Thread by @schutzsmith

At the #WordPress State Of The Word a few weeks back a little birdie told me that I should take a closer look at the .com side of WordPress.

I primarily work with the .org side as a web dev in my day job & freelance clients.

Here’s what I’ve discovered…

img: @wallpapercave

First, a bit of background.

There are actually 2 different WordPress sites out there:
1) WordPress . org which is #opensource and run by the non profit WordPress Foundation
2) WordPress . com which is proprietary and run by the for profit private company @automattic

In the WordPress community they’re commonly referred to as .com and .org, so that’s what I’ll be doing here.

.org is where most of the plugins, themes, and core development, documentation, design, and marketing is done. Primarily from volunteers across companies and skills.

.com is where most people that are new to WordPress go. Part of that is because it is simply the .com, which is by nature the first url any of us would put in when looking for something. It is also the commercial aspect of WordPress but solely for it's parent company @automattic

The lines between .org and .com are both absolute and murky if that makes any sense.

The .org has it’s own ecosystem of contributors and teams, moving forward the vision of WordPress.

The contributors are made up of developers across the industry but most are from @automattic.

Makes sense since it has the largest stake in the success of the .org so the .com can continue to thrive and grow as all private companies do.

But I digress, this thread isn’t about all that, you can hear from many others through the years on that subject.

No, this is about UI.

I’ve taken a closer look this evening and thought I’d compare some of the amazing things that the .com has improved upon but that have NOT come to the .org. I’m not sure they’ve even been mentioned tbh.

Some are long standing UI issues that look to have been solved, in the .com.

First up, spinning up a new site on WordPress.com is an absolute joy. I’m not being facetious. I really mean it! This is the path that looks like.

When you first spin up a new site on .com you are asked if you want to join the Full Site Editing Beta. That is AWESOME!!!

Living all of my time on the .org side, I honestly have heard NOTHING about this beta being on .com. I think that is terrific and wish more of us knew.

I’d also LOVE this to be in the .org build when we spin up a new site on WordPress 5.9 or the next version.

The next step I get to choose a domain. Such a nice experience and one I know that is more hosting focused but after all, this would be nice for some circumstances of users from .org.

Then we move on to choose a theme. And this is a gosh darn delight. Absolutely chef’s kiss 😘👌

.com makes it so easy to see all of their beautiful themes, categories, etc. Notice the nice url in the header now as well.

There’s also a “blank theme” for better custom designing.

Next .com goes through asking what features you need for this site. Brilliant!

This would be amazing for .org to have something like this. A kind of pre-made list of possible things an administrator would need for their new website.

Again, gorgeous use of typography & spacing

And even more brilliant after you’ve selected a few things.

The final screen is their pricing, and I’m choosing not to share that here.

It’s not something that would translate well to the .org because that is “free” and reinforced by the 4 Freedoms at the bottom of the About Page wordpress.org/about/

After billing, we’re into the dashboard. And let me tell you I was jumping everybody. I was so excited to see how good this UI looked that I knocked over my water bottle and damn near had a heart attack before it reached my laptop.

Dare I say, this is one good looking backend.

On this “dashboard” I think this section explaining what’s left for site setup is terrific. Only thing I might do differently is number them instead of bullets.

We have a welcome screen on .org but it’s not the same by any means and has been that way for years.

Next I went through all the various capabilities built into the .com, at least on the Free version.

First, built in stats is pretty cool. Very nice!

Would be great by default in .org sites rather than another plugin. I know @jetpack does it similarly but it feels too bulky.

The Inbox is a great idea! For some website owners this would be ideal so they have their communication and marketing all in one place.

I haven’t looked to see if this is offered as a plugin on the .org side but could see me recommending it to some clients if it was.

Next is Posts in the admin sidebar. Again, just looks really nice compared to the .org version. A nice modern UI, easy to understand.

Not really the same if we look at the .org version. I wouldn’t even know how to get this to look like .com’s or if that would even be possible without completely custom css and overwriting some core PHP files.

PS. Shout out to @NewsletterGlue

One thing that comes apparent to me is I can switch between the .org look and the .com look under Screen Options.

That would be GREAT on .org to change the UI for the admin side like that!

Then you provide the name for your site. LOVE IT! 😍

Next in the admin sidebar is Media. And woooo doggies I could use this for client sites. It has the Media Library which also exists in the .org version BUT it also includes photos from Google and Pexels.

I’m sure the new Open Verse / Open Photos will also be included in here.

Having better integration in .org to photos from other services would be a game changer for so many users. I remember years ago someone had created a plugin that nicely integrated Flickr, 500pix, and others into the Media Library but I believe it’s since been abandoned.

Next is Pages, again similar to the look and feel of Posts. A nice streamlined UI. Easy to understand, easy to work with.

I peeked into the page editing process on .com and it pretty much looks the same as what we have in .org.

