Matt Mullenweg Q&A

Matt Mullenweg Q&A at WordPress NYC Meetup at AlleyNYC on November 19 2013.
http://ma.tt/

http://www.meetup.com/WordPressNYC/events/134712802/

Webcast support: NYI http://nyi.net

More videos: http://wpnyc.org/video/

[applause] New York City

I love it here.

Seriously now. I have been spending a lot more time in New York. I will be here more

this year. I am very excited to meet you. There were two excellent presentations beforehand.

You guys already know what is in 3.7

Who knows what is in 3.8? [laughter]

I'll tell you a few things about 3.8

before we move on to questions and answers.

Or questions and we will talk about whatever.

The first thing you should know about 3.8 is that it's

coming out on December 12th.

That means that the code will freeze on December 5th

and the beta closes tomorrow at 4pm New York time.

If you want any enhancements or new stuff in 3.8 and it is

small enough to be a track ticket get it in before 4pm tomorrow. This is your last window.

Otherwise we have awesome update functionality and enhancements. Three big user interface things.

3.7 was largely an infrastructure release. Although the ... updates

were huge. I think in the future we'll talk about in 3.7 ten years from now

is actually language packs. It is going to be even huger. If that is a word.

For 3.8 it's a bunch of letters. An alphabet soup. We have MVC and THX and

D-A-S-H. DASH is a new wp-admin index.php

An iteration. We are cleaning it up because we haven't looked at that page in many years.

THX stands for theme experience essentially. And the appearance page

is now the funnest page in the entire WordPress admin. Check it out.

It's actually kind of fun to play with now. Finally, MV6. Who here has tested MVC?

Just out of curiosity? Oh, we have a handful here.

You are living in the future. [laughter]

It started as a plugin and it has been worked on for the better part of a year now.

It is a reimagining of the aesthetics of the WordPress admin

which are largely unchanged since 2.7. So...it's not just a paint job.

It actually makes the entire WordPress admin responsive as well.

The admin works as beautifully on a large wide 27" screen as it does

on a tablet or a phone. It took a lot of work but

it was an amazing team. I think 14, maybe 15, contributors have been working on it. Now we have it on 3.8.

Applause for those contributors, including Helen, who is here.

Cool. So...I am Matt.

Ma.tt. You might have seen my link in your links widget

or hidden in your dashboard somewhere.

I am the co-founder of Wordpress. Over a decade now. 10 and half years.

Which makes me feel old to say that.

I founded a company called Automattic 8 years ago which

does Jetpack, WordPress.com, VaultPress, and add-on services for WordPress.

I am also leading the 3.8 release.

Which is why I can say for sure it is coming out on December 12th.

I am happy to entertain any questions you have about WordPress

Or broader stuff. What ever you want to talk about.

We have a mic going around. Raise your hand and

Say your name and

any blog you want to mention.

[1st speaker] Nothing to mention Matt. Thanks. A quick question.

I am just going to start [stated name unclearly] this out with a tech question.

MVC framework. Why are you not saving this in WordPress?

Any intention of moving to a framework of some kind?

[Matt] Sure. No intention to move to a framework of some kind.

MVC is a design pattern. It can be useful in a certain context.

If you look, certain parts of WordPress it is MVC like. But strictly adopting that framework

has no user benefit. And so you think, "Well, what would be the developer benefit from this?"

When you look at how you can use the APIs within WordPress

both the public and sort of public facing and the private

theme system and you think how you can develop within WordPress.

You can actually take a very MVC like approach

and some themes take this pretty far.

We don't see there being a developer benefit. Also, personally, I think

that it is a little bit harder to rock, especially for newer developers.

One of the advantages of WordPress,

from the very beginning, since the Hello Dolly plugin,

is that you can open It up and know how to write a plugin.

You didn't have to figure out class inheritances and many other things.

The aspect oriented plugin and theme infrastructure -

well plugin and action filter infrastructure of WordPress is more intuitive than

many of the other approaches our contemporaries like Joomla and Droopal take.

We always think about not just the user experience, or just from a user point of view, but from a developer

point of view. To someone learning to code for the first time. When they start poking around

in WordPress, how can they figure it out?

This is why we have been working a ton on documentation.

Why, personally, some of you might have run into this,

if you ever look at a function, and you end up looking 8 functions deep trying to figure out what it does.

It breaks my heart a little.

So as simple as we can make things, but no simpler is always our approach.

Thank you for the question. We have one back there.

Oh, right there first. Then we will bounce back up.

[2nd speaker]. I saw your posted on...everywhere. And I have

a blog and I am thinking about branding it. So, instead of

using my name.com I want a branded name. You know, that I can venture out. So, I guess my question is

for blogging, what's your take on having a name that is brandable or are you just using your name.

[Matt] I like putting my name in things. Automat-tic.

A lot of people don't realize that is why there are two Ts.

[laughter] Apparently some people here didn't know that. Yea, Automattic. Yea.

So, my original domain was actually called photomatt.

One thing I learned about the branded name is that sometimes

if you make them too descriptive sometimes what you are really into changes.

Before photomatt I was

saxmatt because I really liked playing the saxophone.

As I became more of a photo guy I used photomatt.

I still use photomatt because I have the handle on everything

But, the one thing that hasn't changed as my interests have diverged and evolved over the past decade or so is

my name. I am still Matt.

I've been getting all the domains I could. I've got Matt.ly, Matt.co, I have Matt[.] everything.

I get angry emails from other Matts from around the internet.

[laughter]

I am going to be like George Forman. He calls all of his kids George. He has eight Georges.

I am not sure if many of you knew that. Boys and girls.

So, I am going to call all my kids Matt.

I want to have a domain for each of them. Matt Lee...

I always come back to the name.

It is something that is very permanent. Other than that

I like were you take something that does not sound like what you do at all

and then imbue it. WordPress may not be the best example.

Do you know what is a better one? Amazon.

What does Amazon have to do with the business?

Think of what Amazon meant 20 years ago.

A jungle where there is a huge amount of biodiverstiy is in the world.

You have it as an adjective. An Amazon man or woman.

A really tall person. What does that have to do with what

the company does? Nothing at all.

But they made Amazon into what we now think about first.

That is so powerful. It really is not about what word

you are using. Unless that word has different connotations.

If you can take something and the first thing people think about is you, ahh!

