Unlocking Your Brand’s Potential with WordPress: Insights from the Executive Director

Have you ever wondered how WordPress can transform your brand’s narrative and enhance your online presence?

Executive Director of WordPress, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, joined me on the SEJShow to discuss the impact of the open source model on WordPress’s growth and economy and provides valuable insights on leveraging WordPress to tell your brand’s story and succeed in the digital world.

As WordPress marks its 20th anniversary, empowering individuals and organizations to share their narratives and establish their businesses, this episode provides a glimpse into WordPress’s future and the unique ways marketers, entrepreneurs, and SMBs can capitalize on its evolving capabilities.

WordPress enabled about half a trillion dollar economy based on everything people can do to create services and products inside the WordPress space. How we have created our marketplaces has been significant.–Josepha Haden,15:22

Like all the things with AI, I always ask my community to move slowly enough to be ethical but fast enough to be relevant. We’re technology, and we have to be fast. Otherwise, we don’t matter. But also, we are open source, so we always want to be as ethical as possible.–Josepha Haden, 36:02

The thing I think that makes Open Source so valuable in the history of WordPress and probably in the history of any open source project is that it not only has a bunch of freedoms for what anyone who wants to use our software can do and can have, but it also specifically includes freedoms from things that they should not have to deal with. Like they should be free from having someone suddenly change their terms of service and no longer having access to their content or, suddenly changing their algorithms and no longer having any access to the audiences that they worked so hard to gain on their sites and in their own spaces.–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 WordPress project timeline.
[04:12] – Explanation of 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 WordPress post publishing?
[27:21] – Benefits for merchants using WordPress for ecommerce.
[28:56] – Storytelling in ecommerce.
[31:26] – The role SEO plays in WordPress’ operation and its importance to users.
[32:31] – Future of WordPress.
[33:08] – WordPress’ multilingual support.
[34:12] – How WordPress is navigating enterprise-level customizations.
[36:02] – Ethical considerations of WordPress & AI.
[41:57] – The role & importance of the WordPress community in its success.

Resources Mentioned:

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 for what it’s worth, a group of existing agencies caters to enterprise clients in WordPress. We know, as WordPress is in the heart of us, that we can do that and support that. And we also can do that while keeping the heart of our open-source philosophies like we see it happening. WordPress.org/enterprise is the page that enterprise-specific agency leaders pulled together to help us get more awareness that WordPress is an excellent choice for enterprise implementations and clients.–Loren Baker, 45:24

One of the goals of Gutenberg was to lower the barrier to entry for new users of WordPress 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 type of management style for all the interactive management spaces available inside the CMS. This was an opportunity for us to modernize the code base and bring in a new concept of how we can work with WordPress. –Josepha Haden, 21:40

So in the publishing space, one of the things that I think, I’m not going to say we’re going to lead in, but certainly, I believe we’re going to do the best in, is making sure that our native, multilingual support is as seamless and robust as it can be. We are the most used CMS worldwide, and that work is slated for phase four of our current Gutenberg project. It’s not necessarily a Gutenberg-centric concept, but it is one of the areas where we can stand to make the most profound difference in using an excellent CMS globally. And so that is in our next three to four years.–Josepha Haden, 33:08

Connect with Josepha Haden Chomphosy:

Josepha Haden Chomphosy is an accomplished leader and technologist in open-source software. As the 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 globally powered by WordPress.

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

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

Connect with 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