Mostly unedited interview with WordPress creator

Mostly unedited interview with WordPress creator Matt Mullenweg for VentureBeat.com ———


MM: Hey how does this sound?
HW: Good
MM: Awesome. Great to connect. How’s your day going?
HW: Oh, it’s good. I have a cold, so I sound congested, but other than that I’m fine. I can tell you had a busy day?
MM: And I managed to break my laptop screen today
HW: How on earth did you break your laptop screen?
MM: It’s so dumb, do you really want to hear it?
HW: Yes I do, I would love to
MM: So you know where — it’s a MacBook Pro 15” — you know where the power goes?
HW: Yeah
MM: I think when I pulled it out, and started closing the screen, it got stuck there
HW: Huh?
MM: So I kind of squeezed the screen on to the power thing, I think without noticing, because I was all in a hurry with all the stuff going on today. I was like, oh, man .. so it  kind of works — it just looks like a, um, it’s flickering in really interesting ways.
HW: So would you mind dumbing down the update? Basically, an over simplification of it?
MM: So for users, it basically means that there’s a new, fast WordPress. And if you’re on a Mac, you can get this awesome app you can put on your desktop.
For developers, we sort of redid 13 years of work in about 20 months and instead of PHP, we wrote the whole thing in javascript.
HW: Okay? That is simpler than I thought it was going to be.

So, this is an update to WordPress.com. And on the WP.com developer blog, one of the comments is something like "Will you consider redoing the WordPress core using a similar technology stack?"

MM: So I think what might happen is that the technology that drives the server side of WordPress and what drives the client side can diverge. Again, this is really up to the community, so we’ll see where it takes us. This thing we released has only been out there one day. Maybe someone will make something much better? But PHP is still really fantastic for server-side stuff, so it drives the API fantastically. But for the client-side experience, I think this Calypso approach is going to be both better for users immediately and also developers will be able to iterate faster.

HW: So i’m looking through comments on Twitter as well. I was kind of expecting people to freak out. Do you expect pushback?

MM: I’ll say as well that learning new things is scary. Personally I now have 13 years experience coding in PHP, and you kind of have to — if you’re learning a new language — you’re kind of back in that beginner phase which can be frustrating at first. I’m sure there will be some people who are sort of scared or worried about the change. It’s a very disruptive change.

But the benefits are pretty huge. What’s on the other side it totally worth it.

I think the reason WordPress is still relevant 13 years later, which is almost unheard of for technology products, is that we’ve always been really honest with ourselves about what’s good and what’s bad.

HW: Are you competing with Medium?

MM: So we don’t see Medium as a direct competitor. I think some people might choose to write there versus writing on WordPress, but certainly this move was not started because of it. In fact the roots of it predate Medium. And also I think it’s a different scale. We’ve very much north of a million people per week publishing  using the current stuff. And I think we can grow that to many many more with this new interface.

HW: Windows and Linux support coming soon? Do you have any timeframes to any of those releases. How important is the desktop?

MM: Desktop’s really important because laptops and desktops are still the best tools for blogging. iPads with their split screens are getting better but still, when you write, you do research and you open up a ton of tabs, you’re probably on a desktop. Are you?

HW: Yes.

MM: We think desktop is super key. What we’ve seen from initial data is that the folks who use the desktop app, maybe because it’s so much faster, are actually engaging at a higher rate than in the browser on desktop. So I’m very excited about both Windows and Linux. We don’t have a date to announce but we’re not far from supporting Windows and Linux.

HW: This is a pretty well-organized push. It’s very well orchestrated, seems like everything was considered, but  at the same time you say this was very risky. Is there anything you’re concerned about? Are you the most confident you’ve even been in the future of what you’re doing? How are you feeling in terms of the completion of this?

MM: I have all of the feelings — all of the feels. The first feeling is probably pride. I’m  very proud of the team because this was a big thing to pull off. I’m anxious, right? Because this is a new thing in the world. And we’re proud of it, but you know, usage is oxygen, and this is the first time most of the world is having this new experience. So that’s a little bit nerve-racking. And the next feeling i have is probably “time to get back to work,” because there is so so much left to do. Just the next couple weeks, we’re launching more things for the remainder for the year. Our big once a year conference is coming up. This is a beginning not an end. What calypso allows us is to iterate on things much faster. But, I think you’ll see, as a WordPress user, it will feel better and better every day.