Corey Maass and Cory Miller share the messiness of building a WordPress product live. They reveal the initial version of Crop.Express, a plugin designed to crop a featured image within the WordPress workflow and discuss their progress and ongoing development.
Estimated reading time: 53 minutes
In this episode, Corey Maass and Cory Miller share their initial version or MVP of the product they are building, Crop.Express. Together they work through enhancing UX, selecting the right business model, crafting marketing messages, and more.
Top Takeaways:
- Work Out the Workflow. You will teach people how to use your product with demos or tutorials. While you want to make adjustments to improve UX, you don’t want to constantly change the workflows for your product. Being thoughtful on the front end can result in better usability and less change.
- Business Models. Building a product also means determining a business model. Offering some functionality for free can gain exposure for a base product. Adding a pro or paid version with increased value to deliver a better end product for a customer.
- Focus on Feedback. As a product builder, you work to anticipate pain points and solve for them. With a quality product, you will solve real struggles for users. But there is a reason users are uninstalling. Accessing their input and experience could be the key to taking your product to the next level.
Mentioned in the show:
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You can follow Post Status and our guests on Twitter:- Corey Maass
- Cory Miller (CEO, Post Status)
- Olivia Bisset (Intern, Post Status)
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Transcript
Session 2 Corey & Cory Launch a WordPress Product Live
Cory Miller: [00:00:00] Hey everybody, welcome back to post status. Where we’re, um, Corey Moss and I are session two.
Launched a WordPress product in public, and you’re getting to see all the, you know, um, kinks and rough edges. But what we hope really comes through is that we’ve had these really good conversations and we’re like, we’re okay with not, we’re being imperfect and showing how this product works, at least with us.
So hopefully it helps somebody else inspire somebody to do better. Um, but, all right, Corey, I have to be the first admit as my partner in this, um, donate my homework. Excuse, excuse. I was frantically in between meetings, trying to like, be creative with the read me text. Mm-hmm. Um, But I, um, so I have to say that first and foremost, and then second.
I know you shared a cool feature that we were talking about that I was like, Hey, we can put this on the backlog. And you’re like, no, it’s here, it [00:01:00] is . Um, so I haven’t even got to see that. But, um, that, that’s kind of my update. But what, what things do you have or want to talk about?
Corey Maass: Um, yeah, I, it, it. Uh, like I’m on top of my stuff, you know, by getting these updates to you.
But I mean, I’m in the same boat. I promised, uh, last Wednesday that, you know, within a day or two I would have this other feature implemented. And it was like last minute on Friday that I actually, or even Monday, that I was like, oh crap, I owe us this thing. So, um, yes, technically I got my paper written and handed in, uh, and you didn’t, but it doesn’t mean I wasn’t up until 6:00 AM the, the morning of writing the paper.
Uh, you know, so, I mean, again, these are, these are the realities. You know, I, I’ve [00:02:00] got client work, I’ve got numerous products that need updating and bugs fixed, and, uh, life goes on. And so, you know, we’ve, we’ve fit this stuff in, in between. When we can. I mean, and, and I think that that’s too, like where we’re at, right?
Like right now, this is, uh, an idea that we’re, you know, we’re still in the garage phase or we’re still in the, like, we can’t make this a priority yet because it’s not out there. It’s not, we don’t have users to satiate, we don’t have revenue to chase. We don’t have, you don’t, you know, you’re doing the marketing and you don’t have anything to market.
And so, I mean, this is, this has been my MO for a long time where if I’ve got a new idea for a new product, it’s just gotta get shoved in between all the other stuff that is at the moment, more important.
Cory Miller: It’s always a game. And this of juggling, I think. And I [00:03:00] swore to myself, I was like, I’m gonna stop juggling, but I juggles for so long with Ithe stuff.
It’s like, as an entrepreneur and doing these type of things, you’re owning all the responsibility and, um, but it’s really good to have someone that understands we’re all juggling, um, back and forth. Um, well, would you want to like, look at where we’re at now from the plugin side, since you’ve got, you’ve done your, you’ve done more than your homework, by the way.
Um, do you wanna share your screen? Do you want me to share?
Corey Maass: Yeah, let me, let me share because I’ve got it, um, set up pretty readily here, I think. Um, so what we’re talking about, um, is the, the very first version of this plugin and I just don’t wanna. Because we are so professional, um, [00:04:00] you know, I need to carefully culminate the experience that people will have.
Um, how do I top left or Let’s do this. Move the screen. Full screen. Uh, move the window. . All right. Um,
nope, that won’t work. Share screen. Let’s try this again. Where’s the plate? Blue window. There we go. Share. All right. So hopefully you can, you’re seeing a, a WordPress install. Yep. Um, so, uh, for the nerds out there, um, I’ve got this, um, are we still recording?
Cory Miller: No, we are now recording again, . Oh, awesome. I pause it.
So now we’re [00:05:00] actually recording . So we’re on session two. Everybody, for the recording sake of launching the WordPress product in, in, in public. And you’re seeing all the foibles, particularly mine. But Corey’s now showing us 0.001 version of the. Right.
Corey Maass: Um, yeah, what everybody missed is us discussing how, just how, uh, we are the epitome of professionalism and, um, it all works out in the end.
But the, you know, part of the point of, of this whole experiment recording is, is to see the kind of, uh, the messiness, the behind the scenes, the, um, so, uh, for the nerds, uh, I’m using, I, I use local WP to develop locally, um, and to run sites locally and stuff like that. So that’s what you’re seeing here is just a local site of vanilla WordPress install.
And, um, so we’ve got version, you know, 0 0 1 [00:06:00] installed, um, crop Express, and then where that puts us is, We had talked about lots of different features, um, but decided that our m v p, our, let’s just add some value to the world version, um, is, is just the ability to crop the featured image. Um, so what we’re doing here is, uh, we still have a featured image panel on the side here.
Um, whoops. Oh, come on. Don’t. We have a featured image panel on the side in, in the block editor. Um, but this is actually our custom panel and we’re hiding the built-in featured image panel. Um, and we say select and crop an image. And so here’s the new UI that I was talking about. Um, I’ve moved some things around and, um, I still think that I want to make one more change where I wanna put these two buttons on top of each other [00:07:00] with a sort of, um, broken image or a, a place.
You know, a, your image will appear here soon because right now if I say upload an image, um, and I choose an image, um, It just, right now it just says, you know, here is the, the name of the file selected. But I think much more, you know, to most people, they’re gonna wanna see a little thumbnail of the image that they’ve selected, again, to kind of prove like, okay, wait, I chose the right one.
Um, and so then you choose, uh, this is when you’re cropping it. Do you want to crop a square? Do you want to crop 16 nine? Um, and then the first fanciness that, uh, you said, boy, it would be slick if was being able to crop a circle. So that’s now there, but, so we’ll start with a square. In a square, you say, crop it, and you get into the cropper.
