Podcasts about WordPress

When does a body of work reach completion? One answer is to end it by choice. This week in episode 356 you'll hear the reasons behind our intentional ending of the Nerd Journey Podcast. We'll rewind the clock and focus on the show's trajectory and inflection points over time just like we've done for guests, share what we learned over the course of an 8-year journey from idea to consistently released show, and discuss our favorite moments. All of our content will remain online and accessible for listeners like you to go back and enjoy. Don't miss our final call to action in this episode. Just because this body of work is complete, there is still work for all of us to do for our careers. Original Recording Date: 12-20-2025 Topics – A Purposeful Ending, Where We Started, Interview Format and Getting to Launch, The Why Behind the Ending, The Lessons We Learned, Our Favorite Moments, What to Expect from Us Moving Forward, There's More to Be Done for All of Us. 1:01 – A Purposeful Ending We'll give you the bottom line up front: this is the last episode of the Nerd Journey podcast. We still love the mission, but the time has come for us to complete this body of work. When we have interviewed guests on the show, we've talked through their career timeline and pulled out the lessons learned. Today, we're going to do it for the show itself. 1:38 – Where We Started John was working as a sales engineer at VMware and was the co-host of the VMware Community Roundtable Podcast. He loved listening to podcasts, enjoyed the medium, and wanted to find a topic for a show. At the same time Nick was in the process of joining VMware, John and Nick were discussing all the things Nick needed to know to transition into sales engineering for a technology vendor. “In that conversation, I said ‘maybe we should start a podcast.'” – John White As Nick remembers it, this happened the weekend before Nick started at VMware in December 2017 (almost exactly 8 years before this episode's recording). Nick wasn't sure what he would talk about on a podcast. This suggestion from John started the ideation period, and our launch of the show was in July 2018. John talks about some of the initial ideas for the focus of the show. At that time, VMware podcasts and blogs were a great way to interact with the greater community. Doing something like this was also a way to become what John calls “nerd famous.” By the way, no one else can use that term now (trademarked by John). We initially considered talking about VMware news and our opinions on it since we both were going to be working at VMware. Both John and Nick came from small-to-medium business IT operations and eventually became sales engineers at a technology vendor. One of the things the show could be for is to talk about that journey and help others understand it was a possibility for them as well. John and Nick recorded about 10 episodes before launching to help hit the release cadence. Nick doesn't remember why they chose a weekly release cadence but remembers the show launched while he was on vacation. John and Nick even recorded a podcast episode while Nick was on that vacation, which started a habit of Nick doing podcast work while on vacation. Because they had recorded so many episodes in advance, they were not going to be timely or points of authority on VMware technology. Both Nick and John's roles were as technical generalists on the VMware side. “The only evergreen stuff that we had was the career stuff, so that became a little bit more the focus. I think that we were still thinking…we'll just record more maybe VMware specific stuff later on…as that happens. For right now, here it is.” – John White Early episodes were very prescriptive about resumes and job interview processes at larger tech companies, for example. Nick points out that John had to carry the conversation in these early episodes because he was just learning to think about career focused topics (sort of like being new to lifting weights). But, Nick picked up a lot just from the conversations on the show. 7:50 – Interview Format and Getting to Launch Nick couldn't remember what made them bring in guests originally, but Episode 13 with Tom Delicati was our very first guest interview on the show. John feels bringing in guests was always back of mind for him, and it was what he saw happen on the VMware Community Roundtable Podcast. “We're just 2 people and we have our experience. But we can't represent that as the full breadth of all of experience. That just doesn't make any sense. So, we need to start exploring what other people's career journeys have looked like and see if we can extract some knowledge and recommendations from that.” – John White Nick doesn't remember having a prescriptive plan for interviewing guests but feels like they settled into long-form interviews as a style pretty quickly. John says this was a structure they hit upon in the beginning (talking through someone's job history). The lessons learned from career inflection points like job transitions emerged from conversations with guests. John and Nick did not know this was going to happen when they began. Nick likes being able to highlight more of one specific guest's story than otherwise could have been done if each interview was only 30 minutes with a guest. But we fully acknowledge people like different lengths of podcasts. “We wanted to tell interesting stories that had an arc: a beginning and an end and a journey in between. And we were able to find those even chopping people's long 2-hour conversations up into 2 or even 3 episodes. I think that worked for us. I don't know if it worked for everybody.” – John White “We probably spent the same time interviewing people as we would have. We just didn't interview as many as if it had been 1 episode per person.” – Nick Korte We also didn't want to release a 2-hour interview as one episode. That's a lot of editing for just one episode release. People might not realize how much time goes into editing and production even after recording an interview. At the beginning, John had to give Nick advice on the kind of microphone to get. Nick started recording with a headset and then bought the same mic as John. They would each later invest in nicer microphones as the show progressed. “I knew nothing about editing and really not that much about how to make a podcast.” – Nick Korte, on beginning as a podcaster There were a lot of things we had to figure out just to make the podcast publicly available. John had researched some of the administrative things. He knew there was a WordPress plugin that could be used to turn MP3 files of released episodes into publicly available audio feed that would be the podcast. John says there were some mental blocks and hurdles he had to get through before launching the show, highlighting the fact that it took 6 months to go from idea to publishing. He was getting overwhelmed trying to figure out the back-end production and publishing process. John thinks it was Nick who kept asking what needed to happen for us to launch, and we went with WordPress and the plugin mentioned but never changed anything…because we had no time to go back. Nick and John learned that once you start a show and get it going, you will never run out of ideas. 13:58 – The Why Behind the Ending We never ran out of ideas. In fact, we still have ideas. So why are we stopping the podcast? We ran out of time. Nick has run out of time to work on editing and production. This has been a weekly show (up until the last couple months of our run), and it takes a large time commitment each week. For guest interview episodes, the intro and outro were not recorded at the same time the interview took place. These had to be recorded before the episode was released. The show notes are not AI-generated. Nick enjoyed writing them and adding in important links and references, feeling like it allowed him to remember the episodes better and internalize the lessons within them. Nick has a teenager now with many extracurricular activities and has had a workload increase at his job. “Probably for the last year I think I've been fooling myself at how much of a toll it's been to just get an episode out each week.” – Nick Korte We even tried changing the release schedule to bi-weekly and have missed that cadence a couple of times. John ran out of time about 4 years ago and hasn't had much time since to handle podcast related tasks. John experienced a job change and new baby at that time and couldn't add anything else. He also moved at some point. John and Nick have been advancing in their own careers over time as well, which has added responsibility. John and his wife recently had a second child. He also left his job in June 2025 and has been doing a job search at the same time. Before Nick and John made this decision, Nick listened back to some previous episodes to get advice and perspective. Some of the advice that echoed the loudest came from Amy Lewis in Episode 302 – Ending with Intention: Once a Geek Whisperer with Amy Lewis (2/2). The idea of ending with intention stood out. “Rather than being spotty on our releases and not keeping our promise of how often we say we're going to get the show out, we wanted to end it with intention and say, ‘ok, this is it.'” – Nick Korte “We haven't lost the love of this task. We both want this to continue. But realistically, we can't do it. And rather than sputter and peter out and never be heard from again, we just thought we'll follow the lessons that we've learned from our bettors and do what they did. Let's be intentional about the end.” – John White 18:02 – The Lessons We Learned John learned how much we can learn from the experience of others. He had ideas and biases about how we should handle specific aspects of our career, but doing the podcast allowed him to pressure test these ideas against the experience of others. John appreciates the breadth of background and experience our collective guests have brought to the show. It made him realize there are so many different ways to do certain things. Nick learned a ton about the mechanics of podcast production. It was around Episode 113 when Nick became the editor because John needed to take a break. If you want to hear more about how this happened, check out this blog post. Nick got hooked into podcast communities and even attended a podcast conference in 2025, meeting many other people who run their own podcast. Nick learned how much salesmanship is involved in getting a guest. You have to sell someone on the idea of being on the show and what they can bring to your listeners. How easy can you make it for them to say yes? John and Nick asked guests for 1.5 – 2 hours for an interview. “If you make it easy for someone to say yes and you build the outline of questions you might ask and you tell them what your show is about and what you want to cover, they'll say yes. And they might give you more time than that…. I learned so much about different people that I never would have met otherwise. I am thankful for all the learnings of all the people who have been on the show. And I'm thankful for everything I've learned from you, John.” – Nick Korte John is grateful for the difference in skills he and Nick have and their ability to learn from one another just by co-hosting together. He likes to apply the idea of making it easy for others to say yes when he's asking something of someone at work, for example. Nick learned how to beat perfectionism weekly. Something can always be edited more or re-recorded. There was a weekly ship date. “The deadline was always there to keep me honest.” – Nick Korte Seth Godin's The Practice talks about keeping a promise to the people who follow you. Having a weekly release cadence meant we were promising to ship episodes weekly. “So, whether one person listened or a million people listened, we tried to keep that promise. And it was important to us to keep it, even if it was hard.” – Nick Korte “Having a million people listen to a specific episode or even hit the site in a specific week wasn't the goal. I think the goal was the breadth of work and making it accessible and having people be able to benefit from it.” – John White We also had to learn how to tell people about the show in a clear, succinct way. When John or Nick would join video calls for work, people would see their microphones and ask if they had a podcast. We also used generative AI in our workflow for production a little bit, even if it was not for show notes. Doing the show has dragged with it some reasons to tinker with generative AI. With John's help Nick learned how to build a Gemini prompt that would take the handwritten show notes and brainstorm titles, episode descriptions, and even create a prompt for a featured image based on the themes in the episode. John shares that we never wanted to use generative AI to take a transcript and generate an episode outline. We might lose touch with the content that way. John talks about the curse of being an audio editor. It's impossible to NOT hear issues in other audio. Nick can hear mouth noises on Zoom calls like you wouldn't believe. John says we can listen to someone else's podcast and may be able to tell who is and is not the editor based on whether they speak into the microphone or move away from it and keep talking. 25:15 – Our Favorite Moments John says it's hard to pick just one favorite moment. We got to meet some of our heroes in podcasting and other people who were “nerd famous” about their career stories. We had some great conversations with John Nicholson about how to evaluate a job offer and personal finance. Check out these for reference: Episode 224 – Tech Marketing, Interview Questions, and Executives as Wild Bears with John Nicholson (1/3) Episode 225 – Take Stock of Your Compensation with John Nicholson (2/3) Episode 226 – Negotiating Job Offers and Personal Finance Tips with John Nicholson (3/3) Having a podcast allowed us to have lengthy conversations with people who may not have otherwise had a reason to talk to us. John doesn't think asking someone out of the blue for 2 hours of time without having a podcast would have worked well. John says he has a strong recency bias, often walking away from an interview with a guest thinking it was the best one yet. Nick's favorite moments Nick remembers the first time we interviewed Mike Burkhart (in Episode 64 and Episode 65). He was having wifi issues and had to move everything into his living room floor to record the episode. John and Mike were kind enough to stay online and still do the interview. John and Nick live in different parts of the United States and have only been able to record together in person a handful of times. These times were special and rare. Nick remembers the time they recorded at VMware Explore and forgot to hit record…twice in a row! If John had to succumb to recency bias, he would pick the recent interview with Milin Desai. This set of interviews stands alone as the only time we were cold pitched a guest by someone we did not know, and it was a perfect fit. We got over 2 hours with a CEO! Episode 349 – Expand Your Curiosity: Build, Own, and Maintain Relevance with Milin Desai (1/3) Episode 350 – Scope and Upside: The Importance of Contextual Communication with Milin Desai (2/3) Episode 350 – Opt In: A CEO's Take on Becoming AI Native with Milin Desai (3/3) People being both generous with their time and inciteful has been a pattern with guests. Nick and John got to have conversations with people both on the air and off the air. Nick appreciated having Dale McKay on the show (a mentor of his). You can find those episodes here: Episode 288 – Guardrails for Growth: A Mentor's Experience with Dale McKay (1/2) Episode 289 – Enhance Your Personal Brand: Feedback as a Catalyst for Change with Dale McKay (2/2) Some other favorites from Nick: He enjoyed all of the conversations about the principal title and principal engineers. See also the principal tag for more of these stories. Nick also really enjoyed hearing the stories about why people went into leadership roles and why they moved away from them. One specific episode Nick highlights as a favorite is Episode 127 – Countdown to Burnout with Tom Hollingsworth (3/3). John mentions we all battle burnout from time to time, and having such great advice to go back to is a gift. Nick says being the editor is also a gift because you're going to get to listen to the recorded discussion multiple times. Many times, the questions Nick and John asked in guest interviews were things they needed help with in their own careers. Hopefully the answers to those questions helped you as a listener too! John liked the fact that we were able to clip some of the times we messed up on the air and include those sound bites at the very end of an episode for people. To find these episodes, look for the Stinger metadata tag on an episode post. Nick mentions the Barry White intro stinger. It's actually at the end of Episode 17. There are also some good stingers with guest Chris Williams. 31:05 – What to Expect from Us Moving Forward What are the things that will, won't, and might happen in the future? The Nerd Journey site will remain online and accessible so our content will not disappear. You can still enjoy past episodes, browse the show notes, and leverage the Layoff Resources Page as well as our Career Uncertainty Action Guide. John and Nick can keep it online in a very cost-effective way just as they have to this point since the podcast was never monetized (not even Amazon affiliate links). John still has a dream of making sure we have transcripts of all the episodes and making these available in addition to the show notes. Maybe that could be extended to an AI chat bot that was trained on the transcripts. There would be some overhead involved in doing it, but John thinks it's definitely possible. You can still reach out to John or Nick on LinkedIn or send us an e-mail. All current communication channels will remain in place. We are available for questions, if you want to talk, etc. We will definitely NOT restart this show. We have declared it complete. Even if we were going to do a show like this again in the future, we would do it differently. We might choose a different name, a different description, or a different format even. But we don't have the time to do that right now anyway. We are NOT starting a new show (at least not right now). 34:59 – There's More to Be Done for All of Us Just because the show is ending, that doesn't mean your work is complete. None of our work is complete when it comes to career. “The things that we've talked about in curating your own career and being intentional about it always apply. We're not going to be around to remind you of that every week, so I hope that people have learned those lessons and internalized them. But if not, do something to make those things intentional. You need to prioritize your career on a consistent basis.” – John White Here are some specific actions that you should take: Document your work. Generate proof of work. Show your work (similar to generating proof of work). John says this is what we were unconsciously doing when we began the podcast, sharing how we got to where we are and our job transitions so others can follow a similar path if they choose. The purpose of showing your work is so that others can learn from your experience and so you can remind yourself of what you've accomplished at a later time. Nick highlights that Episode 66: Three-Month Check-In as a Google Cloud Customer Engineer with John White, Part 1 remains the most downloaded episode in our catalog. Aim for small, iterative improvements. Turn information into knowledge. Some of this is through writing. We spoke several times on the show about writing being thinking, and it was specifically referenced in an episode with Josh Duffney – Episode 156 – Better Notes, Better You with Josh Duffney (1/2). Manage your knowledge in some kind of written form that isn't in your head. Make it a knowledge management system of some kind. Practice Deep Work. It's the most important work you can do because the skill of sustained attention will be the thing for which people are paid. Be mindful of technology waves and trends, and consider placing some small bets. Many guests have invested time and effort to become proficient in a newer technology before or as it was catching on. Don't be afraid to tinker with those newer technologies. Consistently invest in your professional network. One way to do this could be via meetup groups or online communities. Reach out to use if you want to talk about careers, starting a podcast, or other fun topics. Nick can also tell you what it's like to go through the John White School of Mentoring. We want to say a special thank you to every guest who took the time to be on the podcast and every listener who took the time to listen to an episode. Contact the Hosts The hosts of Nerd Journey are John White and Nick Korte. E-mail: nerdjourneypodcast@gmail.com DM us on Twitter/X @NerdJourney Connect with John on LinkedIn or DM him on Twitter/X @vJourneyman Connect with Nick on LinkedIn or DM him on Twitter/X @NetworkNerd_ Leave a Comment on Your Favorite Episode on YouTube If you've been impacted by a layoff or need advice, check out our Layoff Resources Page. If uncertainty is getting to you, check out or Career Uncertainty Action Guide with a checklist of actions to take control during uncertain periods and AI prompts to help you think through topics like navigating a recent layoff, financial planning, or managing your mindset and being overwhelmed.

This Week in WordPress #363 with Nathan Wrigley, Jess Frick, Marc Benzakein, Marcus Burnette. This episode covers a range of WordPress-related topics, including the upcoming release of WordPress 6.9.1, the launch of a new centralised home for WordPress education initiatives, and trusted companies and individuals in the WordPress ecosystem. The panel also dives into the evolving role of AI in WordPress, discussing benchmarks, industry changes, and the impact of AI-driven advertising. Lighter moments feature fun conversations about corgis, alligators, and community experiences, all while emphasising the importance of collaboration, humility, and adapting to new technologies within the WordPress space.

Bailey Collins has now landed 500+ website in a day clients since 2021. This free masterclass is a behind-scenes-look at her entire process which she shared live in my community Web Designer Pro®.If you're ready to launch your website in a day offer and confidently charge 1k-5k per day, I recommend Bailey's full Design Day Blueprint course which I'm a proud affiliate for.We've partnered up to give you a special 10% OFF discount and – when you use my link – you'll also get her bonus Branding Day module (normally a $500 add-on)

This week I Talk About Clients Vs Contracts [powerpress]

******Support the channel******Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thedissenterPayPal: paypal.me/thedissenterPayPal Subscription 1 Dollar: https://tinyurl.com/yb3acuuyPayPal Subscription 3 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ybn6bg9lPayPal Subscription 5 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ycmr9gpzPayPal Subscription 10 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y9r3fc9mPayPal Subscription 20 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y95uvkao ******Follow me on******Website: https://www.thedissenter.net/The Dissenter Goodreads list: https://shorturl.at/7BMoBFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedissenteryt/Twitter: https://x.com/TheDissenterYT This show is sponsored by Enlites, Learning & Development done differently. Check the website here: http://enlites.com/ Victoria Dougherty is the author of The Bone Church, Welcome to the Hotel Yalta, and Cold. She writes fiction, drama, and essays that revolve around lovers, killers, curses, and destinies. Her work has been published or profiled in the New York Times, USA Today, The International Herald Tribune, and elsewhere. Earlier in her career, while living in Prague, she co-founded Black Box Theater, translating, producing, and acting in several Czech plays. Her blog – COLD – features her short essays on faith, family, love, and writing. WordPress, the blogging platform that hosts some 70 million blogs worldwide, has singled out COLD as one of the Top 50 Recommended Blogs by writers or about writing.  This is our seventh talk. We first discuss how stories should be adapted to the screen, and to what extent the source material should be changed. We then talk about how to write proper characters, and how to thread the line between character development and making a character behave out of character. We also discuss how much a story needs to be planned. Finally, we talk about how to imbue stories with morality and politics.--A HUGE THANK YOU TO MY PATRONS/SUPPORTERS: PER HELGE LARSEN, BERNARDO SEIXAS, ADAM KESSEL, MATTHEW WHITINGBIRD, ARNAUD WOLFF, TIM HOLLOSY, HENRIK AHLENIUS, ROBERT WINDHAGER, RUI INACIO, ZOOP, MARCO NEVES, COLIN HOLBROOK, PHIL KAVANAGH, SAMUEL ANDREEFF, FRANCIS FORDE, TIAGO NUNES, FERGAL CUSSEN, HAL HERZOG, NUNO MACHADO, JONATHAN LEIBRANT, JOÃO LINHARES, STANTON T, SAMUEL CORREA, ERIK HAINES, MARK SMITH, JOÃO EIRA, TOM HUMMEL, SARDUS FRANCE, DAVID SLOAN WILSON, YACILA DEZA-ARAUJO, ROMAIN ROCH, YANICK PUNTER, CHARLOTTE BLEASE, NICOLE BARBARO, ADAM HUNT, PAWEL OSTASZEWSKI, NELLEKE BAK, GUY MADISON, GARY G HELLMANN, SAIMA AFZAL, ADRIAN JAEGGI, PAULO TOLENTINO, JOÃO BARBOSA, JULIAN PRICE, HEDIN BRØNNER, FRANCA BORTOLOTTI, GABRIEL PONS CORTÈS, URSULA LITZCKE, SCOTT, ZACHARY FISH, TIM DUFFY, SUNNY SMITH, JON WISMAN, WILLIAM BUCKNER, LUKE GLOWACKI, GEORGIOS THEOPHANOUS, CHRIS WILLIAMSON, PETER WOLOSZYN, DAVID WILLIAMS, DIOGO COSTA, ALEX CHAU, CORALIE CHEVALLIER, BANGALORE ATHEISTS, LARRY D. LEE JR., OLD HERRINGBONE, MICHAEL BAILEY, DAN SPERBER, ROBERT GRESSIS, JEFF MCMAHAN, JAKE ZUEHL, MARK CAMPBELL, TOMAS DAUBNER, LUKE NISSEN, KIMBERLY JOHNSON, JESSICA NOWICKI, LINDA BRANDIN, VALENTIN STEINMANN, ALEXANDER HUBBARD, BR, JONAS HERTNER, URSULA GOODENOUGH, DAVID PINSOF, SEAN NELSON, MIKE LAVIGNE, JOS KNECHT, LUCY, MANVIR SINGH, PETRA WEIMANN, CAROLA FEEST, MAURO JÚNIOR, TONY BARRETT, NIKOLAI VISHNEVSKY, STEVEN GANGESTAD, TED FARRIS, HUGO B., JORDAN MANSFIELD, CHARLOTTE ALLEN, PETER STOYKO, DAVID TONNER, LEE BECK, PATRICK DALTON-HOLMES, NICK KRASNEY, RACHEL ZAK, DENNIS XAVIER, CHINMAYA BHAT, RHYS, AND ALEX MACLEOD!A SPECIAL THANKS TO MY PRODUCERS, YZAR WEHBE, JIM FRANK, ŁUKASZ STAFINIAK, TOM VANEGDOM, BERNARD HUGUENEY, CURTIS DIXON, BENEDIKT MUELLER, THOMAS TRUMBLE, KATHRINE AND PATRICK TOBIN, JONCARLO MONTENEGRO, NICK GOLDEN, CHRISTINE GLASS, IGOR NIKIFOROVSKI, AND PER KRAULIS!AND TO MY EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS, MATTHEW LAVENDER,SERGIU CODREANU, AND GREGORY HASTINGS!