In fact, there was a challenge for WordPress in

the beginning. Those of you who are old school remember

that at the time WordPress was

90-95% of the market was on a system called Moveable Type.

The makers at that time introduced

something called Typepad. It was their hosted server.

It launched at TED. It was a huge deal.

The biggest criticism of the WordPress name when it started was that

it sounded too much like Typepad. Which sounds silly now.

They are completely different. They only share a few letters.

But, at the time, Typepad had so much mindshare that something with two syllables

and I guess 'type and word' are kind of related, seemed too close to people.

That's a good example of the power they had at the time.

Because you guys asked the first two questions you

guys actually get a prize. [laugher/shock].

I have two WordPress Iphone cases.

You asked the first question so you get to chose whether

you want black or green. [1st speaker] Do you know which color you want?

[2nd speaker] I'll take green. Matt: You're wearing a green shirt.

All right, there you go. A round of applause for you guys.

It's always good to be the first. Especially when you're up here.

That silence before the first question is the longest

amount of time in the world.

Ah, how about right over here. Pass the mic. I am out of iPhone cases.

[3rd speaker] I went to a google page tool and tested some older WordPress version.

I saw quite a few different WordPress urls. And variably Google analyzed them. In each case there

was render blocking query and javacript and CSS above the fold.

Move it down below. Because that is what WordPress does.

Are you going to address that. Google doesn't like the way WordPress loads.

[Another attendee comments - Google doesn't like anything].

[Matt] All of that is dependent on your theme.

Your theme can control all of the output including where

all the javascript actions are put.

There are plugins, including I think, W3 Total Cash and supercash.

They can modify how some things are presented so they are more google friendly.

But honestly, I would recommend, if you're into it...

Well, first see how your website loads. Built into Chrome now is a web inspector.

You can right click the inspect element, go to the network tab,

and do a forced reload to see about how long

a normal connection takes.

That will give you an idea of your loading time. Look for what is taking up the most time.

I've have friends who say their website is loading slow,

and I'll see an undersized image. A thumbnail.

This big, and it loads 2 megabites. Those sorts of things

are easy. Look for the easy stuff first.

You can go so deep into CDS scripts to minimizing

HTML and change the order on how things are called.

WordPress loads things early

because that is always the most compatible way to do it.

If something is trying to load right after, WordPress normally loads it.

If WordPress hasn't loaded jQuery already the jQuery function normally errors out.

Reordering that can sometimes be a little tricky. Which is why we don't do it by default.

[3rd Speaker] Hopefully those are fair critiques by Google.

[Matt] Um, yeah. I am not going to argue with Google. [laughter].

I don't know if that is a good side of the argument to be on.

It's all, I would say, a continuum. More performance is

always better. No one ever said I wish it took a little longer to load.

But sometimes eeking out that last bit of performance

is a diminishing margin of results.

I say go that way first, or maybe by switching themes you might be able to automize.

And if you look for a theme including some in the WordPress.org

directory, they talk about more optimized HTML or CSS.

[3rd Speaker] Ok, I haven't found one. A theme that loads

everything at the bottom.

Matt: By default, that's a more advanced technique. I don't know how Google prioritizes

that. I would put that as a lower priority. [3rd Speaker] No, it's not.

[Matt] It's not? Then you can't argue with Google.

Does anyone know a plugin that could change that?

[Audience member] You have to use a...or something like that.

When the script is entered you q up on any external

scripts or inline script tags in your page.

It is dependent on script that have to load externally.

Is there any way that you can actually make the script last

in Google with the script manager?

It would be a lot easier to have all the scripts blocked until

WordPress loads the bottom of the page and loads jQuery where it actually needs it.

You might have to require java script or something like that.

[Matt] Which you could do. You could hook the footer. Do you have a bottler of water?

Thank you.

I would categorize that under more advanced technique.

Something you would have to dive inside the code to do.

Full service. You've got water opening and everything. Thanks.

Next question.

How about all the way in the back there. Blue shirt.

[4th speaker] Hi my name is Juilian. It begins plugin error 0x43. I'm kidding [laughter].

[Matt]: I was about to tell you.

[4th speaker] This is obviously a tech community.

A lot of developers and designers. It's a big part of WordPress.

Could you talk a bit about the user experience and how

that plays to what's going on in 3.8 and beyond that?

Beyond a technical focus.

[Matt] That could be a whole night discussion.

Actually, just the other week I spoke at the Joomla world conference.

They are WordCamp San Francisco essentially. One very

interesting thing to learn about that community.

The next day I hung out with Dreis from Drupal.

I felt like I got all my open source CMSing in one weekend.

It's interesting to see the different decisions folks make.

One thing that is distinct about WordPress

is that we have a philosophy page. If you go to

www.wordpress.org/about/philosophy

there is a series of principles. One of them is 'Decisions not options'.

These are the sort of things that we hold to be true. Interestingly

they are not useful as rules per se.

A designer I work with, his name, Ewing, just wrote a post on his blog 'No Scope' about

'Decisions not options'. I like to say that smart people can

rationalize anything. You can use any guideline

or any sort of principle as an argument almost on either side of any decision.

The thing that I would say is that, probably the most universal. A user is never wrong.

If a user is saying, "I am having trouble with a 'thing". And they can't figure it out.

You don't say "Oh, you're wrong. You need to do this instead.'

It is a feeling that is never invalid. If they have trouble with it then they have trouble with it.

Something could be more intuitive. Or have inline help.

Maybe you eliminate the feature all together so the user doesn't have to think about it.

There are a million ways to skin that cat.

You can approach any side of it.

WordPress has been so successful over the years because we do not get too attached to things.

We don't mind re-examining even our base assumptions about user experience.

It gets harder as you becoming bigger.

Honestly, you're more successful when you make that shift.

You want to look at what has made you successful in the past, and assume

or believe that is what is going to make you successful in the future.

That's why, personally, I always think about speed or agility.

Are we moving fast enough? At least if we are doing something wrong we learn from it quickly.

We don't spend a year working on it.

3.8 was an example of agility. We were trying to radically change our development methods. Versus a core commit team

working on a set of features who decided to head that. Instead we had plugin teams

which had autonomy and very light supervision.

The plugin lead was kind of the lead of that.

They weren't subservient to me even as the 3.8 lead.

Working on these features.

They were working on these features independent of core and plugins.

This is an example of a process that, three years ago, I would have said, "Never. That's silly".

We did it.

It worked pretty well. Let's see on December 12 how well it worked.

