple of hours and I go back into the house and I just tell Rachael, I say, I absolutely love editing. It’s just like, it just really excites me. So it is just these little things. Not necessarily about WordPress, but yeah, figuring out how to get a concept across. And then I’ll sit and I’ll bore the tears off Rachael, try and explain this stuff to her, and she’s just patiently listening to me, you know, so I can get it out of my head.

[00:27:19] Nathan Wrigley: No, I think that’s the most credible way of getting to the perfect simulation of what it is you’re trying to educate people with. Because you trip over yourself, don’t you? And you realise, okay, that second point should have been the third. And the third should have been the second. And there was a better way of explaining that. I think it’s great that you do it that way.

And I’m also, pleased is the wrong word, but I’m curious that you script it as well. Because I know that the temptation is often easy, isn’t it? It’s just, okay, I know this stuff inside out, I’ll just go for it. That extra hour, two hours, three hours, whatever it may be, of disciplining yourself to write it down, I think you go a million more miles with that content. You know, you refine it, you work it through, you cut out the additional words that are not needed, that just sort of demonstrates to me that you are really, really serious about it.

[00:28:06] Elliott Richmond: I say scripted, loosely scripted. It’s scripted not to the absolute T. It’s kind of like flashcard prompts.

[00:28:10] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, no. No, no, no. Sorry. Yeah.

[00:28:13] Elliott Richmond: But there’s the structure, let’s say. And sometimes I do word for word. But if I go off piste, if I’m recording, I’m like, yeah, I’m just going brush over that. It’s not that important. It’s just an um or an ah, or an and and a the that shouldn’t be there, but whatever. I mean, if I watch back some of my stuff, I’m like, oh, did I really say that? I’m my worst critic, I guess.

[00:28:31] Nathan Wrigley: The trick there is never to watch or listen to your own stuff.

[00:28:35] Elliott Richmond: Yeah. Yes.

[00:28:37] Nathan Wrigley: The problem is, if you are self editing, you have to listen to yourself, you know, for every hour that I record, I end up listening to myself for probably about four hours. It is purgatory. For example, the sentence that I’ve just said, I will listen back to and I will be ruing the day that I said it. It’s curious.

Given that it’s on the .com side of things, and if, dear listener, you’re not familiar, we have sort of like this bifurcation, if you like, of WordPress. We have the .org side, which is the way you can go, wordpress.org, and you can download it and put it on a server and put it on your local machine and do what you like with it. And then the .com side, which is where Elliott’s work is going to be mostly living I guess, is the hosted side. So you go and you pay a monthly fee and you have access to WordPress over there, so you don’t have to think about the hosting or anything like that, that’s just taken care of.

Do you get a sense that there’ll be like commercial pressure there? That’s maybe getting to territory that you don’t wish to get into, I don’t know. But will, for example, you have to create content around certain features because it’s shiny and new? So instead of it being educational, it might slip into the more promotional, and I’m doing air quotes as I say that.

[00:29:45] Elliott Richmond: In my experience, little experience working with the guys at the moment, there’s been none of that. It’s literally, you have the free reign, do what you want. There is a benefit of putting a script together in that sense, because you can iron things out if you need to. But in all honesty, of the 10, 15 scripts I’ve already sent through, I’ve only had minimal feedback. They said, great, it looks great. Let’s go with it. And also, if it’s a new shiny thing, show me. I want to know about it. I want to tell others about it as well, you know?

[00:30:11] Nathan Wrigley: Right. So the overlap there is welcome to you, which is quite nice, isn’t it? It’s new, it’s interesting. I would like to mention it anyway.

[00:30:17] Elliott Richmond: There is also another point. I think there’s a misconception between wordpress.com and WordPress, the standalone software. Because effectively it’s the same thing. When you use something like the Studio app, you’ve still got your local files and you can still develop your own stuff. You can get as complex as you want. You are just literally hosting it with the people that make this software. And you then know that you’re going to get the performance, you’re going to get all of the security stuff, you’re going to get all the benefits of hosting with a, on a platform that know the software. So there’s a win-win situation there in my opinion.

[00:30:52] Nathan Wrigley: So you were mentioning earlier, Jamie Marsland, just down the road from you, who’s the head of WordPress YouTube. Obviously kind of a prolific content creator himself, and then got taken on by Automattic to carry on that journey. There’s obviously now you. I wonder if you’ve got any thoughts on how WordPress, and you might read Automattic in here or .com or whatever the right word is. I wonder how you view the seriousness with which they’re taking content creator content.

