#181 – Bob Dunn on rebranding Do the Woo and growing openchannels.fm

Transcript

[00:00:19] Bob Dunn: Welcome to the Jukebox Podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.

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, rebranding Do the Woo, and growing openchannels.fm.

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 Bob Dunn. Bob is a long standing figure in the WordPress community, having branded himself as BobWP back in 2010. With nearly two decades of experience in WordPress, Bob has become one of the most recognizable voices in WordPress podcasting. Producing shows that have educated, inspired, and connected countless developers, builders, and enthusiasts.

Most recently, he launched Open Channels FM, a rebrand and expansion from his well-known Do the Woo podcast, which was originally focused on WooCommerce, but now explores broader topics around the open web, open source, and the wider maker community.

Bob talks about his journey in podcasting, from running Do the Woo for almost seven years to the decision to rebrand and launch Open Channels FM. He explains why he felt it was time to broaden the focus, welcoming listeners from outside of just the WooCommerce and WordPress ecosystem, and how that led to a network approach with multiple channels and series.

Bob describes how Open Channels is structured. Rather than traditional shows, the network features three flexible channels, Open Makers, Open Source Reach, and Open Web Conversations, each hosting a variety of series. This lets content stay organized and evergreen, and accommodates the 25 to 30 rotating hosts with the freedom to produce series across different topics.

Bob talks about the challenges, and rewards, of handing over the mic, stepping into a more of a managerial and founder role and how he’s building a sustainable, collaborative, podcasting network.

We discuss Bob’s technical approach as well, including how he uses WordPress to manage multiple RSS feeds and subscriptions, making it easy for listeners to follow specific channels or get the fire hose of all content.

Bob also shares insights on rebranding a podcast, managing redirects, retaining audiences, updating hundreds of featured images, and ensuring continuity without confusing listeners.

If you’re interested in open source podcasting, or building community driven content, this episode is for you.

If you’re interested in finding 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 Bob Dunn.

[00:03:37] Nathan Wrigley: I am joined on the podcast by Bob Dunn. Hello Bob.

[00:03:40] Bob Dunn: Hey, hello Nathan. Great to be back.

[00:03:42] Nathan Wrigley: Thank you so much for joining me today. Bob and I have been chatting for quite a long time. Actually over many years, we’ve been chatting for quite a long time, because we’re both very, very, very into the exact same thing, and that is podcasting in the WordPress space.

Should anybody not have heard of you, Bob, I know it’s a bit of a generic question. Do you mind doing your little potted bio to tell us who you are, and what you’ve been doing?

[00:04:04] Bob Dunn: Been in business a long time. Two major businesses, branded myself, BobWP in 2010. Did a lot of stuff between then and now.

And, yeah, right now I am doing openchannels.fm. I’m running that, that is a podcast channels with, actually three channels, we’ll be explaining more about that. But yeah, I’ve just been in WordPress quite a while and I think since, oh, I don’t know, about 17, 18 years or so.

[00:04:34] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, it’s a fairly long time. You were one of the voices, when I joined the WordPress space, you were the established podcast voice I think. There were a few, but not many. And there’s very few that have survived. You’ve managed to, turn a living out of podcasting in the WordPress space. So Bravo, well done.

[00:04:50] Bob Dunn: Thank you. Yeah, it’s been interesting. It’s something you just kind of keep going and, you know, doing it all yourself. It gets to a point where, yeah, it’s a lot of work, but it’s paid off.

[00:05:00] Nathan Wrigley: So a little while ago, I’m going to say about, I don’t know, six months ago, something like that, you can correct me in a moment. But for the longest period of time you’ve had Do the Woo. Prior to Do the Woo, there was a bunch of other naming conventions for your podcast. What was it that, in the most recent past, why did you decide to jettison Do the Woo and create openchannels?

Open channels, by the way, you can be found at openchannels.fm. There’s no hyphens or anything. It’s just as you’d imagine, openchannels.fm. Go and check that out. You’d be able to see what we’re talking about. What was the reasoning behind that?

[00:05:35] Bob Dunn: Yeah, so I actually did the rebrand early June. It was at WordCamp Europe, but I’d been thinking about it for about a year. So you have almost seven years under the belt with Do the Woo, and it started out as a WooCommerce focused podcasts. And over the years I added more WordPress into it.

