welcome to episode two of pressing topics for 
Tuesday May 14 2019 I'm your host Jeff 
Chandler joined by Malcolm Peralty 
see that I've already learned something 
got it on the first try today buddy good job 
good job this is the second episode this 
this show is all about pressing topics 
in the wordpress community and 
some articles that caught our eye and 
this is just sort of a recap of some of 
the things we've discovered today and 
we'll start off with a very 
comprehensive comprehensive being the 
the key word post it's actually a guest 
post by Danny Cooper and WP tavern today 
called the most common WordPress team 
develop mistakes and how to fix them and 
Danny Cooper is on the WordPress 
networking review team and he's reviewed 
a number of themes so who more qualified 
to write an article like this then Danny 
Cooper and so he goes through in he 
lists again some of the most common 
mistakes that I mean such as uploading 
your theme to the directory which by the 
way he says that 
most themes take up to about on average 
two months to get to the front of the 
queue to get their initial review so you 
know you want to use the theme check 
plug-in and you want to use you want to 
make sure that you read the theme 
handbook that's out there and the 
requirements and trying to get those 
right on the first try because if your 
theme ends up getting bumped down for 
not hating certain requirements or 
doesn't pass the thing check who knows 
how long it could be before somebody 
gets around to reviewing your theme now 
he also talks about maiming issues on 
escaped output which is security 
security issues are involved there 
untranslatable text incorrectly in 
queueing 
resources plugin territory functionality 
not prefixing which by the way he 
mentions that name spacing in PHP is a 
better way to achieve the same effect he 
also announced that however some users 
are still using older versions of PHP 
5.2 which don't support that feature but 
the most recent version of 
WordPress bumps up the minimum PHP 
version - we're here in the near future 
developers should be able to use 
namespace and in PHP without worrying 
about breaking too many websites so 
that's good and then he also talks about 
licensing issues mistakes with team 
developers on their screenshots there 
shouldn't be any fancy do-dads or 
Photoshop work going on should be just a 
screenshot of what the thing looks like 
when it's in use talks about using 
coding standards and pretty much that's 
it I mean he it's a very comprehensive 
post if you're thinking about uploading 
a theme to the WordPress theme directory 
definitely give this thing a read and 
follow through the checklist before you 
upload the thing to the WordPress theme 
directory and the smoother you make it 
for them the smoother it will be for you 
yeah I've wanted to this for a long time 
I've created themes before but this was 
like you know back in the old days the 
pre 2.0 of WordPress and I just I ret to 
this entire thing and just ate it up and 
it's amazing the level of detail in it 
and you know kind of goes back to some 
discussions we had yesterday where kind 
of that barrier to entry is kind of you 
know the the quality of code is kind of 
that bar has been raised and raised and 
raised over time which is good like it 
should be but it's a little bit 
intimidating as a developer reading 
Orbis and going man there's a lot of 
stuff to be our minds well just throw 
this on themeforest and then I'll go 
through this yeah yeah I get it 
definitely feel this sentiment like you 
know oh oh why bother just put this on 
github or at the very least put it on 
github and submit it to wordpress.org so 
at least if people wanting now they can 
just get it from github until it goes 
through the review process and it's 
actually you know on the data work 
repository but yeah there's there's a 
reason why the theme reviewers and the 
standards and everything's been putting 
the place I mean you've been around the 
wordpress scene almost as long as I have 
and you remember the days of looking 
through the word pressing directory and 
just it's basically just a header and 
image of maybe a widget a sidebar things 
were bland not very many colors that the 
designs really just it didn't was a very 
inspiring and work very many great 
options to choose 
and the directory but if you go there 
today there is a wide variety of 
different types of themes and some of 
the things look very well done that are 
available for free and on the theme 
directory yeah for sure it's amazing how 
far we've come and it'll be interesting 
to see you know as we continue to kind 
of integrate Gutenberg what that will do 
to themes because people kind of include 
their own CSS for like the built in 
blocks as well as custom blocks and 
things like that it's gonna be really 
interesting to watch that evolve over 
time and I'll be interested what kind of 
standards they add to the list or 
requirements going forward because of 
that you know oh boy Gutenberg 
compatible themes where they come with 