Because again, if I rewind the clock three or four years ago, it felt that there really wasn’t much coming out that had that kind of official stamp. We were kind of left to our own devices. We were going into Slack and reading comments, or we were going into GitHub queues for plugin developers and things like that.

But it does seem that at some point in the last four or five years, somebody somewhere said, wait, no, video is it. We really have to invest in video. And it feels like you’ve been caught up in that.

There’s no real question there. It’s more just an observation that video content by people who obviously are out in the community doing this with a serious intention. It’s more than just a hobby. It’s something they’ve got a track record of doing seriously. I wonder if you’ve spotted that trend as well.

[00:32:05] Elliott Richmond: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I often look up stuff on YouTube. It used to be Google. How do I, I don’t know, mitre some wood together? You can go to YouTube now and you can find all of this stuff. Or how do you make the perfect naan bread or the perfect pizza, let’s say? So yeah, YouTube is definitely, in the last, I actually don’t think it, it’s always been there, but it’s probably, it’s only become sort of more prominent on my radar, I guess. So if that’s a result of what’s been happening organically, then yeah, I’ve just been sucked into it. But, yeah, I think it’s always been there.

You always get from YouTube content creators about how much more difficult it is, I guess, because there’s more people doing it, so they’ve got less money to give people. But honestly, I’m not in it for the financial reward anyway. I mean, I do get paid ads and stuff, but it’s peanuts every three months, so I’m not in it for that at all.

So yeah, it’s definitely on my radar basically. I mean, in terms of editing and software, I still look up stuff. You know, even whether it’s WordPress or whether it’s command line stuff. Particularly now, if you drop AI into the title, you’re going to get loads of stuff.

[00:33:10] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I mean, more and more if you go and ask a question of Google, you’re going to get the AI answer first, but then you’re just going to get like a big row of YouTube videos. You know, if you ask it a question beginning, how do I, or something along those lines, the AI often comes first.

I’m actually using a different search engine now. I use one called Kagi, which was actually by coincidence developed by the guy who used to run Manage WP, who then sold it and moved on to make this search engine. There’s another success story coming from the WordPress space. But if you ask it a question, you get the AI generated sort of response over three or four lines, and then after that, just a cavalcade of YouTube videos. And it really, I think, has become the default.

What I’m finding interesting about that is, I think that wordpress.com in this case, but you could read Automattic, are kind of putting their money where their mouth is and doing it in an interesting way.

So rather than, let’s say, employing a team of content creators to do this, this, this, this, and this, they’re asking people like you to just get on with it. Just do what you were doing. I think that’s really interesting. And it’s hard to encapsulate what I’m saying there, but there’s a real level of trust. You know that you’ve got to do things, but nobody’s micromanaging you to tell you what to do. It sounds like nobody’s giving you, okay, we want this piece of exact content, and this one and this one and this one. It’s more, Elliott, you’ve got a track record, you’ve proven yourself, now crack on, but we’ll assist from the financial point of view. I think that’s a really nice model of allowing people like you to do what you do, and the trust that you’ve built up is all that was needed to get you started on that journey.

[00:34:47] Elliott Richmond: Yeah, there are kind of, who this is for, what’s good to do, what isn’t great to do. So there is, not guardrails as such, you’re given complete flexibility, but you are given a kind of like a brief, not template, it’s not template, it’s a, what’s this for? What’s the target?

[00:35:03] Nathan Wrigley: Like an avatar kind of, something like that.

[00:35:05] Elliott Richmond: Yeah. Yeah, an avatar. I don’t find that restrictive in any way. If I did, I wouldn’t be doing it.

[00:35:10] Nathan Wrigley: No, that’s really helpful.

[00:35:11] Elliott Richmond: Yeah, exactly.

[00:35:12] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. But you’re given a lot of rope. It does sound like you’ve got a lot of leeway to do what you like. I mean, maybe there’s constraints around, you know, let’s not make content about the UI of Wix or Squarespace or anything like that. You know, that’s probably out remit.

[00:35:28] Elliott Richmond: That goes without saying.