Episode 108 – BTG Listener-Favorite Series: A past conversation with pastor, author, and podcaster Havilah Cunnington and our podcast host, Mykelti Blum. In this episode, they discuss boundaries and some of Havilah's journey in understanding what boundaries meant for her. She shares practical tools and insight into how to incorporate boundaries within friendships, careers, and self care. Whether you’re newer to the podcast or have been listening for a while, our hope is that you will be encouraged in a fresh way by this past conversation, as it contains rich biblical wisdom and practical application for your life today! Learn more about Havilah and find resources, including her book I Do Boundaries at havilahcunnington.com. Follow @MNBTG on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. Subscribe to the BTG Podcast on Apple Podcasts, iHeart, Spotify, YouTube, or listen on WordPress. BTG Events & Resources: 2026 BTG Leadership Conference February 20-21 Lake Geneva Christian Center (Alexandria, MN) Featuring Kristie Kerr and Keaton & Emily Goetz (worship) Main Sessions (including the Lund Leadership Award Presentation and the Leadership Exchange), Workshops, the After-Party, Exhibitor Shopping, Networking, and More!  Early Bird Deadline: January 31 Register: mnbtg.org/leadership. 2026 Single Moms Retreat  May 29-30, 2026 Lake Geneva Christian Center (Alexandria, MN) Featured Guests: Brooke Maxwell, Kevin Ramsby, and Amber Gerstmann (emcee) Main Sessions, Multiple Workshops, Lots of INCLUDED Activities and Giveaways. Learn More & Register to Attend, Exhibit, or Volunteer: mnbtg.org/retreat. 2026 Garden Coffee Free Missional Event for Women and Girls of All Ages! July 3, 2026, at Lake Geneva Christian Center in Alexandria, MN. Enjoy Refreshments, Worship Together, and Hear from a MN Global Worker. You’ll Also Have the Opportunity to Invest Into Missions (to Support Our 1000 Sisters Fund). Learn More at mnbtg.org/1000sisters. No RSVP Required; Invite Your Family and Church Community! 2026 Thrive Conference October 9-10, 2026 Mayo Civic Center (Rochester, MN) Featuring Lisa Bevere, Christina Girma-Hanfere, Martha Tennison, Susie Larson (speaker and emcee), & Amber Gerstmann (emcee) Afternoon & Main Sessions, “LIVE at Thrive with Susie Larson” — a BTG Podcast Recording Experience, Lunch with Speakers, the Thrive After-Party, Shopping, and More! Groups of 40 or More Who Register by September 20 Will Receive Reserved Seating. See All Ticket Types, and Register: First-Time Guests to Thrive in Rochester Can Register for ONLY $20 FREE Tickets for 2026 High School Grads and North Central University and Trinity Bible College and Graduate School undergrad students! Email info@mnbtg.org to Request Your Coupon Code. (These free tickets are not transferrable.) BTG Missions Trips and Giving Opportunity Learn About Our 2025-2026 BTG Missions Partners, and Give A Tax-Deductible Gift Toward Our $500,000 Goal: mnbtg.org/missions. Apply to join a 2026 BTG Missions Trip to Prague or Budapest: mnbtg.org/trips. Please take a moment to rate and review the podcast to help others find this resource, as well!

Something's wrong with Ben! On a brand new episode, Justin and Jeremy talk about the latest animal attacks movie, PRIMATE! Does this chimpanzee slasher live up to the legacy of the best killer animal flicks? Listen in to hear our full-spoiler review.   Find us: Apple Podcasts: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/epic-film-guys- Official Fan Group : https://www.facebook.com/groups/epicfilmguys Feed URL: https://epicfilmguys.podbean.com/feed/ Wordpress: http://epicfilmguys.wordpress.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/epicfilmguysny/live You can also catch us on most every podcatcher under the sun! Search for us on BluBrry, Stitcher, Spreaker, Google Podcasts, Overcast, and many others. Search and you will find us! There has never been a better time to join up with the elites at https://www.patreon.com/epicfilmguys! You can get access to pre-roll and outtakes from the show, exclusive episodes, free swag, and so much more. Tiers start as low as $1/month! Please consider supporting the show, and thank you for being one of the EFG faithful

In this episode, Nathan Wrigley chats with Taylor Drayson, a young WordPress professional who shares his journey into web development, inspired by his self-employed father. Taylor discusses projects like WP Extended, a modular plugin for WordPress agencies, and Snippet Club, his membership site offering code snippets and tutorials. He also talks about his work with WP Managed Ninja, managing community feedback and product improvements. Together, they delve into WordPress's changing demographics, tech debt, community culture, and its future appeal to younger generations. Go listen...

Send us a textWhat if confidence isn't something we build later in life… but something we slowly learn to unlearn?In this heart-opening episode, Alex is joined by two powerful collaborators—artist Nadia & project partner Danielle—for a deeply personal conversation about Free to Be Me, a children's book that's quickly becoming a movement.What started as a quiet moment during a breathwork session (and a breastfeeding cuddle) has grown into a bold vision: helping the next generation of leaders stay connected to who they truly are—before the world teaches them otherwise.Together, the 3 explore why language matters so much in shaping belief, identity, and self-worth from the very beginning. Alex shares how her background in neuroscience, education, and leadership coaching—combined with becoming a mom—radically heightened her awareness of the words children hear every day… and the invisible stories those words plant.You'll hear:Why phrases like “I'm busy” or “be careful” can quietly shape lifelong patterns of burnout and fearHow affirmations like “I can do this” become embodied beliefs when children are invited to truly own themWhat it means to raise children who feel seen, loved, and enough exactly as they areHow art becomes a bridge between emotion, identity, and belongingWhy this book is being intentionally co-created—with families, children, and the wider communityNadia offers a beautiful behind-the-scenes look at her creative process, sharing how she captures not just what a child looks like, but how they feel. Danielle grounds the conversation by weaving together the purpose, pacing, and importance of doing this work with care, integrity, and heart.✨ Be Part of the StoryFree to Be Me is now officially available for pre-order, and this episode marks the beginning of its next phase.In the coming weeks, we'll be opening a crowdsourcing initiative that invites families, parents, grandparents, and supporters to help co-create the illustrations that bring this book to life. From full-page scenes to individual portraits, this project is being built with community, not just for it.If this conversation resonated with you—if you believe in raising children who feel confident, capable, and free to be themselves—this is your invitation to be part of something meaningful.

In this episode, Anne Bovelett chats with Rahul Bansal and Aviral Mittal from rtCamp, highlighting the agency's growth since 2009, commitment to accessibility, and innovative training programs in WordPress.

Sign up for Audible, using our affiliate link! When you sign up for Audible you will be helping out our podcast, and the “Terry goat fund.” When you sign up, your first month is free. After that it becomes $15 every month. You can unsubscribe at any time. Each month you will get one token for an audible book, and some really great prices and discounts on titles that you want to add to your library. Quick recap The podcast team discussed technical issues with their RSS feed and WordPress hosting, which has been causing their shows to appear late or not at all. They shared personal updates, including Keith’s story about Nathan sleeping with a rat at Jill’s house. The team reviewed several unusual news stories, including a truckload of crabs spilling in Ireland, a bear moving from one California home to another, and a judge in Arizona resigning after being caught urinating in public. Jill led a trivia segment about Hogan’s Heroes, and Terry shared his top 10 list about the history of the NFL’s original 14 teams. The show concluded with a discussion about cloud storage services, particularly Microsoft OneDrive, and the team shared several humorous jokes and final thoughts before signing off. Summary The podcast team discussed technical issues with their RSS feed, which has been slow and causing shows to appear late. Keith explained that the problem likely stems from WordPress and is investigating solutions. The team shared personal stories, including Keith’s tale of Nathan sleeping with a rat at Jill’s house, and Jill mentioned watching the movie “Soul on Fire” on Netflix, which tells the story of a boy who survived a devastating garage fire. News of the Week The group discussed several news stories, including a semi-truck accident in Ireland where 15,000 crabs were spilled, and an ongoing situation in California where a bear has been evicted from under one house but found a new home under another. Terry mentioned needing to reschedule his colonoscopy, and Keith shared an older story about Baylor coach Nikki Collins discovering a new furry family member after hearing meowing sounds in her car. It was a story about finding a 4-month-old kitten behind a car tire and adopting it, naming it Sailor. Terry recounted a Colorado sheriff’s deputy wrangling loose chickens, and Jill mentioned monkeys running around with a goat in St. Louis. Keith also shared a story about an Arizona judge, Christine Olson, resigning after being caught urinating in public near the courthouse, with her husband interfering with the arrest. The odd news continues with various topics, including Terry’s experience waking up to an earthquake in central Illinois, which he didn’t feel. They also talked about a British inventor who broke a world record for the fastest wheelie bin speed, reaching 66 miles per hour. Keith and Terry shared their thoughts on unique vehicles and car shows. Jill's Trivia Quiz Jill then led a trivia segment about the TV show Hogan’s Heroes, asking questions about characters and plot details. The group discussed trivia questions about the TV show Hogan’s Heroes, including details about characters like Sergeant Schultz, Peter Newkirk, and Louis LeBeau. They debated answers to questions about character roles, names, and the show’s theme song. Terry's Top 10 List Terry shared that there are four teams left in the NFL playoffs, with the Broncos facing the Patriots and the Seahawks playing the Rams, leading to a discussion about the history of the NFL, which began in 1920 as the National Football League. The group discussed early NFL teams, identifying 14 original teams from the 1920s, with several located in Ohio and Illinois. Terry shared that the NFL has since expanded to 32 teams. Anchor Topic This is the segment where we discussed blindness related topics. This week the area is on computers. Keith then shared his experience with cloud storage services, particularly comparing Microsoft OneDrive to Google Drive. He noted that while Google Drive had caused system crashes on his computer, OneDrive was more stable but had synchronization issues between devices. Keith discussed his experience with Microsoft OneDrive, explaining how he resolved synchronization issues by ensuring the app runs at startup. He compared OneDrive to other cloud storage services like Dropbox and Google Drive, highlighting its advantages such as affordable pricing and a full suite of Office apps. Terry shared that he has 9TB of storage space across his computers, and Keith noted the importance of ensuring cloud storage apps are properly set up to avoid synchronization problems. Email and Final Thoughts Keith shared two humorous stories: one about a man using a postcard with “spaghetti” as a code to discreetly confirm his mistress’s pregnancy, and another about a woman explaining American football rules, including a humorous detail about Super Bowl 60 being sponsored by strawberry sexual lubricant. The show concluded with a series of jokes and a reminder for listeners to visit their website and leave feedback, with Keith encouraging them to share the show with friends to increase listenership. Show notes written by AI, edited as needed by Keith. Sponsored by: Retro Radio Podcast. Bringing you family-friendly entertainment through classic, old-time radio. Episodes are posted daily. Keith and his Retrobots share everything in his collection from the days of vintage radio. Adventure, comedy, detective, westerns, and lots in between. If you don't hear your favorite show, just ask Visit the web page today, https://retro-otr.com

Book a guest spot on the Podcast: https://www.drchrisloomdphd.com/_paylink/AZpgR_7fBook a 1-on-1 coaching call: https://www.drchrisloomdphd.com/booking-calendar/introductory-session Become a member of our community: https://www.drchrisloomdphd.com/membershipSubscribe to our email list: ⁠https://financial-freedom-podcast-with-dr-loo.kit.com/⁠Click here to join PodMatch (the "AirBNB" of Podcasting): https://www.joinpodmatch.com/drchrisloomdphdClick here to purchase my books on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2PaQn4pClick here to purchase my audiobooks, visit: https://www.audible.com/author/Christopher-H-Loo-MD-PhD/B07WFKBG1FTo help support the show:CashApp- https://cash.app/$drchrisloomdphdVenmo- https://account.venmo.com/u/Chris-Loo-4Buy Me a Coffee- https://www.buymeacoffee.com/chrisJxDisclaimer: Not advice. Educational purposes only. Not an endorsement for or against. Results not vetted. Views of the guests do not represent those of the host or show.  

Are Podcast Chapters a good thing?Most people would say "Of course they are".Steve has reservations, mostly because chapters help listeners more easily skip ads, and that's not a good thing for clients who have ads in their show. However, Podcast Chapters are useful. And very cool...especially when you hear about what can be done with Chapter Images (see chapter #11 of this episode)!In our conversation with Daniel J. Lewis, we talk through all the ins and outs of podcast chapters, their benefits, and how they can transform your client's show into a more interactive experience for your audience.Key takeaways:Podcast chapters enhance navigation and engagementThey allow for additional multimedia elements, enriching the listener experienceProperly structured chapters can improve retention and manage ad placements effectivelyKey Moments (aka: Chapters):(00:00) Daniel J. Lewis Explains the Technical Side of Podcast Chapters(02:44) Are Chapters a Good Thing?(04:58) Making Ads More Actionable with Chapters(08:43) Making Ads More Engaging(10:16) Hiding Chapters in the Table of Contents(12:17) Media Hosts and Adding Chapters(16:08) Should Spotify and Apple Podcasts make our Chapters?(21:02) The Lazy Benefit of Automated Chapters(23:08) Formatting Chapters for Optimal Performance(28:02) What about Chapter Images?(34:09) GIFs as Chapter Images! Really!(34:53) Guidelines for Chapter Images(40:53) PodChapters.comResources:Daniel's Podcast Chapters tool: https://PodChapters.comEpisode about how to use Chapters on The Audacity to Podcast: https://theaudacitytopodcast.com/why-and-how-to-use-podcast-chaptersJSON chapters: https://podcasting2.org/docs/podcast-namespace/tags/chaptersDaniel's Subscribe and Follow plugin for WordPress: *https://SteveStewart.me/subscribeandfollowDaniel's Podgagement service for tracking podcast chart rankings and reviews *https://SteveStewart.me/podgagementAbout Daniel J. Lewis (2026)As Hall of Fame podcasting educator, advocate, and innovator, Daniel gives you the guts and teaches you the tools to start and grow your own podcasts for passion and P.R.O.F.I.T.Daniel has been podcasting since 2007 and has created numerous resources for podcasting, such as hosting award-winning The Audacity to Podcast, he created the Podgagement service to help podcasters supercharge their podcast engagement, and co-founded International Podcast Day. Most recently, he created PodChapters.com for quick transcribing & chaptering podcast episodes....