And then over the last couple years I started talking about a bit more of the, you know, even outside the WordPress bubble. And I felt like something was always missing, because it’s kind of two-prong where WordPress developers, builders, a lot of our audience need to also be aware of other stuff that is going on around them. I’m not trying to push somebody one direction or another. It’s like just know stuff that is happening out there.

And then also for people that don’t know WooCommerce, expanding on that, trying to bring them in on other topics. They would look at WooCommerce or they look at WordPress and say, hey, you know, I’ve never really dug into them. I listen to a few of these.

The two major things that really, I had been chewing on for like, oh man, it had to be almost a year, was growth and sustainability of the site. And, you know, it worked great when it was really WooCommerce focus, but people had the impression that, if they know Woo, they’d look at it and say, oh, it’s a WooCommerce podcast. I’m not going to check it out because I’m not using WooCommerce.

And then of course, people that didn’t know anything about it, they would maybe think it’s, I don’t know, some wrapper or something. I don’t know what, you know, the title is like, it didn’t really define it. And of course they dig in a little bit, they learn what it is.

But, yeah, that was the impetus. It was like, I thought, man, it’s time to, as hard as it is to change a brand or even drop one that has worked for you, I thought we are moving more into content around the open web, open source, fediverse, all these different things. And I really want to make this something where, like I said before, people that don’t know WordPress or WooCommerce would come and listen to other stuff and maybe they’d check it out, maybe they don’t.

And then the WordPress people would continue, because we still have that content in there and they could learn about other stuff. They could learn about things that probably will really help their business even staying in WordPress. So I’m not, again, trying to push them out of it, it’s just open your mind a bit and learn new things.

[00:08:14] Nathan Wrigley: The wisdom that I often get when I read around the podcast industry, and if you are just a consumer of podcasts and you’ve never really dug into that industry, in the same way that WordPress has just a gigantic amount in the background, as soon as you prize open the can and realise that there’s this whole open source software, and there’s events and all of that, the same is true inside of podcasting. There’s a whole industry going on in the background that you may not realise is there.

And one of the pieces of sage advice which is often delivered, is to kind of niche down when you are beginning your podcast. Because obviously, you are going to be a small fish in a very big pond. And so the more specific that you can get, the more likely you are to build up that audience over time.

And so I’m guessing that that’s kind why you went with Do the Woo? So that it was pretty clear at the beginning, okay, we’re really focusing on Woo. So have you noticed that the pivot away from that, so from Do the Woo as a name, even though there was more content in there, to this much more open channel, so open source, whatever that might cover. Has your audience kind of, and I don’t really want to use the word forgiven, maybe I want to use the words, gone with you.

Have they come across that brand transition willingly, or do you sense that some people have, you know, lost interest because now it’s not just Do the Woo? Because that’s, I suppose, something you have to be mindful of.

[00:09:29] Bob Dunn: Yeah. You know, I’m sure some have maybe decided differently, but the interesting thing is how I built it and how I, even after the launch, reorganised it even more, is that all the content that was on there is still on there and continues to be on there. And so as I looked at how can I best organise it, I first put it into like five shows, and it still didn’t quite make sense and gel. So I thought, well, what if I do three channels, and I have an open source reach channel, an open web conversations channel, and an open makers channel.

A lot of the WordPress and Woo stuff went under the open makers channel. So now we still have series, like three or four series on WordPress. At least three series on WooCommerce, and then a variety of other stuff. So the thing was to get people convinced, and when I talked to a lot of people and I was at WordCamp Europe, you know, it’s like, it’s basically the brand is changing, we’re expanding, but the stuff you’ve been listening to is not going away.

And I have to really emphasise that. And it’s, yeah, there’s a bit where you think, oh, you know, am I going to lose it? But then they may come back, they may actually see that, yes, this is still existing, you know, getting this stuff out in front of people. And also, there will be now newer people that will, instead of looking at a name, Do the Woo and thinking, hmm, what do I do? Something like open channels, even though it is a lot broader, might interest them a little bit more.

[00:10:56] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, there’s definitely the ability to tap into a new audience. So this podcast, WP Tavern, it has one show. And on a weekly basis we have a show and, you know, it’s me talking to somebody else. And I guess Do the Woo was a bit more like that. There was this one show and it would drop with a regular cadence and what have you.