[00:35:29] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, yeah. But certainly from my point of view, doing this podcast, WP Tavern, I can’t really sum it up, but I have that same freedom. I can have who I like on, nobody’s telling me what I can do and when it should be done. It was just a case of, okay Nathan, you’ve done podcasting, we would like you to do this one. And it sounds like a similar kind of offer was made to you, but on the video side. The trust behind that is hard to communicate, but it feels so nice.

[00:35:57] Elliott Richmond: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I’ve always said, because I’ve worked on my own for such a long time, since I was in my twenties, and I won’t tell you how old I am, but it’s been a few decades now, I literally am unemployable. I do work on a remote basis for a company, but it’s on a very minimal tech lead responsibility kind of arrangement. But I could not go into an office. I’m just conditioned not to be, someone breathing down my neck. I’ve just been conditioned to have that freedom and creativity that I love. And definitely without a doubt, I’ve been given this opportunity in the same respect. So I’m absolutely stoked about it.

[00:36:34] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I think that’s really lovely. You’ve got that history. And I think we see that in the community a lot. You know, you’ve got a history, and it’s your turn to shine, if you like.

Okay, now the nerdy bit, right at the end. I want to know what your process is. Obviously being a content creator myself, I’ve got a whole load of software that I use and I flit around, but I’ve kind of stabilised on a few key pieces of software, which enabled me to do that journey.

I’m sure that there’s going to be people listening to this who have thought to themselves, I too would like to make videos, and I’m curious, what is your tech stack? I mean, we don’t need to go into absolutely everything, but I’m curious, what are the 3, 4, 5, whatever it may be, essential things that are either on your desk, or on your computer that make the whole thing easy and possible?

[00:37:18] Elliott Richmond: My tech stack is so low key, it’s unbelievable. My lights, if I explain my lights to you, I’ve got basically a cat food pouch box, which is like six inches by four with a hole cut out of it, resting on an LED light with a bit of tissue paper over it. It’s that low key, low tech.

[00:37:34] Nathan Wrigley: So it’s like a small shoebox with a hole cut in with tissue paper diffuse the light.

[00:37:39] Elliott Richmond: Yeah.

[00:37:40] Nathan Wrigley: That’s so great. That’s so cottage industry. I love that. Yeah, because you could of course buy the $150 equivalent, but you know, the cat food box is lying around. That’s brilliant. Oh, I hope this keeps going. I hope you got more of these.

[00:37:55] Elliott Richmond: If I could just turn the camera round. And the other thing is just an iPhone. I just use my iPhone. My iPhone is literally sitting on my computer now. So it’s good enough to do what I need to do with it. At some point it will upgrade, but for anybody who wants to do this out there, you know, you don’t need much kit.

In terms of the software, I just use the Notes app and I just jot down my ideas. I actually use the accessibility keyboard shortcut. So I literally, what I do is tap the key and just speak into my mic about the idea that I want to get across. And then that’s my brain dump. And then I’ll take that, read it back, break it down. It’s all in my own words, I then just get AI to polish it a little bit, so it kind of gives me the bare bones of my script. And then that gets me like 60, 70% there. But it’s literally my brain dump that’s polished, and then I repolish it again. So that’s one key bit of legwork that gets me going quickly.

I’ve picked up a lot of kit over the years from just producing music. I’ve got some NS-10s in front of me, studio monitors, so I can do all my sound balancing and stuff. The other key bit of software is DaVinci Resolve, which is, it’s got all of the motion graphics in it. It is a bit of a head spinner to get into it, but there’s lots of resources out there that can help you get to where you want to be.

There’s lots of stuff out there that you can, like library stuff that you can subscribe to and pull in. But I’m always reluctant to do that because I’m the sort of guy that, I want to, even if it’s code, I want to get into it. I want to understand exactly how it works and do it myself. So working with nodes and animation in that sense has been, it’s been a big learning curve, but I’ve absolutely loved it.

And then just the editing is like DaVinci Resolve. And it has everything in it. I pay a licence for it because I want all the whistles and bells, but you can use the free version and I just cannot believe what you can get away with, with the free version. You get all of the motion graphics, you get all of the audio, you get the colour correction, plus all of the editing suite. It’s incredible.

I’m just looking around to see what other stuff I’ve got, but yeah, that is literally about it.

[00:39:52] Nathan Wrigley: I think you’ve encapsulated perfectly. I mean, really you need a computer with a bit of editing software, and there’s many. Some free, some much more expensive. You can certainly pay a fortune for some editing software. But also camera, a little bit of lighting, I guess a backdrop and a quiet room would help. But that’s kind of really all that it takes. The key bit, of course, the bit that you are not mentioning of course is that script bit. That’s where the magic happens.