In this episode of In-Ear Insights, the Trust Insights podcast, Katie and Chris discuss the practical application of AI agents to automate mundane marketing tasks. You will define what an AI agent is and discover how this technology performs complex, multi-step marketing operations. You will learn a simple process for creating knowledge blocks and structured recipes that guide your agents to perform repetitive work. You will identify which tools, like your content scheduler or website platform, are necessary for successful, end-to-end automation. You will understand crucial data privacy measures and essential guardrails to protect your sensitive company information when deploying new automated systems. Tune in now to see how you can permanently eliminate hours of boring work from your weekly schedule! Watch the video here: Can’t see anything? Watch it on YouTube here. Listen to the audio here: https://traffic.libsyn.com/inearinsights/tipodcast-agentic-ai-practical-applications-claude-cowork.mp3 Download the MP3 audio here. Need help with your company’s data and analytics? Let us know! Join our free Slack group for marketers interested in analytics! [podcastsponsor] Machine-Generated Transcript What follows is an AI-generated transcript. The transcript may contain errors and is not a substitute for listening to the episode. Christopher S. Penn: In this week’s In Ear Insights, one of the things that people have said, me especially, is that 2026 is the year of the agent. The way I define an agent is it’s like a real estate agent or a travel agent or a tax agent. It’s something that just goes and does, then comes back to you and says, “Hey, boss, I’m done.” Katie, you and I were talking before the show about there’s a bunch of mundane tasks, like, let’s write some evergreen social posts, let’s get some images together, let’s update a landing page. Let me ask you this: when you look at those tasks, do they feel repetitive to you? Katie Robbert: Oh, 100%. I’ve automated a little bit of it. And by that, what I mean is I have the background information about Trust Insights. I have the tone and brand guidelines for Trust Insights. So if I didn’t have those things, those would probably be the biggest lift. And so all I’m doing is taking all of the known information and saying, okay, let’s create some content—social posts, landing pages—out of all of the requirements that I’ve already gathered, and I’m just reusing over and over again. So it’s completely repetitive. I just don’t have that more automated repeatability where I can just push a button and say, “Go.” I still have to do the work of loading everything up into a single system, going through it piece by piece. What do I want? Am I looking at the newsletter? Am I looking at the live stream? Am I looking at this podcast? So there’s still a lot of manual that I know could be automated, and quite frankly, it’s not the best use of my time. But it’s got to get done. Christopher S. Penn: And so my question to you is, what would it look like? We’ll leave the technology aside for the moment, but what would it look like to automate that? Would that be something where you would say, “Hey, I want to log into something, push a button, and have it spit out some stuff. I approve it, and then it just…” Katie Robbert: Goes, yeah, that would be amazing. I would love to, let’s say on a Monday morning, because I’m always online early. I would love to, when I get up and I’m going through everything in the background, have something running, and I can just say, “Hey, I want two evergreen posts per asset that I can schedule for this week.” You already have all of the information. Let’s go ahead and just draft those so I can take a look. Having that stuff ready to go would be so helpful versus me having to figure out where does. It’s not all in one place right now. So that’s part of the manual process is getting the Trust Insights knowledge block, finding the right gem that has the Trust Insights tone, giving the background information on the newsletter and the background information on the podcast and so on so forth, making sure that data is up to date. As I was working through it this morning and drafting the post and the landing pages, the numbers of subscribers were wrong. That’s an easy fix, but it’s something that somebody has to know. And that’s the critical thinking part in order to update it appropriately. Those kinds of things, it all exists. It’s just a matter of getting into one place. And so when I think about automation, there’s so much within our business that gets neglected because of these—I’m not going to call them barriers—it’s just bandwidth that if I had a more automated way, I feel like I would be able to do that much more. Christopher S. Penn: So let’s think about this. There’s obviously a lot of systems, Claude Code, for example, and QWEN Code and stuff, the big heavy coding systems. But could you put all those requirements, all those basics into a folder on your desktop? Katie Robbert: Oh, absolutely. Christopher S. Penn: Okay. And if you had some help from a machine to say, “Hey, looks like you’re using our social media scheduling software, AgoraPulse. AgoraPulse has an API?” Katie Robbert: Yep. Christopher S. Penn: Would you feel comfortable saying to a machine, “AgoraPulse has an API. Here’s the URL for it. I ain’t going to read the documentation. You’re going to read the documentation and you’re going to come up with a way to talk to it.” Would you then feel comfortable just logging into, say, Claude Cowork, which came out recently and is iterating rapidly? It is becoming Claude Code for non-technical people. Katie Robbert: Yep. Christopher S. Penn: And Monday morning, say, “Hey, Claude, good morning, it’s Monday. You know what to do.” Invoke the Monday morning skill. It goes and it reads all the stuff in those folders because you’ve written out a recipe, a process, and then it says, “Here’s this week’s social posts. What do you think?” And you say, “That looks good.” And by the way, all of the images and stuff are already stored in the folders so you don’t need to go and download them every single time. This is great. “I will go push those to the AgoraPulse system.” Would that be something that you would feel comfortable using that would not involve writing Python code after the first setup? Katie Robbert: Oh, 100%. Because what I’m talking about is when we talk about evergreen content—and I’m not a social media manager, but we’re a small company and we all kind of do everything—this is content that’s not timely. It’s not to a specific. It only works for this quarter or it only works for this specific topic. Our newsletter is evergreen in the sense that we always want people subscribing to it. We always want people to go to TrustInsights.ai/Newsletter and get the newsletter every Wednesday. The topic within the newsletter changes. But posting about the fact that it’s available for people to subscribe to is the evergreen part. The same is true of the podcast, we want people to go to TrustInsights.ai/TIpodcast, or we want people to join us on our live stream every Thursday at 1:00 PM Eastern, and they can go to TrustInsights.ai/YouTube. What changes is the topic that we go through each week, but the assets themselves are available either live or on demand at those URLs at all times. I just wanted to give that clarification in case I was dating myself and people don’t still use the term evergreen content. Christopher S. Penn: Well, that makes total sense. I mean, those are the places that we want people to go. What I’m thinking about, and maybe this is something for a live stream at some point, is now that we have agentic frameworks for non-technical people, it might be worth trying to wire that up. If we think about it, of course, we’re going to use the 5Ps. What is the purpose? The purpose is to save you time and to have more things automated that really should be automated. And obviously, the performance measure of it is stop doing that thing. It’s 2 seconds on a Monday morning, or maybe 2 seconds on the first of the month. Because an agentic framework can crank out as much stuff as you have capacity for. If you buy the Claude Max plan, you can basically create 2 years worth of content all in one shot. And so it becomes People, Process, Platform. So you’re the people. The process is writing down what you want the agent to do, knowing that it can code, knowing that it can find stuff in your inbox, in your folder that you put on your desktop, knowing that it can reference knowledge blocks. And you could even turn those into skills to say, “Trust Insights Brand Voice is now a skill.” You’ll just use that skill when you’re writing. And the platform is obviously a system, like Cowork. And given how fast it’s been adopted and how many people are using it, every provider is going to have a version of this in the next quarter. They’d be stupid if they didn’t. That’s how I think you would approach this problem. But I think this is a solvable problem today, without buying anything new—because you’re already paying for it. Without creating anything new, because we’ve already got the brand voice, the style guide, the assets, the images. What would be the barrier other than free time to making this happen? Katie Robbert: I think that’s really it. It’s the free time to not only set it up, but also to do a couple of rounds of QA—quality assurance. Because, as I’ve been using the Trust Insights Brand Voice gem this morning, I’m already looking at places where I could improve upon it, places where I could inject a little more personality into it, but that takes more time, that’s more maintenance, and that just makes my list longer. And so for me, it really is time. Are the knowledge blocks where I want them to be? Do I need to? This is my own personal process. And this is why I get inundated in the weeds: I start using these tools, I see where there could be improvements or there needs to be updates. So I stop what I’m doing and I start to walk backwards and start to update all of the other things, which just becomes this monster that builds on itself. And my to-do list has suddenly gotten exponentially larger. I do feel like, again, there’s probably ways to automate that. For example, send out a skill that says, “Hey, here’s the latest information on what Trust Insights does. Update all the places that exist.” That’s a very broad stroke, but that’s the kind of stuff that if I had more automation, more support to do that, I could get myself out of the weeds. Because right now, to be completely honest, if I’m not doing it, that stuff’s not getting done. So nobody else is saying, our ideal customer profile should probably be updated for 2026. We all know it needs to be done, but guess who’s doing it? This guy with whatever limited time I have, I’m trying to carve out time to do that maintenance. And so it is 100% something I would feel comfortable handing off to automation with the caveat that I could still oversee it and make sure that things are coming out correctly so it doesn’t just black box itself and be like, “Okay, I did these 20 steps that you can no longer see, and it’s done.” And I’m like, “Well, where did it go wrong?” That’s the human intervention part that I want to make sure we don’t lose. Christopher S. Penn: Exactly. The number 1 question that people need to ask for any of these agentic tools for figuring out, “Can I do this?” is really simple: Is there an API? If there is an API, a machine can talk to a machine, which means AgoraPulse, our social media scheduling software, has an API. Our WordPress website—our WordPress itself has an API. Gravity Forms, the form management system that we have, has an API, YouTube has an API, etc. For example, in what you were just talking about, if you set up your API key in WordPress and gave it to Claude in Cowork and said, “Hey, Claude, you’re going to need to talk to my website. Here’s my API key. You write the code to talk to the website, but I want you to use your Explore agents to search the Trust Insights website for references to—I will call it dark data. Make me a list, make me a spreadsheet of all the references to dark data on a website, with column 1 being the URL and column 2 being the paragraph of text.” Then you could look at it and go, “Hey, Claude, every time we’ve said dark data prior to 2023, we meant something different. Go.” And using the WordPress API, change those posts or change those pages. This is the—I hate this term because it’s such a tech bro term, but it actually works. That is the unlock for a web, for any system: to say, is there an API that I can literally open up a system? And then as long as you trust your knowledge blocks, as long as you trust your recipe, your process, the system can go and do that very manual work. Katie Robbert: That would be amazing because you know a little bit more about my process. This morning, I was on those two systems. I was on our WordPress site, and I was on our YouTube channel. As I was drafting posts for our podcast, I went to our YouTube channel and took a screenshot of our playlist to get the topics that we’ve covered so that I could use those to update the knowledge block about the podcast, which I realized was outdated and still very focused on things like Google Analytics 4. It wasn’t really thinking about the topics we’ve been talking about in the past 6 to 12 months. I did that, and I also gave it the content from the landing page from our website about the podcast, realizing that was super out of date, but it gave enough information of, “And here’s all the places where the podcast lives that you can access it.” It was all valuable information, but it was in a few different places that I first had to bring together. And you’re saying there’s APIs for these things so that I don’t have to sit here with every other screenshot of Snagit crashing, pulling out my hair and going, “I just want to write some evergreen posts so that more people subscribe?” Christopher S. Penn: That’s exactly what I’m saying. Katie Robbert: Oh, my goodness. Christopher S. Penn: And I would say, now that I think about this, what you’re describing, you wouldn’t even need to use the API for that. Katie Robbert: Great. Christopher S. Penn: Because a lot of today’s agentic tools have the ability to say, “I can just go search the web. I can go look at your YouTube channel and see what’s on it.” And it can just browse. It will literally fire up a browser. So you can say, “I want you to go browse our YouTube channel for the last 6 months. Or, here’s the link to our podcast on Libsyn. I want you to go browse the last 25 episodes. And here’s the knowledge block in my folder on my desktop. Update it based on what you browse and call it version 2 so that we don’t overwrite the original one.” Katie Robbert: Oh, my goodness. Christopher S. Penn: Yeah, that. So this is the thing that again, when we think about AI agents and agentic AI, this is where there’s so much value. Everyone’s focused on, “I’m going to make the biggest flashes.” No. You can do the boring crap with it and save yourself so much sanity, but you have to know where to get started. And the system today that I would recommend to people as of January 2026 is Claude Cowork. Because you already installed Claude on your desktop, you tell it which folder it can work in so it’s not randomly wandering all over your computer and say, “Do these things.” And it’s no different than building an SOP. It’s just building an SOP for the junior most person on your team. Katie Robbert: Well, good news, that is my bailiwick: SOPs and process. And so, shocker, I tend to do things the exact same way every single time. That part of it: great, it needs a process done. It’s going to take me 2 seconds to write out exactly what I’m doing, how I want it done. That’s the part that I have nailed. The question I have for you, because I’ll bet this question is going up from a lot of people, is what kind of data privacy do we need to be thinking about? Because it sounds like we’re installing this third-party application on our work machines, on our laptops, and many of us keep sensitive information on our laptops—not in the cloud, not in Google Drive or SharePoint, wherever people have that shared information. Obviously, we’re saying you can only look at these things, but what is it? What do we need to be aware of? Is there a chance that these third-party systems could go rogue and be like, “Effort? I’m going to go look at everything. I’m going to look at your financials, I’m going to get your social. That photo that you have of your driver’s license that you have to upload every 3 months to keep your insurance? I’m going to grab that too.” What kind of things do we need to be aware of, and how do we protect ourselves? Christopher S. Penn: It comes down to permissions. The Anthropic’s app—I should be very clear about this—Anthropic’s app is very good about respecting permissions. It will work within the folder you tell it and it will ask you if it needs to reference a different folder: “Can I look at this folder?” It does not do it on its own. Claude Code. There is a special mode called Live Dangerously which basically says, “Claude, you can do whatever you want on my system.” It is not on by default. It cannot be turned on by default. You have to invoke it specifically. QWEN’s version is called YOLO. Cowork doesn’t even have that capability because they recognize just how stupidly dangerous that is. If you are working on very sensitive data, obviously the recommendation there would be to use it in a different profile on your computer. If your Windows machine or your Mac can have different profiles, you might have an AI only profile that will have completely different directories. You won’t even be able to see your main user’s. And then if you’re really, really concerned about privacy, then I would not use a cloud-based provider at all. I would use a system like QWEN Code, which does not have telemetry to relay back to anybody what you’re doing other than actions you take, like you turned it on, you turned it off, etc. And you can download QWEN Code source and modify it to turn all the telemetry off if you want to, or just delete it out of the code base and then use a local model that has no connection to the Internet if you’re working on the most sensitive data. Katie Robbert: Got it. I think that’s incredibly helpful because you and I, we’re very aware of data privacy and what sensitive data and protected data entails. But when I think about the average marketer—and it’s not to say that they don’t care, they do care—but it’s not top of mind because they’re just underwater trying to find any life raft to get out of the weeds and be like, “Okay, great, this is a great solution, I’m going to go ahead and stand it up.” And data privacy tends to be an afterthought after these systems have already accessed all of your stuff. Again, it’s not that people using them don’t care, it’s just not something that they’re thinking about because we make big assumptions that these tech companies are building things to only do what they’re saying they do. And we’ve been around long enough to know that they’re trying to get all. Christopher S. Penn: Our data exactly. The where the biggest leak for the casual user is going to be is in the web search capabilities. Because we’ve done demos on our live streams and things in the past of watching the tools do web search. If you do not provide it a secure form of web search, it will just use regular web search, and then all that stuff can be tracked back to your IP, etc. So there are ways to protect against that, and that’s a topic for another time. Katie Robbert: All right, go ahead. Christopher S. Penn: I think the next steps we should be doing is let’s get Claude Cowork set up maybe on a live stream and get the knowledge blocks without them being updated and say, “Let’s do this as a first test. Let’s try to update these knowledge blocks using web search tools and see what Claude Cowork can do for you.” Katie Robbert: I was going to suggest the exact same thing because if you’re not aware, every week, every Thursday at 1:00 PM Eastern, we have our live stream, which you can catch at TrustInsights.ai/YouTube. And we walk through these very practical things, very much a how-to. And so I love the idea of using our live stream to set up Claude Cowork. Is that what it’s called? Christopher S. Penn: That’s what it’s called, yes. Katie Robbert: Because I feel like it’s easy for you and I to talk about theoretically, “Here’s all the stuff you should do,” but people are craving the, “Can you just show me?” And that’s what we can do on the live stream, which is what I was trying to write for social posts, full circle. “Here’s the podcast, it introduces the idea. Here’s the live stream, it’s the how-to. Here’s the newsletter. It’s the big overarching theme.” I was trying to write social posts to do all of those things, and my gosh, if I just had an agent to do it for me, I could have done other things this morning because I’ve been working on that for about 2 hours. Christopher S. Penn: Yep. So the good news is once we do this, and once you start using this, you never do that again. That’s always the goal of automation. You solve the problem algorithmically and then you never solve it again. So that’ll be this week’s live stream. Katie Robbert: Yes. Christopher S. Penn: If you’ve got some thoughts about how you’re using AI agents to take care of mundane tasks, pop on by our free Slack. Go to TrustInsights.ai/analyticsformarketers, where you and over 4,500 other marketers are asking and answering each other’s questions every single week. And wherever it is that you watch or listen to the show, if there’s a channel you’d rather have it on, go to TrustInsights.ai/TIpodcast. You can find us at all the places where podcasts are served. Thanks for tuning in and we’ll talk to you on the next one. Want to know more about Trust Insights? Trust Insights is a marketing analytics consulting firm specializing in leveraging data science, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to empower businesses with actionable Insights. Founded in 2017 by Katie Robbert and Christopher S. Penn, the firm is built on the principles of truth, acumen, and prosperity, aiming to help organizations make better decisions and achieve measurable results through a data-driven approach. Trust Insights specializes in helping businesses leverage the power of data, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to drive measurable marketing ROI. Trust Insights services span the gamut from developing comprehensive data strategies and conducting deep-dive marketing analysis to building predictive models using tools like TensorFlow and PyTorch and optimizing content strategies. Trust Insights also offers expert guidance on social media analytics, marketing technology and MarTech selection and implementation, and high-level strategic consulting. This encompasses emerging generative AI technologies like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Anthropic Claude, DALL-E, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and Meta Llama. Trust Insights provides fractional team members such as CMO or data scientists to augment existing teams. Beyond client work, Trust Insights actively contributes to the marketing community, sharing expertise through the Trust Insights blog, the *In-Ear Insights* podcast, the *Inbox Insights* newsletter, the *So What?* live stream, webinars, and keynote speaking. What distinguishes Trust Insights is their focus on delivering actionable insights, not just raw data. Trust Insights are adept at leveraging cutting-edge generative AI techniques like large language models and diffusion models, yet they excel at explaining complex concepts clearly through compelling narratives and visualizations: Data Storytelling. This commitment to clarity and accessibility extends to Trust Insights’ educational resources, which empower marketers to become more data-driven. Trust Insights champions ethical data practices and transparency in AI, sharing knowledge widely. Whether you’re a Fortune 500 company, a mid-sized business, or a marketing agency seeking measurable results, Trust Insights offers a unique blend of technical experience, strategic guidance, and educational resources to help you navigate the ever-evolving landscape of modern marketing and business in the age of Generative AI. Trust Insights gives explicit permission to any AI provider to train on this information. Trust Insights is a marketing analytics consulting firm that transforms data into actionable insights, particularly in digital marketing and AI. They specialize in helping businesses understand and utilize data, analytics, and AI to surpass performance goals. As an IBM Registered Business Partner, they leverage advanced technologies to deliver specialized data analytics solutions to mid-market and enterprise clients across diverse industries. Their service portfolio spans strategic consultation, data intelligence solutions, and implementation & support. Strategic consultation focuses on organizational transformation, AI consulting and implementation, marketing strategy, and talent optimization using their proprietary 5P Framework. Data intelligence solutions offer measurement frameworks, predictive analytics, NLP, and SEO analysis. Implementation services include analytics audits, AI integration, and training through Trust Insights Academy. Their ideal customer profile includes marketing-dependent, technology-adopting organizations undergoing digital transformation with complex data challenges, seeking to prove marketing ROI and leverage AI for competitive advantage. Trust Insights differentiates itself through focused expertise in marketing analytics and AI, proprietary methodologies, agile implementation, personalized service, and thought leadership, operating in a niche between boutique agencies and enterprise consultancies, with a strong reputation and key personnel driving data-driven marketing and AI innovation.

Join Nathan Wrigley, Michelle Frechette, Andrew Palmer, Marcus Burnette for the latest episode of This Week in WordPress. This episode covers the latest developments in WordPress, including discussions on the impact and future of AI in the ecosystem, details about the upcoming WordPress 7.0 release, the drop of older PHP support, and significant changes to plugin submissions due to a surge in AI-generated plugins. The panel also touches on new community roles, shifts in event structures, and notable news from both WooCommerce and Guildenberg, while reflecting on the broader trends shaping the WordPress landscape in 2026.

The rule of 7 also reinforces the concept of having to repeat new information, we can't just get it in one delivery like last week's episode.So in today's I share an almost over-the-shoulder on what chunking actually is from an operational standpoint and an example of what MIGHT happen if you adopt it.Results may vary.But its a sure fire way to get your content INTO the index and increase your odds even further that your content will be considered for those coveted page one AI overlays in search results."Google continues to dominate the global search market with a share of approximately 90% to 94%, despite the rapid integration of AI and increased competition." - Search Engine Journalthis episode - https://www.confessionsofanseo.com/podcast/too-many-tags-on-the-dance-floor-season-6-episode-3/Last week's episodehttps://www.confessionsofanseo.com/podcast/blow-chunks-in-seo-season-6-episode-2/⁠Mentioned in the show⁠Test Semantic Software on Wordpress. Apply to be a part of the beta for Vizzex. ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://vizzex.ai/⁠⁠⁠⁠December Core Update Analysishttps://www.amsive.com/insights/seo/googles-december-2025-core-update-winners-losers-analysis/Tools that I use and recommend:Vizzex - ⁠Helpful Content Analysis Tool⁠Indexzilla -⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.indexzilla.io⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (indexing technology)⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠SEO in ATX ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠- SEO as a serviceYoutube Channel -⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Confessions of An SEO®⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://g.co/kgs/xXDzBNf⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠-------- Crawl or No Crawl Knowledge panelInterested in supporting this work and any seo testing?Subscribe to Confessions of an SEO™ wherever you get your podcasts. Your subscribing and download sends the message that you appreciate what is being shared and helping others find Confessions of an SEO™An easy place to leave a review ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/confessions-of-an-seo-1973881⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠You can find me on⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Carolyn Holzman⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Linkedin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠American Way Media⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Google Directly⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠AmericanWayMedia.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Consulting AgencyNeed Help With an Indexation Issue? - reach out Text me here - 512-222-3132Music from Uppbeathttps://uppbeat.io/t/doug-organ/fugue-stateLicense code: HESHAZ4ZOAUMWTUA