And it may have escaped people because we didn’t really introduce it as such. But open channels is not that formula is it? It’s more of a, kind of like a network, I suppose, for want of a better word. You’ve got your own mini kind of network of podcasts. So let’s just dig into that a little bit. So you’ve iterated it a bit. You started with maybe three shows and now it’s up to however many, we’ll get into that. Do you just want to go through what all of the different shows are, and broadly what they cover?

[00:11:41] Bob Dunn: Yeah, so what happened is during this whole time of change, and some of this even happened before June, was that I had a whole bunch of shows. So you go to the thing and you’d see like, I don’t know, there was like 15 shows or something. And it seemed a bit too much to me. You’d go there and it’d be like, whoa, you know? Realistic, you’d think, okay, you’d find the show you like and stuff and listen to it.

But as I was expanding the content I launched on June 5th with, there’s a website, there’s five shows and there’s some series under those five shows. And that still didn’t gel after I started getting in there and start rebranding it and working on it deeper, and I’m still working on it. I realised that what I’d like to do is eliminate the aspect of a show, so when they go there, it’s open channels, so it’s plural.

You’ve got the three channels that I mentioned, and underneath all of those are series. So there’s several. Some of them, there’s quite a few series under open makers. There’s some under the other two channels. And the reason I did that is channels are a lot more flexible, and also series are incredibly flexible. If you have a show and you stop it, it’s like, bam, you know, people, oh, where did that go?

And I thought, what if I had these three umbrella channels that I could put series in? I could start them up. Some of them have been going on forever. Some may just go on a few months, but they’re part of that whole stream under that channel.

Now everybody can go there and get all the podcasts that come in, or they can actually subscribe to the three channels.

But the series are just a variety under it. And I haven’t really, the series are often focused more when they happen, the name of the series. I mean, I decided putting all the series on the site would just confuse people more. It’d be like, oh, what?

Then they can go through and they’ll see, you know, if they look through the episodes, they’ll see the various series. I mean, there’s, under open makers, there’s Woo Product Chat, there’s WP Behind the Builds, there’s WP Agency Tracks. And a lot of those were pre-existing. And so the other channels as well will have specific series under it, like Open Web Conversations has a series on the fediverse. One is on, oh man, I should have written some of this down. I can’t even remember all the series.

Anyway, there’s a few under that and there’s a few under open source. And what the beauty of it is too with as many hosts as we have now, I don’t know if it’s like around 25 to 30 hosts. They can pop around in different channels and under different series, or they come up with an idea for a show and we basically do it, and I say, okay, where should I pop that under? I can pop it under a series. It just makes it a lot more flexible.

Talking about it makes it sound more confusing. Going to the site is a bit more cohesive. But the feedback I got from a lot of people, they loved the idea of the organisation and they loved the idea of expanding into more of the open web and open source stuff.

[00:15:08] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, well, let’s get into that bit in a minute. But let’s just stick to the consumption of open channels. So if you go and subscribe in a podcast player, so, you know, typically on a phone or something like that, to this podcast, WP Tavern, it’s fairly straightforward. You either drop in the RSS feed, which is, you know, available, or you can type in WP Tavern, and that’s then saved. And every episode that we produce, including this one, will appear when it’s published.

How are you doing it for openchannels.fm? Because you’ve obviously got three channels, and then there’s different shows and series which live under that. How is it consumed? Is there just one overall RSS feed which will get you the lot? Or can you say, okay, I only want to, I don’t know, consume the stuff about the open makers or the open web conversations? How does it work?

[00:15:55] Bob Dunn: Yeah. What I’ve done is, you can, if you want the fire hose, you can go to openchannels.fm, it has its own feed, and then I do the feed for each of the channels. Like you said, open makers, open source and open web conversations. I thought of going down even more to every series, but I thought that just confuses people more so, you know, it encapsulates what each of those channels are about.

I mean, open makers is, somebody said, yeah, you know, it’s about people in tech making stuff. You make stuff, even if it’s WordPress only. Sometimes it’s interesting to hear how other people are making stuff. And it opens it enough where it’s long, that long funnel of people that make things, you know, whether the developer, designer, their marketing stuff, whatever.

And so that was, yeah, I think that’s the best way to have people subscribe is, you know, they can get it all. But they can look at the three channels too. So if they go on their pod thing and look for open web conversations, that’s primarily what they’re interested in. What we’re talking about there, they can subscribe to that.

