Speaker 1:
Welcome to Women in WP, a bi-monthly podcast about women who blog, design, develop, and more in the WordPress community.
Angela Bowman:
Hi, welcome to Women in WP. I’m Angela Bowman.
Tracy Apps:
And I’m Tracy Apps.
Angela Bowman:
Our guest today is Pooja Derashri. Pooja is a website developer and co-founder of a WordPress plugin development company called WPVibes. She’s a long-time contributor to the WordPress core and was the test lead for WordPress 6.3 and 6.4. Welcome, Pooja.
Pooja Derashri:
Hi. Hi, Tracy and Angela. Thank you for warm welcome.
Angela Bowman:
Thank you. I’m so glad to have you today. We like to start off each episode asking our guests how they got into WordPress. How did you get started?
Pooja Derashri:
I started using WordPress back in 2013 as a web developer, and my contribution journey started in 2017 when I first time attended a WordCamp in Ahmedabad. It was a WordCamp that, in that WordCamp, I came across to the community and the word contribution, and learned about how I can put up my skills into WordPress ecosystem. There I learned about the Polyglots Team, WordPress TV Team, and translated few strings in my local language. That’s how I got involved in WordPress contribution.
Angela Bowman:
So really, you were able to get involved doing something, rather than super technical, was something you knew, which was translation into your own language. And so that was an avenue in that may not have been as intimidating as maybe writing code. And we’ve talked to a lot of people about that, about, core contributions don’t all have to be code, and there’s so many different ways to contribute. And I saw when you wrote to us, you’ve actually contributed more than that. But how did you get into coding and creating a company?
Pooja Derashri:
When I was a web developer, started my journey back in 2013, and that time I was new in WordPress, and just involved in creating website and all. Then in 2015, I got married with Anand Upadhyay. He is also a web developer. Luckily, we got married, and he was running a web development agency that time. And soon after getting married, we started exploring more about the coding. So that time, we just created websites for our client, but later, we found out it more interesting in creating themes and plugins. And journey continues, and we found our goal as a plugin developer. We published our plugins and our clients, our customers, loved our products. And that’s how we discover the plugin development agency.
Tracy Apps:
So what are some of the plugins that you offer?
Pooja Derashri:
Yeah, we have two plugins for elemental add-ons. That is more popular and have more than one installation, and it is most popular plugin. Then we have Bricks Ultra plugin, that is add-on for Bricks Builder. Then we have some solution for WooCommerce also. Our latest addition that our client loves is Frontend Product Editor for WooCommerce. It allows users to edit their product right from the front end. It is super easy and our client loves it a lot.
Tracy Apps:
Yeah, that one I saw. That one looks really, really cool, because I think that’s always a big… I love WooCommerce and all of the capabilities that you can do within WordPress, and being a developer and used to the back end, but a lot of my clients definitely are not. So seeing that, that looks really, really, really interesting and really, really cool. A really neat idea too, because the whole idea of WordPress is to be able to get more people and lessen the barriers, be able to create your own website, your own store. So what a way to do that than some of these plugins like this. So it was really, really cool. Nice work.
Angela Bowman:
Yeah, I think I was on one of the WooCommerce forums where people were asking about frontend editing of products, and I don’t know that I knew about your plugins, so I’m so glad to have that. Yeah.
Pooja Derashri:
Sometimes we take feedback from our users and we’ll convert them into plugins.
Tracy Apps:
Yep. I love it. I am a user experience designer, and I keep telling people, “Don’t just make stuff to make things. Figure out what is the need. Where is that, oh, this is a barrier? So yeah, let’s make technology to fix that and help people.” So it is great. And so I also, I want to know a bit more about, because again, user experience person, being the test lead on the WordPress releases, what does that entail? I’m very interested in this.
Pooja Derashri:
First time when I expressed my interest to become a test lead, it was a bit scary for me because it was extremely new thing. But when I got support from the other co-leads and other team members, and it was very smooth process in getting involved with the testing stuff. Testing is like, we’ve taken feedback from our users, we guide them, we worked on the call for testing posts that included all the features, all the things that needed to be tested. So it is very quite interesting thing where we learned a lot. Testing is not all about coding stuff. Testing is something you need to… If you are non-coder, you can also contribute via testing. So it is something open for all, not just for coders. So that thing is always close to my heart. And I’m developer, but I’m more passionate about non-coder, non-technical stuff. So I always advocate for these things.
Angela Bowman:
I’d love that, as testing being an entry point when people don’t know how they can contribute. Because my understanding with the testing is that you have very specific step-by-step protocols that people can follow to do the tests.
Pooja Derashri:
Yeah. In call for testing posts, we included all the testing features with detailed testing steps, instructions, and the video that is easy for our testers to follow.
Angela Bowman:
I love that. How would someone get started if they wanted to become one of these testers? And how much time would they have to devote? What would be the minimum contribution?
Pooja Derashri:
It can be anything from 30 minutes to whatever they want, like two hours, four hours. In 30 minutes they can test it, track ticket, they can just install a beta version or RC version of any release and they can test on their local environment and can submit their report. And there is a test handbook available on the make.wordpress.org/test blog post where detailed handbook is available about how you can start testing, how you can set up a test and how you submit your testing report. Everything is available on that handbook page. That is super easy for contributors. And we also do a weekly meeting on Tuesday at 11 UTC in call to test channel. That is very much not a new thing, but very much easy for new contributors to get started.