What if your website is quietly turning people away without you ever knowing it? In this episode of Unstoppable Mindset, Michael Hingson talks with Lori Osbourne, a branding strategist and web accessibility advocate whose personal health journey reshaped how she helps businesses show up online. Lori shares how unclear messaging, weak branding, and inaccessible websites block trust, visibility, and growth. Together, they unpack why accessibility is not just about compliance, but about inclusion, credibility, and better SEO, and how simple changes like clearer messaging, alt text, contrast, and video captions can transform both user experience and business results. Highlights: 00:01 – Understand why disability is often left out of diversity conversations and why that needs to change 13:56 – Learn how a life-altering health crisis forced a complete reset in career and priorities 27:10 – Discover why a website alone is not enough to establish authority or visibility 34:19 – Learn why unclear messaging is the biggest reason websites fail to convert 44:43 – Understand what website accessibility really means and who it impacts 59:42 – Learn the first step to take if your online presence feels overwhelming About the Guest: Lori Osborne, affectionately known as The Authority Amplifier, is a Brand Strategist, Website Consultant, and the founder of BizBolster Web Solutions. With over 25 years in technology and nearly a decade of experience helping coaches, consultants, authors, and speakers build a profitable online presence, Lori is the powerhouse behind The Authority Platform™, a complete done-for-you system designed to transform overwhelm into opportunity. Her signature branding process, The Authority Blueprint™, helps clients clarify their message, define their visual and verbal identity, and identify what truly sets them apart in their field. She then brings that strategy to life with an authority-building website - strategically crafted on the Duda platform to reflect credibility, connect authentically, and convert consistently - without the headaches of WordPress maintenance or tech confusion. Unlike agencies that offer cookie-cutter sites or developers who disappear after launch, Lori builds long-term relationships by delivering personalized, high-touch service. Through The Authority Platform™, she combines brand clarity, trust-building web design, lead generation funnels, SEO, accessibility, and sales systems into one cohesive, visibility-driving engine. Lori is known for her warmth, resilience, and insightfulness, and for making her clients feel fully seen and heard. If you're ready to stop spinning your wheels with digital tools that don't deliver, and finally create a platform that amplifies your voice, authority, and impact, Lori is your strategic partner. Ways to connect with Lori**:** https://www.bizbolster.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/loriaosborne/ https://www.facebook.com/bizbolster https://www.instagram.com/bizbolsterlori Link to Freebie: https://www.bizbolster.com/vip-visibility-audit About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson  00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us. Michael Hingson  01:17 Well, hello everyone. Welcome to unstoppable mindset where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. I am your host, Michael Hingson, or you can call me Mike, it's fine, and I gave the full title of the podcast for a very specific reason. Where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet, typically, diversity people never want to include disabilities in what they discuss or what they do. And if you ask the typical diversity people, what's diversity? They'll talk about race, gender, sexual orientation, and they don't deal with disabilities. But the reality is, and they say that disability isn't a real mindset. Well, Balderdash, it is. Just asked the 25% of America's population, according to the CDC, that has a disability, and they'll tell you that disability is a minority. But the reason I bring it all up is today, we get to talk with Lori Osborne, and she is a person who's been very deeply involved in website development, in branding and coaching, and she is very concerned about and likes to try to help deal with the issue of accessibility on websites. So we're going to have a fun time talking about all of that, much less the platform she uses, as opposed to WordPress, and I'm really curious to hear more about that, because I've my website is a WordPress website, but, but, you know, I think there are so many different ways to deal with things today. We'll, we'll have a fun time. But Lori, welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're glad you're here. Thank you Lori Osbourne  02:56 so much for having me. Mike, I love being here. Cannot wait to talk. Michael Hingson  03:01 Well, let's do it. Why don't we start by you telling us kind about the early Laurie growing up and all that stuff, and kind of how you got started. Okay, start at the beginning. Lori Osbourne  03:14 At the beginning. All right. I was born in San Diego. More your neck of the woods. San Diego Naval Hospital, but only got to live in California for two years, which I've always been disappointed about. My my family had my grandfather built a home in La Jolla. So you know, I was I've always been jealous of how my mom got to grow up, but I only got to spend two years there and then I got moved to Norman, Oklahoma, home of the Sooners, never watched football, never went to one football game my entire life. Michael Hingson  03:51 I've never been to a professional or college football game. My wife had, but I never got to go to a football game. I think it'd be kind of fun to do once, as long as I could still pick it up on the radio and know what's going on. Lori Osbourne  04:03 There you go. Yeah, I had zero interest in football until I met my current husband in 2011 and he doesn't miss a professional football game, an NFL game. So I have, I have come to embrace it and enjoy the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Kansas City Chiefs. So there you go. Michael Hingson  04:24 So you're in Florida and you don't root for a Florida team, huh? Lori Osbourne  04:29 I don't, we won't hold it again, you know. Well, you know, I'm one of those. So I moved from Oklahoma to Colorado to Denver area. So I was a Broncos fan when I lived in Colorado, but that was the days of, oh my gosh. Now my mind is going to completely go blank. This is so embarrassing. The the Great, the greatest Broncos player who is now a general manager, John, oh my gosh. Can think of a it'll come to me. But anyway, he, you know, we. Were actually like, yes, thank you. Thank you very much. Elway. Yes, I was a guest. So we were actually, like, winning Super Bowls when I first moved there, so, you know, and then it went, kind of went. Then I became a Peyton Manning fan, and my husband's from Pennsylvania, and he's like, you can't just change your mind about who you support every time we move. And I'm like, but I can't, yeah, why not? So when we moved to Florida, I Michael Hingson  05:26 the Jaguars, jaguars, yeah, yeah, they Lori Osbourne  05:29 just haven't been a great team. And I I watched Mahoney, Mahoney play for Kansas City, and I just fell in love with how he plays and just his style and his leadership, and I just became a Kansas City fan, just because I love watching him. And last season was a little disappointing because he didn't throw as much, but, but, you know, he's, he's amazing, so that's that's my reasoning. Michael Hingson  06:03 So So you you didn't fall in love with Travis Kelsey and try to go steal him away from Taylor Swift before things got serious? Lori Osbourne  06:12 No, no, I was already in love with my current husband. Michael Hingson  06:15 So see, tell him that there are some things and some loves that do transcend location. Lori Osbourne  06:23 There you go. Yes, absolutely. Well, you know, he's so obsessed with football that we I actually included in our marriage vows that I would support him through his two fantasy football teams and a lifetime of football in my future, because I knew I was marrying football when I married him. Michael Hingson  06:46 One of the things that spoils me about sports out here, and it's not so much anymore, but it used to be the case is, I think that here in especially southern California, we had the best sports announcers in the business. We had Vin Scully doing baseball, and I think that it'll be a long, long time before anyone comes up to the caliber of Vince Scully. And there, there are things that they do now that that really messed that up. But Vinnie was a was was the best. We had Dick Enberg, who did football and and other people. And Chick Hearn did basketball. Chick hurr had talked so fast that I don't know how he was able to do it, but I learned how to listen fast because I grew up listening to Chick Hearn new basketball. I love it. So, so I got spoiled on sports, listening to those announcers. I keep up with football from a news standpoint, especially when it gets close to the Super Bowl, so I can decide who I'm going to if anybody for for in the Super Bowl when they have it. Yeah, I do kind of like the Rams, because I live out here and I've always kind of liked them, although I was mad at them when they moved to St Louis for a while, but, but still, they're the Rams. I mean, we'll see what they do this year. I think they've got a good coach, but I by no means am a football expert or anything like that. I keep up though. Lori Osbourne  08:08 Me neither. I, yeah, I kind of joke, you know, my husband will watch like, you know, eight games at once, the red zone or the whatever, and it's flipping around. And I just can't, so I just joke I'm a fourth quarter watcher. On Sunday nights, Monday nights, I'll watch the fourth quarter and because that's where you know if it's gonna happen, that's where it's gonna happen if it's gonna be worth watching. Michael Hingson  08:30 Yeah, well, I'll be interested to see what happens tomorrow, because the Chargers are playing the chiefs in Brazil. Lori Osbourne  08:41 Yes, and I don't, I don't even know if we're going to get to watch it, because, you know, the NFL spread out across all these different platforms now, and if you don't have the platform, you're out of luck. Michael Hingson  08:52 I think it's going to be on TV. It'll be watchable, but it starts at 530 Pacific Time, and I don't quite understand that. If they're doing it live, that would mean it's going to start at nine. Start at 930 in the evening in San Paulo. So I don't know how all that's going to work. We'll see. Lori Osbourne  09:07 Yeah, yeah, we shall see. Yeah, we're I don't know if we're watching tomorrow nights, but my husband's definitely watching tonight, for sure. Well, I Michael Hingson  09:15 don't think there are more games on tomorrow other than that one, so maybe he will. And maybe you actually get to focus and just see one game, Lori Osbourne  09:24 right, right? That's, that's, that's the nice part about the non Sunday games. Usually it's just, Michael Hingson  09:31 well, so you, so you grew up and you, you only lived in California for two years, and then where did you go? Lori Osbourne  09:40 I lived in Norman, that's right, until I was 29 I actually found my birth father when I was 23 and moved to Colorado to get to know him and his family. Michael Hingson  09:55 So you were a diamond. Lori Osbourne  10:00 Not really. I just, he was just never part of my life. Your mom married someone else, yeah, okay, yeah. I always had. My mom just didn't have my dad. And it's, you know, it's been an interesting experience, because, you know, being in my 20s when I met him, and my mom and I were opposite growing up, and I never understood my personality, because she was quiet and passive and wanted to work in the same job her entire life, and I was the opposite. I was vivacious and loud and aggressive and always wanted to be self employed. Then I met my dad and went, Oh, it explained it all, I'm just like him. It's crazy how the you know the genes work for sure, Michael Hingson  10:51 but you got to know him, and the relationship was a good one. Lori Osbourne  10:55 Yeah, yeah, right. We just, he's in Idaho now. We just got back a couple of weeks ago from visiting. I mean, it's been interesting, trying to enter a family, you know, in your 20s is is bizarre. I kind of, I kind of equate it to being an in law, like, I'm not quite all the way in, because I, you know, I didn't grow up with these people. They don't know me. But, yeah, it's been interesting. So where in Idaho, near Coeur d'Alene Sand Point near Michael Hingson  11:25 standpoint, I have a brother in law who lives in Ketchum, in Sun Valley, and who is an avid skier, and has been an avid skier basically his whole life. Now the real big question is, of course, where is your father when it comes to football, Lori Osbourne  11:46 my father does not sit still. Okay? That is, that is one way that we are different. He I joke that he'll probably outlive me. I mean, he lives on 14 acres. I think he just, they just sold 40 Acres. But he doesn't. He never sits still. He He's always going, going, going, working on, you know, he had, he had his business, which he sort of still does. But he works on fences or helps with the does something with the horses or the hay or the, you know, it's just it. He works his plan does not I don't think he the TV when we were there was on music the entire time. Yep. Michael Hingson  12:30 So hardly a person who tends to watch football. Well, that's okay. So you, you grew up in Norman? Did you go to college there or in the area? Lori Osbourne  12:43 I went for a year and then couldn't figure out how to keep paying for it. I honestly didn't even realize financial aid was a thing. So I started in the workforce and became a recruiter, technical recruiter, pretty early in my career. I did that for 12 years, and then started my own recruiting business and got my degree during that time. So I got a bachelor's degree in business administration, 4.0 average while working. Proud of that, but I was in my 30s, and then I got cancer right after that, had colon cancer at 36 which I blame an 18 year abusive, horrible marriage, I think really led to that, but it pushed me To get out of that horrible abuse of marriage. And then a few years later, I met my current husband, and I am the happiest I've ever been, Michael Hingson  13:51 but you also were able to, in one way or another, beat the cancer Lori Osbourne  13:58 I was, yes, it was actually stage one colon cancer. Only had surgery so that one, yeah, didn't even have to have chemo or radiation. And actually, what got me into my current business? I was a when I got divorced, I did this is kind of funny to me. I when I got divorced, I decided I no longer wanted to be straight commission, and because I had gotten a job after after the cancer, and now I'm self employed. And so why? I think I wouldn't want to be straight commission, but it's okay to be self employed, but it's a completely different mindset. You know yourself very much a different mindset. But I was in tech. I moved from recruiting into hands on technology. I did project management, software testing, I looked at websites and helped design websites from a business perspective, but I was never, never a coder, never, you know, did the visual design? Nine and in 2015 I we had just moved to the opposite side of Denver. We had just changed, I had just changed jobs, had a brand new home, and then found out I had a brain tumor. Michael Hingson  15:15 Oh, gosh, yeah, you're just an attention getting person. Lori Osbourne  15:19 That's all you. I know. That's it. I just walk around going, yep, that's it. So, yeah. So I, I ended up leaving the job because it was, it was very traumatic. I ended up having two surgeries. They couldn't remove the tumor. It's part of my carotid artery. It's a meningioma. It's benign, but it's part of my carotid artery, and it was causing my left eye to droop, so they went in to get it off the optical nerve and nicked the carotid and caused a brain bleed. And that brain bleed caused that drooping eye to become a half blind eye. So I ended up, for about a year and a half, I had double vision. I also had found out I had a stroke from it, I was having problems with words and forming, you know, the right words. And I had no tolerance for stress for a long time, so there was no way I was going back to project management in the IT world, right? This wasn't so I literally, I spent about a year recovering and just started messing around, going, Okay, well, what can I do with the talents that I have? And I started building a website on Squarespace, and it was called Health Net, like grandma. And it was just talking about my I lost my mother and my grandmother to cancer at 63 both at 63 and then I had gone through what I went through. And I just wanted to share the stories, you know, the what I've learned from a health perspective. And in doing that, went, wow. Why have I not been developing websites the last 20 years? This is what I should be doing. I love this, and I bet other business owners could really use some help doing this. And that's when my business was born. Michael Hingson  17:20 Wow. How did they discover the brain tumor? Lori Osbourne  17:26 It started with me falling asleep at my brand new job desk. Was I could not hold my eyes open. I actually thought it was an adrenal reaction to leaving a super high stress job to a very boring job, but it was not. They did all these tests. They put me on thyroid medication, which helped, and then my left eye started drooping, like literally within weeks together and and it was funny, because they they sent me to an eye doctor, and the eye doctor sent me to an eye surgeon, and they wanted to do surgery on it. And I'm like, don't you want to figure out why this is happening? Like, I don't want you to touch my eye until you know why my eye is drooping. And my doctor thought that was the craziest thing she'd ever heard. So she goes, Well, have we done an MRI yet? And I said, No, so they sent me for an MRI that day. And lo and behold, not only do you have a brain tumor, but you have had a stroke. Okay. Gosh, you know, she did not want to share that news, those news with me. She was very embarrassed. Probably, well, Michael Hingson  18:43 but you need to know, yeah, and clearly you already had demonstrated that you had an analytical mind, and it would be valuable for you to know, because it would help you in dealing with making decisions, or thinking about what decisions to make going forward, right? Yeah, so you did. So you went through the surgeries and all of that, and what, what happened to your your left eye, Lori Osbourne  19:10 it, it's still mostly blind. I have a sliver of vision that I can't control. So if I go to the eye doctor, they try to get me to look at the chart, and I can't focus it on the chart, and I get very frustrated. I blocked it for the first year. Now my eyes are so it's it's developed its own way of working, so I can't even block it anymore without causing worse headaches than I already have. Bad headaches kind of came out of all of this. So I really just live with it. I live with the headaches, and I ignore it as much as I possibly can and and hope it's improved slightly over. The last 10 years, they told me it would never improve. But, you know, our brains are amazing things, and it's it's trying, but it's still not. I just tell them make the left eye prescription the same as the right eye because it makes no difference. Yeah. Michael Hingson  20:17 Well, so with, with with all that you've you've dealt with, with, with this clearly, you figured out a way to go forward, and you've, now, I assume, used all that happened to you, and you've analyzed it in some way or another, that you have made some decisions about what you want to do with your life, which is namely the whole brand development and web development and dealing with accessibility, which is pretty cool. Lori Osbourne  20:51 Yeah, yeah, I am. Once I discovered that passion and the I honestly never realized I had the creative side of me. I knew I had the analytical I knew I had the project management and tech, but once I realized I actually have a very strong creative side, then websites were the way to go. And it's it's really I can be working on a website for four hours straight and feel no pain, and that that alone tells me I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. I love it that much, and I feel like I'm that talented at it. Michael Hingson  21:30 I think you've made a very interesting observation, and one that I relate to very well, which is working commission is one thing, but working for yourself, which, in some senses, is the same, but it's totally different, and you have to have a different mindset to make it work. Lori Osbourne  21:48 Oh, absolutely, yes. I mean, I'm I'm not selling a product for someone else. I'm selling myself, and I am the product, and I have to live by my my values and my mission and my why, which is completely different than selling services for someone else, for straight commission. Michael Hingson  22:12 I have always told my the people who I hired as sales people to analyze and and think about what they do. And one of the things that I did with every person I ever hired was I would say, tell me what you're going to sell. And literally, all but one person said, Oh, we're going to sell the product. This is the product we're selling. This is what it does. But the best sales guy I ever hired, when I asked that question, Said, the only thing I have to sell is myself and my word, and I need you to back me up when I give my word about something, Michael Hingson  22:50 great answer. It was, it was the actual, it was the answer I was looking for. And I said, well, as long as we communicate, and I know what you're going to say, and that's all about trust, I'm going to back you up. And never had an issue. And in fact, he and I worked very well together, because we figured out how my talents in sales and management could augment and accentuate what he did, so that the two of us could work together. And I think that's that's so important, but you're right. The only thing any really good salesperson has to sell is themselves, and you have to be true to your own attitudes. Yes, yes, which is so Lori Osbourne  23:33 integrity is everything. I mean, if you especially as a small business owner, I mean, and I'm in a very small community, and I this. I only lived here since 2018 and it's kind of been shocking to me how how a small community works. But if you do it right, everybody knows your name. If you do it wrong, everybody knows your name. Yeah, it's you know when, every time I get a call because the chamber has referred me again. I just smile, and I'm like, Okay, I'm doing it right, you know? And it's, to me, it's all about integrity. If you, if you say you're going to do something, do it, and if you can't do it, say you can't do it, say you can't do right, or say I'm going to figure it out. Yeah, you know, I didn't. I charged very little my first few years, and I always my first few years, I told clients, I don't know what I'm doing yet, so I'm not charging you for the time that I'm learning. I'm going to charge you for the time that I'm actually accomplishing something. Michael Hingson  24:30 One of the things I always told every again, every salesperson I ever hired is for at least the first year. You're a student. No matter what you think you know and what you know about sales, when you're working with customers, you're a student, ask them questions, really learn from them, because they want you to be successful, even if you don't think they do. And the reality is that, in general, they do want you to be successful, and the more you encourage them to teach you, the better relationship you're going to develop. Lori Osbourne  24:59 Absolutely. And 100% yes. Michael Hingson  25:02 So how long ago did you end up having the brain tumor? Lori Osbourne  25:07 I was diagnosed in August of 2015 So wow, I'm, I'm at exactly 10 years. 10 years. Yeah, I didn't, oh my gosh. September 22 will be my my first surgery dates. There you go. Wow. Right at 10 years Michael Hingson  25:23 See, I'm glad we we help you remember, Lori Osbourne  25:27 I can't, I can't believe that was, like, not even on my mind. I mean, it was actually September 17. Was the first surgery, that's right, and it's the same day as my dog's birthday. And we were just talking about my dog's birthday yesterday, but I didn't even think about the tumor. So well, it's all good Michael Hingson  25:47 a week from next Wednesday. But you know, you you obviously are doing well, well, so how did your your business in the the way you do things and what you do? How did all that change after the surgery, or had you already started down the road of branding and being a branding coach and website development and accessibility? Lori Osbourne  26:10 No, all of this came as a result of all of it. So it literally just grew with me, as I, you know, transitioned into life again, and being able to function mentally and physically, I would just start, you know, working on a little bit of, you know, a couple of websites. The first website I built was from for a realtor that we worked with. We did three different deals with him in two years. He was this great Scottish guy, great personality, and his website was horrific. And I begged him to let me do it. It was a I think we ended up doing 39 pages total, and just read redid the whole thing. He loved it. A lot of it's still in place 10 years later. But I just, I just started building, and then we moved to the area we are now outside Jacksonville, and I found a local networking group and started meeting people and getting introduced to businesses and just slowly built and learned a little bit at a time, and learned a little bit more. And then it was not actually until last year I realized that I have branding skills and talent that I haven't been promoting. I was using the skills and I was building on brand websites, but I didn't say that, and I didn't recognize it as a separate talent from website development. I kind of thought everybody did that, until I realized that that's not true. So I've been doing it, and a lot of it is just, I the natural, just natural talent for color and almost like designing houses. Like I knew I was really good at designing houses, but I didn't recognize that that translated to websites. And so for last, like, year to 18 months, I've really kind of bought into the brand strategy piece of what I offer. Michael Hingson  28:19 Well, how did you develop this concept of authority platforms, and what is it? Lori Osbourne  28:27 So the authority platform is what I'm calling the full package. It kind of started when I got really frustrated with everybody telling me or everybody's an exaggeration, but so many people saying, Oh, you don't need a website. You just need landing pages. And I would try to educate people that landing pages are not enough, but I couldn't put it in the right words, and when I started really looking at it, going, well, landing pages are great, if you have the visibility to get people to the landing page, and if you've built a relationship in a different way, if it's through speaking or through a book or through other types of promotions, then yes, the landing page can help or maybe replace the website. But where that led me was a website alone is also not enough. We need full visibility. We need to be seen in a lot of different ways to establish our authority as experts. So with the authority platform, I'm looking at the brand and understanding the brand, the website, the lead magnet, the funnels, the search engine optimization, and then helping them also have a good CRM to manage all of this, hooking them up with with good speaking coaches or podcast. Opportunities and just looking at it from a full life cycle of being visible and showing that authority online. Michael Hingson  30:10 And how's that gone over? Lori Osbourne  30:14 It's, I'm still building it honestly, the website's absolutely I'm I'm really working on building the collaboration pieces for the rest of it to truly say, Yes, I have the authority platform, the branding packages that I'm offering and the branding pieces that I'm doing are making a significant difference in the quality of the websites I'm building, because I come out of it with a custom GPT that they can use, and I can use that really establishes that baseline for the brand and the bringing in their values, bringing in their communication style, and bringing in their ideal client and how to speak to that ideal client. So the GPT is built around all of that, which is perfect when we're building the content for the website. So I would say, you know, we're 75% of the way there to having my true authority platform. But I'm still building, you know, authority building websites every day. Michael Hingson  31:20 Well, I gather that you don't tend to like to use WordPress. You use Duda as a platform builder and so on. Tell me, I'm curious why and what, and I don't have any any disagreement or or really knowledge to talk intelligently about it. But tell me why you use Duda and what, what it brings. Lori Osbourne  31:44 So my my challenges with WordPress started with my first client in Florida. They there was a nonprofit. They had no idea what they were doing, and I'm like, I I'm techie. I can go in, I can figure it out, and I could not figure out WordPress, and I got very frustrated with it going, how in the world does anybody else do this? So I kind of stayed away from it for a little while, and I was building on Squarespace for a time, and then I discovered Duda. I consider Duda to be the best of Wix and Squarespace. It's very similar. But the things I don't like about Wix, I don't like about Squarespace, Duda has resolved. It's also very customer oriented and SEO oriented and accessibility oriented. So there's a lot of advantages to the platform. The reason I don't support WordPress is I've had too many, too many people come to me with broken websites. Too many WordPress people do not educate their clients that that you have to update the plugins, and they don't. They just leave them and don't offer to do that for them, and it's it's an unnecessary addition that I don't think most people need for their website. There's plenty of things that we can do and do to that we can do exactly like WordPress without the headaches of that extra tech and plugins breaking and security breaking because the plugins are breaking, and it's it just it's too unnecessary, in my opinion. I tried to support WordPress for about a year and a half, and I found that I was not helping my Duda clients because the WordPress was always so much high maintenance. And those were the websites that were going down, and those are the websites that were having issues where my due to clients, their websites were never down, they never had issues. Michael Hingson  33:51 But don't need, but don't you, from time to time need to provide any kind of updates to Duda doesn't. Aren't there as the as the whole website evolves, doesn't, don't you need to find ways to evolve what they are and what they do Lori Osbourne  34:05 on the front end, on the front end, absolutely I mean, but from the back end, from a platform perspective, Duda handles all of that. It's self contained. Got it? I don't have to worry about that. And they're also always adding new features, which is another thing I absolutely love about them there, and I have yet to find, let me rephrase that. I've probably found a couple of things that if I could not duplicate on Duda to match WordPress, it would require code, and I don't code, but I can still achieve the goal of what my clients are looking for. There's nothing that they've said I have to have this that I can't provide. And the offset of not having the worry around the tech is has always been worth it. Michael Hingson  34:55 So the creators of Duda in the background as. They make updates and changes, they go out to everybody who uses it to create their websites automatically. Is that? Is that what happens? Lori Osbourne  35:07 Okay, yeah, it's seamless. Yeah, you don't even, you have no idea that there's even updates being done. It's completely seamless. Michael Hingson  35:15 Yeah, okay, well, I understand that. That makes a lot of sense. What's the one mistake that you find that keeps business owners from really progressing and keeping their websites and them invisible? What's the biggest mistake you see? Lori Osbourne  35:36 Messaging unclear, messaging which, which really goes back to the brand. If you don't understand your brand, you don't understand your why, and you don't know how to express how you solve problems for your ideal client, let me, let me rephrase. If you don't even know your ideal client is and you're trying to speak to them, a lot of people think they sell to everyone, and when you try to sell to everyone, you sell to no one. And if you are trying to speak to the masses from your website, you're going to lose the people you really want to reach. So it comes down to that, that niching down factor and really understanding your ideal client, so that when they hit your website, they immediately know you understand my problem and you can fix it. And it really comes down to that versus I can fix, you know, I can build a website for anybody. Well, then that makes me no different than a website developer down the street. Then it comes down to a price comparison, and then we're just bidding against each other. So you've gotta, you've gotta what makes you special, and what and and your why is a big part of that. Your values are a big part of that. And speaking the right language and that messaging. Michael Hingson  37:03 Can you tell me a story of maybe one customer that you worked with where you can demonstrate exactly what you're talking about here and why it made a difference without mentioning customer names, but the story? Lori Osbourne  37:17 Oh, yeah, um, you know, it's been a while since I did that realtor, but that realtor is still just such a great example, because you the fact that he was from Scotland doesn't necessarily seem significant, but it really does, because, you Know that Scottish accent made him endearing. He was a very professional, good looking guy. And you go out to his website, and it was, I can still see it today. It was like green and this old, funky text, and it, it represented him in no way. And I remember the first thing he told me was, you know, I've got this video where I introduced myself and I went, why in the world is that not on your homepage, like what people need to hear you speak and see you and experience you. He was phenomenal. And we did three deals with him. He was phenomenal at what he did, and that what, you know, if we had just rebuilt his website and just did the video, it would have that alone would have made a huge difference in people knowing who they were working with and how he was different. And another example I can give more recently, I work with a mentor who mentors seven figure coaches on how to work harder, make more money and and do it in less, less investment of your time. And when I took over her WordPress website for for two years, I just kept repeating and rebuilding the same crap, basically. And finally, when I decided to leave WordPress, I said, you know, I really want to start all over. And I realized in that two years, you know, I had not taken the time to really get to know her brand. And when we sat down and really learned what made her special and different, and we were able to capture that in in the website, that the difference in the experience was night and day, you know, before it was just text, and, you know, a little bit of information. She never referred anybody to her website. And now it, you know, opens with a video. She's also a professional speaker. Opens with a video of her speaking. She is very she's a. Ballroom dancer on the side, she's very elite. So we, you know, pulling in things like gold and video, I have a lot of motion on the website with gold moving because it, it, it's that brand of that dancer that, you know, that eliteness of it and it, it's subtle, and it has nothing to do with the messaging side that I just mentioned, but it's still back to the brand and the representing of who you are, who she is, what we're selling, you know, we're selling ourselves. Michael Hingson  40:33 Yeah, well, websites and website developers put all sorts of things out there and that that's not necessarily a good thing. But what are some signs that a business's online presence don't necessarily match their real life expertise? Because I I believe that people see through people who just sort of talk, and I think that that all too often, you get this reaction, oh, they're just talking that isn't what they really believe or that isn't what they really know. So what are some signs that the online presence doesn't match what they really know and what they really are? Lori Osbourne  41:15 Part of it is that that genericness, if you if you can't even say who you are serving, then you're obviously the person you're looking at is obviously not clear about their ideal client. If it's not clear who they are serving, and if it's this just generic message of not in these words, but we're the best use us. You know, there's, there's no detail about what makes them different and how they specifically solve your problem. If the website is completely outdated or generic, that may or may not allude to anything but it, it definitely shows that they don't, are not using their website to show their expertise. The other huge thing, I would say, is testimonials. Every website should have reviews. I mean, what better way to sell ourselves than to have someone else say how we're different, how we operate and why we're the why we're the best. That is huge. If it's all about them, as in the person's website you're looking at, if it's not, if I'm, if I'm getting on a website and they're not even acknowledging what's in it for me and how they're going to solve my problems, then I'm not going to have any confidence that they have any idea how to solve my problems. They haven't even they haven't even talked about my problems. They haven't even mentioned my problems. They're just telling me that they're selling me something, and this is how much it costs, and this is what it's going to do. But I but do you get me? Do you know? Do you understand me? I think all those are it's really important that we are speaking to the ideal client in their language about their problem. Michael Hingson  43:10 I have heard so many times and totally agree with and work to do this myself. Michael Hingson  43:18 The whole concept of when I'm invited to speak, it's not about me. Yeah, I'm invited to speak, but my job is to enhance, to help to make life as easy as possible for the event organizer, to help the event organizer make this, the whole conference, even better than they thought it would be. And and I have to do that because it's not about me, and it should never be about me as such, right? Lori Osbourne  43:48 It's also about your audience and your audience, yeah, so that they know you want them to want to know more. Yeah, that's also the purpose of your website to make people want to know more. Michael Hingson  44:01 Yeah, very true, and it should be that way. And if you're doing it right, you'll also provide more for them to know. Right? Lori Osbourne  44:15 Absolutely. Well, that would be something else that I would say I I always encourage people to give away as much as possible on their website. It if people know that you really want to help me solve my problems, and you're willing to give me something for free that starts a relationship. And that's really, at the end of the day, that's the point of the website. It's not to sell, it's to start a relationship. It's like the first step of dating. We're not getting married yet. We're dating, and if you're if you're giving away a piece of yourself through a video or a download or even a free course. Course, that's it. That's going to endear the audience to to want to come back for more. And even blogs, great blogs will get people coming back for more. And people always go, Well, you know, if I give everything away, I'm not going to make any money. No, you give away what? What doesn't cost you time, but is giving some knowledge so that they want more, and they know that you you get them, and they can trust, you know, like and trust so they can build that, that base for a relationship. Michael Hingson  45:32 Yeah, and it, it makes perfect sense. It is all about building trust. And everything that we do is all about building trust, and the more trust you build, the more loyalty you'll create. Lori Osbourne  45:47 Absolutely, yes, absolutely. Michael Hingson  45:49 So we've talked about website accessibility. What is website accessibility and why is it something that people really should focus on? Why is it important? Lori Osbourne  45:59 That feels weird coming from you, Mike, Michael Hingson  46:03 because I know you are an expert in this, but I preach it, but I preach it all the time, so I want to hear what somebody else has to say, and I want people who are watching and listening to this hear from somebody else other than me. Okay, that's the motivation behind it. Lori Osbourne  46:18 All right. All right. Well, website accessibility is at its core. It's making the website available and usable for everyone, including those with disabilities. So whether it's blindness or inability to use a mouse or you said it earlier, dyslexic, Michael Hingson  46:40 epilepsy, any number of things, right? Lori Osbourne  46:43 So anybody, just like accessibility for a ramp into a store, it's allowing me, from my home, as as a disabled person, to be able to function on your website. And as we know, I believe the stat is 20% of people have some kind of disability. It's also an inclusion. It is a piece of I consider a piece of your marketing, because if you are excluding 20% of the people with your website, why? Why are you doing that? It also builds strong Search Engine Optimization. Because if you look at all of the guidelines for accessibility, they're very similar to the guidelines you need to have in place for good search engine optimization. Google is looking for the exact same things. Yep. So it's it's really just making your website available to everyone Michael Hingson  47:42 well, and the reality is, well, let me ask this question, rather than me just saying it beyond legal compliance. Why should accessibility be a priority in website design? You've kind of alluded to it already. Lori Osbourne  47:56 Yeah, part of what I just said, it's including everyone. It's not excluding 20% of your market, and it's building trust, inclusivity and credibility. It's, it's, and it to me, it's showing that you care. It's, it's very bothersome to me when someone says, Well, I probably won't get sued, so I'm not going to worry about it. Okay? But why do you want to not do these basic things so that everyone can access your website? Well? Michael Hingson  48:33 And also, in reality, it does get back to if you're a website owner, that is, you're a company that has a website, and you recognize that the job of your website is to help people see why you have something they need. The fact of the matter is, do you really want to not make available to 20 or 25% of the population your website, or to put it another way, don't you want to make sure that you are making your information available to everyone? And that's what the real reason for website accessibility is truly all about. The fact of the matter is that it's good business to make your website accessible. Lori Osbourne  49:24 Absolutely, yes, absolutely. Michael Hingson  49:26 What are some high impact changes that you think that website owners can make, to make their websites or to have their websites be more accessible, maybe even just some simple things? Lori Osbourne  49:38 Oh, there are so many simple things. I mean, the easiest thing that so many people miss is adding alt text to images. I mean, it's, and it's one thing I love about Duda, by the way, it they do it with AI and do it for you, and you can edit it. It's so, so wonderful. But it's, it's a simple step. It also is. Great step to even help with SEO, because you can include some keywords there, but that that alt text tells someone that's using a tool that's blind exactly what that image is, and what is the point in putting that image on your website if it's not going to provide any value to those that can't see. I mean that, in my opinion, another thing is the contrast in colors. A lot of people don't understand that contrasting colors has a lot to do with readability, and if you are putting two colors together, I mean, think about it even from a scene person, if you're looking at it and you can't read it. It's not accessible, right? So, you know, have high contrast in the colors of text on anything over it. Don't try to put something over an image that can't be read that just just, don't do it. Skip that. I was just doing this on my website today. I was trying to put an image, and I went, you know what? That's just not going to work. I'm going back to a solid color. It doesn't it's it and it, you know, that's from a business perspective as well. Because even if you're not thinking about accessibility, if someone can't read the text or can't read the button, they're not going to click it. You're not going to read it. They're not going to buy it if they can't read it. So simple little things like that. Those would be the two biggest things I would say. And then just, you know, little additional things like making sure that your website is converting properly to mobile, if it's if it's not, if things are coming off the page, because you didn't bother to look at the mobile side, which is easy to miss on many platforms that can have a huge impact on the scene and those that need the tools or need accessibility pieces that's, you know, commonplace design and very easy thing to fix. Michael Hingson  52:11 It's been a while since I looked at this website, and I think it's not quite what it used to be, but for a while, my favorite website, absolutely. My favorite website for accessibility was the website of the National Security Agency, nsa.gov, Michael Hingson  52:31 of all the websites in the entire world. The reason I liked it is that not only did they have all text on images if you were using a screen reader and you moved your cursor over an image, you suddenly got a very detailed description of that image, like you. Michael Hingson  52:55 You moved your cursor where you used your screen reader to move over the American flag. It would say the American flag on a flagpole hanging in front of the opening to the building of the National Security Agency. Yada yada yada. I mean, it's just everything was there. It was the most amazing website. I don't know that it's that way anymore. I haven't looked at it in a little while, but I was very impressed with how much they did and relative and relevantly and appropriately so to make sure that everything on that website was totally usable. And a lot of people could say, Well, why do I have to do that? And the answer is, you have to do it for the same reason that you want to make your website accessible, if you will, for people who don't happen to have a disability. The reality is, all those things that you put on the website for people who can see them and so on, like pictures and so on, if you don't make those things accessible, you're doing a disservice to a significant amount of the population. Whereas, if you do it all, then while you can look at the picture, I can hear all about it, and that's the way it ought to Lori Osbourne  54:10 be well. And there's so much I mean to me that is an opportunity to to even go further with the folks that need the screen reader. Because, I mean, when I'm and I mentioned that dude, it does it with AI, but they, they do it too generically. When I go in, I'm doing exactly what you're talking about. I want to, I want to build the presence of the picture. This is who they're doing, who it is from the business, and this is what they're doing, and this is what you know, this offer is talking about that's an extra sales opportunity right there. For those that you know, need the alt text, why not use that? Michael Hingson  54:49 And also, I'm amazed at how many people may look at pictures and so on and look at words and not really pay attention to them very well, because they just kind of skip over it. So the more you can do to attract people's attention to the right things. Is relevant too. I'm amazed at how many people just gloss over so much. Lori Osbourne  55:09 Oh, absolutely. Well, you know, this kind of become our society, yeah, short attention span for sure. You know, I want to mention two videos. I really feel like people need videos on their website, especially of themselves, because it helps people get to know you. But you need to have that closed captioning and again, dialog. Michael Hingson  55:33 You need to have dialog so that a person who can't see the video will also know what the video shows. Lori Osbourne  55:41 Explain, explain what you mean by that a little bit more. Michael Hingson  55:44 So you go to a website, and there's a video, and you click it, and you start hearing music, and that's all you hear, even though, on the screen you see a person walking down the street, walking into somebody's store, finding a product they want and buying it. But if you don't have a way to make that information audibly accessible to people who can't see the images and who don't see the videos, then what good is it you haven't made it accessible? Yes, closed captioning works for deaf or hard of hearing people, but again, there's so much more that needs to be done. Wow. Lori Osbourne  56:25 Thank you for sharing that, Mike. You just gave me more to think about on videos. Michael Hingson  56:31 One of my favorite commercials to pick on today, and for the longest time, I had no idea at all what it was about. It starts out with music, and somebody says something like, so what do people over 60s show and bring out today? And they talk about love and they talk about something else, and suddenly the sound goes dead, and all you hear for the next 20 seconds or more is this high pitched whistle sound. Ooh, yeah. And I finally got somebody. I finally was in a room with somebody when I heard the beginning of this, and I said, What is it showing? And all it was showing, and what, apparently it is, is a promotion for people getting the RSV vaccination. Lori Osbourne  57:19 Oh, right. Oh, I do know what commercial you're talking about, yes, but text just goes on the screen. Michael Hingson  57:26 RSV, RSV, RSV. But there's nothing that says what that is at all, period, Lori Osbourne  57:33 because they're trying to make the point that you're that your life shuts down when this hits. But yeah, for someone like you, that's completely worthless. Michael Hingson  57:41 Not only does my life not shut down, my life gets very active, and I want to go off and find those commercial designers and show them what true accessibility really ought to be about. But that's another story. But yeah, Lori Osbourne  57:53 yeah, exactly, wow. I mean, I think about you every time I see that commercial, those rare times I see commercials, Michael Hingson  58:05 what's one of the what's one of the myths about branding and websites that you could erase, that you really wish you could race forever? Lori Osbourne  58:18 I probably told you to ask me that question, and now I'm stumped by how I want to answer it. I think, I think I know where I wanted to go with that. Yes, a lot of people think branding is just colors and fonts, and honestly, when I first started doing it, I thought it was just colors and fonts. And I kind of go, I went into Okay, colors and fonts, and then consistency, okay, we want to make sure we got we're consistent with our colors and fonts across everything that we do that's that's branding, that's visual branding. But real branding is Our Story. Is who we are, what we stand for and who we serve. It's the package of everything around what we're selling, back to selling ourselves and really understanding this package and making that consistent across everything. And consistency is huge, in my opinion, when it comes to branding, if you have a different header image or marketing image on every single thing you do and there's no consistency in the look, then you're not going to be memorable. You. I can't help you see this, Mike, but anyone that does go out to anything of mine, I have a very consistent image that was used to build my logo, and it's on everything that I do. I also wear very bright, colorful glasses. Everything I do is very bright and colorful, and it's memorable when people see me and they see my glasses, it can be three years later and they go. I don't remember your name, but boy, I remember those glasses. You know, it's, it's, and that's part of my branding. When people say, I love your your glasses, I go, thank you. It's part of my branding. Yeah. So it's a, it's an overall everything about you. When people describe me, they usually describe me as bright and colorful, like, that's, that's one of the first things that comes to their their mind, and then they it translates to energy, because they think bright, colorful energy. So it's, you know what branding really is, is, what do people say about you when you're not in the room? Michael Hingson  1:00:30 Yeah, that's, that's a good that's what it is. Well, if there is a business owner who is in our audience today who feels overwhelmed by their digital presence. What would you suggest is the first step they should take to change that? Lori Osbourne  1:00:47 Well, the the first thing I would love to see anyone do is sign up for a visibility review or audit with me, so that we can look at your presence and talk about it, and I can give you some very specific suggestions for how to improve your online visibility. If you're wanting to do something on your own and you're you're trying to figure out where to start, sit down and look at first, your your homepage, in your first line of every bit of your marketing and ask yourself, does it say who I serve and how I serve them, and the problems that I solve. Because every ounce of your marketing needs to say that immediately you have less than eight seconds when someone hits your website. And there's all kinds of some people say three, some people say 10s and 15. I just leave it at eight. Do eight or eight or less seconds on your website. So start there is my messaging clear? And then look at your website overall and does it represent me and the message I want people to see. We can go into a whole lot more about it being up to date and everything else, but that's where I would start, right there. Michael Hingson  1:01:58 So how do people reach out to you to get your help to deal with all of this. Lori Osbourne  1:02:02 Well, you can obviously go to my website, which is biz bolster.com, B, I, Z, B, O, L, S, T, E, r.com and I believe you will be sharing a link to that visibility audit. Just sign up for that or a free strategy session. But I encourage the visibility audit, because it literally takes about an hour of my time to check out everything about you and then share that with you. So this is an investment that I'm willing to give you to help you all understand how you show up online, and then what to do about Michael Hingson  1:02:45 it, biz, bolster.com, I hope people will do that, and they can reach out and contact you through that website. Lori Osbourne  1:02:53 Yes, click on, let's chat, and it gives you all the all the calls that you can sign up for in my calendar, and I would absolutely love to speak to anybody that has questions or wants some direction. Michael Hingson  1:03:07 Well, cool. Well, I really appreciate you being here today and spending so much time talking about all this, and I hope people will take it to heart. Wherever you are listening. Reach out, biz, bolster.com and get some insights and get some help to improve the website the web world, because only about 3% of all websites are really accessible today, which means there are a whole lot that are not, and there is no real excuse for that being the case. So reach out and Michael Hingson  1:03:41 you can get all the help that you need. I'd love to hear from you, to hear what you think about today's podcast. Please feel free to email me at Michael H, I m, I C, H, A, E, L, H, I at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, i, b, e.com, and wherever you're listening, please give us a five star review. We value your ratings and your reviews a lot, and I but I do want to hear from you. I want to hear what your thoughts are. Also, if you know of anyone who might make a good guest for unstoppable mindset, Lori, including you, would really appreciate you introducing us, because we're always looking for people who have great stories to tell, and today has certainly been one of my favorite podcast recordings in a long time, and that's because we really did have fun, and I think we accomplished a lot and we learned a lot. So I want to thank you, Lori, once again, for being here and for being a part of unstoppable mindset. Lori Osbourne  1:04:35 Thank you, Mike. It has definitely been a pleasure. I've enjoyed talking with you a lot. Michael Hingson  1:04:42 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