[00:17:04] Nathan Wrigley: Just from a, well, it’s not particularly technical, but from a slightly technical point of view, how do you manage that? If memory serves you’re using Castos, which is a sort of self-hosted, it’s a WordPress plugin, which binds your RSS feed into your WordPress website, but also carries the functionality to have different series and episodes all within the same WordPress website. I might have been kind of promoting that a bit, and it’s not the solution that you used, but I think it is.

[00:17:29] Bob Dunn: Yeah, it is. And so what it allows you to do, I could have actually created feeds for each series, but then I thought, is that going too granular? I mean, are you looking at all this stuff and thinking, so Open Web channel is like the default channel, I mean, openchannels.fm. Then you create three feeds for three shows or channels, which are the other three. And then when I do a series, I just choose to put it under whichever channel it should fall under.

[00:18:01] Nathan Wrigley: Right, okay. So you’ve basically got three places to go and update, and you can handle all of that in the WordPress admin and what have you. I should probably say that there’s a SaaS equivalent as well. You don’t have to use WordPress to make that happen, but it’s so tightly integrated with WordPress, it kind of makes sense.

The other curious thing about it though is that for the longest time we were really familiar with you as a real significant piece of that jigsaw puzzle. You know, Bob would do the episodes. It is always Bob, in the same way that there’s always me on this. But with this, I think you said now you’re up to, did you say 25 or 15 co-hosts, something?

[00:18:36] Bob Dunn: 25-30 hosts.

[00:18:38] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, that’s a lot. So you’ve got 25 other people who are helping you create the content. In effect, they have become you for these shows. They are the host, if you like, and they’re then interviewing people, and talking about whatever that episode may be about.

How are you coping with that? How are you coping with no longer being behind the mic? And you’ve basically become a bit of a manager for a podcast network, which is curious.

[00:18:59] Bob Dunn: Yeah. Yeah, I’d like to, you know, I was talking to somebody about this and to me it was, it ended up being a goal that I didn’t know I wanted it to be a goal. You know, as I started to step back, I thought, well, you know, I’ve talked a lot over the years, I mean, more than anybody ever wanted to hear. I thought, well, maybe, you know, it’s time to get some other voices out there.

For the time being, I’m still doing the opening, but I keep myself as forefront as, I guess you call founder or whatever, of the podcast channel. And I’m cool with it. I love hearing the different opinions. It just was a shift for me at some point where I had no problem with it. And I think testing it in the beginning, I think the first three, so I brought on Brad Williams at the very beginning, because I didn’t want to do it by myself. We were just doing co-hosts and then we continued for a while.

Then I brought on, later on I brought on Mendel Kurland, which at the time was GoDaddy, and Jonathan Wold who at the time, he was at WooCommerce, and now he has his own thing going on. And I would still be part of it, so it was the four of us. But I started liking the idea when I wasn’t part of it. It was fun to see somebody else take and run with it.

And so over that period of years, I became more and more confident with people. Now, it’s basically, unless I have an idea for a guest, a lot of them choose our guests. They choose a topic because they’ve done this long enough. They know what I like to hear. They know what not to do and to do. I keep it pretty open for them. And they love that freedom because they don’t have to, you know, they come in, they do the recording, all the production stuff is not their responsibility.

And I think it’s also helped them to get to know each other more. They’ve gotten to know other guests. It’s built their brands some, I hope. And it became a point where I was just like, I thought this is it, this just works. And I’ve been really lucky with the hosts I’ve had, because they’ve been excellent. I never have problems. I mean, it just is a nice flow and they’ve all become good friends and, yeah, it works.

[00:21:17] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I think if you were looking at it from the outside, there are so many trip wires there where you think, well, that, couldn’t work. You know, 25 hosts, multiple shows, yeah, okay. Good luck with that.

But obviously, the history that you’ve got doing the shows and turning up to WordPress events, presumably you kind of knew most of these people fairly well already, so you had that rapport and trust with each other.

But it’s a lot to trust them to just get on with it. To be able to say, okay, here’s the time slot, go off, get your guests and then just hand me the recording at the end, I’ve got complete trust in you.

But it does sound like you’ve still got your fingers in there a little bit with the kind of like the post-production and the editing, and finally making the episode into what it is and all of that, and shipping it. Do you ever see yourself stepping out to the point where you don’t even do that, where it’s just, there’s just this network?

[00:22:05] Bob Dunn: You know, I’d really like to kind of just have the role as founder. I mean, I’ve done a production and I’ve done this for, when we ran our other business before WordPress, the life and WordPress and stuff, we basically did everything, we didn’t have employees. So I’ve been doing this like over three decades.