like black templates and all that stuff 
mm-hmm that would be cool so an article 
that you came across talks about this is 
on code nwp that com the 10 best 
countries doubts or software development 
- based on data and I believe this list 
was made in no particular order but some 
of the countries that were listed on 
here I could have guessed all right the 
last one number 10 I wouldn't have 
guessed I don't know why and that's 
actually the country you live in but 
tell us your takeaways from this article 
and by the way you run press Titan 
WordPress Agency can you share any 
experiences you've had or have you dealt 
with outsourcing before yeah of course I 
mean throughout my entire career I have 
and I've also worked for agencies like 
10 up who are multinational right like I 
worked on teams where there's people in 
South Africa and Germany and the 
Philippines everywhere so you know I 
when I look at this this post it 
definitely echoes what I've experienced 
I will say though that best is kind of 
subjective right they didn't say 
cheapest but a lot of these countries 
you'll find are kind of on the cheaper 
side the development costs are a lot 
lower right 
for example India is currently it's a 
lot cheaper to get a full-time software 
developer in India than it is kind of in 
the States and I think that's part of 
the reason that Canada made the cut is 
not because we're a cheap place to 
invest if you want software developers 
but in terms of like quality of 
education and things like that we got 
that going for us and then also you have 
the power of the 
the usdollar being able to get kind of a 
30% discount on software developers up 
here with a very similar level of 
education so nothing in this list really 
surprised me I will say that it doesn't 
really take into consideration some of 
the cultural aspects of hiring 
developers from these different places 
I've had issues before in kind of 
misunderstandings with people in kind of 
Southeast Asia and just kind of trying 
to make sure that you see eye to eye 
with your developer so that you can 
actually execute on your vision but 
overall I think this is a really helpful 
seeing eye to eye with your developer 
from halfway across the world 
hey man when you're managing a project 
that's how that works right like we're 
so lucky to live in a world where you 
know the world has shrunk to the point 
where I can you know jump on a hangout 
like this with someone anywhere in the 
world yeah and did you end up having to 
stay up late or get up early to deal 
with the time zones always so at some 
points we had to run to scrum meetings 
so to stand-ups every day because we had 
people like we had a group of people in 
kind of north and south america and then 
we also had a group of people kind of in 
India South Africa Germany and things 
like that so it didn't always work to 
have everyone on the same Kollek having 
someone from California and so on from 
India on the same call was very 
difficult and something that this list 
mentioned is that Canada was the most 
expensive place on this list with an 
average software developer earning 
sixty-two thousand two hundred sixty 60 
ad a year was translates to about forty 
seven thousand seven hundred bucks and 
in the US so that's pretty expensive and 
the other thing I learned on this list 
is that India is churning out millions 
of stem students graduating stubb 
students in in math and science yeah and 
that doesn't surprise me I mean they 
know that with their population they 
really have to kind of focus on the 
global opportunities that exist and what 
better way to do that then to get them 
to go through technology training and 
you know yeah none of this surprises me 
at all and and I will say some of the 
values or some of the financials that 
they put on this I would love to see 
more about where their data comes from 
they use things like pay scale which is 
not in my opinion 
truly representative of salaries in 
different places I mean for example the 
the Canadian figures living in Canada I 
can tell you right now that a developer 
for like 48 thousand US dollars is 
pretty kind of early to mid tier I mean 
they're not your full stack you know ten 
years experience kind developer they're 
also not living in one of the major 
cities where there are the high quality 
or high value universities or colleges 
so it's just something to keep in mind 
with these figures all right and I know 
maybe our listeners are out there saying 
well what is the list what are the ten 
countries listed so I'll tell you India 
Ukraine China Poland the Philippines 
Romania Brazil Taiwan Egypt and your 
home away from home 
actually your home mm-hmm Canada yeah so 
there you have it so before we wrap it 
up here any one or two tips that you 
could provide for anyone out there 
looking to possibly outsource some work 
yeah I mean I really enjoy codable I 
think the quality of the developers that 
they've been letting through onto their 
network of available developers for 
WordPress development is only getting 
better and better over time I will say 