I am already thinking about 3.9.

3.8 is far from done.

We are going to do a lot of work in the next couple of weeks

But in my head we are out of the jungle. We have gotten past the hard part which was seeing if those plugins were going to be ready.

And if teams would work well together.

Setting up weekly meetings.

All the structural things that created the environment I hoped we would thrive in.

The've done well so far.

The beta process and hitting the release date is largely a method of being strict about

freezing the code. Sometimes we are bad about that.

But 3.9 is where this will be tested.

The release I am not leading.

The one after 3.8

Maybe if we had not had two releases going on simultaneously.

We started a few things months before.

This week, if you have an idea that should be a plugin

for inclusion in core for 3.9 this week is

the time to talk about it. Talk about it at the dev meeting.

Dev meetings happen every Wednesday.

4pm local New York time.

They are on IRC. It is an open channel. Anyone can join.

W are talking about 3.9 features tomorrow.

It's tomorrow right?

I sometimes lose track of the days. That's the downside of working 7 days a week.

Weekends are not as delineated. Neither are the seasons.

I remember how exciting summer was. Now it just passes and goes. And I think, "Oh wow. It's cold. I need a jacket.

I wonder if the WordPress sticker is still on my jacket."

I don't know if I answered your question, but we will go to to the next one.

How about another blue shirt. Then we will pop to the front. This row is on fire. You're next.

[5 th Speaker] Hi Matt. My name is Alizée.

[Unclear]

I work with a bunch of guys on WordPress.

My question is what is the WordPress VIP work environment like?

Do you use the systems approach?

Is that era over?

Matt: I do think that the age is over for most of us.

It's really important for Amazon or Automattic to have fantastic systems employees.

I have been on call before and get the text messages when something goes wrong.

It is not a good way to live. It is very stressful.

Especially before the advent of tethering and everything that makes it easier now to get online.

There are a spectrum of options. Starting at $60,000 a year you WordPress VIP. The most bulletproof thing in the world.

WordPress VIP starts at $60,000 a year. You have the most bulletproof thing in the world.

Depending on who is counting WordPress.com is the first 5 websites in the world, or in the top 10.

You can run something on this exact same infrastructure.

That is going to be tough to break.

That is why there is less flexibility.

The code gets audited and reviewed by people.

Let's call that $5,000 a month. At this end you have the $5 of the world.

Blue Host, Dream Host and GoDaddys of the world that are much better than prior years.

We have all heard the horror stories about each of those three.

GoDaddy has upped their game. They just introduced built in GoDaddy upgrading of your plugin and themes automatically.

In addition to core updates. The infrastructure updates that Blue Host and Dream Host have done are impressive.

One of those accounts plus super cache and total cash can get you pretty far

in terms of scaling.

Even 5-10 million page views per day.

The middle has been interesting. There are four major players. The 3 that you probably know about are

Pagely, WP Engine, and Zippy Kid which has rebranded to Pressable.

These aspire to be the Heroku of WordPress.

They are doing a pretty good job in many ways.

I have qualms with some. Pagely modifies core. Which to me isn't kosher.

Their marketing can be a little aggressive. By and large they are well intentioned.

They are trying to achieve total flexible so that you can change the code when ever you want.

They are more in the $20 to $30 a month range.

So, $5. $20 to $30. $5,000 is the lookout.

The dark horse is Google App Engine. It's free until 25,000 page views a day.

More than what most of us get. Certainly more than Ma.tt.

I think it will be disruptive. It is lame right now.

If they keep iterating it could possibly be the default way to run WordPress.

Thank yo. How about up here.

[7th Speaker] I am a blogger. I know that WordPress creates websites for people like me.

My question is, how can us bloggers contribute to WordPress?

I have been grappling to learn code, and I will.

I know we talked about adding captions to videos. That's on my list.

Are there other ways that we can contribute?

[Matt] Totally. That's awesome. Ways you can contribute.

First. You want to learn to code. I highly recommend it to everyone in the room.

I believe that scripting is the new literacy.

Learning to program, irregardless of whether you want

to do that in your life, changes the way you think.

It's an awesome skill to have.

As a blogger, one way is to first, have an awesome blog.

The way I chose my first blogging software

which was Movable Type was based on the blogs

I read that I loved. That's what they used.

When I clicked the powered by link and I said

this doesn't look to hard. I can do this. And that's how I started.

Having a great blog, with the powered by link is the best advertising

in the world for WordPress.

It shows the creativity and what people can do.

You can be more involved in the WordPress project directly,

something outside your personal evangelism by showing awesomeness.

Thanksgiving is coming up next week, right?

Someone is going to ask about a website at the table.

You all are that person in your family probably.

You are going to fix the wifii while you' are there. [laughter]

Update the 47 apps that have not been updated on the phone.

It drives me crazy.

It is better now in iOS 7.

I would get a compulsion on my mom's phone.

when I would see that she had 120 app updates.

I would just have to...I love updating things. It is like Christmas morning.

That's a diversion. We'll go back on track.

WordPress documentation.

There are these field guides we have been working on

for a while. If you can write English that other people

can understand you can help these.

It's been one of those projects that have been harder

to get launched or iterated on.

There are field guides which I think are awesome. The Codex as well.

How do you access the field guides or Codex?

Google WordPress field guides. I can't think of the url off the top of my head.

The Codex is a wiki. It's codex.wordpress.org.

There is a mailing list where people talk about this.

It is called wp-docs. It's a mailing list. You put in your email

and you start getting junk in your inbox.

Junk from other people passionate about WordPress documentation.

That is the group that works on this.

They also have on make.wordpress.org a p2.

If you go to make.wordpress.org (we like verb subdomains) you can check out that group

and hang out with them.

Honestly, at this point, we have 150 to 250 code contributors.

There is only a small handful of people, and you can count them

on your fingers and toes, who work on the documentation

and other parts of WordPress.

I think that, personally, we are at the point of diminishing marginal returns with features on WordPress.

It already does alot.

The next 20% of people adopting WordPress will be

around education. People figuring out how to use

what we already have.

Documentation, meetups like this, are the way that is going to happen.

WordPress has never had a SuperBowl ad.

Wix, one of our competitors, went public.

They spend $29 million a year on marketing.

I think they need to because

they do not have awesome folks like you

in this room telling their family at Thanksgiving

that this is what they should use.

We've always grown one blog at a time.