And people like you are able to turn difficult things into easy to consume things. For people like me who consume it, it all just looks so straightforward and easy. But I’m well aware that in the background there’s probably quite a lot of soul searching and rehashing and rethinking and you were saying, explaining to your wife and re-explaining to your wife and so on.

And so whilst the software and the iPhone camera and all of that are necessary to make it happen, I think the bit which makes your stuff, and people of your calibre’s stuff, stand out is that bit inside your head. The bit which only you can do in the way that you do it, you know? I’m grateful for all the stuff that you’ve done for many years, and long may it continue. You’re carrying on throughout 2026, I think is how it’s framed at the moment.

[00:41:02] Elliott Richmond: Yep, or up to December at least that’s the arrangement. But I’m also allowed to do whatever, you know, my own stuff as well. So if you spot a video about me making pizza or preparing dough, somehow I can thread WordPress into that, I will. I probably can actually because I’ve got a dough calculator.

[00:41:20] Nathan Wrigley: With your pizza plugin, I’m sure that there’ll be ways of getting those messages across. I think we’ll knock it on the head there, as we say in the UK. Best of luck. I’m sure luck is not the thing that you need, but I hope it goes well, and I hope that you enjoy it and that obviously the crowd of people who come along gain a lot of knowledge from everything that you’ve done.

Just before we go, I think we should probably say where we find you online, where that YouTube channel is, or your website, whichever you prefer. Both if you like.

[00:41:46] Elliott Richmond: Yeah, you’ll find me on YouTube, which is elliottrichmondwp. I do have an Elliott Richmond, which is all of my personal stuff, so don’t get that confused with the WordPress stuff. It’s elliottrichmondwp. And you can find my blogs and my brain dumps on elliottrichmond.co.uk. And that is double L, double T by the way.

[00:42:07] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, as I was typing your name in, subconsciously it always ended up with one T. I don’t know what was going on there. But all the Elliots in my life have got a single T. E-L-L-I-O-T-T, and then Richmond, as you might imagine.

If you go to wptavern.com and you look for the Elliott Richmond episode using the search functionality, then you’ll get that episode, I’m sure. And all of the links for anything that we have mentioned, so the YouTube channel and the website, what have you, that will all be in there, one click. Along with a transcript of everything that we’ve talked about as well. So Elliott Richmond, thank you. Good luck with 2026 and thanks for coming on the podcast.

[00:42:46] Elliott Richmond: You’re welcome and thank you so much for having me.

[00:42:48] Nathan Wrigley: You’re very welcome.

On the podcast today we have Elliott Richmond.

Elliott’s been deep in the WordPress community for over twenty years, developing since the early days, back when WordPress was yet to be forked from b2. He’s freelanced, built with multiple CMS systems, and has contributed creatively to the community, including releasing a WordPress advent calendar way back in 2013. He’s an active WordPress developer, content creator on YouTube, and, unexpectedly, a part-time pizza vendor, running a thriving pizza business powered entirely by WordPress tools.

Many listeners will know Elliott for his technical videos, but today we discuss how WordPress has served as the glue for unexpected ventures, like scaling a local pizza business during lockdown using WooCommerce, Jetpack, and custom plugins. Elliott’s experience showcases just how flexible WordPress can be, whether for websites, unique ordering systems, or even streamlining business processes for other niches.

Recently, Elliott has been asked by Automattic to create educational content around WordPress.com, giving him early access to features and allowing him to share his workflow and insights with a broader audience. He talks about his approach to content creation, balancing scripting versus improvisation, and details his low-tech kit, from iPhone cameras to DIY lighting.

Throughout the episode, Elliott shares how community connections and feedback loops, especially via YouTube comments, shape his work, and he discusses the new opportunities for content creators within the WordPress ecosystem.

If you’re interested in WordPress beyond websites, curious about how to turn technical know-how into educational video content, or just want to hear about WordPress-powered pizza (and who doesn’t), this episode is for you.

Useful links

Elliott featured in WP Tavern before: 24 WordPress Snippets ’til Christmas, Submissions Open for 2019

Jamie Marsland on YouTube

Gutenberg Times

Xdebug

Kagi Search Engine

DaVinci Resolve

Elliott’s YouTube channel

Elliott’s website