Matt: Assorted Links
A few interesting reads or listens: The Next Thing You Smell Could Ruin Your Life, a deep dive into chemical sensitivity and toxicant-induced loss of tolerance, or TILT, by Lexi Pandell (WordPress!) at Wired. IRL Brain Rot and the Lure of the Labubu, by Kyle Chayka at New Yorker. Simon Willison’s Lethal Trifecta talk, on […]
My Ultimate Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization in WordPress
You might have plenty of traffic coming to your WordPress site, but is it actually converting? I often talk to business owners who face the same challenge: visitors keep arriving, but sales and sign-ups aren’t growing. I’ve run into that challenge myself and quickly learned that traffic is only half the battle. The real work […]
Matt: Maker Taker
My sister Charleen sent me this meme with the note “Someone needs to draw you in there with your arm up ” It’s a nice ode to the Dries essay on Maker/Taker problems. Well, thanks to the magic of AI, I asked the Nano Banana AI Studio to “make it so on the bottom one […]
Matt: Breaking Ribs
Chris Young, who is otherwise famous for being a co-author of the 2,438-page cookbook Modernist Cuisine or centrifuging steaks and drinking them, is one of the friends who, over the years, has told me I have to watch Breaking Bad, the TV show. When I was in Marrakech for a few weeks earlier this year, and it was a […]
Gutenberg Times: Gutenberg Changelog 120—WordCamp US, Automattic Telex, Gutenberg 21.4 and 21.5, and the need for more blocks
Birgit Pauli-Haack and Sarah Norris discussed WordCamp US, Automattic Telex, Gutenberg 21.4 and 21.5, and the need for more blocks This episode dives into the ongoing evolution of Gutenberg, from AI-driven tools for easier block creation to the expansion of core blocks and enhancements stemming from vibrant community input. There’s a strong focus on practical […]
Gutenberg Times: Accordion Block, Automattic Telex, Playground CLI and more—Weekend Edition #339
Hi, WordCamp US was a blast, although a four-day WordCamp felt weird. And after day four I was exhausted. I am almost done dealing with jet lag coming back from the nine-hour time difference. Interestingly enough, I saw way more talks than at previous WordCamps and I enjoyed learning new things. I also caught up […]
Matt: Happy Birthday Anil
If my calendar is correct, one of the OG bloggers Anil Dash is turning 50 today! His blog, which I believe has been active since 1999, inspired me with how he effortlessly transitioned between his top-tier fandom of Prince and his thoughtful commentary on the nuances and second-order effects of what we were doing with blogging, micro-blogging, […]
I Tested 20 Fastest WordPress Themes and Found the Top 8
Here’s the ugly truth: a slow theme can kill your WordPress website before it even has a chance to grow. I found that out the hard way after choosing themes based on looks instead of speed. My sites were crawling, visitors were bouncing, and my hard work was going to waste. That’s when I realized […]
Open Channels FM: Expanding WordPress Capabilities with Angie and the Power of Multi-Agentic AI
In this episode of the Dev Pulse, Expand the Stack series, host Zach Stepek broadcasts straight from the show floor at WordCamp US 2025, where he dives into the latest innovations shaking up the WordPress community. Zach catches up with Shilo Eish Yemini and Miriam Schwab from the Elementor team in their unmistakably pink booth […]
Matt: Simon Says
Simon Willison has vibe-coded 124 useful tools.