I think that is the most important.

For everyone else in this room.

For every single person in this room, the next person that you

help get going with WordPress, and get them auto updating

and secure. It is the best thing in the world.

It makes me happy. Thank you.

Right in front of you someone had a question.

[8th Speaker] Hi Matt, I am Jane.

I Wikapedia'd you this evening.

Is it true that you type 120 words a minute? That's amazing.

[Matt] I can.

I type using a different keyboard layout

called Devorak. Qwerty was designed in the type writer age.

One of the problems you have is when you have hands

coming out and running into each other.

Who knows what the most common two letter

combinations in the English language?

TH. Who said TH? I'm sorry I do not have any more prizes.

That's cool to know. So, TH.

On Devork that is like that.

Also, different fingers have different strengths.

Those are two of the strongest fingers on the home row.

On Qwerty that is all over the place.

When you type words of 'thee' or 'the' your hands don't

run into each other.

They were going to switch so they created

this new system called Devork as a slightly

better system called Colemak. They are optimized

for all the vowels. All the vowels are on the home row.

One of the most common - what's a non vowel called? A consonant?

Yes. You can type lots of words on the home row.

I read stats once that said that, in an average year,

a Qwerty typist fingers move 12 miles, and a Devorak

typist about one mile.

It is more efficient in many ways. The fastest typists

in the world who hold world records tend to use Devorak

or Colemak. I switched to it 12, 13 years ago, and I

still use it to this day. I use to think I was really cool

until I got beaten in a typing speed contest somewhat recently

by someone who is here. Helen. Helen, can you wave?

Core contributor, Helen, has wicked fast fingers in Qwerty.

In Automattic we have done a few typing throw downs.

Someone will challenge and we do a contest. Who

ever types faster, the loser switches to the other

persons layout.

[Laughter] I am very glad Helen and I did not do this.

Since that humiliating defeat I have been practicing

at getting my speed back up.

I love this website called type racer. It's a pretty

lame website, but it's really fun.

You race other people in typing.

It is what I do on Saturday nights.

[lots of laughter] So type racer is really neat.

I can hit 120s or 130s. But in that contest I hit the 90s.

I was low in wind. I need to get back up.

Right here in front.

[9th speaker] Thanks for coming. I am a novice WordPress

user. A year in now.

Most definitely a novice programmer. I took my

first introduction to python class and found

I struggled through it, but I did finish.

I think that I can be proficient with it. My question then is,

if WordPress is going to be my platform (and it is)

what do I want to focus on programming wise.

[Matt] That's a great question.

I would say the things that are most important are

the things that are most fundamental to the web.

That's HTML. CSS. JavaScript. [9th Speaker] Could you say

in which order? [Matt] I would say in that order.

HTML. CSS. JavaScript.

HTML and CSS will allow you to shape WordPress.

And know the WordPress theme system. You can learn

even without knowing a ton of PHP or anything else.

You can make almost any website in the world.

You can make some pretty cool stuff.

JavaScript is where our more advanced functionality is going.

If you learn Javascript PHP will be a walk in the park.

You will be able to hack around with plugins

and everything like that.

It is where I would recommend starting,

rather than starting with PHP.

The way I have always learned the most is by

picking something that I do not know how to do

and figuring it out. Often with lots of Googling,

copying and pasting.

Hacking your way.

You finish it, and you're like, "Oh man, it works!"

You step back and you think, "Man I need to rewrite that." [laughter]

Then you start over again. With every single iteration

you get better and better. Reading other people's plugins.

Learning enough about code so you can read other

people's code is huge. In jazz, one of the ways you

learn to solo is by transcribing other solos.

Breaking it down. Using your ear. Going through your

favorite Sammy Rollins. Going note by note

until you are playing along with him.

Do that with a plugin. Break it down. Try to get

to the point where you can understand every

line of that plugin and what it is doing.

Start with a simple one. Hello Dolly is pretty good.

[laughter] I am a personal fan.

And understand every single line.

Try to write it yourself from memory and compare

what you wrote to what exists. See if there is a way

you can refactor it so it is more efficient, or have

fewer lines of code or fewer characters.

Even a single line of codes. In theory, it is how you learn

anything. You read about Benjamin Franklin.

He would take his favorite line of prose, then memorize

it. Then write out each sentence on a card, then mix it

up and try to rearrange them. In the order that he

remembered. He would compare the way he put

them to the original. So, the most ways you can break

down a task and work on the components of that task.

In my opinion it is the best way to learn coding,

WordPress, music, writing. Anything in the world.

Those things are more related than people think.

Congratulations, you are about to enter into 'a whole

new world.' (Sings hook of the LIttle Mermaid song).

[laughter] [9th Speaker] It is. I felt like I was learning a new language.

[Matt] It is learning a new language. The good news

is that, once you learn a new language, they rest of them are way easier.

You are not going from French to Japanese.

You are going from Brazilian Portuguese to Portuguese.

They are way closer than further apart.

[9th Speaker] I took the intro course twice.

[Matt] Well, take the intro course twice.

Alright. Next Question. You sir.

You had a confident hand raise.

[10th Speaker] How are you doing? First, I wanted to

come to the person that asked, "How do you get started?"

One thing that put me over the top was a great book

called 'Professional WordPress Plugin Development'.

That got me just writing my own plugins. I went from

knowing nothing to writing plugins.

In a week. [Matt] That's a great book actually.

[10th Speaker] Do you think that WordPress will

change in the future the editor that is used to

posts? I know there has been a lot of complaints

about it. It is a clunky. You switched it from code view

to visual view without changing code. Just wanted to

know if that's something that is on your radar.

[Matt] Oh god, I hope so. [laughter]

Yea. [10th Speaker] Thank you.

How about right there so you don't have to run as much?

[11th speaker] I'll start by thanking you, and expressing

our love. If you wouldn't have created WordPress I would

still probably play hockey and my mom would say, "Hey,

find a job." [lots of laughter] My first question is -

The last time I saw you, it was probably a year ago

in New York and you wore the same jacket. [laughter[

And you were grounded. How do you stay so grounded?

That was my first question. The second is, "How do you sustain

all these offers from, probably Microsoft to buy WordPress.

[Matt] That's a great question.

I work with really great people, and when you work

with them they don't let you get too far off course.

Certainly, the people I work closest with at Autotmattic

and WordPress.core are like friends and family.

We go back over a decade now.