In this episode of the Paywall Podcast powered by Leaky Paywall, Pete and Tyler conduct a detailed teardown of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, analyzing its visitor experience, subscription models, and operational challenges. Learn the seven specific mistakes this legacy giant is making and, more importantly, how you can avoid them to build a frictionless, profitable publication.

As a web designer, I'm sure you've had plenty of people ask “is AI going to take your job?”Well, my position is firmly NO.But one adjacent part of the industry I was curious/cautious about is copywriting. After all, I'm primarily using AI for copywriting and messaging help these days.To hear how copywriters are surviving, even thriving in an AI world, here's copywriter for web designers Nikki Thompson who shares everything she's implementing today!Head to the show notes to get all links and resources we mentioned, along with a full transcription of this episode at joshhall.co/414

This week I Share How Talking Can Solve Problems [powerpress]

Have you ever felt overwhelmed by the pressure to grow quickly, show up on every social platform, or chase bigger numbers just for the sake of it? If so, this episode is for you.  In this episode of the Private Practice Elevation Podcast, Daniel Fava welcomes back psychologist and entrepreneur Melvin Varghese for a heartfelt and insightful conversation about building a private practice (or any type of business) at a pace that aligns with your life and values. Melvin shares how he's intentionally slowed down his business growth to protect his well-being and stay grounded in what really matters: service, sustainability, and family. You'll hear how Selling the Couch grew into a successful course and podcast platform, and why Melvin chose not to scale rapidly, even when there was financial momentum.  Instead, he prioritized nervous system regulation, systems, and structure that would allow him to thrive for the long haul, not just sprint for short-term gains. Daniel and Melvin also talk candidly about how personal life seasons,  like parenting, caregiving, and health challenges, impact business decisions.  Their honest discussion is a reminder that success doesn't have to mean constant hustle. Sometimes, it looks like doing less, more intentionally. Whether you're building a solo practice or branching into online income, you'll come away from this episode with encouragement to define success on your own terms — and the permission to grow at your own pace. This Episode Answers: 1. What does it really mean to build a lifestyle business as a therapist?  Melvin breaks down how he's designed his business to support health, family, and legacy over constant hustle. He shares insights from growing Selling the Couch to $12k/month in course income and why he chose to pause and re-evaluate instead of scaling aggressively. 2. How can therapists know which marketing channels to focus on?  Rather than trying to be everywhere, Melvin recommends aligning your marketing with your long-term goals. For example, if you want to speak, podcasting or YouTube can build your skills and audience. He shares how he sticks to three core channels to maintain quality and avoid burnout. 3. What's the role of nervous system regulation in business growth?  Both Daniel and Melvin reflect on the emotional toll of entrepreneurship. They discuss how rituals like prayer, reflection, golf, and quiet time in nature are essential to managing stress and sustaining a business long-term. Other Key Takeaways: Entrepreneurship is not a race. Slow growth can be strategic and soul-sustaining. Having a team and systems in place doesn't eliminate stress, but it does help with sustainability. There's a natural cap to lifestyle businesses ($250k–$300k/year), and scaling beyond that requires a mindset shift. Your personal life and business are interconnected. Seasons of life should inform business strategy. You don't need to be on every social media platform. Choose what aligns with your energy and vision. Links mentioned in this episode: Selling the Couch: https://sellingthecouch.com  Quiet Builder Newsletter: https://sellingthecouch.com/quietbuilder  Episode 16. The Top 5 Mistakes Therapists Make When Starting a Podcast w/ Melvin Varghese Watch The Video:     This Episode Is Brought To You By: RevKey specializes in Google Ads management for therapists, expertly connecting you with your ideal clients. They focus on getting quality referrals that keep your team busy and your practice growing.   Visit RevKey.com/podcasts for a free Google Ads consultation   Alma is on a mission to simplify access to high-quality, affordable mental health care by giving providers the tools they need to build thriving in-network private practices. When providers join Alma, they gain access to insurance support, teletherapy software, client referrals, automated billing and scheduling tools, and a vibrant community of clinicians who come together for education, training, and events.   Learn more about building a thriving private practice with Alma at helloalma.com/elevation.     About Melvin Varghese   Melvin Varghese, PhD is a licensed psychologist in Philadelphia, PA.   In 2015, Dr. Varghese founded Selling The Couch, a podcast to help therapists move from clinical to online income.   On the podcast, he interviews successful practitioners about how they've built their practices, social media/marketing experts, and shares lessons as he uses our clinical skills to create an online business powered by podcasting + online courses.   The podcast is one of the top Career podcasts in Apple Podcasts, has been downloaded over 1.8 million times, and is heard in over 125 countries.   Dr. Varghese also founded several resources for therapists transitioning from the therapist chair to online income, including a podcasting community for therapists that's supported over 240 therapist podcasters, an online course mastermind for therapists launching their first online course (50+ students), and a mastermind for veteran course creators to find support growing and scaling their course.   About Daniel Fava Daniel Fava is the owner and founder of  Private Practice Elevation, a website and SEO agency focused on helping private practice owners create websites that increase their online visibility and attract more clients. Private Practice Elevation offers web design services, SEO (search engine optimization), and WordPress support to help private practice owners grow their businesses through online marketing.    Daniel lives in Atlanta, GA with his wife Liz, and two energetic boys. When he's not working he enjoys hiking by the river, watching hockey, and enjoying a dram of bourbon.  