And so this is where you can zoom around and you select your image.
Cory Miller: [00:08:00] And um, Hey, real quick, Corey, how does it go if you want to crop back out, like you go, oh, it’s too tight. Will it, can you push back out?
Corey Maass: Um, so there’s, there’s zoom in and out here. Ah, ah, okay. Okay, okay. On the bottom because Yeah, I didn’t, what the, the better way to, to manipulate this is actually the, the mouse wheel.
Like I’m zooming in and out here with the mouse wheel. I got you. Um, but we can’t assume that everybody has a mouse wheel. Um, right. So, um, I think eventually maybe we want a slider, but for now, I just wanted us to have something so you can zoom in, um, and then, and then move it around kind of thing. Okay.
Cory Miller: Can you go back to the previous screen first? Oh, go ahead.
Corey Maass: If you have something else. Oh, just, and, you know, so there’s, um, yeah, lots of different ways to kind of move this around. It’s, I think it’ll take a [00:09:00] little, everybody’s gonna have to kind of get used to it. They’ll get used to it. Um, yeah, there’s also a new preview in a new window.
So like if you’ve, if you’ve zoomed in before you actually set crop this and set this as your featured image, um, it’ll open a new window with the result. So you can, you can see it. Oh, that’s cool. Um, so if you go back, you can say, crop a circle and go to crop it. And so there’s your circle. Um, and that will now save as a p and g with transparent around it.
So this is, you know, I think again, when, when you mentioned it, I was like, oh snap, that’s gonna be really slick because it’s now really common that you’ve got avatars images of people are circles. I think that’s just a very common pattern. So the fact that we can offer that here, um, is very cool. And then the, the other new.
What I was [00:10:00] insisting on, um, as of last week was, um, you had said, okay, maybe version one, but it was like, no, we need this. So the circle is a nice to have. I think that’s gonna be really fun and cool to talk about as a feature, but not totally necessary. Whereas choosing an image from the media library to me, was a non-starter.
Cuz you, once you brought it up, I was like, yeah, you can’t, again, you know, one of the things I kept talking about last week was I’m trying to do a lot of product development for this from the perspective of my clients. And I’m like, my clients half the time, like they’ll crop an image and then they’ve got no idea.
Once they’ve uploaded it, they’ve got no idea what happened to it. Is it on the desktop? Is it in their download folder? Whatever, whatever. So, um, we need to be able to essentially recover, you know, start over using an image from the media library. So that’s now supported. Again, you select an image, [00:11:00] pick your shape and size and all that.
And then, you know, here’s one that I’ve pre previously cropped as a square. So that’s what you’ve got. But you can like zoom in on our little person here. Um, are you double
Cory Miller: clicking or are you doing your scroll?
Corey Maass: Well, uh, uh, I’m, I’m, uh, moving the box around. Okay, there we go. Yeah, so, and that’s where it’s like, I’m clicking and dragging.
Yeah. So, yeah, it’s, go ahead.
Cory Miller: So I’m side bared on like product for a second and more, so I wouldn’t even do this, explain it if we weren’t live, but, um, cuz I know, you know, these things, I’m, this is where I dig in on product personally is I go, okay, I use myself as the default, but I know that’s, there’s some ancient practices I have, for instance, but, I think our biggest thing is showing them how the workflow, like it’s gonna take out this amount of time [00:12:00] for you to go over here from a marketing side too.
And product is like, how are you cropping today? It’s probably piece together stuff. Maybe somebody’s in Canva or something like this. But the workflow we’re doing is like you’re writing up post-it. You go in, what’s your, you know, do you do your feature demos first? Do you do it third? And when you do that, you’re gonna save this workflow over here.
Mm-hmm. . And the re, the reason why I was just asking some of these questions is to know myself and to make sure I calibrate and go, okay, we’re gonna be teaching people. Mm-hmm. because you get, you teach somebody a workflow and you don’t want to change workflows very often. And so that’s why I was just asking cuz I, you, you’ve seen this a hundred times, but like any little edge in the flow of the process is something we’ll be watching where people get tripped up.
So if I understand that, I can help . Um, so I think that was really good. Could you go back to [00:13:00] the previous screen for a second? Sure.
Corey Maass: So from the work, and I think, I think where you, you know, what you’re bringing up now is exactly the right thing at the right time, because what I’ve been focused on is, to me this is, this is slightly better than a proof of concept.
Yeah. It’s like we, we have now proven that we can upload an image or select an image. We can crop it in a few different ways. It saves as the featured image, all of, you know, I’m clearly, I’m using the WordPress blue. These are not pretty things, you know, the buttons are inconsistent in, in inconsistent places, you know, so now is the right time for you to start looking at this from a products perspective and Me too, and going, okay, so what’s actually gonna be, We don’t want to deviate too far from like WordPress patterns that people are used to, but this is where we start to make it our own product and a product that’s fast and easy to [00:14:00] use.
Cory Miller: So I think my first thing, um, reaction to this is it’s the, it does the job we need where we don’t have to go into too many of the, you know, really fine tuned ui ux stuff, but like, it does the job. Mm-hmm. . But we were talking last week about like, you know, opinions trying to in, kind of push a reaction back from, um, the users.
Uh, I just wanna mention that note. I don’t think I have anything particular, but like, to me, this is functional, what we’re trying to do, like this gets the job done and it’s maybe not the most elegant, modern design we’ve ever seen, but it, it’s clear, um, And he gets the job done.
Corey Maass: Yep. Doesn’t work on mobile.
Uh, I don’t know if it ever will, cuz that’s kind of a lot of functionality to try to do on a phone. [00:15:00] Um, but at some point we will review that.
Cory Miller: Um, what I’m curious about is we have selected five ratio sizes and two shapes. We put the functionality, which I think, thank you for putting the media li library in there.
I think that’s, that, that was a really, really good decision. I just never know if I go, can we get that in there? What that might look from a timeframe, but I love that you made that decision. So it seems like we’ve made some assumptions for them. Like, Hey, here’s the common aspect ratios. What I’m gonna bet like five bucks on is one of our first things we’re gonna get is, can you do, and it’s gonna be this, oh my god, 50 flavors of.
Uh huh process. But from a product standpoint, if you’re able to take a step back for a second, what do you think will get some reactions from Yeah,
Corey Maass: I, I think you’re exactly right. And I think that [00:16:00] every, cuz every theme I think has their ideal image, size, shape, et cetera. Um, we, and, and so one of the things that I’ve got in the back of my mind is, um, the next step is, or one of the next things we’re gonna need is essentially I’m envisioning, and this is an assumption, but I’m envisioning there’s, there’s two roles.
Involved here. One is, again, because from the, from the, from my situation, there’s Corey who controls and sets up the website, and then there’s clients who go in and are publishing story after story. And so Corey needs an admin, like, I don’t want, uh, my clients to have four, three or three four. There’s nothing on our website that’s those aspect ratios.
Um, and so [00:17:00] I want an admin screen that only admins meaning me have control over that says, you know, what aspect ratios, what essentially what, you know, what options are available for featured images. And I’m gonna go in and I’m gonna say square and 16 nine, not nine 16, and nothing, four three. Um, I might or might not even let them choose a shape, you know, and then, and so I’m gonna clean that up.
or I’m gonna select options so that then when the client goes in, there’s, you know, there’s one option or some, you know, or something
Cory Miller: like that. So switching gears over to marketing and mm-hmm. , you know, business model stuff. That’s where I go, okay, that seems like Corey a del, uh, free does this better image cropping outta the box with a lot of template sizes, ratios that like, does a job that could get us bigger [00:18:00] exposure for the base plugin.
And then I just see right there, the way you were describing, it’s like there’s the pro or the paid side, which is, hmm, I’m a developer, I’m an agency. My clients mess this stuff up all the time. I’m gonna preset it and right there I go. That’s value to an agency. One, they’re gonna get a better end product for their customer.
They can, they can have some opinions about it, like if you wanna limit them, but like you do this from a client facing side too. But that right there from a business perspective is where we go, okay, there’s the start of our pro. Love it. You know, are we adding some value to that? Like they don’t want them to mess up their theme.
And, and you know, even on a bigger perspective, maybe there’s 10 people on a website or something mm-hmm. , you know, going in. But, you know, I could think of higher ed in this instance or something where it’s like, no, they shouldn’t have 16 by nine option. Never. Right. You know?
Corey Maass: Yeah. I, yeah. And [00:19:00] I, I, one of the things that immediately jumps out at, you know, first of all, you, my bad habits are showing, right.
I think in terms of product and feature. And so I’m like, I’m, I’m by default, I’m, I’m, I go down those rabbit holes immediately and I love that you immediately are like, here are the people . Which my brain doesn’t even, I mean, I’m, I’m talking about me and roles and stuff, but I’m not, it doesn’t register consciously.
Whereas you immediately are like the difference between a free version, a person, mom and pop shop, or a power user on their own website installing a plugin. They’re still gonna have great options. It’s still gonna bring them a ton of value, which I think is, is awesome. Um, and we can do some simple ways to, cuz it’s like, I don’t want people to install and go, well I need, you know, instead of 16, nine, I need 1610.
So [00:20:00] uninstall. Mm-hmm. . So we’ll have to think about some ways to give. Some more options so that, you know, we accommodate more people. But I love that you’re immediately going, okay. You know, but, but there’s a different version for a different role. A different kind of person. A different kind of user. Um, cuz I, because I mean, as we always talk about it, it’s like B2C and b2b.
Yeah. You know, b2b, there’s, there’s more opportunity, there’s more money, there’s more investment in tools and whatnot. So that just makes more sense.
Cory Miller: This is where I want to be watching, but I never, I have, I go into these things with some kind of a straw man, you know, avatar. Yeah. But the, how it’s worked way better for me is not, I’m not clairvoyant and go exactly this.
I go, okay, here’s my straw man. We have use cases around that. We think there’s others. And then what I love Corey is [00:21:00] like, Those first responses, even if they’re bad, are helpful. Yeah. But what I tried to train the team and I themes is like try to a long answer in their question. Figure out what are they trying to get done.
Yeah. But, and then that helps us. Like lineate, it was probably two or three years into Ithe where I was like, oh, it’s do it yourselfers and what we call builders, you know? Mm-hmm. people building stuff for other people and then we could create product better. But my hypothesis for all this is like I wrote down bloggers, anybody that does rapid WordPress content creation.
Mm-hmm. , that could be our big base, right? Mm-hmm. . And then you just gave me a use case’s, like I’m delivering project to Clint. I don’t want them to mess it up cuz it’s gonna cause problems for us. Ding ding. I just found it’s worth, there’s a value numbers assigned to that. Absolutely. Which we can talk about when we get to like the pro and licensing and stuff.
Yeah. And we confirmed on the huddle by the way too. Like several of the agency owners were like, oh yeah. [00:22:00] What my challenge will be in marketing, our challenge will be in marketing is I think if we can as succinctly as possible, go see this problem and somebody go, fills that pain going, yeah. Like I did when you go, I’m working on this thing.
And I was like, I, I instantly felt that pain. That’s when, when we’ll start to see some interesting metrics. A part of this. I think. So like I was thinking like even if we showed this, like, I don’t know how we do this on the marketing set, but you’re like, Hey, I’m, I’m a rapid, you know, content creator type person going in there, and then I have to go over here and find my workflow.
Yep. You know, and then come
Corey Maass: back this other site, or I have to open Photoshop, I have to
Cory Miller: do.dot. And then I think some of the best potential pro features for this are gonna come from the, but I want this. And those are simply the, like the, oh, I want it to be exactly this. [00:23:00] Dimensions. I say it by the pixel, whatever that is, you’re like, ding, ding.
Maybe that’s something you’ll pay money for.
Corey Maass: Well, and, and I mean, the other opportunity for this, I think is, um, I’m, I’m very far out of the theme market. Um, it’s not even, even in, in the, the decade plus that I’ve been in WordPress. Like I’ve done mostly custom development, but I’m envisioning like a c f advanced custom fields can get in, can be embedded in other things.
And I’m kind of envisioning, again, I know we’re, we’re moving more towards, you know, full site editing and all that kind of stuff. But, um, a theme that has our functionality built in, because the theme is built specifically to show off a 16, nine image. You wanna prevent your users from uploading anything that isn’t [00:24:00] 16.9.
And so I can also see some sort of like the developer version that, that is embeddable, you know, as a must use plugin or something that, um, yeah. You know, so then, so then the theme, because imagine, uh, a theme developer, again, if a, if, if my experience and assumptions are correct, um, a, a theme developer is getting hit with tickets that are like, your demo looked great, but then as soon as I started uploading my pictures from my phone, the layout’s broken.
You know, what the hell? So, you know, if there was, if a, if it was embedded or built into a theme that had the, that limited the end user from making mistakes, you know, which isn’t really them making a mistake, but you know what I’m saying?
Cory Miller: Um, yeah. So let me say this coming before I do these, cuz I don’t want it to think that we’re gonna, I don’t want it to.
Bloat V1 release. Um, I think this is ready for v1. [00:25:00] I agree. The second thought I just had is when you should keep talking about themes. I think about, I, I wrote down here, cadence Astra, generate, press, whatever. Uh, I mean, let’s throw in elementary in there. Um, I’ve got at least three of those four connections to say like, it might be worth us seeing what, let’s say cadence for instance.
Um, we run that at posts, like, okay, what are those features in their themes? And maybe take a browse, but we have connections with these theme groups mm-hmm. To say like, we could get some adoption through helping their user. You know, we’re a third party free add-on kind of thing. But that could help us get some adoption.
And that’s something I can, I can put on my plate, uh, for sure is to one, look around some of those themes and just see, um, , but you know, those four as elements or technically isn’t a theme, but you know, cadence [00:26:00] Astra generated press are hot themes. Mm-hmm. , you know, that we can get some adoption for,
Corey Maass: you know, like, and I’m, and I’m a Beaver Builder user deeply, but, and they allow, and I know Elementor also allows, uh, custom modules.
So again, down the road, if we think that there’s a market for this, then a, there’s the Beaver Builder Image module. Elementor I’m sure has the similar, you know, but there’s a,
Cory Miller: we could just hook into And that’s another paid pro feature too.
Corey Maass: Exactly. You know, I love it because, I mean, people, people buy.
Other, other add-ons or additional modules or module sets or whatever. Like, I don’t, I, um, I don’t want to get too far down there, but that’s also like, I love the, the, uh, obviously as a, as a developer, I am most comfortable with developing as marketing. And so, you know, integrating with Beaver Builder, if we show up absolutely on, on their [00:27:00] marketplaces, then people are going, oh, what’s this Crop Express thing?
Cory Miller: I just talked to Robbie a couple days ago on Slack, so Yeah, absolutely. I should have included B Builder too. Um, so that’s like on the future, that’s on the backlog for the marketing business stuff to get some adoption. But what I’m doing on this course, so, you know, is like building a case. Mm-hmm. of like, we’ve selected a pretty narrow workflow issue, but I, you’re helping me with those thoughts is build a case for that pro side of, oh, cuz I’m already building a case for like, there’s an agency package that’s, Has the pro.
Yep. That’s, you know, if we can continue to build, find, and build value in this. I, I love that because there’s so many bigger builder Elementor Yeah. Um, developers that use that love it. And both those tools and to go, here’s something that’s gonna make your clients, [00:28:00] well, it’s gonna make your life easier as the agency.
Cause they’re not gonna put something stupid within the layout . Um, and it won’t slow down their site that causes performance issues. Right, exactly. Or, you know, just doesn’t look right. Yeah.
Corey Maass: Yeah. And that was the, uh, it’s, it’s sort of a, we, we won’t actually do this, but one of the things that popped in my head when you were talking about how do we illustrate the difference that this.
Plugin will make for you, as I was picturing, a, uh, a marketing site where all of the images are wrong. Like Yes. The wrong Oh, yes. You know, like it overlapping text or like way too long or whatever. And there’s like, click a button to see the difference that our plug-in will make. And then all the images are like
Cory Miller: Corey.
Yes. Like there’s, there’s a page. Like, let’s do that because it’s like, that’s the raw [00:29:00] emotional obvious effect that connects. Like, I, I think I told you, you know, 10 years ago, my, my mom put, and we had feed rotating images in the theme, and it was like, yeah, , you know, just sewing, like showing, Hey, ever, ever have this, there’s a beautiful design, you know, of a site.
And then the image is just like, . And then go, that’s our, that’s our agency. Marketing thing is like tired of this, like this is a point.
Corey Maass: Love it.
Cory Miller: Crop express
Corey Maass: even. Oh man. Even, even just a carousel. Cuz like, I literally was dealing this with, dealing with this with a client the last couple of days was like a carousel where like an Im, one of the images, not kidding, was this was like as tall as it should be, but an inch wide.
And then the next picture was like the, you know, and, and they’re like, why is it stretched out? And it’s like, cuz the carousel is forcing it to fill the space, you know? So it’s like if [00:30:00] we just put in a whole bunch of janky images and then was like, click a button or see the carousel where it’s like all of the images are sized correctly without a ton of effort.
Like now you get it, you know,
Cory Miller: protect your clients from themselves. Like we would build tools and they’d be like, yeah, you can basically make it as ugly as you want. This is protect your clients from themselves. But there’s that. So we’re fleshing out these two avatars, which maybe this one is. Maybe it ends up being the free one, but it gets to this one, which we think, my hypothesis might be, there’s money here.
Protect your clients from themselves, protect your work from themselves. Um, but this one could be something that shows, like ever trying to like, add all the tools you crop and like ever. I don’t know, there’s something there, but we’re fleshing out the use case to me of a problem. Then I think there’s more around this base problem, like we’re coming to a belief of, [00:31:00] you know what I mean?
Like over here it’s like everybody’s built a site and the clients have like rurally screwed it up. Yeah. And, but we’re also hitting a pain point where they’re trying to create content and this is in the way. So I, I love those two avatars. You.
Corey Maass: Yep. Um, I, the other thing that comes to mind is like, I mean, it’s, it’s protect clients from themselves so that they stop sending you emails.
Yes. You know, as, or stop opening support tickets.
Cory Miller: Sean from, uh, Sean Heskes from WP 1 0 1 basically created that, his thing, his entire little empire over there on that scenario, tired of your customers complaining about the, or, you know, asking these sets of questions and that’s how they built it. So, like, that’s part of that marketing material.
We’ll remember on the pro side is mm-hmm. , you know, stop messing up your work, protect them from themselves. . [00:32:00]
Corey Maass: Yep. Yeah. And if you can, and if we get so that it’s configurable, so it’s like, okay, you’re setting up a new site for a, for a client. This might be a, a process that you do over and over again, or it might be a one-off, whatever.
But one of the steps, you know, you’re installing the theme that you like, you’re in, you’re plugging in those templates, page templates, you know, setting up the nav, whatever. And then just one of the things is you install Crop Express. You go in and you say, you know, only let them upload 16, nine. Um, I also think, you know, there’s, there’s others.
Basically it’s wherever. For me, one of the end goals is wherever WordPress uses images to, ideally wherever WordPress uses images, we’re there for you . Um, but like, you know, we become that, that middle, um, middle layer so that it’s like, oh, you’re in the media library. You can upload these kinds of images [00:33:00] or these sizes and shapes.
If you are in the, you know, you have a custom post type that’s all about people, you know, you’ve got users, well then you want that circle option, whatever it is. But it’s like being able to configure each one of those SY scenarios and lock it down so that then again, when you know, you’ve got, you’ve got a membership site, you know, if, if a u a new user clicks the Add my Avatar button, They have to crop a circle, you know, things like that.
And then being able to basically inject our functionality in all those places so that it just, you know, prevents chaos. It prevents all those bugs, it prevents all those layout breaking changes. Um, you know, that, and frankly, anybody interacting with the website could make based on, you know, by uploading images.
Cory Miller: So it seems like we wanna be paying attention to a lot of how. As we’re scrolling through the web, how people [00:34:00] utilize featured images. Mm-hmm. , and there might be some things here too, like this circle add-on. I would use this just for Mike Demo came on as a new columnist at, uh, post status. And I, I came back to this problem
And so like, I might go into WordPress somewhere and or this and crop it, so I’ll just can save it rather than trying to hunt it down on the internet.
Corey Maass: Um, well, and this is, I think, I think the other, the other thing that we wanna do on eventually on the marketing site, right? Like right now, crop Express is a cropper crop express.
The website is a cropper. Yeah. And so I, I still like the idea of this is a WordPress plugin, but somewhere on the marketing site is like the ability to try this. So there’s a front end friendly. You know, crop an image. And so like, you know, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a nice little web utility. And then also our website subsequently gets listed on all those, you know, infinite number of websites that [00:35:00] list all the free little utilities that are out there.
You know, all the ones that convert image, image types or compress images or convert PDFs to JPEGs or whatever it is, like Crop Express as a free online simple image crop can get listed. So again, marketing,
Cory Miller: it’s content built in content marketing. I love that. Exactly.
Corey Maass: Exactly. Um,
Cory Miller: well that means we should maybe keep note of that public site too, because like, hey, you’re, you’re right on, there’s another level of adoption that I just kind of glossed over, but the fact that someone would need, like the circle thing, you just need to, you know, there’s the a hundred sites that do all these different things and they sh slam ads at you and you’re like, or you can come here.
Utility. And then, by the way, if you want to buy, if you need the word press plug in, here it is. That’s Visibility Pro to do that. Mm-hmm. , which leads me all back to co I love that. Like I’ve never had something like this where it’s built in content [00:36:00] marketing, so that’s something to keep track for sure.
Corey Maass: Um, and I think, I think this is what you just said, I just wanna finish the thought.
Um, but not only, you know, not only having a crop, but it’s like we basically using the same code base. We have a dozen different crops that are basically just a dozen different configurations of our crop. And so if you google for crop and image in a circle, the circle cropper pops up. And if you crop, if you say a square, the square cropper pops up.
But it’s all the same thing. So it’s no, it’s no extra, not really any extra work for us, but a phenomenal s e o opportunity.
Cory Miller: So I just did that. That’s so interesting. Cro. Um, yeah, there’s search stuff I’ll have to look through cause I just Googled that. Mm-hmm. , because I mean, those are, those might be really good ways.
And again. Okay. So [00:37:00] all that talk front, you know, the actual crop.express website, the plugin and everything. Um, back to like feedback loops. Mm-hmm. . So I think the only other thing be besides meeting Readme done for V1 launch of this and the repo, um, is thinking for me is th on my agenda is thinking through the feedback loops.
How are we gonna get that feedback? Yep. Because what we want to do is like, I’m not saying we do it on this screen that you’re showing, but like ideally there’d be like, once something else needs something else mm-hmm. and it goes to a mechanism that. You know, a forum, a trailer board, whatever stuff common, combine, whatever we wanna do, but like something where we can like, cuz that’s what I’m most interested in is that feedback loop, you know?
Yeah, absolutely. Um, um, where they go, I want custom spec, custom specifications. Cool. You’re, we’re working on that in version two or [00:38:00] pro or whatever we, you know, decide to do. Yeah. But the feedback loop to me would be the only thing I can think of before launch. Yeah. Before V1 MVP launch.
Corey Maass: Yeah. I mean that’s, you know, one of the magic aspects of WordPress plugins is absolutely the WordPress directory.
And I know a lot of people that’s not, I don’t know if that’s true. There’s more conversation lately about not having a free version. And I, I understand and, and appreciate that perspective, but the, the opportunity that. Is missed. There is the, the discoverability inside that directory. And it’s like, I want, because my, my initial, I say that because my initial reaction is, yeah, well, I mean, first of all, we need to go through the process of getting approved.
Like that’ll take a week. Um, but just because it’s there, it’s like if you launch an [00:39:00] app online, you know, and, but don’t tell anybody about it. You know, did it happen? Falls in the woods. Yeah. Whereas you put a plugin in the repo, the likelihood is that, you know, you’re, you’re gonna start to get a trickle unless you’re, unless you’re, there are no keywords or you know, you’re using.
Truly random wording or whatever, but people are gonna start, you know, you have to assume that, that some people search for the word crop and we’re gonna, we won’t be number one, but you know, you’re gonna start to see a trickle of users. So yeah, we, we do want whatever we want from the beginning, we want from the beginning kind of thing.
Um, yeah, it is, it’s easy enough to add. I mean, there are a couple of options just to flush this out. Like we could link to a Contact us form on the website. Um, we could build a little, you know, the little, a little modal that pops up right in [00:40:00] place, which is probably the right answer, because it’s less friction.
It doesn’t open a new window. It doesn’t, you know, so it have feedback and it opens a text area. They type and, and we, we get it. Um, so something like that, you know,
Cory Miller: in, in plugin, you mean in WordPress port.
Corey Maass: Yeah. Um, not in dashboard, but it’s like looking at, you know, our on, once our modal opens for cropping, we have a little, you know, link.
It’s like the, yeah, A little link. A little button. It’s like, you know, the, every website now has the, um, help desk or whatever, the little icon that’s always floating in the corner that inevitably pops up with texts, , that you then have to close. Um, you know, but we could have something similar right next to crop, crop, the big crop button.
Um, we could have a little button that says, you know, feedback. Uh, I mean, we can, we can kind of take this as far as we want, [00:41:00] but I think, and I think inversion 0 0 2, like we can actually on install, we can, we can throw up a little notice or something that’s like, Hey, we’re a new plugin. We’d appreciate feedback, but at least for now, like there is at least a button that will, again, you know, one click type.
Click send and we get something.
Cory Miller: Um, so I think if we were able to do something like maybe it’s in that modal, uh mm-hmm. that you just showed me, it’s like request a feature. Mm-hmm. , um, just a little link. Someone that says, request a feature, there’s an action to it, and then they’ll go to the Crop Express site.
I think see that there’s an online tool too, but the form is there and you’re just like, tell us what you’re wanting. We’re, we’re trying to make content creation easier. We’re not, we’re specifically starting, I guess with image, we’re trying to make image, I don’t know, [00:42:00] there’s some word there of like making your, it’s a part of content creation to me.
Workflow easier, faster, and then get that feedback that goes to both of our emails, and then we can continue to talk about that. Yep. I think if we could just, if we could maybe put that in a modal. Do you like it? Are you okay with it being in that modal right there? Absolutely. Just like absolutely a little link down somewhere outta the way.
Corey Maass: Yeah. It’s cuz at that point it’s topical, right? Like you don’t, you know, you, you don’t want it somewhere on the website. You don’t want it hard to find. And so it’s like, I’m cropping, this is pissing me off. Oh look. A link where I can tell them that this is pissing me off. You know? That’s exactly the moment we want to capture their thinking.
Yeah. So simple. And, and that’s simple enough. I mean, a web form that sends an email is, is, you know,
Cory Miller: I think if we just do that for launch, we’re [00:43:00] good, man. This looks really nice. That’s what we’re trying to get it to do out. It’s, it’s hitting. Use case. And then we’re opening just the feedback. Channel loop is the biggest thing.
And having those emails, this is what I did, you know, you like, come up with an idea now. Great ideas. They always suck. the, the good ideas. You’re like, they probably, they might work, you know, but oftentimes you get, I got the Valida and I’m sure you have over the years is like that validation from someone going, I want that.
Well if so, my bet’s gonna be one of the first like set of customs specification. Mm-hmm. . Um, at least we get some validation for that. Like, right. Oh, they want that. Cool.
Corey Maass: So like, or we, you know, we’ve, uh, people talk about solving the problem or not, you know, if we solve 60% of the problem or they see the solution.
Over the [00:44:00] hill. Um, then, you know, then hopefully it’s, cuz it’s what, so I, I think I’ve told you about this before. Like one, the pattern that I, part of what drew me into WordPress plugins as a business opportunity years ago was I saw how. Clients and website users, like I would spend hours and clients would spend, you know, gobs of money hiring to set up these websites, e-commerce, blogs, web apps, whatever it is.
And so if it’s e-commerce, then they should be, you know, their job is to add new products, to promote products, you know, to try to get sales. If it’s a blog, then their job is to write content. And instead I would see them spend hours, you know, scrolling through the free plugins and going, oh, do I need a to-do list, you know, plugin inside my WordPress install, do I need snowflakes falling because it’s Christmas time, [00:45:00] kind of thing.
Yeah. And it’s like, it was. It was, it felt like, I mean this is all very, a very cynical view, but I, but I witnessed it. It was like they would essentially, it, you know, it felt like productive procrastination. Um, they felt, it made them feel like they were doing something, but they weren’t actually doing the thing that they were supposed to do.
Cuz what they’re supposed to do is hard, and I can relate to that. I get that, you know, but, But the discoverability, you know, and this is, this is where I think that comes from, is people will just kind of go in there, here’s, you know, an infinite num, well, there’s 60,000 free plugins, you know, let’s have some fun and try these things and it’ll spark my imagination.
Um, the problem with that, of course, is that there’s the, everybody, just about everybody is a tire kicker. Mm-hmm. , I’ll install this, try it uninstall, I’ll install this, try this uninstall. Um, depending on, you know, how specific of a problem they’re trying to solve. And so, yeah, we want to, we, you, you [00:46:00] always run the risk of, um, you know, people, people trying it and leaving without getting any indication of, and again, it’s like it solves a problem where it doesn’t is the assumption.
And that’s kind of like first gen startup thinking. Mm-hmm. , um, Whereas now the better way to look at it is like, does this, especially in the WordPress plugin world, it’s like, does this start to solve the problem? Does this almost solve the problem? Because there’s definitely a, uh, a pattern in WordPress of hobbling together a number of tools to solve the problem overall.
And so, yeah, how do we, how do we determine that we are almost solving the problem or we are part of that work chain? Or people are uninstalling because it’s useless, or are they uninstalling because it doesn’t quite get them there. But they, but we, if, if we added one more button, We would get them there.
How do we determine that? So I like your focus on feedback,
Cory Miller: and the way [00:47:00] I’m always trying to do is sense out pain because people will pain for, you know, the whole str, I can’t remember what the book is, but it’s like, it’s the pain and gain. But I, I’ve spent most of our time with Ed. I themes with the pain just helping.
I mean, at the first it was like themes, but then with plugins it was solving for some pain point. Now I’m trying to rate this pain right now and then discover if there’s more pain that we could like actually solve that. They go, sh I will pay you to solve this pain point for me. Yeah, I, I think we’ve got some good thoughts there.
Um, but I’m really hoping Corey, in this, that we discover something we hadn’t thought of that we go, oh, a hundred percent this could go down that, down that path. And it could be. More lucrative than we’re probably thinking. So I’m kind of hoping for that. Yeah. Um, but I think we’ve demonstrated enough that there’s enough pain that we could, we could do and then we’re gonna iterate on what we [00:48:00] hear back.
Corey Maass: Yeah. Yeah. And if it’s, and if it ends up, you know, there, there is an, a likely scenario that we put this out there, we get enough users that it does something, but not enough users or not, or we don. Understand that opportunity or, or it doesn’t present itself for a while. Like I had that with social link pages that I built this thing out.
Um, and there was some ob the, the sort of the obvious like, oh, let me add more features and that’s what I’ll charge for. But I wound up just letting it ride for a year. Didn’t think about it. I fixed a few bugs, but, you know, and it was after a year I had a thousand users, like, okay, there’s something here.
But it took that ramp up, you know, to try to discover. And I, and frankly, I still haven’t. Nailed it. You know, so like you and I may end up having a lot of conversations.
Cory Miller: Um, [00:49:00] this is why
Corey Maass: four ways figured this
Cory Miller: out. Maybe there’s unicorns out there, the geniuses that are like, oh, everything I touch is a perfect product and it makes a bunch of money.
I think the rest of us are like just figuring it out, wanting to do something good and
Corey Maass: figuring it out. I was counting on you, man. I thought you were that
Cory Miller: guy. I’m the leprechaun.
Um, now, yeah, I had something. I was thinking when you were saying that, I was like, ah, sorry. Maybe. Oh, this is like.org, the.org repo. There’s conversations about that and I go largely when someone has an opinion like that, it’s not one size fits all. It’s just for their use case. It doesn’t work. What I love about us, our conversations is we had deliberate, a deliberate conversation that we figured out this is enough for a.org.
That let’s say, doesn’t go anywhere would solve a problem for us and we could probably be happy about it. Right. And at this level, [00:50:00] maybe, I don’t know, technically speaking from your perspective, but like wouldn’t require a ton of maintenance potentially. Right? Now I get it When we get into blocks and stuff that also showcases value.
Like you wanted a block. Yes. Well that’s Then is that a pain point then pay me for the SL solving that problem. But I know there’s people@poopoo.org. I don’t. Um, definitely not in every case that this case, I love it because you and I made it narrow. We’re not trying, we didn’t say this is the be all, end all image editing software for WordPress plugin in the repo and free.
We didn’t do that. We made it very practical, purposeful, getting some of this feedback. So like that’s why I’m okay, because I think the free plugin could exist in perpetuity. We’ve seen some. Jumping off points that go, maybe we weren’t a case for a pro paid ver version of this. So yeah, I wanna come back to that dart org thing.
Cause I hear it all the time too, and I’m like, I don’t know. For every case that went wrong, I [00:51:00] can probably give you five more. That went right?
Corey Maass: Yeah. Yeah. And it’s, it, it’s, it’s not without its challenges. I mean, I answered a, a question in on post out this morning that was like, how do you maintain a free and a pro version?
Um, and I have solved that problem. For myself. And so wanted to put that out there, you know, but there isn’t just as, you know, there somebody else even chimed in, like, how is this still not a solved problem? But it’s, there’s a reason for that. Like, too much development is too, uh, varied. And so there isn’t one solution.
Um, yeah. But you know, so it’s not without, its, it’s foibles, but it’s, um, that’s not the right word, but it’s not without its issues. But I, to me, the, the benefit outweighs the work, the extra work.
Cory Miller: Yeah, I do too. Um, yeah, if you had built in, if we had 50,000 [00:52:00] people we thought were like blogger content stuff, it might be maybe a bit different story, maybe.
Um, but even then it’s like you could generate interest for the time and investment. I understand it’s taken to this part. I go. Let’s put it on George, Oregon. See it? Yeah. Worth it. Oh, that leads me to my second, so we got the feedback loop. The other thing we want to do, this is something that’ll be on my task, is on the website, something to go.
I want to see the next things you’re doing, get on the email list that we, I think we set up. Yeah, we did set up. Um, I don’t have that today. I just know I want to share with you so we can, you can help me on that. Keep me accountable to this. But the next thing I would want to do for on the marketing business side is um, start generating that email list feedback, number one, and then email and I’ll, we should be thinking of something that could be an incentive to [00:53:00] the email.
Mm-hmm. , you know, why you should get in the email. You know, I know we do, a lot of people do like 10% off stuff like that. We don’t have the pro yet, but something that goes.
It is enticing for this core user avatars we’re thinking. Does that make sense? It does, yeah. Just to start building that email list and we get enough people and we can start actually pushing content out. Yeah. And then when we get new version, I only wanna just say that, so we set the tone for like next, next stage of like, I need to be thinking we too, you can add your ideas in.
Here is what we could do to help incentivize that email.
Corey Maass: Yeah. Yeah. And I don’t, I don’t have, I don’t have an immediate answer. Like what do they, um, what’s it called? It’s not click bait.
Cory Miller: opt. Yeah, it’s click bait. It’s, you can say it, it’s
Corey Maass: okay. Well, no, but it’s the, you know, the, the incentive lead magnet.
There it is. Thank you. Lead magnet. Um, you know, nothing [00:54:00] obvious comes to mind. I mean, who, who’s gonna read the, you know, here’s the expert guide on image cropping. Like, it’s, no. You know, like, yeah. It’s not that we’re, we don’t have, we don’t have the authority, we don’t have the, an, you know, the definitive answer.
We don’t have, I’ve definit. Built things like that, written things like that before, you know, because you’re supposed to, but at this point I’m a little skeptical of them. Um, you know, I don’t think most people are scratching their heads about image cropping, and I don’t think that there’s some deep, you know, tech knowledge to be gained, uh, the right way to crop circles like the one
Cory Miller: you’ve never been to the image cropping meetup group, then it’s fascinating
Corey Maass: Now I, the image crop conference coming this year, you know, I’ll be
Cory Miller: thinking of that. We, we were able to do it with a number of plugins to help juice that, but you’re right, it’s, it’s watching [00:55:00] Paint Dry, but, But there’s something I’ll be thinking of that. Yeah, yeah. Um, I just know because when I added that loop in at Ithe, that was the circle.
Yeah. And a lot of WordPress company com product companies don’t like email. And I’m like, sure, maybe it’s 10 years old, 50, whatever the, you know, however long email’s been around. But I email marketing, that’s what we grew ithe with. Most people don’t really realize that unless they were getting our emails and it was like, Hey, that’s the stuff we were doing on the scenes.
I’m blowing that way out of proportion for a crop express right now. But just going like, I want the path to be open to like have that direct marketing relationship with the customer.
Corey Maass: So. Well, and I don’t, I don’t, I don’t care if you like email or not. If, if it works, then we’ll then we’re gonna use it.
Yeah. Like, it’s not. You know, PE people have their preferences, you know, and we are not, that’s a lesson I have to learn over and over again. Like, I’m a power user, you know? Yeah. Just cuz I, I understand this, you know, [00:56:00] you know how to manage interruptions or something like that. You know, most people are still checking their email a thousand times a day.
So that
Cory Miller: what I will do is like talking about this, you’re pro, you’re helping me more than, you know, from a product and marketing perspective because I like to have that person in mind and as best I can be that person and Sure. You know, and then go, because when I get clear down that it, that for me is a switch.
It’s like, okay, I understand our clients, like the day we kind of realized we’re looking at our customer base going, these said the people look like freelancers, agencies, web, you know, web developers. This side over here, like, what’s that dentist office doing? You know, you’re like a dentist is, yeah. So it helped us and then that’s when we started to do our marketing.
But that’s what for, for me, is getting in their skin, getting in their workflow, trying to sniff out and get a picture where I walk [00:57:00] in their shoes and go, okay, this is what they need. Which by the way, we’ve joked enough about these things. It’s like there’s gotta be a parody in here about the, you know, I don’t know, there’s something fun that we could do.
Like cropping is watching paint drive, but could we make it quirky and fun? Right? Yeah. Put that in the point. Put that uh, in the column of stupid ideas. Corey Miller has.
Corey Maass: Well, I, I’m the, I’m the one that came up with, you know, we need a website that looks broken and then, you know, click the big, you know, crop express button that, that makes it all look sparkly and, and beautiful.
And, and that’s where we use the Snow Effect and, and a unicorn bo bounds by, what is it? Um, not Gravity Forms, gravity view that has the, you know, the astronaut, astronaut sing songs and all that stuff. I mean, I’m, I am all for, you know, maybe this is your Safe Dad joke space. And so then we, we integrate more of that into, uh, into the marketing.
Cory Miller: Um, I [00:58:00] hope Lin, I hope either of our Lindsay’s doesn’t watch this thing. They’ll be like, seriously, you guys are just doing dad jokes, which
Corey Maass: is, Hey, sorry, go whatever. Hey Corey. But it’s, it’s, it’s dad jokes as marketing, you know, so it’s, they, it it’s their retirement fund too, you know, , um, But yeah, with, with a, a little bit of of time left, like, let’s get around to, um, you know, next steps where we’re at, that kind of thing.
So I, I’m happy to put in the feedback form. Um, I definitely want you to install the plugin, mess around with it a little bit if there’s, and, and if there’s anything obvious that’s annoying. Again, I think we’re good enough. We’re certainly good enough to get in the repo. You know, things will change quickly as we move along, but we’re trying to just draw a line in the sand to get the damn thing out the door.
Um, you know, but if there’s any, any obvious red flags, like, oh, hey, [00:59:00] you know, on when I installed it on my site, it everything’s 90 degrees or something, you know, like, yeah, then let me know. Um, and then I hope I haven’t. Made you stuck with like, the first version of the readme can be very simple. Um, you know, enough
to launch.
Cory Miller: I No, no, no. I, I stuck my, I stick myself quite a bit, get stuck on my own, but, um, I was looking at description as really the meat of it, you know, because that’s what, that’s what does the little blip at the top and the actual page text. Yeah. Um, insulation. I need to just go and find another plugin. Copy and paste that FAQs.
We can keep that pretty simple. Do you want, do I need to do screenshots and stuff?
Corey Maass: Nope. I mean, and, and none of this we need, none of this is, other than the description, none of this is [01:00:00] necessary to submit. Like, we don’t need installation instructions to submit. We don’t need f a Q to submit. Um, You know, we want enough of a description so that whoever reviews this gets a sense of, excuse me, who, who we are, you know, broadly speaking like that we are not trying to upload malware kind of thing.
So it’s like, yeah, if, if we write three sentences that just kind of give them a hint of the direction we’re gonna take this, um, then it, you know, like coming and, you know, feature image cropping done easy and well, you know, coming soon, you know, more ways to crop images. And WordPress said, well, you know, and again, in a few sentences is sufficient.
Um, okay. And then, you know, and then cuz you can. I’ve definitely seen, heard, [01:01:00] read about like, you don’t wanna update your readme six times a day. They will actually ding you for that. Um, you know, but there’s nothing that says we can’t upload, update the README every day or a couple of days. So it’s like you can, you can iterate on it.
Okay. Pretty regularly, you know? Um, I think there’s, supposedly there’s, it’s in the algorithm too that’s like if you, if you only ever push updates that are the read me, they’ll ding you as far as, you know, search optimization stuff. But like, none of the things we really need to worry about, I just want, like I’ve, I’ve submitted plugins before that I already had stubbed out, um, or mentioned a pro version and got feedback that was like, I see you’re gonna do a pro version.
So it’s like they definitely read it. To get and get sort of a sense of the intention, [01:02:00] you know what I mean? Yeah. Um, and so, um, and I, I mean, I no comment on pros or cons of mentioning that kind of stuff, but just I think, I think that’s all we need. Okay. Okay. Um, but I, and from my perspective, like it’s Wednesday, you know, ideally we get this out the door in the next day or two to submit, you know, start that process.
Cory Miller: Okay. I’ve got it now saved. Um, and I’ll try to add more than two sentences in here, but yeah, I, this is the block I’ve had on these things is I feel so far outta riding and doing things, and now I just do a lot of voice stuff. But, um, anyway, I, I’ll get that done. Um, I’m out this afternoon and then I’ve got time, I’ve got some blocks of time tomorrow, so, I don’t think it should be a problem to get that to you.
Let me just say I’ll get it to you tomorrow. Okay. [01:03:00] Then I get a little deadline for myself and I’ll, do you think in the long description you said this, like, should we mention there might be a pro or say
Corey Maass: I, from, from the experience that I had, I would say no. Okay. Like, it, it definitely, I, on a, on a previous plugin, I, I got some pushback on the, the product itself.
And I think that by mentioning Pro, cuz you, you, you get there, you know, still in the WordPress world there’s a, a fair number of zealots, zealots people who are emphatic that everything should be free and so you run the risk of sort of rubbing somebody the wrong way. By starting with that, you know? Um, and so I, the less mentioned, uh, you know, we’re not being insincere, we don’t have a perversion to talk about.
So why talk about it, I [01:04:00] think would is my, my perspective now. Okay.
Cory Miller: Okay. Well I have it saved on generate WP two, so don’t fine things, but, okay. And that, and that’s easy, man. I, I’m, I’m trying to get these, get through some blocks and then some chaos, but, uh, man, I’m super pumped. Um, yeah. Well, okay, well, uh, lemme get on this tomorrow and we’ll be checking in.
Corey Maass: Um, cuz down the road, like part of the iteration too is going to be like, there’s the, the banner images, you know, we’re gonna wanna decide on a logo. Um, you know, but again, I don’t, none of that. None. Even if we start to get a trickle of users, like I don’t think it’s gonna hurt us to not come out of the gate.
A hundred percent polished. Yeah. Like we can iterate on that stuff pretty quickly,
Cory Miller: so, okay, perfect. [01:05:00] All right, sir.
Corey Maass: Anything from your perspective? No.
Cory Miller: Yeah, we spent most of the call talking about mine, so I feel like, but no, I think we’re ready to go with what I’ve seen. I will look at the pl, uh, I will put, look at the plugin.
I’ve already got it on my site test site. Um, yeah. Cool. I’ll have something to talk about. So hopefully we might, by end of week we’re in the submission process, so we next week can talk about where we are with it and um, maybe it ends up talking about other things while we’re waiting on. That, yeah.
Corey Maass: Approval process. I think one, one of the things I do think I will do, because I’m thinking about our conversations while going through this process, is I will jot down some of the steps that I took and, and so I might monologue for five or 10 minutes next time of just like, okay, so once we got everything together, here are the steps that I went [01:06:00] through.
In order to submit it, you know? Yeah. Here’s what I included in the email or you know, here are the documents cuz there’s a, there is a whole section on, on the word, the WordPress documentation about building plugins and then specifically how to submit them, you know, what should be included, what shouldn’t be included.
I need to review my codes for any like red flags about, you know, they wanna make sure that it’s, every plugin obviously is secure and, um, and stuff like that. So it’s like, here are all the steps that I kind of, you know, at a high level went through before submitting this and then here’s the feedback we got back.
Like, what did I miss? Is there a, you know, gaping security hole that I should have picked up on or whatever. So, you know, let’s, um, I want to kind of earmark that cuz I do think it’s like, these are the sort of things that I’ve now done a few times, I think other people. Who haven’t gone through the process, like we all just kind of go through it.
Cuz you only go through it once and then you never have to think about it again. It’s submitted, it’s done, it’s out there, whatever. [01:07:00] So it’s like, then the next time you do it, you forget all of the steps and, and what the process looked like. So I think it’d be good to document
Cory Miller: it. Oh heck yeah. It’s awesome.
Thanks for friend.
Corey Maass: Yeah. I will talk to you soon. Sounds good.
Cory Miller: Bye bye.
All right. I guess it stops on YouTube. We’ll see now.
Corey Maass: It’s still live though.
This article was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.
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