WordCamp Canada 2025

Wish I had gone to WordCamp much sooner

Mon, 03 Nov 2025 12:33:03 GMT

I couldn't figure out how to connect with such a distributed group of people, and it was right out there at the WordCamps. Geez how could i have missed that. I've been out of practice, i guess.

Now the big question is which wordcamp should I go to next? ;-)

Also I've been learning about Jetpack, and now see it might be the key to getting the tech out there.

As far as I can see it doesn't have much news distribution functionality. We have huge stuff there with FeedLand, which I didn't talk about much at WCEH.

Hope you don't mind that I used your blog, I started out writing this as an email to Dan, who was kind of my minder at WCEH, but remembered that I'm a blogger and there's a better place to put stuff like this.

Matt Mullenweg at WordCamp Canada

Fri, 17 Oct 2025 14:32:08 GMT

I'm back at WordCamp in a big room Matt Mullenweg to answer questions for the people here. Yesterday's presentation went really well, lots of smart people really interested, fantastic discussion after. A very nice web culture. I went with three slides to get started, and then talked, demo'd, answered questions, and listened to ideas. Told a few jokes. Got a few laughs. It got the job done, help feed the word of mouth on WordLand.

Arrived early at WCEH 2025

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 12:00:52 GMT

Arrived at Carleton Univ, after a 6AM breakfast. Everyone is very cheerful. I met Ryan who is the developer of the WordPress API that WordLand uses. These are web people, one of the last bastions? We all have to work together. And I think we actually are working together. :-)

Long form text

Mon, 13 Oct 2025 14:56:56 GMT

Evan Prodromou is talking about long-form text in the social web in Ottawa on Friday. The very important role WordPress is playing to pull the twitter-like world into the actual web instead of their limited idea of the web. Sounds like harmony to me. ;-)

It's actually more than long-form-text that WordPress is supporting via ActivityPub, they're covering all the basic features of HTML that WordPress supports. This is the web pulling the twitter-like world back to the web, instead of the other way, removing features from the web.

I call this textcasting. Same idea. 😀

Not your grandparent's blogroll

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 15:12:02 GMT

BTW, something I'd like the WordCamp Canada folk to have a look at, the home page of my DaveVerse site.

There's a blogroll down the right side, only it's unlike any blogroll you've seen before.

The order changes, when a site updates it goes to the top of the list.
If you click on the wedge, you see the titles of the most recent five posts on the site. If they don't have a title, that's okay, we use the text of the description.
If you roll your mouse over the permalink for each post you can see how the story begins.

If you want to read more about these blogrolls, here's a good place to start.

The social network of the web

Fri, 10 Oct 2025 13:14:52 GMT

I was just catching up on tweets and saw an announcement earlier this week that Matt Mullenweg is going to lead a town hall discussion at WordCamp Canada next Friday in Ottawa. A week from today. I find that exciting. I'll in the room for sure, and blogging it. Why not? ;-)

I am presenting the day before, where I'll do a demo of the new WordLand, explaining how it's now twice the product it was last time you all saw it. It is still centered on WordPress as the place where all the user's writing is published. And somehow through the magic of software, we manage to make it into a social network. And the cool thing about the whole stack of software we build on, all of it is replaceable and of the web, in every sense.

There are things that Bluesky and Mastodon can do that WordLand can't. But there are also many many things we can do with the structure that WordLand creates that the others can't touch. There's a simple reason for that, if implementing something, no matter how attractive, without limiting the web-ness of the system, we didn't do it. This is the social network of the web. That means all the pieces connect with each other in fantastic unforeseeable ways. And anyone can discover these connections. That was the joy of the early web, the thought "Hey I think I can do that" and when you try, it works! We're back there again, if the people come. The technical challenge is still there but now is smaller. Getting people to look and fall in love (hopefully) is the big challenge.

After WordLand 0.8 is ready, real soon now, who knows what's next? That's the glory a bootstrap. Every step tells you where to go next. That's how you know you're hitting a target.

I don't know if Matt will be there for my demo, I hope he is. He and Automattic and the community have created a fantastic platform. Finding WordPress has a super powerful API that I didn't know about is like finding a new web. Let me know if you see it too. ;-)

So thanks Matt for your great contribution. I hope to be able to thank you for that personally in Ottawa next week. Perfect timing.

We like Twitter. So blogging must be dead.