You know, I am at a point where, no, I think it’s time to step back from some of this production stuff. I would like to because it, yeah, it buries you. And when it picks up and you have quite a few shows in a row or something, there’s some serious work to do. And I get a little too over picky with editing, probably somebody could do it a lot quicker. I mean, I, it drives me nuts sometimes. I’m thinking, why am I spending this much time on it?

But, yeah, I definitely am looking at some ways of doing that over the next few months. And looking at some other opportunities, but want to still be part of this, because it’s still my baby.

[00:23:00] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I think that’s incredible to have that level of trust. I’ve never yet managed to have that relationship where I thought that I wanted to step away. I think for me, the bit that I enjoy more than anything else is this bit that we’re doing now, the bit I’m having a chat with somebody. I really do like the one to one, or one to few. So the most I do is 2, 3, 4 really is the sort of ceiling, and that’s the bit that I like most.

And so the bit that you’ve stepped into, curiously, would be something that I would not really wish to be involved in. I’d rather just hand that off to somebody, but I do know what you mean.

You have a perfectionist approach to the editing, and you can be halfway through it and think, I’ve just spent six hours and all I’ve done is remove empty space that nobody would’ve noticed. Anyway, it can be curious.

So are you still iterating? Are you still willing to take on some new voices? Are you still open to people approaching you?

[00:23:57] Bob Dunn: Yeah, we are. Because I think with this new brand, it’s kind of, before I get into that, I was just going to mention is that when you rebrand, I’m finding there’s a ton of work with post rebranding, and another one of my picky little, I don’t know what you want to call it, is I started looking at the site and I thought, well, I want this site to reflect the new brand a hundred percent. I don’t want people to go back and get confused.

I’ve been changing the featured images on 670 episodes with the new brand. And, you know, that’s just, again, that’s me. But I want, it was quite a shift in rebranding and I want to make sure that, when they even go back, they see that, yes, I’m still on the same podcast, you know, I’m still on the same site so. Now I’ve lost track of what you asked.

[00:24:45] Nathan Wrigley: No, it’s okay. I’m actually going to pivot and just ask you a quick technical question, which is, did you close down your previous RSS feed, and rely on people finding the new one, or is there some clever way of moving people over?

[00:24:58] Bob Dunn: Yeah, you have to redirect it basically. It’s not a lot of steps, but it’s steps that if you don’t do it in the right order, it can really pretty much screw up everything. And right now, I am having a bit of challenge with some of the stuff moving over on Apple and the feeds and stuff, and I just put in a support question with them.

But you basically, eventually I’ll shut down a show called Content Sparks and Do The Woo. Because they were, they’re now under Open Makers as a series, but I kind of got to make sure all the things are connected and working smoothly. So it’s something, if anybody ever does this, whoever’s hosting your podcast, talk to them and ask them questions until you feel confident to be able to do steps one through five, without blowing up your whole podcast.

[00:25:43] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, it’s a bit like when you move a website, there’s loads of different bits and pieces that you’ve got to get right and in the correct order so that, I don’t know, your email carries on sending, and all the posts that you desperately want to be still in the search engine results, that kind of thing. Yeah, there’s a lot of hoops to jump through.

In fact, so much so that a few kind of pivot ideas that I’ve had, not around WP Tavern, but around other podcasts that I do, I’ve kind of backed away just because the technical challenge was just not worth the time investment for the minor thing that I wanted to do.

Anyway, the question, returning to where we got to. The question was, are you still open to modifying what you do or have you solidified for a little period of time? In other words, if somebody catches sight of your podcast or listens to this one and thinks, do you know what I could contribute? I’ve got an idea in the open space that I would like to contribute. Are you still open to new hosts or is it really just guests now? Have you solidified on the hosts? Where are you at with all that?

[00:26:36] Bob Dunn: You know, the hosts, I think the hosts that are on it right now, they always have the option. I mean, they volunteer their time. I’m hoping they get rewarded by, you know, brand and exposure. And I know a lot of them have met a lot of people and built relationships that they never would’ve been able to because they actually talked with someone.