that their their comprehension and 
understanding of the language that you 
use is probably what I would consider 
the most important part and don't forget 
a developer that might seem inexpensive 
might not be if you think about the 
hours of development required right a 
developer that takes you know 60 hours 
at $10 an hour is more expensive than 
developer that you know wants $50 an 
hour but only takes three hours to do 
something so kind of make sure you keep 
that in mind when you're getting 
development done because I've been 
burned by that before thinking I'm 
getting a deal and it didn't end up 
being one yeah so tell us a little bit 
about four reasons why somebody should 
choose WordPress for their e-commerce 
site yeah so this is a post on torque 
mag and it kind of walks through 
basically it's like a is in WordPress 
great kind of post rate it walks through 
the fact that WordPress is highly 
scalable which people will debate 
endlessly 
it has rock-solid security again people 
will debate that endlessly it allows you 
to kind of get away from that hosted 
environment like Shopify and things like 
that so you can really customize things 
to to meet whatever functionality or 
features you need and WordPress itself 
is you know free to download and use web 
hosting can be had for fairly 
inexpensive amount of money and so 
you're not really locked into kind of 
that same monthly fee as a lot of the 
hosted e-commerce solutions and I've 
built a lot of e-commerce sites before 
and I've actually done a couple of 
Shopify sites and you know I have to 
agree WordPress in a lot of ways has 
become an amazing platform for 
e-commerce I will say WooCommerce as 
even though it's the flagship ecommerce 
solution for WordPress can be very heavy 
I think people assume that you need 
WooCommerce for everything ecommerce in 
WordPress and that isn't necessarily the 
case at all so it's you know mohamad 
stone ale kind of situation and you 
don't need to do that there's lots of 
other ways to kind of integrate 
ecommerce and WordPress so I really 
consider your needs before installing 
WooCommerce because it's heavy but 
overall it's a really great post to kind 
of get people who maybe are on the fence 
or questioning whether or not WordPress 
is right for them to to give it a second 
look I think we still have WP e-commerce 
out there somewhere I think they're 
they're chugging along doing their thing 
and then a company that's recently made 
huge plays into the WordPress ecosystem 
is big commerce yeah so big commerce is 
kind of strange to me because it's a 
it's a software-as-a-service right it's 
you don't really own all of your data on 
your own servers but it allows you to 
kind of have a little bit more security 
a little bit more speed so again you 
kind of have to decide what's most 
important to you and I think their 
plugin is more of like a connector type 
plugin that's precious yep yep and I 
don't know have you had a chance to mess 
around a play with the dedicated 
WooCommerce hosting by a liquid web I 
have not yet and I think I think that's 
really interesting we're seeing a lot of 
that happen serve both I think as well 
is setting up like like serverless 
WooCommerce setups I don't know how 
they're doing it but they're right 
because you think server list and you 
think 
not dynamic right and so the fact that 
they're figuring out how to do shopping 
cart experiences with WooCommerce on 
this kind of environment is super cool 
because it's super fast 
I know liquid web is doing some like 
customized optimizations as well - of 
Commerce to make it really fast and you 
know we've we've at Preston we try to do 
it as well and we still find it it's the 
slowest part of most sites that are 
e-commerce sites that we work with so 
I'm always interested to read more about 
how they're figuring out how to speed up 
whoo whoo commerce which was everything 
is interesting because you have you know 
you have all these web hosts and you can 
install WordPress on them just fine you 
can install WooCommerce on there just 
fine because it's a plug-in but here you 
have liquid host or liquid web liquid 
OHS were they actually they're dedicated 
to squeezing every little bit optimizing 
every little bit of WooCommerce that 
they can and providing a seamless 
experience for customers and that's one 
of their one of their verticals that 
they're providing that just just think 
it's kind of neat it's really smart 
right because if you want to compete 
against like the Shopify's of the world 
that's what you got to do for your 
customers right yeah but I think it will 
Commerce I think of complicated and then 
I think of these audit you know data 
customer data things you got to protect 
gdpr and then the the different the 
different levels of service or PCI 
compliance I think is what it is you got 
about and it'd be nice if you know a 
service could take care of all that for 
you and you just manage your clients and 
your customers and your sales and your 
inventory you have to worry about that 
stuff for sure and I I'm very happy to 