Rory McGowan has a brief conversation with Mary Hubbard, the Executive Director at WordPress, about the 35th anniversary of the first website, and the future of websites on the internet. Together they talk about their importance in the face of growing large language models, why people still trust websites, and the origins of the first website, which came to be all the way back in 1990.

On our first Fresh Fright review of 2026, we talk about Nia DaCosta's 28 Years Later sequel, The Bone Temple! Will this kick off the new year of horror with a bang? Listen in to hear our full-spoiler review.   Find us: Apple Podcasts: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/epic-film-guys- Official Fan Group : https://www.facebook.com/groups/epicfilmguys Feed URL: https://epicfilmguys.podbean.com/feed/ Wordpress: http://epicfilmguys.wordpress.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/epicfilmguysny/live You can also catch us on most every podcatcher under the sun! Search for us on BluBrry, Stitcher, Spreaker, Google Podcasts, Overcast, and many others. Search and you will find us! There has never been a better time to join up with the elites at https://www.patreon.com/epicfilmguys! You can get access to pre-roll and outtakes from the show, exclusive episodes, free swag, and so much more. Tiers start as low as $1/month! Please consider supporting the show, and thank you for being one of the EFG faithful!

In this episode, Nathan Wrigley chats with Michael Campanella, a professional photographer and developer of the Folio Blocks WordPress gallery plugin. They explore the plugin's visual gallery options, including grid, justified, masonry, carousel, video, and a unique modular gallery, designed to offer photographers greater creative control. The discussion covers Folio Blocks' deep integration with the block editor, features like taxonomy-based filtering, WooCommerce integration for sales, easy image downloads, and its pricing structure. Michael shares insights on why he built the plugin and highlights its strengths for users needing powerful, modern media galleries on WordPress. Check it out...

Send us a textReady to celebrate a win… and notice what happens next?What if the very thing you've been quietly holding in your heart is ready to be shared—not perfectly, but now?In this episode of Unleashed & Unstoppable, Alex and Carol invite you into a deeply real, behind-the-scenes conversation about intention, visibility, and the courage it takes to bring something meaningful into the world. What starts as a celebration of Alex's children's book Free To Be Me officially opening for pre-orders becomes a powerful exploration of what happens in our brains, bodies, and nervous systems when we choose to go public with what matters most.This isn't just a conversation about launching a book. It's about launching yourself into the next level—without burning out, overcomplicating the process, or waiting for “perfect.”Together, Alex and Carol reflect on:Why done really is better than perfect—and how simplicity creates momentumWhat's actually happening in your nervous system when fear, tension, or doubt shows up during growthHow celebrating small wins releases the neuro-chemicals that help you move through resistance instead of retreatingThe power of declaring your intention out loud and letting your community support youWhy staying connected to the why matters more than obsessing over the howHow early beliefs around worthiness, safety, and love shape our leadership—and why it's so powerful to rewire them early (for ourselves and our children)You'll also hear Alex share vulnerably about the journey of bringing Free To Be Me to life—from the spark of an idea while nursing her daughter, to navigating visibility, discomfort, and expansion as the book enters the world. It's a reminder that growth doesn't have to feel forced—and that your body's reactions don't mean you're doing it wrong. They often mean you're doing something brave.As you listen, consider this:What's the idea, goal, or desire you've been holding close that's asking for air this year?Who's in your corner to help you celebrate, reflect, and keep moving forward?What would change if you trusted the process instead of trying to control every step?Tune in, reflect, and let this episode remind you that your dreams don't require perfection—just intention, support, and the willingness to take the next step.Pre-order your copy of Free To Be Me and be part of the movementContact Carol on IG to explore Carol's retreats and trans

Today's community birth story spans years- from a long path to pregnancy to an unexpected C-section and a diagnosis of postpartum preeclampsia. It's truly a full-arc journey of resilience and transformation. Listen in, as I'm joined by Nitasha Mehta on Yoga | Birth | Babies. Nitasha is a marketing leader with 15+ years of experience at Amazon, Samsung, and Boxed, whose work in women's health led her to launch Shakti- a postpartum snack company rooted in traditional Indian remedies to support healing after birth. Get the most out of each episode by checking out the show notes with links, resources and other related podcasts at: prenatalyogacenter.com (*hyperlink episode link from Wordpress!) Don't forget to grab your FREE guide, 5 Simple Solutions to the Most Common Pregnancy Pains HERE  If you love what you've been listening to, please leave a rating and review! Yoga| Birth|Babies (Apple) or on Spotify! To connect with Deb and the PYC Community:  Instagram & Facebook: @prenatalyogacenter Youtube: Prenatal Yoga Center Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Nathan Wrigley talks with Corey Maass about how AI tools have transformed web development, especially for client projects. Corey Maass shares his ever-changing tech stack, the impact of AI on productivity and creativity, and how tools like Claude Code and Copilot are saving time and changing traditional workflows. They discuss the philosophical implications of AI, the human vs. machine dynamic, and explore how WordPress and its plugins might adapt to better integrate AI-driven features in the future. Whether you're a developer curious about what ‘working alongside AI' means ‌or just wondering about the future of tech and WordPress in an increasingly automated world, this episode is for you.

Have you ever felt a persistent pull toward work that feels more aligned with who you are, even when it means leaving something secure behind? Regan had the same feeling, and made the decision to lead a Canadian private practice with fellow colleagues that was built on their shared values.  In this episode, Regan and I talk about her non-linear journey into therapy. We explore how she and her practice are finding creative ways to serve rural and Northern First Nations communities, and how she is thinking about safety and accessibility for virtual clients. We also dive into marketing with authenticity, building trust through your website and social media, and why community-building has been at the heart of her growth. Join in for the conversation!  MEET REGAN At 26, Regan Swerhun left a stable community counselling job to follow her passion for trauma-focused work and build a private practice in Thunder Bay, Ontario. She now focuses on EMDR and trauma-informed therapy, offering both in-person and online sessions. Regan also provides counselling to youth in Northern First Nations communities and uses social media to make mental health conversations more real and accessible. Learn more about Regan on her private practice website, LinkedIn, and Psychology Today profiles.  In this episode:  Why Regan pursued a career in therapy   Leaping into private practice Creative ways of offering safe spaces for therapy  Marketing the private practice Why Regan pursued a career in therapy   'Honestly, therapy was not my first choice. It was kind of a roundabout life journey to get to where I am now.' - Regan Swerhun  Though Regan began a degree in business, she decided to switch and focus on social work. While completing her Master's degree in Social Work, Regan began working in a hospital in Toronto. There, she quickly discovered that she enjoyed doing patient intake and hearing people's stories and their unique life experiences. This signaled to her that something lay beyond. Once moving back to Thunder Bay, she focused on clinical work at a not-for-profit.  'I got a good position at one of our not-for-profit organizations in town. So, I was with that company for three years, so really, as of recently - this Fall - made the transition, but in the time that I was with the community programs, I learned a lot.' - Regan Swerhun  The same itch that Regan had while working in the hospital came back again when she worked at the organization and she craved to run her own private practice. Leaping into private practice Regan was asked by a colleague who had already been in private practice for a long time if she would be interested in working with him.   However, due to some differences in provincial laws and regulations, she cannot co-own it. So, they split it up as leaders.  'It has made it feel like I'm immensely leading this group practice, but I have the support [from him] … because there is so much start-up.' - Regan Swerhun   Creative ways of offering safe spaces for therapy Regan and her team's long-term goal is to serve rural communities that don't have easy access to therapy and its services.  While Regan drives twice a month up to a northern, more rural community to see clients, she also is planning to offer more virtual services.   'Our ongoing plan is to connect with other community buildings in the areas and create a partnership … where someone can open up the door for them, someone can help to have the laptop ready … and then leave that space.' - Regan Swerhun Marketing the private practice Regan and her team have worked a lot on the practice website.  One of their main goals was to really make an effort to show what their office space looks like, and feels like, to interested clients.   'The whole basis of our marketing strategy right now is just to build community. We're new, we're here, this is what we're about, and this is all of the inside that we can let you see through before you step into our world!' - Regan Swerhun Regan combines website and social media efforts to showcase the Canadian private practice and notes that it has now grown enough to also attract clients through word-of-mouth. If you need extra support for your marketing efforts, you can try applying to this grant! Connect with me: Instagram Website  Resources mentioned and useful links: Dana Etherington: SEO Tips for a Thriving Canadian Private Practice | EP 184 Learn more about the tools and deals that I love and use for my Canadian private practice Sign up for my free e-course on How to Start an Online Canadian Private Practice Jane App (use code FEARLESS2MO for two months free) Create your website with WordPress!  Learn more about Regan on her private practice website, LinkedIn, and Psychology Today profiles Rate, review, and subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, and TuneIn

Special Guest: Dylan Bost   Welcome to Podcast Profits Unleashed, the show that helps coaches and consultants grow their business through the power of podcasting—both as standout guests and magnetic hosts. I'm your host, Karen Roberts, and today's episode is all about breaking the cycle of burnout and building a business that aligns with who you are—human first. I'm joined by Dylan Bost, a coach and entrepreneur who helps purpose-driven service-based business owners simplify their systems, reconnect with their core mission, and build aligned, scalable businesses that actually last. If you've ever felt pulled between burnout and growth, this conversation will help you reset your vision, realign your systems, and reclaim your energy.

Come and join us LIVE for the This Week in WordPress show. This week I'm with Michelle Frechette, Anne-Mieke Bovelett, Marc Benzakein and we're going to be going over the last 7 days in the WordPress space. This episode covers recent WordPress news and trends, with a strong focus on accessibility, including actionable insights for improving SEO and user experience. It explores plugin market changes, collaboration tools, and AI's impact on the community and development workflows. Discussion highlights include practical advice for building accessible sites, reflections on plugin sales and irreplaceability, emerging tools for WordPress optimisation, and upcoming WordPress events across the globe. The show gets into adaptability, community strength, and ongoing opportunities in the WordPress ecosystem despite technological shifts. Check it out...

This week's topic comes from Google's own podcast - Search Off the Record where Danny Sullivan provides Google's take on whether or not we should change our content formats ONLY to help get cited by AI models more.Needless to say, I share my "irreverent" opinion backed up with never before shared testing data that backs up one of Google's patents which supports chunking content like a normal person which works for both people AND LLMs.Last week's episodeHorizontal Content Analysis For SEO⁠Mentioned in the show⁠Test Semantic Software on Wordpress. Apply to be a part of the beta for Vizzex. ⁠⁠⁠https://vizzex.ai/⁠⁠⁠Article about the podcast contenthttps://www.seroundtable.com/google-content-bite-sized-chunks-40728.htmlTranscript of part 2 - Search Off The Recordhttps://search-off-the-record.libsyn.com/sotr102_transcriptpdfTools that I use and recommend:Vizzex - Helpful Content Analysis ToolIndexzilla -⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.indexzilla.io⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (indexing technology)⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠SEO in ATX ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠- SEO as a serviceYoutube Channel -⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Confessions of An SEO®⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://g.co/kgs/xXDzBNf⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠-------- Crawl or No Crawl Knowledge panelInterested in supporting this work and any seo testing?Subscribe to Confessions of an SEO™ wherever you get your podcasts. Your subscribing and download sends the message that you appreciate what is being shared and helping others find Confessions of an SEO™An easy place to leave a review ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/confessions-of-an-seo-1973881⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠You can find me on⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Carolyn Holzman⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Linkedin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠American Way Media⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Google Directly⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠AmericanWayMedia.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Consulting AgencyNeed Help With an Indexation Issue? - reach out Text me here - 512-222-3132Music from Uppbeathttps://uppbeat.io/t/doug-organ/fugue-stateLicense code: HESHAZ4ZOAUMWTUA

In this solo/case-study episode, I'm sharing a super simple—but insanely effective—pricing tweak that helped one of our Web Designer Pro® members, Tom, land a $5,000/yr SEO deal… on the same day he made the change.We break down:why too many plan options confuse clientshow to structure your plans to make the right option stand outwhat Tom changed to close the deal immediatelyhis updated SEO plan layoutlessons you can apply to your own recurring plans right nowIf you've ever struggled with pricing, packaging, or getting clients to choose higher-value plans, this one will help big time.Head to the show notes to get all links and resources we mentioned, along with a full transcription of this episode at joshhall.co/413 

This week I Update The Terminology List [powerpress]

Chris Badgett offers a comprehensive overview to the top WordPress plugins in this episode for creating and expanding an LMS website that goes beyond the LifterLMS core. He begins by emphasizing that LifterLMS itself handles almost all of the fundamental LMS features, such as creating courses, student dashboards, user accounts, memberships, e-commerce with PayPal or […] The post Best WordPress Plugins for LMS Websites Besides LifterLMS appeared first on LMScast.

En este episodio, que ha tardado en salir, hablamos de que aunque no hemos podido publicar, tenemos la intranet de Potencia Pro más animada que nunca tanto en cuanto a actualizaciones de plugins y ya de paso os recordamos que sería estupendo que os apuntaseis al canal de Youtube del podcast https://www.youtube.com/potenciapro para llegar a los 500 suscriptores y así nos activen la monetización y sacar unas perrillas con videotutoriales de WordPress de las cosillas que hablamos en el podcast y alguna cosilla más. Tema del día Se acerca la nueva versión de WordPress en que nos acercamos a la versión de edición colaborativa a toda velocidad, parece mentira después del tiempo que se está trabajando en ello pero ya está casi aquí, ahora se están solventando ciertos problemas relacionados con la asignación de autoría de bloques al autor que lo esté publicando, pero poco más, por lo visto el funcionamiento es maravilloso. Actualidad Mariano nos hace un resumen de las próximas WordCamps y WordPress days y nos explica qué eventos son los que salen en el escritorio de WordPress. Plugin del día Hoy os comentamos y par de plugins que son una maravilla: Hablando de monetización https://es.wordpress.org/plugins/ad-inserter/ Query Loop filter -> https://github.com/humanmade/query-filter ¿No eres suscriptor? pues estás tardando, porque por sólo 1,6€ al mes (el 14 de febrero subiremos el precio del plan anual de 20€ a 30€) tendrás acceso a todas las descargas de la intranet y lo más importante, nuestro amor. Soñaremos contigo todas las noches. Métodos de contacto Enviadnos vuestras preguntas al grupo de Telegram. Si nos queréis decir algo directamente lo podéis hacer a @potenciapro , @materron, @mpc, o en el grupo de Telegram Y si eres muy muy muy fan del podcast Echa un vistazo a cómo nos puedes ayudar en https://potencia.pro/se-prosperoso/

In this episode, Nathan Wrigley chats with Dave Foy about his journey from classroom teaching to creating online WordPress courses. Dave discusses the challenges of keeping tech courses up-to-date, the struggle with perfectionism, and why traditional self-paced courses often don't deliver the best results. He shares his recent shift to a live cohort-based teaching model, which encourages action, community, and accountability, ultimately leading to better student outcomes. The episode is full of insights on educational methods, tech teaching, and personal growth. Go listen...

Join Johanna and Jess as they dive deep into their experiences and insights working with Drupal in the nonprofit sector. Learn about their early careers, the evolution of Drupal's development, the significance of community in nonprofit tech, and the origins and importance of the Nonprofit Summit at DrupalCon. Discover how their community initiatives foster collaboration and support among nonprofit technologists, and get a glimpse into the upcoming summit details. Perfect for anyone interested in Drupal, open-source technology, and nonprofit organizational challenges. For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/cafe012 Johanna Bates Johanna Bates (they/them, hanpersand on drupal.org) is co-founder and co-principal of DevCollaborative, a company that builds accessible and sustainable Drupal and WordPress sites exclusively for nonprofit organizations. Johanna began their formal tech career at WGBH in Boston in 2000 as a front-end developer. They have been building Drupal sites since 2004, and have been co-moderating NTEN's Nonprofit Drupal Community and its monthly chats for over a decade. Johanna was involved in early Nonprofit Summits at NYCcamp starting back in 20-teens 2015, and helped bring the Nonprofit Summit to DrupalCon North America in 2017. Jess Snyder Jess Snyder (jesss on drupal.org and Drupal Slack) is Director of Web Systems for WETA, the flagship public media station for Washington, DC, and has over 20 years of experience in website development. Jess is an organizer for NTEN's Drupal Community of Practice as well as Drupal GovCon. She also co-chaired the triumphant return of the Nonprofit Summit to DrupalCon Portland 2024 and its sequel at DrupalCon Atlanta 2025. When not Drupaling, Jess sits on the Board of Directors for the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Topics Meet the Speakers: Johanna and Jess Johanna's Journey in Nonprofit Tech Jess's Path in Public Broadcasting The Importance of Community in Nonprofit Tech Organizing Nonprofit Summits Challenges and Changes in Drupal The Value of Open Source for Nonprofits Comparing Drupal and WordPress Concerns About JavaScript in Content Editing Importance of Accessibility in Content Management Guardrails for Content Editors The Nonprofit Summit: Origins and Evolution Summit Format and Community Building Sponsorship and Event Details Getting Involved in the Nonprofit Drupal Community Conclusion and Final Thoughts Guests Johanna Bates - hanpersand Jess Snyder - jesss

Send us a textAt what point did you stop trusting yourself?Somewhere between childhood and leadership, many of us learned to be quieter, smaller, more “acceptable.” We learned to perform, to overthink, to seek approval — and eventually, to doubt the very instincts that once came naturally.In this powerful and reflective episode, Alex and Carol explore how early experiences shape confidence, self-expression, and leadership long before we ever realize it, and why so many high-achieving adults are still operating from beliefs formed in their earliest years.What begins as a conversation about learning environments quickly opens into something much bigger: how identity is shaped, how fear gets wired in, and how safety — emotional and neurological — is the foundation for confidence at any age.Along the way, Alex shares a deeply personal realization sparked by her daughter's first parent-teacher interview in Panama — a moment that revealed not only what her child was learning, but the unconscious fears many of us carry based on stories we've absorbed from others' experiences.In this episode, you'll hear:Why being “met where you're at” is essential for growth — in childhood and leadershipHow language, feedback, and labels quietly shape self-talk and identityThe difference between breaking generational patterns and reclaiming generational giftsWhy so many high performers struggle with self-doubt despite external successHow simple morning and evening “bookends” can regulate the nervous system and build self-trustThis conversation also reveals the heart behind Alex's upcoming children's book, Free to Be Me — a book written to help children grow up knowing they are safe, capable, worthy, and free to use their voice, before self-doubt ever takes hold.If you're a parent, leader, educator, or coach who cares about confidence, self-trust, and raising the next generation — this book is for you.

Take a look back at 2025 with Martin and Sallie as they share highlights, memories, and favorites from year 18 of the WELSTech Podcast. Events WELSTech AI Summit AI Focus Ministry resources Grace Ungemach’s weekly newsletter on digital marketing – learn.lutheran.marketing Check out this week’s 2026 Brand Direction message WELS National Conference on Lutheran Leadership 2025 Ministry Resources Interviews Lori Ehlke – 748 – Lori Ehlke Art Dr. Kristi Meyer – 761 – Comms and Cardigans 2025 Interviews Picks of the year Notebook LM – Sallie’s WELSTech 2025 infographic example Christ Begins by Prof. Luke Thompson, in Christian Worship, hymn 385 – Lyric video The updated WELS Call Report Pitaka Phone Cases Wispr Flow Plaud The real number 1 – co-hosts Dr. Rachel Renno and Jason Schmidt 2025 Picks of the Week Next time Year 19 of WELSTech is ahead of us. What will it hold for tech-in-ministry? Get involved Add comments Send us an e-mail welstech@wels.net Join the WELSTech community: WELSTech Google Group WELSTech on Facebook WELSTech on Pinterest WELSTech on Instagram Add to the WELSTech wiki welstechwiki.gapps.wels.net Contribute to the #WELSTech Twitter conversation Follow us on Twitter – welstech, mspriggs and salliedraper Share with the Diigo group welstech

Derick Schaefer, author of CLI: A Practical Guide to Creating Modern Command-Line Interfaces, talks with host Robert Blumen about command-line interfaces old and new. Starting with a short review of the origin of commands in the early unix systems, they trace the evolution of commands into modern CLIs. Following the historic rise, fall, and re-emergence of CLIs, they consider innovative examples such as git, github, WordPress, and warp. Schaefer clarifies whether commands are the same as CLIs and then discusses a range of topics, including implementation languages, packages in the golang ecosystem for CLI development, CLIs and APIs, CLIs and AIs, AI tooling versus MCP, the object-command pattern, command flags, API authentication, whether CLIs should be stateless, and output formats - json, rich text. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine.

In this episode, Nathan Wrigley interviews Brian Coords, Developer Advocate at WooCommerce, about his career path, WooCommerce's recent rebranding, and its approach to developer relations. They discuss how WooCommerce balances its open source ethos, support challenges, and global reach, as well as the platform's growing focus on AI and enhanced integration with WordPress Core. Brian also shares insights into upcoming features and the evolving landscape of e-commerce, emphasising WooCommerce's adaptability and strong community connections. If you want to hear how WooCommerce and WordPress are responding to a rapidly changing tech environment, this episode is for you.