Wed, 01 Oct 2025 14:48:12 GMT

I was having a conversation with Dan Knauss from the WordCamp Canada team. He said that people in the WordPress world don't think of it as a blogging community. I can see why they resist that, blogging has gotten a lot of bad PR in the last 19 years. The same bad PR that RSS got, and I felt that was so wrong, as wrong as what people said about blogging.

We like Twitter. So blogging must be dead.

I understand -- I get it. But that's marketing, and only necessary because Twitter wouldn't let blogging be part of what they did. I'd be happy to talk about that during my keynote if people want to hear why I think that.

Anyway until 2017 I tried to fit in between the silos. 2017 is when I realized it was hopeless. I couldn't write for the web and for the silos at the same time, I had to choose, so I went with the web. Instant happiness.

Okay so you don't emphasize blogging in the WordPress community. This imho is a mistake.

Even if it was a community built around a style of sneakers or audio equipment I would say it's a mistake not to build a custom blogosphere just for the community. In the past we would have used Twitter for this, but I don't think anyone in their right mind wants to try to do that now. Esp a community, like WordPress, that has open web built into its bones.

I don't have a lot of time to write this morning, so let me leave you with this story.

It took years to boot up blogging as a community. I thought everyone would want to do it as soon as they saw what it was, but there needed to be a critical mass before there could be a critical mass. Logically impossible, right, but somehow it happened anyway. But slowly, in fits and starts.

But podcasting, in contrast, happened much more quickly. The reason? We already had blogging to build on. We had a way to communicate without the press in the middle. That's the power of blogging. We build our own news system. Do things the journalists don't understand or are counter to conventional wisdom.

So imho it's only coincidence that WordPress happens to be a great blogging tool. It can be that and all the other things it is. It's going to be something else too, if I have my way -- it's going to define the basic software that powers the social web. Not peripheral, but central. That and RSS. Incredibly powerful combination, and I think ready to be a strong alternative to the silos. In order for that to work, we have to reboot the blogosphere, so we will do that. :-)

The blog is the message

Mon, 22 Sep 2025 19:07:02 GMT

For a piece on my main blog, I gathered up links to my blog posts about WordPress, they go back further than I thought.

For example, in 2010 for the Rebooting the News podcast I did with Jay Rosen, we used a WordPress site for the show notes and to distribute the podcast audio. Not surprisingly we had some feature requests/fixes, and of course being bloggers, the requests went on my blog, so they're still there.

Another example, when Medium was gaining popularity, I wondered if it were possible to make a similar user interface for WordPress. Now we know for sure that it is possible.

Then I wanted to see how many podcasts I had done about WordPress, I've only had my shownotes site for a short while, but there are a lot more than I thought.

I use podcasts and blog posts to "think out loud" and also to keep track of how ideas develop.

If my memory serves, the aha moment for me was a similar one that Nick describes in this wonderful piece about bringing the Cool Kids back to WordPress. It was when I discovered the Node.js package for their API which covered all the functionality of WordPress. It's how their browser software works, not something most people think about, but developers like me do.

I think we can easily rekindle a blogging community like the one we had in the 90s and 00s, you just have to put your mind to it, and write blog posts that stimulate interest and ideas for others.

Back then we blogged about blogging itself, and then podcasting. Guess what, it's going to be the same now. Every medium primarily talks about itself. I've lived that, but Marshall McLuhan predicted it with his Medium Is The Message soundbite.

In blogging we used to say we were watching them watch us watch them watch us etc. That's really all human beings do. We love stories about ourselves and each other, friends, family or foes. Inside we're all the same and as they say it's really simple. :smile:

Embrace the creativity of others

Sun, 14 Sep 2025 00:56:02 GMT

I wrote a piece in October 1996 after attending a conference of the tech industry that as it turns out was in its final stages. This was one of the last times it met. I was coming from the web, and wanted to see if anyone else was ready to change how we work with each other.

Here's an invitation to truly embrace the creativity of others. Instead of beating your breast about how great you are, try saying how great someone else is. Look for win-wins, make that your new religion. Establish a policy that nothing will be announced unless it can be shown that someone else will win because of what you're doing. How much happier we would be if instead of crippling each other with fear, we competed to empower each others' creativity.

I've been following that ideal ever since, people seem to misinterpret it for subservience or weakness, or a pretense to cover another kind of greed, when it's really sincere, and all about strength.

Sometimes people say yes, and when that happens magical things happen. I swear to god. I've been there. I've done it, it's not something you can do on your own, by definition. It's rare when people actually help each other and thereby create something. It's why the Beatles are such a great story. Someday I still hope to be part of a group like that.