Certainly my family does. They do not hesitate to call

bs. I think that's really where being grounded comes

from. What keeps you grounded is not anything you do

intrinsically. It is everything around you holding you

down in a good way. In terms of courting offers

for Automattic, or offers to sell...A lot of it is that I

am not motivated by money as much anymore.

There is diminishing marginal returns to that, just

like anything. We have been very successful already

in terms of the company we built and the success so

far. It is more a matter of impact. The question is not

well, "Can we get a billion dollars if we went with

Google," but, what would you do with that this will

make a greater difference than what we are doing

today? How, if at all, being inside a larger company

enable us to impact the web in a bigger way? We are

talking about 20% of the web now.

If there was some magical thing that could take us to

80% percent of the web in a year, that would be

something I would consider. If it is just a capital thing...You

have to think about what is going to have the biggest

impact on your world. And the world.

For me, having a bunch of money that I am going to

give away later. Because I can not spend it all. Wasting

it on stupid stuff is not going to have a bigger impact

on the world as the thing we are working on today.

It is really just thinking about the long term. The next

five, ten, twenty years. And being focused on impact.

[audience] Don't sell. [laughter] Matt: Thank you.

[10th speaker] If you want a new jacket you should

check out Century 21. [Matt] I am so embarrassed I am

wearing the same jacket. [lots of laughter]

It is my New York wardrobe. I have to be honest. I

have fewer clothes here.

Cool. Behind you there was a question.

[11th speaker] WordPress is flexible and used for

a lot of things. Not just a simple blog. I am curious,

what is your favorite crazy theme and crazy blog you

have run into. [Matt] The example I used at WordCamp

San Francisco, which I like alot. By the way check out

the State of the Word 2013. If you want to see some of

the broad, where it is going, etc. It is only a few

months old so it is not stale yet. [audience] What's that?

[Matt] State of the Word. Once a year we give a State of

the Union address. The State of the Word Address.

Every year in Word Camp San Francisco. I guess I have

been doing it eight years now. We try to do it.

It is one of those chances to take sort of a 10 thousand

foot view. One of the examples I use, and I actually showed

a video from it is a web dev studios thing. Was it web

dev? [audience] Yes. [Matt] is a web dev studios thing

where they created an app for YMCA where you could

hold a card up and the iPad app would scan it.

The app would pull different work out plans and things

done before. Pretty awesome. Regardless of what it

was doing and where it was doing it, the idea that

WordPress is being used as a back end for an app

that had really rich, native functionality is fascinating.

It does not look like a blog or website at all.

In terms of my favorite blogs and cool themes, I often

go back to people who I admire generally.

When I started WordPress, I actually made a list

of six people, who, if WordPress could someday be

good enough for them to be on, I could be happy.

We have five of them so far. [audience] Who are they?

The first person on the list was actually a New York

native, Zeldman. Zeldman.com. Still one of my web

idols to this day. I remember, when he switched from.

Because he hand coded his site for twelve years.

He wasn't going to switch to anything. So when he

switched to WordPress I was just one of the better days.

Jay Z. Another New Yorker, a Brooklyn native.

Lifeandtimes.com, Jay Z's magazine. To be fair Kanye

did it first. In the music world Kanye was the early

WordPress adopter. It is like the love of jogging pants

he was talking about. He was on it before everyone else

He now longer blogs. I got to meet him weirdly.

A couple of weeks ago. He knew what WordPress was.

Super cool. What one of his problems is, I guess he

sturggles with people changing his message. I didn't

make the case, but someone else in the room said,

well, if you blog you are your own mediator. And he

really felt like he had done it already. He was

finished. But he was the first. Then Jay z adopted

WordPress. And I love that site. It is actually

a pretty cool site. Lifeandtimes.com. It's a cultural

magazine. [audience] Who was the first one again?

[Matt] Zeldman.com. Z-e-l-d-m-a-n. He is a web

designer. A web standards advocate. He is one of the

grandfathers of the modern web. Fathers of the

modern web. He is not that old.

And the first thing I talked about was this YMCA

thing that I do not know a url for, but if you check out

the State of the Word 2013 it is in there.

[audience]

Ok. So check out badgeos.org and see it.

Wrapping up questions we have a bit of time left.

[speaker] So, if you were writing WordPress right now and

it could not be in php, what language would you write it

in. And what is one feature that you absolutely have to

have that may be difficult to do today.

[Matt] The first one is easy. If I were starting a new

project today, and I didn't have to worry about web

hosting and anything like that I would try it in Go.

It is a language from Google. It seems really really cool

the way they do real time stuff. Just the whole

concurrency model. I dig it. [audience] Excuse me

could you repeat that? [Matt] Go. G. O. That's it.

It is probably hard to Google. [lots of laughter] You

think they would think about this stuff. Maybe if you

Google 'Go programming language" you will find it.

The thing I would do differently. Is, first, what we are

moving towards in every release. Making WordPress a

Javascript application. WordPress is born out of the

days when web pages were more like documents and

applications. Even as a simple example, just the idea of

pagination.

Pagination links on the comments screen. The pages

screen and the post screen. All sorts of screens have

pagination. Why? Why not have an infinite scroll?

Why not just have an infinite scroll?

As you filter it filters in real time, and things like that.

I would like to see search be better. The idea that in

the WordPress admin alone there are 8 different places

you can search. 8 different things. It would kinda cool

to unify that. That might be in 3.9. That's one of the

things people are talking about for 3.9. An omni search

project. So, thinking of it in real time and also like a

client side application. Sort of like a Gmail. Where you

kind of load this thing. Maybe it is 500k of Javascript.

It would be WordPress. And all of the rest would

be data calls such as Jason over the wire.

Supper fast. Cashed locally and if you are on

mobile it stores a whole copy of the database

your mobile device and then just sort of

working through these APIs WordPress could

use and other people could use too if they

wanted to build something on top of it. A good

follow up would be, "Will this ever happen?"

And it's not going to happen in 3.9 or 4.0

but it is one of those things that piece by

piece as we iterate on different parts of

WordPress our philosophy is that a ground up

re-write is really tough because, A) It took us

10 years to get this far. Even if we assume

that we are four times as good and we say it

takes two and a half years to create existing

functionality on base level, so you wouldn't

know anything changes, probably a lot will

happen in two and a half years. We will

be on iPhone 7 at that point. There is a lot

that can change in that amount of time so

the world changes while you are rewriting.

You break back what is compatibility and

often you create new bugs. Maybe you fix

some things like this architecture thing but

you will probably write several hundred

new bugs. Some of which you are not going

to know about or notice until years later. There is huge

built in benefit through the irritation approach.

We do not do giant refactors, but ever single

new release for WordPress we try to refactor

at least 5% to 15% of it. Sometimes we take a

more object oriented approach if it is right.

Sometimes moving a lot of the funtionality to

the javascript side. If you check out the way

DHX works or the new media library. It is

actually really cool how the bulk of that code is

java script. You are interacting with a very

light page. That is why you should learn

Javascript. It is the future. Like plastics.

[laughter] Or bitcoin. That has been a little

crazy. When WordPress.com came out in

support of bitcoin it was $12. Just saying.

But that's currency we support. You should

buy. So, that is our approach.

The thing is that those 10% or 15% we are

doing every release add up over 5 or 10

releases which might take two years. Which

is almost a complete rewrite. But we were

getting user feedback along the way, not

making as many new bugs. Its a more of an

iterative approach than a ground up approach.

So, I think we are going to end up where 90% of

the code is going to be Javascript. We are

already at a point where a lot of new

functionality is already created by javascript. It

is going to happen bit by bit.

Matt: You are the man.

Steve Bruner: At the State of the Word you

put up a graph and mentioned that that less

and less people are using WordPress as a

traditional blogging platform. More as a

CMS, a traditional CMS, or an app. But it is

still very bloggy. There's been talk of forking

WordPress which would be ridiculous.

Do you ever see a time when removing

Posts or Categories or the default post statuses

which is so core to WordPress as ever happening?

[Matt] Removing Posts or Pages would be

pretty extreme. But I do think that a lot of

what is happening is that WordPress is

simultaneously developing as a blogging

platform, a CMS and application platform.

The reason for that is we are creating a CMS

that focuses on blogging first. We try to make

it as easy as possible for the most number of

people. Blogging is a lot of different things to

many different people. A lot of what it means

to me is that you can do it yourself. You don't

need to hire someone or have a Ph.D. or

know how to code to do that. The CMS parts

of it are what we use to create that. We have

evolved as an application layer because

we need a world class application layer.

We are not happy with any that exist out there

right now. We need an application layer to

build the best in the world blogging and CMS

apps. How decoupled those things are in the

future, I do not know. I think there is

something to having a single wiziwig that we

support. For all its imperfections at least there

is only one of them. Other CMS have taken

approach where you can chose a wiziwig.

Now you are not just dealing with one you

are dealing with four crappy ones. [Laughter]

You are building a plugging or something

else on top of it. Sometimes I think it is good

to choose a path and build on that one path.

I guess that answers some of it. All the way

to the back corner. You have had your hand

up for like a minute. [Speaker] Ok, going

back to what you were saying about using

more JavaScript in WordPress, do you see

WordPress as more of core JavaScript or

JavaScript libraries or jQuery and things like

that for the functionality. [Matt] Absolutely.

JavaScript has been core to WordPress for a

long time. Since the early days of jQuery.

They have always been like sister projects

which is kind of neat. A lot of these new

features uses backbone and those sorts of

approaches to modern day JavaScript than

before. And we are starting to adopt even a

style guide for JavaScript code that we have

never had before. I think that is a good

example of maturity. When you are arguing

over braces and tabs and spaces and things

that is when you know you have made it.

So, I feel now that JavaScript is a first

class citizen in the WordPress world.

Every major user feature I can imagine in the

next few years is JavaScript heavy. It is

the new editor. It is changing how the wigits

work. It is making all pages infinite scroll and

dynamic instead of being something you

have to paginate through. Those are all

really JavaScript heavy things. The PHP stuff

is updates. The next level of language packs.

It is really all the stuff that has to happen

server side, which is getting smaller and

smaller. [Speaker] Adding those JavaScript

features, can you see yourself using the core

JavaScript or can you see yourself using Java

Script libraries. [Matt] We are using the

libraries where ever possible. Now, the cool

thing is that if you actually look at backbone it

is really tiny. It doesn't add a lot but it gives us

a lot of convenience. jQuery is a lot heavier.

But we hitched a horse to it. So, I can see

jQuery being core for a while to come.

Before jQuery we used prototype. So, I know

there is still a compatibility library of prototype

in core. That is a good example that we can

transition things. It is just that we want to

try to not do that so often. We do not want to

be ADD with it. As we choose

something, like moving from prototype to

jQuery, we were betting, I think rightly so, that

jQuery was going to be something that we

could work with and co-evolve with, I think

rightly so, over the next two to five, even eight

years. How about the gentleman right here.

[Speaker] Hi, my name is Peter. Next

question about JavaScript. We see that also

transitioning server side, making [unclear] to

sever side scripted support. Changing to

PHP. [Matt] Not so much. It is really about

portability. There is no better language for

distribution in the world than PHP right now. It

can run anywhere. You can run it on aws or

Microsoft Azura. You can run it on oxface.

You can run it everyplace. PHP fog. GoDaddy. Just the

ability to distribute and run in a pretty efficent

way with PHP is better than anything else

out there. I honestly do not see that changing

in the near term. The same way Ruby got very

very popular but never became popular

in a shared hosting, I think that there are

things fundamental to the virtual machine,

that is at the core of these languages, that

PHP for all it's warts and uglyness is the best

in the world at. Running in the shared

environment. These other languages,

including node, and sever side JaveScript, do

not take that into effect in the same way. So,

forceable future, WordPress is PHP. But, let

us think 18 years down the line, when

WordPress is 90% JavaScript code and 10%

PHP code, and works over in API. In theory,

something that reimplemented that API,

on the server side, that 10%, It might be

something that people could implement in

different languages. As long as the API

speaks the same language, really, the bulk of

what WordPress means, is now this client side

code. Could someone create a node, or Ruby,

or some other sort of server part of it that

spoke to this API, yea, totally. Lady back

there. [Speaker]. Hi, my name is Elizabeth.

I wan to switch subjects a little bit. I know

that in 2009 you made the decision not to

succumb to censorship in China. So, therefor

WordPress is effectively blocked in China.

First of all, I want to thank you for that.