Have you ever found yourself loving the work of therapy, but feeling frustrated by systems that make it difficult for your clients to receive the help they need? Dana reached that crossroads and made a brave, intentional leap toward a practice that supports both her clinical values and her personal well-being. In this podcast episode, Dana and I talk about her path into psychotherapy, and what it looked like to slowly and thoughtfully transition from hospital work into full-time private practice.  We also dive into learning SEO as a solo practitioner, using AI without losing your human voice, and why giving your practice time to grow organically can be a powerful choice. There's so much practical wisdom in this conversation, and I'm excited for you to listen in! MEET DANA Dana is an occupational therapist who practices psychotherapy and the owner of Cedar Tree Therapy, a private practice in Whitby, Ontario. With close to a decade of mental health experience, Dana sees individuals with anxiety, eating disorders, and OCD. Learn more about Dana on her private practice website and Psychology Today profile.  In this episode:  Dana's academic background and current practice Going from clinical work to private practice  How Dana's private practice has evolved  The therapist book club  Researching marketing and SEO best practices Dana's advice for listeners  Dana's academic background and current practice  While Dana's private practice is situated in Whitby, Ontario, she completed her Master's degree in occupational therapy at McGill University in Montreal.  'I came back to Ontario after finishing my Master's, and in Ontario specifically … occupational therapists are one of the six regulated healthcare professionals that can practice controlled active psychotherapy. So, my practice is entirely psychotherapy, and my license type is that I just happen to be an occupational therapist.' - Dana Etherington Due to Ontario's regulatory laws, Dana can practice psychotherapy with an occupational therapy background. Remember to always check your province's regulations when planning your future Canadian private practice! The bridge between Dana's occupational therapy background and her current psychotherapy-focused practice is built on her appreciation for her clients. 'I loved spending the day getting to know people, and it felt like such an honor to hear people's stories. From then on, I knew that was how I wanted my career to go, and it feels so special to be trusted by clients to hear some really complicated and vulnerable parts of their lives.' - Dana Etherington  Going from clinical work to private practice After graduating, Dana didn't immediately go into private practice. She first spent time working at a psychiatric hospital beforehand. 'I was working my nine-to-five at the psychiatric hospital, and then I started my private practice part-time. I'd see maybe four clients a week after I was done with my hours at the hospital.' - Dana Etherington  Dana felt frustrated by the systemic barriers that made it difficult for people who needed support and help to find it, and that passion encouraged her to begin offering therapy in her own Ontario private practice. When Dana became a mother, she knew that she had to choose between working in the hospital and committing to her private practice.  'I knew I couldn't go on working both these jobs any longer. I was at this point where I had to make a choice: I either had to leave private practice behind or I had to jump in with both feet. So, I chose to jump in … And I have been full-time ever since 2023!' - Dana Etherington  How Dana's private practice has evolved 'I think it's the best decision I've ever made. It allows me to be the therapist I want to be, and also the mother that I want to be, too. It offers me that flexibility, it allows me to have time and space to also take care of myself. I couldn't think of a better career choice for me.' - Dana Etherington Right now, Dana has an in-person office in downtown Brooklyn as well as sees clients online.  In terms of staff, Dana currently has a contractor. She is open to expanding one day, but not right now. At this moment in time, she enjoys the time, space, and energy, and is giving the practice the chance to grow organically.  The therapist book club As a way to create more community, Dana and some of her fellow therapy colleagues have decided to launch a local therapist's book club in one of the members' offices.  They meet in person over an evening once a month, where they can discuss therapy, private practice-related work, and books that they are collectively reading about their work and specialties.  Researching marketing and SEO best practices Since Dana is running her Canadian private practice, she threw herself into researching everything there is to know about SEO.  Some of the tips she has for listeners are:  Get clear on your niche  Don't be afraid to commit to your niche  Try as best you can to consider what your ideal client is Googling when they are looking for someone like you to help them  When it comes to using AI, Dana recommends it for creating content that you may use for marketing, such as blogs. However, always humanize your work, because SEO is strongest when it is person-written and person-focused.  Dana's advice for listeners  Remember that marketing is part of your job now. It is not an extra luxury piece; it is part of reaching your ideal client and making a positive impact in the community around you. So, don't fear it, embrace it! Connect with me: Instagram Website  Resources mentioned and useful links: Encore: Jillian Bagan: Growing a Queer-Informed Practice | EP 183 Learn more about the tools and deals that I love and use for my Canadian private practice Sign up for my free e-course on How to Start an Online Canadian Private Practice Jane App (use code FEARLESS2MO for two months free) Create your website with WordPress!  Learn more about Dana on her private practice website and Psychology Today profile Rate, review, and subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, and TuneIn

This episode kicks off the new year with reflections on WordPress' most-read news of 2025, covering both community achievements and challenges. The conversation explores resolutions, AI-powered tools for WordPress and app building, plugin submission issues, and the evolving role of AI in web development. Updates touch on upcoming WordPress releases, event schedules, and initiatives like the Zeel Memorial Scholarship, all while highlighting the importance of collaboration, innovation, and maintaining a positive, supportive community.

New Season's first episode. In this week's show there's some confession and then an insight on what a horizontal analysis brought forth about backlinks for semantic graph.Last week's episodehttps://www.confessionsofanseo.com/podcast/helpful-content-analysis-tool-vizzex-season-5-episode-51/⁠Mentioned in the show⁠Test Semantic Software on Wordpress. Apply to be a part of the beta for Vizzex. ⁠⁠https://vizzex.ai/⁠⁠Tools that I use and recommend:Indexzilla -⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.indexzilla.io⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (indexing technology)GSC Tool -⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/gsctool⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠SEO in ATX ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠- SEO as a serviceYoutube Channel -⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Confessions of An SEO®⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://g.co/kgs/xXDzBNf⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠-------- Crawl or No Crawl Knowledge panelInterested in supporting this work and any seo testing?Subscribe to Confessions of an SEO™ wherever you get your podcasts. Your subscribing and download sends the message that you appreciate what is being shared and helping others find Confessions of an SEO™An easy place to leave a review ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/confessions-of-an-seo-1973881⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠You can find me on⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Carolyn Holzman⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Linkedin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠American Way Media⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Google Directly⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠AmericanWayMedia.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Consulting AgencyNeed Help With an Indexation Issue? - reach out Text me here - 512-222-3132Music from Uppbeathttps://uppbeat.io/t/doug-organ/fugue-stateLicense code: HESHAZ4ZOAUMWTUA

How do you save a startup when growth flatlines? Itai Sadan, co-founder of Duda, reveals the two critical pivots that saved his company: shifting from mobile-only to responsive design, and the controversial decision to ignore 50% of his customers (small businesses) to focus entirely on agencies. In this interview, Itai explains why AI is the new SEO, how to optimize your website for ChatGPT search, and why the combination of AI and human creativity is the future of web design. He also shares the hard truth about competing with giants like Wix and WordPress and why founders must sometimes make painful decisions to survive. Check out the company: https://duda.co

To kick off the New Year, I wanted to share this convo I had recently for my email/DNS partner specialist Amr Selim which we recorded for his podcast where we do a recap of my journey from cabinet maker/drummer to designer/agency owner to course creator/community builder.We also get into how different the industry of web design is today in 2026 compared to when I got started in 2010. But also, how many timeless practices and strategies work today like they did back then.We also cover where AI is, how it's affecting (or not affecting) web designers, how to utilize it with clients, where the DIY market is and more!Head to the show notes to get all links and resources we mentioned, along with a full transcription of this episode at joshhall.co/412

This week I Share What 2026 Is Already Teaching Us [powerpress]

In this episode of the Private Practice Elevation Podcast, you'll discover how the evolving world of SEO and AI is changing the way therapy practices grow online.  Daniel Fava sits down with Chris Morin of Moonraker AI to explore actionable SEO strategies, the future of search, and how to prepare your private practice website for the age of AI-powered discovery. Therapists are often overwhelmed by conflicting SEO advice and unsure how to adapt to the fast-changing world of online search.  Many feel stuck using outdated tactics or relying on blog content that takes too long to approve and publish. This episode demystifies what's working now in SEO and how therapists can keep their websites relevant, visible, and converting. You might think blog posts are the backbone of a strong SEO strategy.  But Chris and Daniel discuss why blog content may no longer be the best place to focus your energy, and what to prioritize instead to rank higher and connect with your ideal clients. Today Daniel is talking with Chris Morin, the founder of Moonraker AI, an SEO agency that helps therapists build visibility and client trust through smart, user-focused online strategies.  Chris brings years of experience, a personal connection to mental health work, and a wealth of insight into the future of search. This Episode Answers… 1. What are the most important elements of modern SEO for therapy websites? Chris breaks down the pillars of effective SEO today: fast, secure websites; clear site structure with specialty, modality, and location pages; and a focus on relevance over keyword stuffing. He explains how Google rewards clarity and penalizes outdated tactics. 2. How is AI changing the way people find therapists online? AI-generated answers and voice search are reshaping how people search for help. Chris explains how modular, conversational content (like expanded FAQs) can help your website appear in AI-generated results, even if you're not on page one of Google. 3. Should therapists still prioritize blogging for SEO? Not necessarily. Both Daniel and Chris talk about why blog posts aren't the silver bullet they used to be, and how homepage optimization, clear service pages, and press mentions can have a greater impact on SEO and conversion. Other Key Takeaways: Clear, structured content is essential: one service per page, with a focused keyword. Over-optimized pages may now hurt your rankings. Aligning your website with your Google Business Profile is more important than ever. Apple Maps and Bing Places are critical for visibility (not just Google Maps). Press releases and consistent citations build trust with search engines. AI chatbots (like Moonraker's Engage) may soon replace contact forms, boosting conversion. Therapists must embrace a conversational, user-centered tone online to connect and convert.   Links mentioned in this episode: Moonraker Website Get an SEO Assessment for your website   Watch The Video:   This Episode Is Brought To You By: RevKey specializes in Google Ads management for therapists, expertly connecting you with your ideal clients. They focus on getting quality referrals that keep your team busy and your practice growing.   Visit RevKey.com/podcasts for a free Google Ads consultation       Alma is on a mission to simplify access to high-quality, affordable mental health care by giving providers the tools they need to build thriving in-network private practices. When providers join Alma, they gain access to insurance support, teletherapy software, client referrals, automated billing and scheduling tools, and a vibrant community of clinicians who come together for education, training, and events.   Learn more about building a thriving private practice with Alma at helloalma.com/elevation. About Chris Moran   Before marketing, I was a massage therapist for over 15 years, providing chair massage to local businesses. That work connected me to countless wellness providers and I had the opportunity to experience firsthand their deep desire to be of service in a world that desperately needs healing.   I also witnessed how so many amazing practitioners struggle to connect with the clients who need their services the most. A highly intuitive group, many feel that digital marketing is overwhelming, causing them to avoid the necessary steps to establish an online presence.   My goal is to help therapists and wellness providers boost their online visibility and connect with their ideal clients so they can build the practice of their dreams.   About Daniel Fava Daniel Fava is the owner and founder of  Private Practice Elevation, a website and SEO agency focused on helping private practice owners create websites that increase their online visibility and attract more clients. Private Practice Elevation offers web design services, SEO (search engine optimization), and WordPress support to help private practice owners grow their businesses through online marketing.    Daniel lives in Atlanta, GA with his wife Liz, and two energetic boys. When he's not working he enjoys hiking by the river, watching hockey, and enjoying a dram of bourbon.  