see that growing as kind of a sector of 
WordPress and for those out there who 
are running a jetpack they recently came 
out with a major update 7.3 a few days 
ago today they published a minor release 
seven point three point one this 
occludes a couple of enhancements to 
various modules within the plugin quite 
a few bug fixes as well so make sure you 
update the seven point three point one 
if you're running jetpack and last but 
not least today on the show and this one 
will probably generate some cut this is 
a pressing topic but it is a proposal to 
modify the plugin 
guidelines and anytime we the plugin 
guidelines are brought up about changing 
them it always generates an enormous 
amount of discussion because if you've 
read the if you've read the guidelines 
there's room for interpretations there 
is a room for errors there's room 
there's a lot of different gray areas so 
this post by Mika Epstein who was one of 
the gatekeepers for the wordpress plugin 
directory has published his post on the 
make wordpress of erica plugins site 
that talks about why they're making 
these changes and she says that and 
working with ESL developers or 
english-as-a-second-language was 
mentioned in a number of confusion 
points were due to the semantics of 
translations so they've made a number of 
grammatical clarifications and sentence 
tightenings and she says that the 
purpose i mean the initial purpose is 
it's not to eliminate loopholes but to 
make it more clear to someone who is not 
a native english speaker that certain 
things are not okay and in addition to 
this proposal 
they've also rewritten guideline 11 
which is don't spam the admin dashboard 
so here the couple here are the couple 
changes that have been proposed the 
first is that admin messages and 
advertisements must be limited to one 
per common page messages must only be 
shown to people who can action on them 
for example don't show install acts to a 
user who can stall anything that seems 
like common sense but that's not what 
happens you know in WordPress all 
messages must be permanently dismissible 
by an action on a page such as clicking 
a dismiss button or an extra closed 
filters are insufficient as now all 
users are capable of implementing them I 
fully agree with that no repeatable 
messages if a user has been asked to try 
this add-on and said no their choice 
must be respected exceptions will be 
granted for reminders to complete setup 
or if the action in a way that would 
require that add-on and last but not 
least all advertisement type messages 
have to directly relate to the developer 
or the plugin ads for other things a 
developer happens to like aren't 
permitted and they also go over what the 
proposal will not cover and he 
specifically mentioned injecting in the 
search results and they give a summary 
and they're encouraging everybody to 
a comment on the proposal I'll be part 
of the solution and within a few weeks 
time I believe the proposal will either 
be Reaper posed or there be changes or 
it will be implemented but it's nice to 
see I'm pretty much fully in agreement 
with all those changes that that have 
been proposed when I read it my first 
thought was wait all this stuff doesn't 
already exist as requirements like wait 
a second how have we gone this far 
without that being a requirement I will 
say I would hope that in this effort to 
make things more clear that they 
continue to work on that even with these 
changes right saying that there has to 
be you know permanently dismissible by 
an action on a page such as like for 
example basically clicking on a dismiss 
button or an X close that to me is not 
as clear as it should be it really 
should be like which only includes 
things like clicking on a button that 
says close this or an X to close like 
and it has to be and it may more detail 
right like it has to be like directly 
related to this box and things like that 
because I don't know about you but I've 
seen some messages that are kind of 
confusing in terms of dismissing some of 
these strange quasi advertisements or 
information boxes on the WordPress admin 
so I I can't believe this stuff doesn't 
exist already in the list of 
requirements and I just I hope that they 
make it even more clear as they go 
forward the word press back and really 
just a NASCAR NASCAR car with all those 
advertisements but sometime thing quote 
quote Mika says our understanding is 
that a cluttered in unmanageable 
dashboard upsets users making it harder 
for them to do what they want this 
behavior if an acted by all plugins 
could cause WordPress irreparable harm 
end quote and I mentioned this on 
Twitter and I believe on WordPress 
weekly a few weeks ago but sometimes it 
feels like all of the plugin authors out 
there are in a war you know they're in a 
war for space and the work they are and 
and us the users end up being the 
casualty of this work well but I mean 
here's the thing right if if you've 
already proven that you're interested in 
something that I am doing I feel like 
there's that opportunity for conversion 