Secondly, I wanted to find out what brought

you to that decision, what you gave up in

making that decision, and what you think of

a county like China or other countries, that

have a lot of more control on blogging and

microblogging, and what you think of the

future of such countries. [Matt] Sure, I think

it was actually earlier than 2009. There was

press about it in 2009, but the decision

happened when Automattic was really

small, maybe five or six people. At the

time a quarter of our traffic was coming

from China. It was a big drop in traffic.

It was really one of those things, the way they

implemented censorship, I thought was

particularly insidious. They didn't actually

censor you. They strongly encouraged you to

self censor your own service. They wouldn't

say, "Here is a list of terms you can't have on

Chinese blogs," they said, "What ever you

think would create the most harmonious

society." [Laughter]. That is actually the word

they used. Some equivalent of the translation

of harmonious, or harmonizing. That seemed

so bad. Very big brother. I will also

say I use to be much more on a high horse

on how China approaches the Internet vs the

United States. But there have been a lot of

revelations this year. [Laughter]. Where it

turns out that we have been doing some

kind of sketchy things as well. Maybe not

aimed at overt censorship in the same way.

But I think that privacy is key to a free

society. The ability to have private

conversations and communications

and anonymous publications and things

like that aren't the only thing.

[Speaker] Censorship and privacy are

different things. Related but different.

[Matt] I think that censorship and privacy

are very related. More related to anonymity.

The Founding Fathers were the Snowdens of

their time. They were publishing things that

the existing regime did not believe in. They

were treasonous, right, to England and the

UK. I guess England is the UK.

[Speaker] To King George. [Matt] To King

George. I think that, regardless of what any

of us believe in a society at any given time,

we have to recognize the fact that,

some of what seems terrible today, or

treasonous or anything, might be what we

look to as foundation in the future. Often,

some of the most powerful ideas, are

minority first. Freedom of speech is very key.

Sort of goes to to the censorship thing.

But, I think the ability to publish anonymously,

and have ideas you can publish without

repercussion, and the ideas can stand

on their own, is also really important to a

free society. I think it is terrible that a wistle

blower is right now safer in Russia than

America. What ever that means. It is

kind of crazy. For all you might consider that

there is channels that you can report these

abuses or things like that. From all we have

seen so far, it was so much worse than

anyone could have imagined. Even some

of the most paranoid, tin foiled hat wearing

people. All the guys, the Thomas Drakes of

the world, who reported things and tried to

go through the proper channels before the

NSA and previously, kind of had their lives

really screwed up. They were ultimately cut

off in terrible ways and go through years long

losses and everything. That is part of the

reason I believe in open source. How

can you really trust the system you are

running on unless you can peek under the

hood and look at the code.

I blog about this sometimes as well.

Subscribe to Ma.tt if you want to see

occasional links or rants on this issue.

So, you asked how I feel in comparison to

other countries. I am glad that there is

freedom of speech in the United States.

That we are having very open conversations

around these revelations. I think that many

of our laws are actually quite good. Like

around the MCA and how things are

taken down. Perfect, no. Copyright still

has a very heavy hand in how patents work,

how copyright law in and of itself works, and

how things are taken down. It actually is not

a bad balance. I can see a path forward for it

being better. That is honestly what I hope the

most. Some of the crazy stuff that came out

of the NSA revelations, I am

optimistic about. When that is revealed I

feel like, now we are going to have a more

open conversation about it. Perhaps, as a

country, we can come together either through

our right of voting, or influencing our leaders,

to change how this happens. And that is

actually really, really powerful. I am excited

about that. But I am not on a high a horse as

much as I use to be. [Speaker] You

mentioned earlier that you plan to be

seeing a lot more of us in New York here and

opening an office.

I didn't realize that. With Wix going public

[Unclear]. With Wix lounge the office is a very

handy dandy feature. [laughter]

[Matt] So how Automattic works is, that it is

totally distributed. Automattic, the company

I work at, is now 222 people. Spread accross

170 cities. We do have a few folks in the NY

metropolitan area. I do not think any of them

are here to night. Partialy because one of the

guys, you probably know Bo, is in

Denver meeting with a few of his

colleagues. Because everyone works

all over the world we do frequent meet ups.

The cool thing about this is I can also be

anywhere. If there was an office with

200 people and I was galavanting

around, I probably wouldn't be doing my job

for very long, or certainly not doing my job

well. But because I can be just as present and

effective any place with a keyboard and

Internet I can chose. Lately, I have been

choosing to spend a lot more time in

New York. I just got a new place. I have

had an apartment here for two years.

It wasn't that great. I just moved. I found a

Manhattan unicorn. It is actually bigger and

cheaper than my old place. In a cooler

neighborhood. I am now more on the edge of

Soho, Nolita, Little Italy, China Town. That

whole nexus of neighborhoods. I love

exploring it. The reason I originally came to

New York is because it scared me. I know

if you make it here you can make it

anywhere. As a Texas boy it was a

very intimidating city. I would come here

for business. Usually a few times a year and

just felt totally lost and intimidated by the city.

I felt like the only way I was going to figure it

out was to dive in to the deep end. It is

pretty amazing. I am sure you guys

know this. I am preaching to the choir. Even

between trips the resturants on my block

change. [Laughter]. I feel like I am in a whole

different neighborhood. I love that. The

energy here. Let's see how the winter goes.

[Laughter]. I am not big on the cold. [Speaker]

You can invite us over one day. [Matt] It's not

that big of an apartment [Laughter]. But I am

enjoying it a lot. I will probably sneak into one

of the WordPress meet ups and stand in

the back like I was earlier. Oh, but office, no.

Sorry, I kind of forgot the original question.

We only have one office. It is the

head quarters in San Franciso. It is beautiful.

It is 15,000 sq ft. It is great space. On most

days there are five or six people there.

We have maybe 20 people in the Bay Area.

I do believe we have some co working

desks in New York and all over

the world. We allow people to work where

ever they are. If you want to read more about

this there is a book that came out about how

Automattic works. Not written about us.

But it's called 'A Year Without Pants'.

[Speaker] Scot was here. [Matt] Oh, cool.

You guys all heard about it. If you haven't

heard it yet check out

'A Year Without Pants'. I feel kind of

silly saying that It's a good book.

Funny title. It tells you all about how we work.

Why we are not going to be opening any

office. [Speaker] I one day wondered into the

Wix Lounge. They moved from 19th Street

and take up one floor. [Matt] Laughs. Yea,

There are some great offices here. I visit.