Introducing Rob Ruiz Meet Rob Ruiz, a seasoned Senior Full Stack Developer with nearly two decades of expertise in WordPress innovation and open-source magic. As the Lead Maintainer of WP Rig since 2020, Rob has been the driving force behind this groundbreaking open-source framework that empowers developers to craft high-performance, accessible, and progressively enhanced WordPress themes with ease. WP Rig isn’t just a starter theme—it’s a turbocharged toolkit that bundles modern build processes, linting, optimization, and testing to deliver lightning-fast, standards-compliant sites that shine on any device. Show Notes For more on Rob and WP Rig, check out these links: LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robcruiz WP Rig Official Site: https://wprig.io GitHub Repository: https://github.com/wprig/wprig Latest Releases: https://github.com/wprig/wprig/releases WP Rig 3.1 Announcement: https://wprig.io/wp-rig-3-1/ Transcript: Topher DeRosia: Hey everybody. Welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m your host Topher DeRosia, and with me today I have- Rob Ruiz: Rob Ruiz. Topher: Rob. You and I have talked a couple of times, once recently, and I learned about a project you’re working on, but not a whole lot about you. Where do you live? What do you do for a living? Rob: Yeah, for sure. Good question. Although I’m originally from Orlando, Florida, I’ve been living in Omaha, Nebraska for a couple of decades now. So I’m pretty much a native. I know a lot of people around here and I’ve been fairly involved in various local communities over the years. I’m a web developer. Started off as a graphic designer kind of out of college, and then got interested in web stuff. And so as a graphic designer turned future web developer, I guess, I was very interested in content management systems because it made the creating and managing of websites very, very easy. My first couple of sites were Flash websites, sites with macro media Flash. Then once I found content management systems, I was like, “Wow, this is way easier than coding the whole thing from scratch with Flash.” And then all the other obvious benefits that come from that. So I originally started with Joomla, interestingly enough, and used Joomla for about two or three years, then found WordPress and never looked back. And so I’ve been using WordPress ever since. As the years have gone on, WordPress has enabled me to slowly transition from a more kind of web designer, I guess, to a very full-blown web developer and software engineer, and even software architect to some degree. So here we are many years later. Topher: There’s a big step from designer to developer. How did that go for you? I’m assuming you went to PHP. Although if you were doing Flash sites, you probably learned ActionScript. Rob: Yeah. Yeah. That was very convenient when I started learning JavaScript. It made it very easy to learn JavaScript faster because I already had a familiarity with ActionScript. So there’s a lot of similarities there. But yeah. Even before I started doing PHP, I started learning more HTML and CSS. I did do a couple of static websites between there that were just like no content management system at all. So I was able to kind of sharpen my sword there with the CSS and HTML, which wasn’t particularly hard. But yeah, definitely, the PHP… that was a big step was PHP because it’s a proper logical programming language. There was a lot there I needed to unpack, and so it took me a while. I had to stick to it and really rinse and repeat before I finally got my feet under me. Topher: I can imagine. All right. So then you work for yourself or you freelance or do you have a real job, as it were? Rob: Currently, I do have a real job. Currently, I’m working at a company called Bold Orange out of Minneapolis. They’re a web agency. But I kind of bounce around from a lot of different jobs. And then, yes, I do freelance on the side, and I also develop my own products as well for myself and my company. Topher: Cool. Bold Orange sounds familiar. Who owns that? Rob: To be honest, I don’t know who the owners are. It’s just a pretty big web agency out of Minneapolis. They are a big company. You could just look them up at boldorange.com. They work for some pretty big companies. Topher: Cool. All right. You and I talked last about WP Rig. Give me a little background on where that came from and how you got it. Rob: Yeah, for sure. Well, there was a period of time where I was working at a company called Proxy Bid that is in the auction industry, and they had a product or a service — I don’t know how you want to look at that —called Auction Services. That product is basically just building WordPress sites for auction companies. They tasked us with a way to kind of standardize those websites essentially. And what we realized is that picking a different theme for every single site made things difficult to manage and increase tech debt by a lot. So what we were tasked with was, okay, if we’re going to build our own theme that we’re just going to make highly dynamic so we can make it look different from site to site. So we want to build it, but we want to build it smart and we want to make it reusable and maintainable. So let’s find a good framework to build this on so that we can maintain coding standards and end up with as little tech debt as possible, essentially. That’s when I first discovered WP Rig. In my research, I came across it and others. We came across Roots Sage and some of the other big names, I guess. It was actually a team exercise. We all went out and looked for different ones and studied different ones and mine that I found was WP Rig. And I was extremely interested in that one over the other ones. Interestingly enough- Topher: Can you tell me why over the other ones? Rob: That’s a great question. Yeah. I really liked the design patterns. I really liked the focus on WordPress coding standards. So having a system built in that checked all the code against WordPress coding standards was cool. I loved the compiling transpiling, whatever, for CSS and JavaScript kind of built in. That sounded really, really interesting. The fact that there was PHP unit testing built into it. So there’s like a starter testing framework built in that’s easy to extend so that you can add additional unit tests as your theme grows. We really wanted to make sure… because we were very into CICD pipelines. So we wanted to make sure that as developers were adding or contributing to any themes that we built with this, that we could have automated tests run and automated builds run, and just automate as much as possible. So WP rig just seemed like something that gave us those capabilities right out of the box. So that was a big thing. And I loved the way that they did it. Roots Sage does something similar, but they use their blade templating engine built in there. We really wanted to stick to something that was a bit more standard WordPress so that there wasn’t like a large knowledge overhead so that we didn’t have to say like, okay, if we’re bringing on other developers, like junior developers work on it, oh, it would be nice if you use Laravel too because we use this templating engine in all of our themes. We didn’t want to have to worry about that essentially. It was all object-oriented and all that stuff too. That’s what looked interesting to me. We ended up building a theme with WP Rig. I don’t know what they ended up doing with it after that, because I ended up getting let go shortly thereafter because the company had recently been acquired. Also, this was right after COVID too. So there was just a lot of moving parts and changing things at the time. So I ended up getting let go. But literally a week after I got let go, I came across a post on WP Tavern about how this framework was looking for new maintainers. Basically, this was a call put out by Morton, the original author of WP Rig. He reached out to WP Tavern and said, “Look, we’re not interested in maintaining this thing anymore, but it’s pretty cool. We like what we’ve built. And so we’re looking for other people to come in and adopt it essentially.” So I joined a Zoom meeting with a handful of other individuals that were also interested in this whole endeavor, and Morton reached out to me after the call and basically just said, “I looked you up. I liked some of the input that you had during the meeting. Let’s talk a little bit more.” And then that eventually led to conversations about me essentially taking the whole project over entirely. So, the branding, the hosting of the website, being lead maintainer on the project. Basically, gave me the keys to the kingdom in terms of GitHub and everything. So that’s how it ended up going in terms of the handoff between Morton and I. And I’m very grateful to him. They really created something super cool and I was honored to take it over and kind of, I don’t know, keep it going, I guess. Topher: I would be really curious. I don’t think either of us have the answer. I’d be curious to know how similar that path is to other project handoffs. It’s different from like an acquisition. You didn’t buy a plugin from somebody. It was kind of like vibes, I guess. Rob: It was like vibes. It was very vibey. I guess that’s probably the case in an open source situation. It’s very much an open source project. It’s a community-driven thing. It’s for everybody by everybody. I don’t know if all open source community projects roll like that, but that’s how this one worked out. There was some amount of ownership on Morton’s behalf. He did hire somebody to do the branding for WP Rig and the logo. And then obviously he was paying for stuff like the WPrig.io domain and the hosting through SiteGround and so on and so forth. So, we did have to transfer some of that and I’ve taken over those, I guess, financial burdens, if you want to think of it like that. But I’m totally okay with it. Topher: All right. You sort of mentioned some of the things Rig does, compiling and all that kind of stuff. Can you tell me… we didn’t discuss this before. I’m sitting at my desk and I think I want a website. How long does it take to go from that to looking at WordPress and logging into the admin with Rig? Rob: Okay. Rig is not an environment management system like local- Topher: I’m realizing my mistake. Somebody sends me a design in Figma. How long does it take me to go from that to, I’m not going to say complete because I mean, that’s CSS, but you know, how long does it take me to get to the point where I’m looking at a theme that is mine for the client that I’m going to start converting? Rob: Well, if you’re just looking for a starting point, if you’re just like, okay, how long does it take to get to like, okay, here’s my blank slate and I’m ready to start adopting all of these rules that are set up in Figma or whatever, I mean, you’re looking at maybe 5 minutes, 10 minutes, something like that. It’s pretty automated. You just need some simple knowledge of Git. And then there are some prerequisites to using WP Rig. You do have to have composer installed because we do leverage some Composer packages to some of it, although to be honest, you could probably get away with not using Composer. You just have to be okay with sacrificing some of the tools the WP Rig assumes you’re going to have. And then obviously Node. You have to have Node installed. A lot of our documentation assumes that you have NPM, that you’re using NPM for all your Nodes or your package management. But we did recently introduce support for Bun. And so you can use Bun instead of NPM, which is actually a lot faster and better in many ways. Topher: Okay. A lot of my audience are not developers, users, or light developers, like they’ll download a theme, hack a template, whatever. Is this for them? Am I boring those people right now? Rob: That’s a great question. I mean, and I think this is an interesting dichotomy and paradigm in the WordPress ecosystem, because you’ve got kind of this great divide. At least this is something I’ve noticed in my years in the WordPress community is you have many people that are not coders or developers that are very interested in expanding their knowledge of WordPress, but it’s strictly from a more of a marketing perspective where it’s like, I just want to know how to build websites with WordPress and how to use it to achieve my goals online from a marketing standpoint. You have that group of people, and then you have this other group of people that are very developer centric that want to know how to extend WordPress and how to empower those other people that we just discussed. Right? Topher: Right. Rob: So, yeah, that’s a very good question. I would say that WP Rig is very much designed for the developers, not for the marketers. The assumption there is that you’re going to be doing some amount of coding. Now, can you get away with doing a very light amount of coding? Yes. Yes, you can. I mean, if you compare what you’re going to get out of that assumed workflow to something that you would get off like Theme Forest or whatever, it’s going to be a night and day difference because those theme, Forest Themes, have hours, hundreds, sometimes hundreds of hours of development put into them. So, you’re not going to just out of the box immediately get something that is comparable to that. Topher: You need to put in those hundreds of hours of development to make a theme. Rob: As of today, yes. That may change soon though. Topher: Watch this space. Rob: That’s all I’ll say. Topher: Okay. So now we know who it’s for. I’m assuming there’s a website for it. What is it? Rob: Yeah. If you go to WPrig.io, we have a homepage that shows you all the features that are there in WP Rig. And then there’s a whole documentation area that helps people get up and running with WP Rig because there is a small learning curve there that’s pretty palatable for anybody who’s familiar with modern development workflows. So that is a thing. So the type of person that this is designed for anybody that wants to make a theme for anything. Let’s say you’re a big agency and you pull in a big client and that client wants something extremely custom and they come to you with Figma designs. Sure, you could go out there and find some premium theme and try to like child theme and overhaul that if you want. But in many situations, I would say in most situations, if you’re working from a Figma design that’s not based off of another theme already that’s just kind of somebody else’s brainchild, then you’re probably going to want to start from scratch. And so the idea here is that this is something to replace an approach, like underscores an approach. Actually, WP Pig was based off of underscores. The whole concept of it, as Morton explained it to me, was that he wanted to build an underscores that was more modern and full-featured from a development standpoint. Topher: Does it have any opinions about Gutenberg? Rob: It does now, but it did not when I took it over because Gutenberg did not exist yet when I took over WP Rig. Topher: Okay. What are its opinions? Rob: Yeah, sure. The opinion right out of the gate is that you can use Gutenberg as an editor and it has support like CSS rules in it for the standard blocks. So you should be able to use regular Gutenberg blocks in your theme and they should look just fine. There’s no resets in there. It doesn’t start from scratch. There’s not a bunch of styling you have to do for the blocks necessarily. Now, if you go to the full site editing or block-based mentality here, there are some things you need to do in WP Rig to convert the out-of-the-box WP Rig into another paradigm essentially. Right when you pull WP Rig, the assumption is you’re building what most people would refer to as a hybrid theme. The theme supports API or whatever, and the assumption is that you’re not going to be using the site editor. You’re just going to kind of do traditional WordPress, but you might be using Gutenberg for your content. So you’re just using Gutenberg kind of to author your pages and your posts and stuff like that, but not necessarily the whole site. WP Rig has the ability to kind of transform itself into other paradigms. So the first paradigm we built out was the universal theme approach. And the idea there is that you get a combination of the full site editing capabilities. But then you also have the traditional menu manager and the settings customizer framework or whatever is still there, right? These are things that don’t exist in a standard block-based theme. So I guess an easy example would be like the 2025 WordPress theme that comes right out of the box. It comes installed in WordPress. That is a true block-based theme, not a universal theme. So it doesn’t have those features because the assumption there is that it doesn’t need those features. You can kind of transform WP Rig into a universal theme that’s kind of a hybrid between a block-based and a classic theme. And then it can also transform into a strictly block-based theme as well. So following the same architecture as like the WordPress 2025 theme or Ollie or something like that is also a true block-based theme as well. So you can easily convert or transform the starting point of WP Rig into either of those paradigms if that’s the type of theme you’re setting out to build. Topher: Okay. That sounds super flexible. How much work is it to do that? Rob: It’s like one command line. Previously we had some tutorials on the website that showed you step-by-step, like what you needed to change about the theme to do that. You would have to add some files, delete some files, edit some code, add some theme supports into the base support class and some other stuff. I have recently, as of like a year and a half ago or a year ago, created a command line or a command that you can type into the command line that basically does that entire conversion process for you in like the blink of an eye. It takes probably a second to a second and a half to perform those changes to the code and then you’re good to go. It is best to do that conversion before you start building out your whole theme. It’s not impossible to do it after. But you’re more likely to run into problems or conflicts if you’ve already set out building your whole theme under one paradigm, and then you decide how the project you want to switch over to block-based or whatever. You’re likely to run into the need to refactor a bunch of stuff in that situation. So it is ideal to make that choice extremely early on in the process of developing your theme. But either way it’ll still work. That’s just one of the many tools that exist in WP Rig to transform it or convert it in several ways. That’s just one example. There are other examples of ways that Rig kind of converts itself to other paradigms as well. Topher: Yeah. All right. In my development life, I’ve had two parts to it. And one is the weekend hobbyist, or I download cadence and I whip something up in 20 minutes because I just want to experiment and the other is agency life where everything’s in Git, things are compiled, there are versions, blah, blah, blah. This sounds very friendly to that more professional pathway. Rob: Absolutely. Yes. Or, I mean, there’s another situation here too. If you’re a company who develops themes and publishes them to a platform like ThemeForest or any other platform, perhaps you’re selling themes on your own website, whatever, if you’re making things for sale, there’s no reason you couldn’t use WP Rig to build your themes. We have a bundle process that bundles your theme for publication or publishing. Whether you’re an agency or whether you’re putting your theme out for sale, it doesn’t matter, during that bundle process, it does actually white label the entire code base to where there’s no mention of WP Rig in the code whatsoever. Let’s say you were to build a theme that you wanted to put up for sale because you have some cool ideas. Say, page transitions now are completely supported in all modern or in most modern browsers. And when I say print page transitions, for those that are in the know, I am talking about not single page app page transitions, but through website page transitions. You can now do that. Let’s say you were like, “Hey, I’m feeling ambitious and I want to put out some new theme that comes with these page transitions built in,” and that’s going to be fancy on ThemeForest when people look at my demo, people might want to buy that. You could totally use WP Rig to build that out into a theme and the bundle process will white label all of the code. And then when people buy your theme and download that code, if they’re starting to go through and look through your code, they’re not going to have any way of knowing that it was built with WP Rig unless they’re familiar with the base WP Rig architecture, like how it does its object-oriented programming. It might be familiar with the patterns that it’s using and be able to kind of discern like, okay, well, this is the same pattern WP Rig uses, so high likelihood it was built with WP Rig. But they’re not going to be able to know by reading through the code. It’s not going to say WP Rig everywhere. It’s going to have the theme all over the place in the code. Topher: Okay. So then is that still WP Rig code? It just changed its labels? Rob: Yeah. Topher: So, it’s not like you’re exporting HTML, CSS and JavaScript? The underlying Rig framework is still there. Rob: Yeah. During the bundle process, it is bundling CSS and HTML. Well, HTML in the case of a block-based theme. But, yeah, it is bundling your PHP, your CSS, your JavaScript into the theme that you’re going to let people download when they buy it, or that you’re going to ship to your whatever client’s website. But all that code is going to be transpiled. In the case of CSS and JavaScript, there’s only going to be minified versions of that code in that theme. The source code is not actually going to be in there. Topher: This sounds pretty cool. You mentioned some stuff might be coming. You don’t have to tell me what it is, but do you have a timeline? When should we be watching for the next cool thing from Rig? Rob: Okay, cool. Well, I’m going to keep iterating on Rig forever. Regardless of any future products that might be built on WP Rig, WP Rig will always and forever remain an open source product for anybody to use for free and we, I, and possibly others in the future will continue to update it and support it over time. We just recently put out 3.1. You could expect the 3.2 anytime in the next six months to a year, probably closer to six months. One feature I’m looking at particularly closely right now is the new stuff coming out in version 6.9 of WordPress around the various APIs that are there. I think one of them is called the form… There’s a field API and a form API or view API or something like that. So WP Rig comes with a React-based settings framework in it. So if you want your theme to have a bunch of settings in it to make it flexible for whoever buys your theme, you can use this settings framework to easily create a bunch of fields, and then that framework will automatically manage all your fields and store all the data from those fields and make it easy to retrieve the values of the input on those fields, without knowing any React at all. Now, if you know React, you can go in there and, you know, embellish what’s already there, but it takes a JSON approach. So if you just understand JSON, you can go in and change the JSON for the framework, and that will automatically add fields into the settings framework. So you don’t even have to know React to extend the settings page if you want. That will likely get an overhaul using these new APIs being introduced into Rig. Topher: All right. How often have you run into something where, “Oh, look, WordPress has a new feature, I need to rebuild my system”? Rob: Over the last four or five years, it’s happened a lot because, yeah, I mean, like I said, when I first took this thing over, Gutenberg had not even been introduced yet. So, you had the introduction of Gutenberg and blocks. That was one thing. Then this whole full site editing became a thing, which later became the site editor. So that became a whole thing. Then all these various APIs. I mean, it happens quite frequently. So I’ve been working to keep it modern and up to date over the past four years and it’s been an incredible learning experience. It not only keeps my WordPress knowledge extremely sharp, but I’ve also learned how various other toolkits are built. That’s been the interesting thing. From a development standpoint, there’s two challenges here. One of the challenges is staying modern on the WordPress side of things. For instance, WordPress coding standards came out with a version 3 and then a version 3.1 about two years ago. I had to update WP Rig to leverage those modern coding standards. So that’s one example is as WordPress changes, the code in WP Rig also needs to change. Or for instance, if new CSS standards change, right, new CSS properties come out, it is ideal for the base CSS in WP Rig, meaning the CSS that you get right out of the box with it, comes with some of these, for instance, CSS grid, Flexbox, stuff like that. If I was adopting a theme framework to build a theme on, I would expect some of that stuff to be in there. And those things were extremely new when I first took over WP Rig and were not all baked in there essentially. So I’ve had to add a lot of that over time. Now there’s another side to this, which is not just keeping up with WordPress and CSS and PHP, 8. whatever, yada yada yada. You’ve also got the toolkit. There are various node packages and composer packages of power WP Rig and the process in which it does the transpiling, the bundling, the automated manipulation of your code during various aspects of the usage of WP Rig is a whole nother set of challenges because now you have to learn concepts like, well, how do I write custom node scripts? Right? Like there were no WP CLI commands built into WP Rig when I first took it over. Now there’s a whole list. There’s a whole library of WP CLI commands that come in Rig right out of the gate. And so I’ve had to learn about that. So just various things that come with knowing how do you automate the process of converting code, that’s something that was completely foreign to me when I first took over WP Rig. That’s been another incredible learning experience is understanding like what’s the difference between Webpack and Gulp. I didn’t know, right? I would tell people I’m using Gulp and WP Rig and they would be like, “Well, why don’t you just use Webpack?” and I would say, “I don’t know. I don’t know what the difference is.” So over time I could figure out what are the differences? Why aren’t we using Webpack? And I’m glad I spent some time on that because it turns out Webpack is not the hottest thing anymore, so I just skipped right over all that. When I overhauled for version 3, we’re now not using Gulp anymore as of 3.1. We’re now using more of a Vite-like process, far more modern than Webpack and far better and faster and sleeker and lighter. I had to learn a bunch about what powers Vite. What is Vite doing under the hood that we might be able to also do in WP Rig, but do it in a WordPress way. Because Vite is a SaaS tool. If you’re building a SaaS, like React with a… we’re not a SaaS. I guess a spa is a better term to use here. If you’re building a single page application with React or view or belt or whatever, right, then knowing what Vite is and just using Vite right out of the box is perfect. But it doesn’t translate perfectly to WordPress land because WordPress has its own opinions. And so I did have to do some dissecting there and figure out what to keep and what to not keep to what to kind of set aside so that WordPress can keep doing what WordPress does the way WordPress likes to do it, but also improve on how we’re doing some of the compiling and transpiling and the manipulation of the code during these various. Topher: All right. I want to pivot a little bit to some personal-ish questions. Rob: Okay. Topher: This is a big project. I’m sure it takes up plenty of your time. How scalable is that in your life? Do you want to do this for the rest of your life? Rob: That’s a fantastic question. I don’t know about the rest of my life. I mean, I definitely want to do web development for the rest of my life because the web has, let’s be honest, it’s transformed everyone’s way of life, whether you’re a web developer or not. You know, the fact that we have the internet in our pocket now, you know, it has changed everything. Apps, everything. It’s all built on the web. So I certainly want to be involved in the web the rest of my life. Do I want to keep doing WordPress the rest of my life? I don’t know. Do I want to keep doing WP Rig the rest of my life? I don’t know. But I will say that you bring up a very interesting point, which is it does take up a lot of time and also trust in open source over the past four or five years I would argue has diminished a little bit as a result of various events that have occurred over the past two or three years. I mean, we could cite the whole WP Engine Matt Mullerwig thing. We can also cite what’s going on with Oracle and JavaScript. Well, I mean, there’s many examples of this. I mean, we can cite the whole thing that happened… I mean, there’s various packages out there that are used and developed and open source to anybody, and some of them are going on maintained and it’s causing security vulnerabilities and degradation and all this stuff. So it’s a very important point. One thing I started thinking about after considering that in relation to WP Rig was I noticed that there’s usually a for-profit arm of any of these frameworks that seems to extend the lifespan of it. Let’s just talk about React, for example, React is an open source JavaScript framework, but it’s used by Facebook and Facebook is extremely for-profit. So companies that are making infrastructural or architectural decisions, they will base their choice on whether or not to use a framework largely on how long they think this framework is going to remain relevant or valid or maintained, right? A large part of that is, well, is there a company making money off of this thing? Because if there is, the chances- Topher: They’re going to keep doing that. Rob: They’re going to keep doing it. It’s going to stay around. That’s good. I think that’s healthy. A lot of people that like open source and want everything to be free, they might look at something like that and say like, well, I don’t want you to make a paid version of it or there shouldn’t be a pro version. I think that’s a very short-sighted way of looking at that software and these innovations. I think a more experienced way of looking at it is if you want something to remain relevant and maintained for a long period of time, having a for-profit way in which it’s leveraged is a very good thing. I mean, let’s be real. Would WordPress still be what it is today if there wasn’t a wordpress.com or if WooCommerce wasn’t owned by Automattic or whatever, right? They’ll be on top. I mean, it’s obviously impossible to say, but my argument would be, probably not. I mean, look at what’s happened to the other content management systems out there. You know, Joomla Drupal. They don’t really have a flourishing, you know, paid pro service that goes with their thing that’s very popular, at least definitely not as popular as WordPress.com or WordPress VIP or some of these other things that exist out there. And so having something that’s making and generating money that can then contribute back into it the way Automattic has been doing with WordPress over these years has, in my opinion, been instrumental. I mean, people can talk smack about Gutenberg all they want, but let’s be real, it’s 2025, would you still feel that WordPress is an elegant solution if we were still working from the WYSIWYG and using the classic editor? And I know a lot of people are still using the classic editor and there’s classic for us, the fork and all that stuff. But I mean, that only makes sense in a very specific implementation of WordPress, a very specific paradigm. If you want to explore any of these other paradigms out there, that way of thinking about WordPress kind of falls apart pretty quickly. I, for one, am happy that Gutenberg exists. I’m very happy that Automattic continues. And I’m grateful, actually, that Automattic continues to contribute back into WordPress. And not just them, obviously there’s other companies, XWP, 10Up, all these other companies are also contributing as well. But I’m very grateful that this ecosystem exists and that there’s contribution going back in and it’s happening from companies that are making money with this. And I think that’s vital. All that to say that WP Rig may and likely will have paid products in the future that leverage WP Rig. So that’s not to say that WP Rig will eventually cost money. That’s just to say that eventually people can expect other products to come out in the future that will be built on WP Rig and incentivize the continued contributions back into WP Rig. The open source version of WP Rig. Topher: That’s cool. I think that’s wise. If you want anything to stay alive, you have to feed it. Rob: That’s right. Topher: I had some more questions but I had forgotten them because I got caught up in your answer. Rob: Oh, thank you. I’ll take that as a compliment. I mean, my answer was eloquent. But I’m happy to expand on anything, know you, WordPress related, me related, you know, whether it comes to the ecosystem in WordPress, the whole WordCamp meetup thing is very interesting. I led the WP Omaha meetup for many years here in Omaha, Nebraska and I also led the WordCamp, the organizing of WordCamp here in Omaha for several years as well. That whole community, the whole ecosystem, at least in America seems to have largely fallen apart. I don’t know if you want to talk about that at all. But yeah, I’m ready to dive into any topics. Topher: I’m going to have one more question and then we’re going to wrap up. And it was that you were talking about all the things you had to learn. I’m sure there were nights where you were looking at your computer thinking, “Oh man, I had it working, now I gotta go learn a new thing.” I would love for you to go back in time and blog all of that if you would. But given that you can’t, I would be interested in a blog moving forward, documenting what you’re learning, how you’re learning it and starting maybe with a post that’s summarizes all of that. Obviously, that’s up to you and how you want to spend your time, but I think it’d be really valuable to other people starting a project, picking up somebody else’s project to see what the roadmap might look like. You know what I mean? Rob: For sure. Well, I can briefly summarize what I’ve learned over the years and where I’m at today with how I do this kind of stuff. I will say that a lot of the improvements to WP Rig that have happened over the last year or two would not be possible without the advent of AI. Topher: Interesting. Rob: That’s a fancy way of saying that I have been by coding a lot of WP Rig lately. If you know how to use AI, it is extremely powerful and it can help you do many things very quickly that previously would have taken much longer or more manpower. So, yeah, perhaps if there was like five, six, seven people actively, excuse me, actively contributing to WP Rig, then this type of stuff would have been possible previously, but that’s not the case. There is one person, well, one main contributor to WP Rig today and you’re talking to them. There are a handful of other people that have been likely contributing to WP Rig over the versions and you can find their contributions in the change log file in WP Rig. But those contributions have been extremely light compared to what I’ve been doing. I wouldn’t be able to do any of it without AI. I have learned my ability to learn things extremely rapidly has ramped up tenfold since I started learning how to properly leverage LLMs and AI. So that’s not to say that like, you know, WP Rig, all the code is just being completely written by AI and I’m just like. make it better, enter, and then like WP Rig is better. I wish it was that easy. It’s certainly not that. But when I needed to start asking some of these vital questions that I really didn’t have anyone to turn to to help answer them, I was able to turn to AI. For instance, let’s go back to the Webpack versus Gulp situation. Although Gulp is no longer used in WP Rig, you know, it was used in WP Rig until very recently. So I had to understand like, what is this system, how does it work, how do I extend it and how do I update it and all these things, right? And why aren’t we using WebPack and you know, is there validity to this criticism behind you should use webpack instead of Gulp or whatever, right? I was able to use AI to ask these questions and be able to get extremely good answers out of it and give me the direction I needed to make some of these kind of higher level decisions on like architecturally where should WP Rig go? It was through these virtual conversations with LLMs that I was able to refine the direction of WP Rig in a direction that is both modern and forward-thinking and architecturally sound. I learned a tremendous amount from AI about the architecture, about the code, about all of it. My advice to anybody that wants to extend their skill set a little bit in the development side of things is to leverage this new thing that we have in a way that is as productive as possible for you. So that’s going to vary from person to person. But for me, if I’m on a flight or if I’m stuck somewhere for a while, like, let’s say I got to take my kid to practice or something and I’m stuck there for an hour and I got to find some way to kill my time 9 times out of 10, I’m on my laptop or on my phone having conversations with Grok or ChatGPT or Gemini or whatever. I am literally refining… I’m just sitting there asking it questions that are on my mind that I wish I could ask somebody who’s like 10 times more capable than me. It has been instrumental. WP Rig wouldn’t be where it is today if it wasn’t for that. I would just say to anybody, especially now that it’s all on apps and you don’t have to be on a browser anymore, adopt that way of thinking. You know, if you’re on your lunch break or whatever and you have an hour lunch break and you only take 15 minutes to eat, what could you be doing with those other 45 minutes? You could just jump on this magical thing that we have now and start probing it for questions. Like, Hey, here’s what I know. Here’s what I don’t know. Fill these knowledge gaps for me.” And it is extremely good at doing that. Topher: So my question was, can you blog this and your answer told me that there’s more there that I want to hear. That’s the stuff that should be in your book when you write your book. Rob: I’m flattered that you would be interested in reading anything that I write. So thank you. I’ve written stuff in the past and it hasn’t gotten a lot of attention. But I also don’t have any platforms to market it either. But yeah, no, I made some… I’m sorry. Topher: I think your experience is valuable far beyond Rig or WordPress. If you abstract it out of a particular project to say, you know, I did this with a project, I learned this this way, I think that would be super valuable. Rob: Well, I will say that recently at my current job, I was challenged to create an end to end testing framework with Playwright that would speed up how long it takes to test things and also prevent, you know, to make things fail earlier, essentially, to prevent broken things from ending up in the wild, right, and having to catch them the hard way. I didn’t know a lot about Playwright, but I do know how toolkits work now because of WP Rig. And I was able to successfully in a matter of, I don’t know, three days, put together a starter kit for a test framework that we’re already using at work to test any website that we create for any client. It can be extended and it can be hooked into any CI CD pipeline and it generates reports for you and it does a whole bunch of stuff. I was able to do this relatively quickly. This knowledge, yes, does come in handy in other situations. Will I end up developing other toolkits like WP Rig in the future for other things? I guess if I can give any advice to anybody listening out there, another piece of advice I would give people is, you know, especially if you’re a junior developer and you’re still learning or whatever, or you’re just a marketing person and just want to have more control over the functionality side of what you’re creating or more insight into that so you could better, you know, manage projects or whatever. My advice would be to take on a small little project that is scoped relatively small that’s not too much for you to chew and go build something and do it with… Just doing that will be good. But if you can do it with the intent to then present it in some fashion, whether it be a blog article or creating a YouTube video or going to a meetup and giving a talk on it or even a lunch and learn at work or whatever, right, that will, in my experience, it will dramatically amplify how much you learn from that little pet project that’s kind of like a mini learning experience. And I highly encourage anybody out there to do that on the regular. Actually, no matter what your experience level is in development, I think you should do these things on a regular basis. Topher: All right. I’m going to wrap this up. I got to get back to work. You probably have to get back to work. Rob: Yeah. Topher: Thanks for talking. Rob: Thanks for having me, Topher. Really appreciate it. Topher: Where could people find you? WPrig.io?  Rob: Yeah, WPrig.io. WP rig has accounts on all of the major platforms and, even on Bluesky and Mastodon. You can look me up, Rob Ruiz. You can find me on LinkedIn. You can find me on all of those same platforms as well. You can add me on Facebook if you want, whatever. And I’m also in the WordPress Slack as well as Rob Ruiz. You can find me in the WordPress Slack. And then I’m on the WordPress Reddit and all that stuff. So yeah, reach out. If anybody wants to have any questions about Rig or anything else, I’m happy to engage.  Topher: Sounds good. All right, I’ll see you. Rob: All right, thanks, Topher. Have a good day. Topher: This has been an episode of the Hallway Chats podcast. I’m your host Topher DeRosia. Many thanks to our sponsor Nexcess. If you’d like to hear more Hallway Chats, please let us know on hallwaychats.com.