right 
all of these people want to make a 
business 
this you have covered over your career 
hundreds of articles of developers who 
you know are getting like $20 every six 
months for donations for their hard work 
on a plugin is gonna cut it we know 
right like so they're like well if I can 
get you to install all these other 
things or upgrade to the premium version 
or or you know go through this affiliate 
link to buy this amazing plugin like 
maybe I can meet it make ends meet so 
that I can you develop this cool tool 
for you I think that you know that the 
Wild West approach of letting all of 
these developers do whatever the heck 
they want definitely has to go but I 
think that in replacement of that the 
community definitely has to think of how 
we can help struggling developers either 
monetize or you know make create 
opportunities for them to continue doing 
this because WordPress shouldn't always 
be about the person that has the 
privilege to be able to spend their free 
time on this mm-hmm and then you know if 
you install 20 to 30 plugins and you 
leave a go for about a month 
generally what you're going to see the 
next time you log into the WordPress 
back-end as a giant mess so I mean how 
do we how do we how do we solve that 
issue of giving developers and providing 
them opportunities for upsell or for 
advertising or paid upgrades without you 
know without it being a mess for 
everybody yeah makes me it makes me 
wonder if you come up with some I mean 
here here the guidelines are trying to 
set up some standards for how developers 
can do that and we'll have to see if 
these convert or if these are allow 
enough space you know to allow 
developers to to use them but I don't 
know man it seems like a very complex 
issue of allowing mists and blocking 
Matt how do we get the how do we balance 
at all yeah I mean my suggestion would 
be like an actions panel in the 
dashboard and the WordPress admin so you 
know how you can temporarily like trash 
post pages and other things in WordPress 
and then you can go to the trash and you 
can restore them or see them again or 
act on on those items we almost need 
like a way to 
allow these developers to put almost 
like to trash their messages right put 
them in a spot where I can go and review 
them again if I so choose but to get 
them off of my dashboard right away when 
I clean out WordPress and we've talked 
about this I've mentioned it on the show 
back when because this issues come up 
time and time again and almost every 
week you see somebody posting an image 
on Twitter of the dashboard and how 
there's 30 different messages some of 
them are air some of them are upsell 
some of them are hey why don't you 
upgrade you know it's it's been three 
weeks since I've seen you I want you to 
come over and give me some more money 
but yeah that one thing WordPress needs 
and I believe there might be a couple 
tickets in track related to this but so 
far I haven't seen too much in a way a 
discussion on it is some sort of 
notification manager and these these 
messages are there for developers to use 
and if they use them for the right 
purpose it's fine 
but when you use them and when I see a 
green or red message I think oh no 
danger but really it's just telling me 
hey why don't you upgrade to something 
it's irresponsible and that's not the 
way they should be used but yet if 
you're a developer you know that's gonna 
be seen by the user that's gonna get 
their attention so I guess why not do it 
yeah like I said some kind of separate 
actions page and then on the the main 
dashboard right you know with the boxes 
to show us like WordPress news and 
upcoming events you have another one 
that shows the latest things in your 
actions panel and and that way we have 
that kind of consistency of use we have 
that separation the worst thing the 
thing that I dislike the most is when I 
go to like you know the themes page or 
the plugins page or some page where I'm 
actually trying to do some real work on 
a wordpress site and I have like 15 
notices that I have to like dismiss and 
cancel and closed and like three or four 
that don't end up closing or working so 
you know you just dismiss them ah but 
one of them was important but you didn't 
read it cuz you thought yeah that's the 
worst - and then you have no way of 
getting it back you have no way of 
finding out which that's right what who 
did that or why wait wait actually want 
to see that notice it's gone forever 
it's gone until a month later and right 
that's not ideal yep indeed indeed so 
that's gonna do it for today's edition 
of pressing topics you can find show 
notes and links to all the stories we've 
mentioned today on WP t burn com if you 
want to follow me on Twitter 
you can at Jeffro je FF r0 and Malcolm 
yeah if you want to find me I'm find 
purpose and you could find him and if 
you're interested in some wordpress help 
press Titan correct that's correct press 
Titan calm there we go there you have it 
so until tomorrow everybody enjoy the 
rest of your evening but by night