I don’t remember that wizard in the bottom left looking quite like that for .org though and as many steps but I could be mistaken.

Comments is the next section and seems similar to the .org counterpart aside from some nicer icons.

One thing I do notice is that the avatar just looks out of place and dated. Dunno why it feels like that for me.

Next is Feedback and THIS. IS. AWESOME. Essentially the .com has integrated @Crowdsignalcom into their offering so that users can run surveys, polls, etc.

There is a .org version of this as a plugin but I have not used it yet. Will be definitely taking it for a spin though!

Now in the sidebar menu I get to @jetpack. I’m on the free plan here so I can’t actually use it BUT it definitely lets me know why I should. 🤣

On to WooCommerce in the sidebar, and perhaps the ONE MAIN REASON I would recommend .com to clients. I don’t do WooCommerce often so I’d rather put them on a platform where it can shine.

I’ll upgrade an account on .com in the future and we can play around with that another time

Next is the Appearance menu. It is similar to what I’ve seen in the .org version BUT these themes are all built by Automattic and as far as I can tell, they aren’t all available on the .org theme repo. I get it, .com is a closed system but some of these would be nice on .org.

There is one thing I notice though.

Do you spot it?

Take a closer look at that previous image of the themes list. I’ll wait…

It’s an Install Theme button! That’s right, you can install themes, and even plugins, on the .com version now.

The main distinction years ago used to be that .com was a closed system and you could not add your own themes or plugins.

That was what made all of us using .org not worry about it - if you needed custom themes or plugins you’d have to go to one of us doing them.

This is NO LONGER THE CASE.

I’ve not tested any of my custom themes or plugins yet but will and report back on how it goes.

So what does this all mean?

.com could POTENTIALLY be a revenue stream for web designers and web developers as a host for your clients

Note, you have to be on the .com Business Plan to install themes or plugins.

Back to this concept of a revenue stream for .org folx. There is even a service from the .com to build the site for you.

I’m pretty sure that this hooks into their recommended vendors, which is potentially any web designer, builder or developer they have a relationship with.

The price points seem about right for referrals to freelancers or small(ish) agencies.

Great! I love seeing people who‘ve contributed to .org in some way being compensated.

I whole heartedly believe that people who contribute their time for design, development, documentation, teaching, events, marketing, etc. should be able to be compensated for their efforts.

More on that in a minute.

Let’s now look into the next section in the admin menu bar of WordPress .com, the Plugins section.

Right away, the most blaring thing you notice is that there are plugins you can pay for right here in the plugin screen! You can pay monthly or annually.

That’s A LOT DIFFERENT than what we have in the .org Plugins screen.

I get it, the .com is @automattic house and they can do what they want in there, but why not have this store feature available in the .org as well?

Why NOT have a centralized place for paid plugins /themes?

We could add a small “tax” onto the purchase of any of these that then could go back into the .org / WordPress Foundation to help compensate contributors for their efforts on the free / open source side. Joost de Valk, co-founder of @yoast, expressed this on @post_status slack.

I was surprised to hear from .com leadership on that same thread some, what I felt to be dismissive responses that it would take too much effort.

OK, but so did Gutenberg and yet here we are, never having voted as a community on actually adopting it as the main content editor.

I love WordPress, both .org and .com. I want to see both succeed!

But right now I feel the borders of where .org ends and .com begins are so fuzzy that none of us working blue collar web jobs feel confident on .org’s direction.

I don’t know what the answer is, but I do know that the way things are now won’t keep working.

We’re not getting new people into the community fast enough and we’re seeing good, even GREAT, people leave because they aren’t listened to or compensated fairly.

There are a lot of smart people still in this community that care deeply about it’s success through new ideas, diversity of thought, inclusion of different backgrounds, and perseverance of will but we’re all getting very tired.

Where does this go? I don’t know.

What I do know is that .com has received a lot of love from @automattic but also built off the contributions of .org from the community as a whole.

I’d like to see some of that love given to contributors across the whole community.

There are some smaller efforts, like sponsored staff and the whole concept of Five For the Future but I don’t see that being sustainable for growth with mergers and people leaving the community. wordpress.org/five-for-the-f…

To wrap this up, there are much smarter and more eloquent people that can speak to all of this, so coming up in just under 24 hours we’re having a @TwitterSpaces to hear from a wide array of folks about this.

Please set a reminder and join us!

twitter.com/i/spaces/1djxX…

There are some set speakers in place but we’ll also be opening the floor to hear from anyone that would like to speak.

Would love to hear what other people think about how we can encourage new people into the WordPress community to help it keep growing & thriving for years!

One thing to note, I’m truly sorry that I didn’t specify the Alt for all of these images I used!!! I’ll do better next time.

Also, @TwitterDev would be great if you had a reminder for us to add Alt text for images on Mac Desktop app.