So that’s another reason this particular structure of it now is so great because it’s so fluid. So it’s easy. If somebody comes in and has an idea, and it kind of gels and I think, okay, this is great, or maybe it exists with an idea I already have going or a series I do. Yeah, I’m always open to that because, you know, and some people kind of serve as, I don’t want to say substitute hosts, but they’re kind of there if I need to grab somebody, or I have an idea and it’s like, I need somebody to host this and this person would be good.

So, yeah, kind of a long answer there, but I’m always open, because this is not, this is a reason to change this is to keep it fluid and make it sustainable basically, where it can continue to grow.

[00:27:42] Nathan Wrigley: So definitely not closed, but you’re happy with where things are at the moment. If the status quo was to continue, that would be great. But, you know, new voices is possible.

Again, not just with the personnel, are you kind of fairly happy with the structure that you’ve got, the three channels that you’ve got now? Have you solidified more? Because it sounds like there’s, you know, been a couple of months of chopping and changing over there. Do you think you’ll stick with what you’ve got?

[00:28:02] Bob Dunn: Yeah, I think that’s definitely, it’s where it is because, like I said, I did something completely different in the rebrand in June, and since then I did something different again.

I think what happens is, when you rebrand and you start restructuring, what you thought was the right structure, you start looking at it and you think, oh, maybe this isn’t quite right. Maybe I should do it this way.

And so I talked to several people. Getting some opinions, it’s nice because sometimes I’m inside my own head and it’s like, I need somebody to tell me if I’m just stupid or it’s a wild idea or, yeah, this is good. So, yeah, I like the three structured channels because it gives me so much flexibility under those.

[00:28:45] Nathan Wrigley: I think it’s pretty remarkable what you’ve managed to do. You know, you went from just many, many, many years ago, just beginning a podcast. And just hacking away at that for years and years and years. And now you’ve got this, kind of like little mini network.

But also, I’m getting the intuition, I could be wrong about this, but I get the intuition that you’ve leaned into the word open so that you are no longer limited to just WordPress as a project. Is that the case? Are you going to be leaning into just other open source things, whether that’s other CMSs or, I don’t know, anything in the open source space? Is that in fact the case?

[00:29:19] Bob Dunn: Yeah, you know, I think what it is, in fact I was just talking to somebody, person that does accessibility, she wants to bring on somebody from Joomla and talk about accessibility because she’s under the open source channel. And exactly that. The impact of open source has been so huge and WordPress has been at the core of it. And WordPress will still be a big part of this podcast or this channels. And, yeah, I feel it’s healthy for my hosts. It’s healthy for everybody that listens, and everybody in the WordPress to hear about other stuff.

You know, it just opens your mind. It has you thinking more about things and knowing what’s out there. And sometimes maybe you think, well, you know, I’m burned out on WordPress, but you hear some other stuff and you think, well, maybe it’s not so bad. You get a big picture of the open source and open web.

[00:30:11] Nathan Wrigley: There’s certainly no shortage of things to talk about if you go into open. I mean, obviously WordPress is such a large niche that you really can talk about that until the cows come home. But the you prize open the can of open source, you know, you really are a hundred x’ing the amount of things that you can talk about. So that’s kind of really nice that you can, well, you’ve basically got an infinite horizon of content to make in the near and distant future. And I don’t suppose open source is going anywhere in the short, medium, or long term. It’ll still be around.

Okay, speaking of short, medium, and long term, if you’ve taken yourself away from the mic on every occasion to being in a few, and then kind of now being in the minority of things, and we talked about how you enjoy kind of managing the whole thing, even though it sounds like there’s a lot of shepherding cats, let’s put it that way, in the background.

Is the intention for you to sort of get to the point where you can be invisible in this, well, certainly from a public facing point of view. You wouldn’t have your voice in any of them at some point, and you would be able to, I guess, silently kind of move away. Is this like an end game here? What’s going on?

[00:31:14] Bob Dunn: No, you know, I think I’m going to be involved, and the thing was built on my brand really. And I need to stay and keep my fingers in whatever way works for me. And, you know, I’m, I just turned 68, and I’m ready to do other things every once in a while like sit on a rock on the beach and look the water. You know, important things like that.

But no, it’s, I like looking at it as still being the face of it, but maybe, can I say not so much the voice of it? I’m out there, I’m still, you know, a huge part of it, and probably as long as I have my fingers in it, I’ll occasionally do little short podcasts. Right now, I do some on the updates on the site and, you know, I might even whip up something like, you know, thoughts from the founder, I don’t know.

[00:32:03] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, I like it, yeah.