Right now, it's still totally everyone for themself. Our world is breaking. Read the news. But I believe if we did start really collaborating and not just talking about it, things would change very very quickly. Things would happen that can't happen until we work together.

I had it figured out in 1996, but still haven't figured out how to make it happen, and time is running out.

Last chance for the open web

Wed, 03 Sep 2025 17:26:50 GMT

I just recorded a podcast to Jeremy Herve, who we've been working with, at Automattic.

First, he responded to my piece from last Thursday, Think Different about WordPress.

Then I recorded a 20-minute podcast in response, Last chance for the open web. That's what it's really about. WordPress embraced the open web and maintained that support for 22 years. It's the best platform to build on if your intent is to create an easy writing platform for the open web.

I'm going to do more podcasts in the WordPress community in the coming months, and I think this episode would make good background. I'd be happy to elaborate on any of what's in this podcast or in the Think Different piece.

WordPress community blogs?

Wed, 03 Sep 2025 12:51:33 GMT

I've been reading various interesting WordPress community blogs.

I'd love to compile a list of these blogs. I would publish the list in a form that others can plug it into their feed readers, or use it as a start for creating their own lists.

I figure the WordPress blogging community should be the best curated list out there?

Given that it is used to create and edit blogs.. :-)

Anyway if you know of a few excellent WordPress community blogs please post a comment in response to this post or send me an email at dave at scripting.com.

BTW, here's the list of feeds I have so far.

Why I need WordLand

Tue, 29 Jul 2025 10:42:27 GMT

I’m primarily a writer, my podcasts reflect that, so most of the work I do on each podcast, beyond recording the audio, is in writing the show notes.

I have a template the writing and audio flow through. Fairly standard stuff, the same approach used by Tumblr and many other blogging systems, including UserLand's Manila and Radio UserLand (I am the founder of UserLand).

Here's an example of a show notes page rendered through that template.

The idea of WordLand is to do all the block-oriented work once, outside of the writing environment, then flow the writing through it, far away from the heavy lifting. It’s always how I’ve done my blogging tools.

I understand WordPress so far has a steady workflow through the block editor, but these are workflows for designers and programmers. WordLand is the flow for writers.

Note: This post originally appeared on my personal blog.

My blogroll is a feed reader

Sat, 19 Jul 2025 13:39:49 GMT

The nice thing about a blogroll is that it can become a feed reader, in a very small space. It's been on my blog home page for over a year, and I use it a lot, largely because I have to go to that page a lot to see how something I've written looks. Then I see that one of my favorite sites has updated, and I take a quick look to see what's new.

From a technical standpoint, it's hooked into a FeedLand instance where I have created a category called blogroll, and put all the feeds I want in my blogroll in that category. All I have to do to add a new one is subscribe to it in FeedLand, and click the blogroll checkbox.

Another developer wrote a post about using their blogroll as a feed reader, and I wanted to put my hand up and say yes -- this is a good idea. People should do this.

I like it because it's real innovation in reading, something that imho has been lacking in the feed world. Lots more potential here.

And you're welcome to use my blogroll as your feed reader. I have put it on its own page but it's at a confusing location. Something to fix, maybe later today if I have some time or tomorrow. :-)

Sun, 13 Jul 2025 14:17:38 GMT

Honestly I don't think Automattic has done enough to tell people about a crazy new feature for WordPress blogs.

Here's the feature.

You can use WordPress to write a blog post that appears on Mastodon.

You can read about it in a WordPress post I wrote to demonstrate the new stuff.

And here's the same post on Mastodon.

It's the same thing.

This is revolutionary, a legitimate breakthrough.

There's a good thread of comments about this on Mastodon, and if you have questions, consider joining it. Or you can post a comment here and I can try to get you the answer.

And to be clear, I didn't make this happen, it was done by some brilliant developers at Automattic with the power of ActivityPub. I just get to use it, and it gives my product WordLand a great feature, for free.

It's pretty freaking excellent, if you ask me. 😀

Agenda item: WordPress and ActivityPub

Fri, 27 Jun 2025 12:05:57 GMT

I just heard that Evan Prodromou, a leader in the ActivityPub/Fediverse world, will be a keynote speaker at WordCamp Canada in October in Ottawa. I just wrote an email to him and Dan, which as often happens I realized while writing it that it should also be a blog post. So here goes!

Given that this is Canadian WordCamp, I was hoping that Evan might be there.

We've known each other since the early days of Twitter, when Evan was running identi.ca and I was trying to live with the limits of all the incompatible silos the tech industry was creating. Now we're starting to undo the crazy stuff, millions of people understand the importance of getting rid of lock-in, so finally we're empowered to fix a lot of problems. And at this conference, we have a chance to focus on one very important connection between WordPress and ActivityPub.

First, I love what the WordPress team has been doing in making posts flow from WordPress to ActivityPub. I have been blown away by what it can do, and how it moves the needle so far in support of writers.

Because my new product WordLand connects to WordPress, posts that we write also can flow through to ActivityPub and can appear on Mastodon and any other AP-compatible system. It amazes me every time how well this connection works.
It's also amazing because many of the features of WordPress writing make it through to Mastodon via ActivityPub: Posts can have simple styling, links, you can update posts, and a bunch more. I saw someone using a blockquote the other day and it looks great. I think almost all the features in WordLand make it across to Mastodon! Wow.
But no one is talking about it. It's time imho to change that, and start making the Fediverse work for writers, and escape the limits of Twitter circa 2006. But before they can use it they have to know it exists.
And since WP uses features in AP that most clients haven't tested with yet, because there was no way to use the features until WP supported them, there are obvious and simple tweaks that will make my WP posts look even more excellent in an AP client.
And there's the connection between RSS and ActivityPub. I've been writing about inbound and outbound RSS feeds being a powerful way for systems to interop. A quick path through the walls between the systems. We have to do this, if we don't what would that say about the "open" part of the open social web?

So imho we have a lot to talk about. 😀

Dave

PS: Can this blog be viewed in Mastodon? That is, have you installed the code that enables this compatibility?

PPS: Dreams can come true, like what I wrote up in 2022 about textcasting. Think about it. WordPress brings almost all these features to the ActivityPub world, for the benefit of writers and their readers and the open web.

Welcome to WordLand! :-)

Wed, 25 Jun 2025 15:23:53 GMT

First, thanks to the organizers of WordCamp Canada for inviting me to speak at this year's conference and for allowing me to post to this blog.

I like to start these things really early and encourage a conversation that starts way before the conference and extends beyond. That way we can get more done when we meet face to face. And that's really why I do this -- to meet other people who want to do the same kind of stuff I do.

I did a podcast a few days ago entitled WordPress and Me. I've been involved in blogging since inception in one way or another, and over the life of WordPress I have used it, but never dived into it as a developer. I assumed that meant working in PHP, which has never been one of the environments I've mastered. These days I do all my server coding in Node.js.

But then one day I discovered that there was a comprehensive API for WordPress that ran in Node. So I tried doing some stuff with it, and it worked! I read through the docs and it made complete sense, in fact it reminded me of the API we built for Manila, in the late 90s, a precursor to WordPress. I discovered that WordPress had met me where I worked. So I continued experimenting and saw quickly that you could make a very nice editor with this API, so I went for it, and the result is WordLand, which is the primary thing I want to talk about and demo in October in Ottawa.

A few more notes from the conversation on Slack a yesterday.

I found it interesting that the questions assume I know more about WordPress than I do. I'm not a newbie to what WordPress does as a user, but I am very new to working with it as a developer.
I made the choice of APIs without realizing I was making a choice! From what I learned yesterday, I doubt the other API would have made WordLand possible. But if people really want to get the ball rolling, we should either clone the API so it works anywhere (that's usually possible) or extend the wpIdentity package to support the other API. Since it's liberally licensed, anyone can do it, it doesn't have to wait for me to get to it.
I think people will find over time that I am more receptive to the perspective of an independent developer trying to co-exist with a dominant vendor, having spent much of my career in that role. The problems of that were why in 1994, I completely turned my career in the direction of the web, it was exactly what I needed to be creative -- a platform with no platform vendor.
I have, however, also been the CEO of a corporate platform vendor at UserLand, with the product Frontier -- which is the environment that all this stuff happened in (blogging, feeds, podcasting) but it never got any credit for it. It's a shame because Frontier is an amazing platform, but people really resent the platform vendor, and aren't very kind to them. This happens everywhere, not just here. So I also identify with the position that Matt and Automattic are in.
I want to make a contribution, not only by providing a really nice editor for writers using WordPress, something I can relate to because I am also a writer -- but also to leave behind the code I used to connect to WordPress so that other editor-makers can build on that, and most important -- our products can be 100 percent compatible, so users can use different editors to work on the same documents.

But even so there's even more to the story. Luckily there will be a few months to work on that stuff before October! :-)

PS: I tend to edit these posts after publishing.

PPS: Of course I wrote this post using WordLand.