Unlock the potential of your brand with WordPress: Insights from the Executive Director

Ever wondered how WordPress can change your brand’s narrative and improve your online presence?

WordPress CEO Josepha Haden Chomphosy joined me at the SEJShow to discuss the impact of the open-source model on WordPress growth and economics, and to provide valuable insights into how WordPress is being used to make history to tell your brand and succeed in the digital world.

As WordPress celebrates its 20th anniversary and gives individuals and organizations the opportunity to share their stories and start their business, this episode offers a glimpse into the future of WordPress and the unique opportunities marketers, entrepreneurs, and SMBs are capitalizing on developing skills can benefit.

WordPress enabled an economy of about half a trillion dollars based on everything people can do to build services and products in the WordPress space. The way we created our marketplaces mattered.–Josepha Haden, 15:22

As with anything AI related, I always ask my community to move slowly enough to be ethical, but fast enough to be relevant. We are technology and we have to be fast. Otherwise we don’t care. But since we are also open source, we always want to be as ethical as possible.–Josepha Haden, 36:02

What I think makes open source so valuable in the history of WordPress, and probably in the history of any open source project, is that it doesn’t just offer a set of freedoms for what anyone who wants to use our software can do and may have, but it also expressly includes liberties from things they should not concern themselves with. For example, they should be protected from someone suddenly changing their terms of service and losing access to their content, or suddenly changing their algorithms and losing access to the audiences they worked so hard to target on their websites gain their own space.–Josepha Haden, 10:12

[00:00] – About Josepha.
[00:29] – The 20th anniversary of WordPress.
[00:40] – SEJ’s transition from Blogger to WordPress.
[01:54] – The timeline of the WordPress project.
[04:12] – Explanation of the open source project contributions.
[14:32] – The WordPress economy.
[14:51] – SEO plugins in WordPress.
[17:23] – How do plugin and theme developers monetize their work in the WordPress space?
[20:25] – How has Gutenberg changed the way WordPress posts are published?
[27:21] – Benefits for merchants using WordPress for eCommerce.
[28:56] – Storytelling in e-commerce.
[31:26] – The role that SEO plays in the operation of WordPress and what it means to users.
[32:31] – Future of WordPress.
[33:08] – WordPress multilingual support.
[34:12] – How WordPress handles enterprise-level customizations.
[36:02] – Ethical considerations about WordPress and AI.
[41:57] – The role and importance of the WordPress community in its success.

Mentioned resources:

WordPress – https://wordpress.com/
Yoast – https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/
All-In-One SEO – https://aioseo.com/
Rank Math – https://rankmath.com/
Josepha’s blog – https://josepha.blog/

And what it’s worth: A group of existing agencies serves corporate clients in WordPress. Because we care about WordPress, we know we can do it and support it. And we can do that too, while keeping the core of our open source philosophy as we see it. WordPress.org/enterprise is the page that company-specific agency leaders put together to help us create more awareness that WordPress is an excellent choice for enterprise implementations and customers.–Loren Baker, 45:24

One of Gutenberg’s goals was to lower the barrier to entry for new WordPress users by creating this block standard. The idea was that everyone would use the same variety and type of interactions. You only had to learn one management style for all interactive management areas available in the CMS. This was an opportunity for us to modernize the codebase and introduce a new concept of working with WordPress. –Josepha Haden, 21:40

In publishing, one of the things that I don’t think we’re going to take the lead on, but I think we’ll definitely do our best, is to make sure our native language support is so seamless and robust as possible. We are the most used CMS worldwide and this work is planned for phase four of our current Gutenberg project. It’s not necessarily a Gutenberg-centric concept, but it’s one of the areas where we can make the biggest difference in using a great CMS around the world. And that also applies to the next three to four years.–Josepha Haden, 33:08

Contact Josepha Haden Chomphosy:

Josepha Haden Chomphosy is a seasoned open source software leader and technologist. As Executive Director of WordPress, she oversees the strategic direction of the world’s most widely used content management system (CMS), with 43% of all websites worldwide powered by WordPress.

Since taking on this role in 2019, she has dedicated her work to building a more diverse and inclusive community that welcomes hundreds of volunteers worldwide, expanding the reach of the platform and empowering users to create exceptional digital experiences. Josepha is known for her leadership and philosophy, her passion for open source software, and her commitment to creating a more equitable and inclusive industry.

Connect with her on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephahaden/

Contact Loren Baker, Founder of Search Engine Journal:

Follow him on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/lorenbaker
Connect with him on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorenbaker