Thoughts on the State of the Word from Mark Westguard

Bob: Hey, BobWP here. I think I’m winding down. Well, I think I might have one more podcast from NYC here, State of the Word, post State of the Word. Yeah, I have Mark Westguard joining me for this one and Mark is, ah just another basic awesome WordPress person. But if you haven’t heard of Mark, or you haven’t heard of his product, which I’ll have him introduce you to, you definitely got to reach out to him. So Mark, welcome, it’s been great hanging with you.

Mark Westguard: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Bob. Thanks for having me.

Bob: Yeah. So what is this plug in you got?

Mark Westguard: It is a form plug in called WS Form. It is primarily targeted at developers, agencies that want to create complex forms, without the need for a lot of code. It’s a no code, development environment for forms, but it does everything from contact us forms, to surveys, to eCommerce. It integrates in with WooCommerce, which is how you and I got to meet each other. And we’re excited to be at State of the Word and be part of that small community that we’re here for New York.

Mark Westguard: I think that’s been the best part of these last few days, is just meeting everyone.

Bob: Oh yeah.

Mark Westguard: It was wonderful to listen to Matt yesterday and learn about what they’ve been up to for the past year and what they’re going to be up to. And it’s just filled my brain up with all kinds of ideas to go home with.

Bob: Yeah.

Mark Westguard: But yeah, just getting to meet people that I knew and getting to meet so many new faces has been fabulous and people from all parts of the WordPress industry as well. So people like yourself that you’re podcasting, you’re blogging and everything else that you do. And then also meeting other plug-in developers, just to learn the journey they’ve been through. And it’s a struggle, like any small business, it’s effectively what it is. We’re all in this to make a living, and it’s been interesting to talk to people and learn their journey. Also, just talking to some other people that are more established, and understanding how open and willing they are to help other people in the community. And all you’ve got to do is talk to other people and people will help.

Bob: Yeah.

Mark Westguard: Really is a great bunch of people.

Bob: Yeah, and it’s been fortunate that there were several of us that stayed at the same hotel there. In fact, we had this table that just became our second home in the restaurant here. Seems like we just all gravitate, somebody would show up there, and then two more and then three more.

Mark Westguard: Yeah. Every time we ate, it was the same menu.

Bob: Yeah.

Mark Westguard: I think I’ve been in that restaurant five times.

Bob: I know.

Mark Westguard: It’s got to the point where we are down to macaroni cheese with truffle sauce. Trying to find something to eat, but no, it’s been great. Fortunately, the food was great.

Bob: Yeah.

Mark Westguard: I actually haven’t left the hotel more than a couple of times whilst I’ve been here.

Bob: Yeah, I know. That’s what… It’s like, you go downstairs and up, there’s somebody, whoop, next thing you know… I walked down there the other day and Marks doing the demo at WS Forms to somebody down there, and I thought, “This is great.”

Mark Westguard: Yeah, we just, you bump into people. A lady I spoke to overheard about what I was doing, and then sat down and gave me her spec of what she needed for some web development, because I still do web development to top up my income, and there’s a little bit of business development going on as well.

Bob: Yeah. Wow.

Mark Westguard: For such a small group of people we’ve learned so much from each other.

Bob: Right.

Mark Westguard: For sure. It’s been great.

Bob: Excellent. So what was your takeaways from State of the Word, do you think?

Mark Westguard: I think my biggest takeaway is the… Being a plug-in developer for Forms, I’m sitting there thinking, “How do I move my product on in the next 12 months? What’s going on with WordPress? It’s very heavily, Gutenberg focused, as we all know. I already have a Gutenberg block, but there’s a lot more that’s happening with Gutenberg now, in terms of being able to style things, colors, fonts, and everything else that they’re getting into. The open verse with the images, is there anything that we could do to incorporate that?

Mark Westguard: I’d love to contribute to open verse as well, and I’ve got a bunch of photos I could add to it, to help people out. But particularly on the form styling side of things for us, has always been in a challenge, because typically, when you build a form, you put it on your website. It’s like a little alien that needs its own little bit of attention. We try to improve that process. So we’re compatible with Bootstrap and Foundation Frameworks that makes developing of form much, much easier.

Mark Westguard: Then we have our own framework as well, where you can choose colors and fonts and everything else. And that uses the WordPress customized feature, under the appearance menu. I’m not sure, but I feel like that’s eventually going to fizzle away, because they’re just moving so much of the styling into Gutenberg, which I think is great. So we just got to stay on top of that.

Bob: Yeah.

Mark Westguard: It was great to see the progress that WordPress has been making. Kind of made me want to make that leap and start contributing, because there’s so many people needed to get it where it needs to be. And it was exciting meeting other contributors to the product.

Mark Westguard: So I may make that leap if I’ve got the time. But like Matt said, the five minute pledge to do just time back. I guess we do that in a way with our free version of our plugin.

Bob: Yeah.

Mark Westguard: So, the free version of our plugin lets you put a basic contact form on your site. It logs all the submissions. You can start it up. It’s fully mobile, responsive and accessible. We give that away for free in the plugin directory, so we’ll continue to develop that. But I’d like to get involved in other areas of WordPress for sure.

Mark Westguard: Then I met Michelle Frechette for the first time. She’s been wonderful for the… I only met her about a month ago, and her and I have just been hanging out and talking, and she’s been introducing me to loads of people and that’s been fantastic. Her and I went to State of the Word yesterday. Almost didn’t make it because of the Uber situation, with the traffic.

Mark Westguard: But yeah, it was a lot to digest. There was a lot of information thatwe come across. I think the questions that were asked were great. I thought your question was magic.

Bob: I threw them for a loop because I know I’ve had Matt on my site, and for those of you that didn’t watch, I gave him a very general question. I said, “What’s new for Woo 2022?” And he figured, because when he was on the podcast, he had Paul who’s the CEO of WooCommerce because I mean, Matt is not focused on WooCommerce.

Bob: He knows it’s there. He knows what it’s doing, but it was fun because he actually, and I’m going to record a short podcast and pull out his answer, because his answer… So that’s why I’m not going to give the answer here, because you’re going to have to listen to that. Unless you’ve seen the State of the Word, which pretty much spoils it. But how he answered encompassed exactly what I hear in what everybody’s asking and that’s all around Gutenberg.

Bob: It was fun, and it surprised me, the very first thing when I walked into… I was walking the long, and Matt came up to me and says, “The train. I was the…”

Bob: I mean, I usually have to approach Matt. Matt never approaches me, so that was… I think the whole, I mean, I’m sad that it wasn’t a big event and I see all these people. But it was the intimacy of that smaller group, and I even saw, I think I felt like, and I’ve seen Matt at all the word camps and stuff, that there was a real map coming out, because a smaller group. And he was just having a great time and talking with people and posing with people.

Bob: And so there was a different level there, which I don’t say this should be it moving forward.

Mark Westguard: Yeah.

Bob: But I feel incredibly lucky I had the opportunity.

Mark Westguard: Yeah, me too. I spoke to him just before he went on stage and he said that he really wanted an audience for the State of the Word. When he did it last year with no audience, it was a lot of takes to do it. But he just excels when he’s in front of an audience.

Bob: It’s it. Yeah, I mean he can have a little bit of the… And that is what you don’t really get. I mean, even though you have the people asking questions at the big one, he was able to make a conversation with people, because you’re right there.

Mark Westguard: Yeah, he’s great,

Bob: I mean, I sat in the front, just because there was some seats there and I thought, “My God, I feel like I’m in some boardroom at some shared space, or…” I mean, it wasn’t that small.

Mark Westguard: No, it came across great. And to your question about WooCommerce and where that’s going with the whole Gutenberg side of things, that was of interest to me as well, because we have the WooCommerce extension that we have to enable you to customize products. I’ve got to keep on top of that, because if they’re going to start changing the way product templates work, it’s exciting.

Mark Westguard: It kind of, the event gelled a lot for me. What they’re doing with Gutenberg, the direction they’re going in. And I can see why it’s been such a long journey, and a challenging journey for those guys to get it to where it is. It’s just a mammoth task. And I didn’t realize the whole offshoot of potentially licensing out Gutenberg and blocks to third parties and stuff.

Mark Westguard: There’s a lot that goes into it. The multilingual side of it, the development it for other platform. It’s just there’s a lot that goes into it. So they make me respect that a lot more because everyone’s had a small frustration with a new product and it’s great to see it coming together.

Bob: Yeah. Cool, so well, yeah. We’re just whipping these out. Everybody’s heading out today. I head out later on the train. Nobody is heading out on train, like I am, because everybody has more sense than me.

Mark Westguard: But it’s been your selling point, this whole trip.

Bob: Yeah. It has been. Has been. I mean, if you can get Matt to constantly say, “Everybody that came here by, car, train and plane,” then I think you’ve done something right.

Mark Westguard: Yeah. Yeah. You cracked it.

Bob: Yeah.

Mark Westguard: You suffered it, but you cracked it.

Bob: Well Mark, it was great. Before you take off, I know you’ve got a typical feels like probably Monday for you, with all your emails and stuff coming at you.

Bob: Where can people connect with you, and check out WS Forms and I’m sure we’ll have you back on the regular podcast to have you get a little bit more into Forms and WooCommerce and that whole thing.

Mark Westguard: Absolutely. Yeah, they can just find me, the products @wsform.com. They can find me on Twitter WS_Form and look forward to seeing you there.

Bob: Cool.

Mark Westguard: You’ll see me on a lot of Facebook groups and stuff, so if you ever have any questions, then just drop me a line.

Bob: Cool. Alrighty. Okay. And they’ve become a pod friend too, so you can always get the direct link over at dothewoo.io. I’ll be getting that up real shortly so, yeah, cool. Thank you very much.

Mark Westguard: Yeah, thank you Bob. Appreciate it.