[00:32:05] Bob Dunn: Yeah, something like that. So there’s, I don’t want to just become invisible because it really, how a lot of people have known this, and how I’ve built it is through my personal brand, and I think that’s important to stay intact with it. So I’m not going away anytime soon. And yeah, just need to reevaluate how many hours I put into it and how I can make it, again, more productive and sustainable. Because, you know, if I’m sick, who’s to do the production?

[00:32:33] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. When it was just you, you could just say, well, I’m not to record that one. I’ll just skip a week. But now that you’ve got like these 25 other hosts, you’ve got to kind of manage all of that. Oh, that’s really interesting. And of course, you’ve got to put time in the calendar to sit on the rock on the beach as well.

[00:32:47] Bob Dunn: Yeah, I know. I’ve got to get that in there, you know. It’s very important.

[00:32:52] Nathan Wrigley: How does this whole thing hang together from a financial point of view then? So is it a sponsorship relationship? Do you onboard sponsors to keep the whole thing, because obviously, you know, it’s trying to, you’re trying to support yourself in all of this. How does that work?

[00:33:03] Bob Dunn: Yeah, it’s basically sponsorship. And the sponsorship model, but ever since I started this podcast, in fact, before I started this one and did another one before that, I started having sponsors right away.

And if your podcast is your main source of income, you got to have something. So yeah, it’s sponsorships. I am sure you relate to it yourself. And, you know, unless you’re famous and they just roll in, or you can get like a million subscribers paying $5 a month or something like that.

So, yeah, we’re constantly looking for sponsors. And I’ve changed the model so many times over the years. And it’ll probably change a little bit here again soon. So it’s never capped at a certain number. That might be capped for a period of time. But, yeah, it’s a constant flex and it’s hard work. And that’s all I can say.

[00:33:57] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I will just drop the URL for that. So if you’re interested from this conversation, if you’re interested in getting on as a sponsor for the openchannels.fm network, it’s the regular URL, openchannels.fm, but then append to the end of that, /sponsors, plural, or you can just find it in the main menu at the top of the site. That will also get you there and, yeah, you’ll be able to find out more about how you might make the journey into sponsoring that podcast.

Well, Bob, I know that you are a busy man. You’ve got 25 cohosts to shepherd and lots of editing to do, and dare I say it, sitting on a rock on the beach is also going to feature at some point during the day as well.

So thank you so much for chatting to me today. Once more, if you want to check out what Bob is doing with all of his co-hosts and his new structure, go to openchannels.fm to find out more. Bob Dunn, thank you so much for chatting to me today.

[00:34:47] Bob Dunn: Thank you. Always a pleasure.

On the podcast today we have Bob Dunn.

Bob is a long-standing figure in the WordPress community, having branded himself as BobWP back in 2010. With nearly two decades of experience in WordPress, Bob has become one of the most recognisable voices in WordPress podcasting, producing shows that have educated, inspired, and connected countless developers, builders, and enthusiasts. Most recently, he’s launched Open Channels FM, a rebrand and expansion from his well-known “Do the Woo” podcast, which was originally focused on WooCommerce but now explores broader topics around the open web, open source, and the wider maker community.

Bob talks about his journey in podcasting, from running Do the Woo for almost seven years, to the decision to rebrand and launch Open Channels FM. He explains why he felt it was time to broaden the focus, welcoming listeners from outside of just the WooCommerce and WordPress ecosystem, and how that led to a network approach with multiple channels and series.

Bob describes how Open Channels is structured. Rather than traditional shows, the ‘network’ features three flexible channels, Open Makers, Open Source Reach, and Open Web Conversations, each hosting a variety of series. This lets content stay organised and evergreen, and accommodates the 25 to 30 rotating hosts with the freedom to produce series across different topics.

Bob talks about the challenges and rewards of handing over the mic, stepping into more of a managerial and founder role, and how he’s building a sustainable, collaborative podcasting network.

We discuss Bob’s technical approach as well, including how he uses WordPress to manage multiple RSS feeds and subscriptions, making it easy for listeners to follow specific channels, or get the firehose of all content. Bob also shares insights on rebranding a podcast, managing redirects, retaining audiences, updating hundreds of featured images, and ensuring continuity without confusing listeners.

If you’re interested in open source, podcasting, or building community-driven content, this episode is for you.

Useful links

BobWP website

openchannels.fm

Castos

Sponsor Open Channels FM