I've visited great co-working spaces. The

Square space office is amazing. But, It is

just not us. Right here. Oh, you actually had

your hand up before hand. Upfront.

[Speaker] Just a quick questions about

layout. I work with students and they come to

me with basic questions about WordPress. They

all noticed one day that there links were gone.

[Matt] Oh, the blogroll. [Speaker] They blogroll

is gone. So, all came to me. [Unclear]

I wonder if I can get from you why.

[Matt] It might have been a bug. [Laughter]

That links feature is still in WordPress. It is

just that, if you do a fresh install it is hidden.

[Speaker] That is what I mean. For those who

do a fresh install they say, on my last install

there it was there. Now it is not.

[Matt] It is one of those things.

Starting something new, it is so hard to

remove a feature. Yea, the blog role feature.

There is a lot of code and database tables

for something we found a very small

percentage of users were using. It could be

done just as a widget. I do not think that we

have done that transition as good as it could.

Again, if you are setting up a new blog it is

kind of hidden. I think there is a flag to turn it

on. Essentially, consider it hidden. We haven't

yet done in core a really great widget to

replace it. The user is not wrong. That is our

fault to be totally honest. We get really

excited about taking things out because we

never get to do it. So, sometimes I think

we front load the process more and

forget about the follow through. So, we

should. Allan, write down that. Maybe a

good 3.9er thing. To have a really

fantastic links widget in core. Just client side,

right? Not needing two database tables.

[Speaker] Right. [New Speaker] There have

been a couple of protocols in WordPress for

a while. Specifically, X and R, PC and RSS.

They have been around for a while. They

have pretty much been the statement for a

while. But WordPress has gotten pretty big

It has the ability to throw its weight around.

if it thinks it is something that can and should

be changed. Do you see WordPress pushing

to make some revolutions to those protocols

in the future? [Matt] Yes. There are two

specific things I can point you too. One, there

is a rest API that was started as a Google

Summer of Code project. It is now going

to be one of these plugins as a feature

slated as a future release. If you are

passionate about JSON Api for WordPress

check it out. There is also one I am

personally advocating for, and hope to get in

before 4pm tomorrow because I have to

follow my own rules too.

I do not know the ticket number off the top of

my head, if anyone can look it up. It is an

RSS JS. Basically, WordPress has feeds for

everything. It is one of the coolest features.

Anything you can view on the front end, any

tag, page, any search. You can view a feed of

that. You can view the feed on RSS 2.0,

RSS 1.0, Atom .3 and Atom 1.0. We support

four by default. I want to add a fifth. A JSON

representation of that feed. With the ability to

have a call back. JSON is a JavaScript data

format. J-S-O-N. People call it Jason or j-son.

Potato. Potata patata. It is a very concise way

to show, or represent, programming or

programatic data structure much more

concise than anything else. Because it is

JavaScript it can be consumed natively.

And, because we will have call back support

on this, if this ticket goes through, you will be

able to integrate these feeds completely

client side. Which I think will be really, really

really cool. This is an area you ask, "How

many people support RSS JS right now?"

The answer is almost no one. But, I think we

can get 20% of the web on it. [Laughter]

And I am curious to see what will happen

after that. [Speaker] What was that first

point you were making? [Matt] Oh, the rest

API. If you go to make.wordpress.org/core

and click on the features as plugins on the

side bar, it is one of the top ones I believe.

That will take you to where were we have

been talking about it. P2 post about it, and

you can get in touch with the guy. Did anyone

look up what that RSS JS track ticket is?

[Speaker] 25639. [Matt] 25639. So, if you ever

you can go comment on ticket 25639 tonight

[laughter] we will ddos it. Really hoping to

get it in by tomorrow. [Speaker] A really quick

follow up question. If that is the

case do you see WordPress moving from

away from SimplePie rss as a way to parse

RSS? [Matt] That's a good question! Once we

have this JSON feed support in core, really

the only thing we use the feedreading stuff

for, which is a pretty substantial library to

include in WordPress, is that little list of

headlines on the dashboard. That is all we

use it for. That could be an opportunity for

something that we stop loading by default, or

we do not need to load on the index.php.

I even remember a few years ago when I was

doing some hard core profiling of WordPress

code, it added a pretty significant

overhead on pages where we loaded it.

[Speaker] Just as someone who is using

it for plugin development, keep the functions

available. [Matt] We always keep stuff there

like I said, for sometimes years. Like I said, I

don't know if prototype is still there. If it is not

we left it in there for four years before we

finally took it out. Cool. Last question. Hope it

is a good one. [Speaker] Two questions.

First, do you use a mark down? [Matt] Oh, I

forgot to announce that. So, hold on before

your next question. WordPress.com, as of

about three hours ago now, supports

markdown. [Applause]. [Speaker] Yes!

[Matt] I literally was like, going up I was

like, "I am going to

give away the cases and announce

markdown. Obviously, I am a goldfish. I do not

personally use that alot. I like html.

[Speaker] The second question is facetious.

Since you have a .tt url are you from

Trinidad? [Laughter] [Matt] It's funny.

So, my Twitter is @photomatt. Again, I said I

got stuck with this photo thing. Luckily

i still like photography. And my url is ma.tt.

Not .com, no www. No anything. Turns out .tt

is Trindad and Tabago. It was weird when I

bought this. It was unregistered. Literally, no

one had bought this before. The

the trinidadian and toboggan registry is super

old school. Old school enough that it looks

like a web page from the 90s. I typed my

information in the form saying I was

interested in the domain. And I got a for mail

email back to myself. It literally said first

name equals matt. Last name equals

mullenweg. Anyways, it was unregistered.

The cost is weird. It's like a thousand dollars

for the first two years, and a thousand dollars

for the next five years. I was like, "This is my name."

[Laughter]. This is a good investment.

I actually blogged or tweeted, "I just made a

major life purchase." And some gossip

website was like, "Did he buy a wedding ring,

did he buy a house?" [Laughter]

They do not know to a geek that the domain

name is just as important, if not more,

than any of those things. But the weird thing

is there is not way to pay by credit card.

[Laughter] So, literally, I walk into

Bank of America.

If you ever send a wire you have to fill

out a super long form. And, they are like,

"So, you are sending this money to this

bank..." [Laughter] "...in Trinidad." "Are

you sure about that?" I'm like, "Yeah, yeah. I

saw it on the Internet. [Laughter]. Cool.

Thank you so much everybody. It has been

great chatting with you. [Applause].