Tracy Apps:
I love that. When I was teaching, one of the things that I remember I had… Because I was teaching, mostly they were mostly designers in user experience, it really, that crossover between design and development is a space I have resided in for quite a while. But a lot of people, a lot of new designers, it was really overwhelming to them because of the technical side of things. But what you say, just donating basically 30 minutes or so, you’re going to contribute just as much as the person that’s coding because you’re going to catch those issues. And especially with such a large project as WordPress, you need a wide variety of people and insights. I remember I ran just a really quick usability test in order to actually create a WordCamp talk, because I was like, “Oh, I’m wondering… My assumption is this.”
And one of the biggest things that stood out to me was the little Edit icon. It used to be that little pencil, and so it was like an image in the Block Editor and it had the little pencil to say Edit, to edit what that photo was. And I had someone test this and I recorded them, and they were a writer, so they saw the pencil and they say, “Oh, that’s where I must be able to add text.” And I was like, “Oh, I never even thought about that.” It was fascinating to be able to see that. And now I’ve noticed that in the Block Editor that’s changed, and it says Edit, and I’m like, “It’s perfect.”
Angela Bowman:
Yeah, I think that’s an amazing observation. And I also think, it’s interesting to me because I’m an Elementor user, and I don’t know if you know, I’m an Elementor global community leader? So I run an Elementor meetup is all that it means, I’m not paid by Elementor or anything. I’m just like for free. I run an Elementor meetup because I’m really passionate about Elementor. I love Elementor, but I also really love the Block Editor too. And being a core contributor, but you’re also working very intimately with this Page Builder, I just want to know where your mind is at with that. We’ve got full site editing, we’ve got blocks, we don’t need Elementor, technically speaking, but how do you hold those divergent worldviews, in a way, in your mind? What are you thinking about this tension here?
Pooja Derashri:
Yeah, totally agree with you. Full Site Editor comes in picture two, three years back, but Page Builder is in 2016. So users are very much friendly with the Page Builders and they feel it very comfortable in working with creating websites with Elementor instead of Full Site Editor. I’m not saying Full Site Editor is not good, but in two, three years they will learn and get familiar with the Full Site Editor, but right now they are much comfortable with the Page Builders. Our first plugin, which comes in market is, in WordPress repository also, was for Elementor and it was our most popular. So I can clearly see from our users’ feedback that they love Page Builder and Full Site Editor equally.
Angela Bowman:
Wow. Yeah, so I mean with my clients I’ve had to train them how to use the Block Editor and train them in Elementor, and most of them have managed that just fine. When they’re writing blog posts, they’re using the Block Editor. I’ve had to do specific CSS styles for buttons and lists and things like that, to match the styles that we’re using in Elementor. But once I’ve set up that and they can just type and write in the Block Editor, they’re fine. When they get into Elementor… I think they’re more comfortable in the Block Editor, because they probably spend more time writing blog posts than they do modifying layouts. They usually are just changing text in Elementor and not doing as much layout work as I would be doing.
Pooja Derashri:
But few people still like classic editor.
Angela Bowman:
Oh, then yes, then people like the classic editor. That’s true.
Pooja Derashri:
The old school kind of people, they still like classic editor instead of block. But yeah, how WordPress changes, people started adapting it.
Angela Bowman:
Do you think people are going to start using the Full Site Editor more, like transitioning? Is that what you’re feeling, is we’re making enough progress with the Full Site Editor that we’ll maybe have a drop-off on the Page Builders? Or do you think the Page Builders would just still be just as highly competitive, and we’ll just have these two worlds?
Pooja Derashri:
For upcoming two or three years, no, Page Builder’s still be in the picture because people are more comfortable and more familiar with the Page Builder right now. Like many DIY users are there, they just need to go and create their website using Elementor. There is huge resources available for Elementor. So they are 1, 2, 3 years not, but after that, Site Editor will be taking over the market.
Angela Bowman:
Yeah. Yeah. So it’s so interesting because Elementor is huge. I mean huge, huge.
Tracy Apps:
Doesn’t it also go on other platforms, other than WordPress, or is Elementor just WordPress?
Angela Bowman:
Just WordPress.
Tracy Apps:
Okay. I thought I remember, there was one Page Builder that I thought was a crossover between different systems and stuff, but okay, it must be a different one.
Angela Bowman:
Yeah, but it’s interesting because it’s millions and millions of users, people have gotten comfortable with it. But it’s a lot, it’s kind of a cash cow right now, and because it’s just so amazing, flexible. But full site editing, like you say in three years, the Page Builders are going to have to… Someone’s going to have to have, like, where’s the competitive advantage. And with development, so you’re a developer too, I’ve always wanted to know this, what is it like to extend Elementor? And you’ve obviously done some extensions with WordPress vis-a-vis your WooCommerce run-in builder. Have you had to learn different systems of coding in order to do…? Have you done any block-based development, I guess is what I’m saying, custom blocks versus your custom widgets for Elementor? And how is that to integrate with WordPress versus Elementor? I just am dying to know.
Pooja Derashri:
If we talk about the coding thing, then Elementor is not that stable in coding matters. If we release our plugin or release our [inaudible 00:17:40], then it breaks sometimes due to the instability of Elementor. If we work on the Block Editor thing, it is more stable and compatible, the Elementor or other Page Builder plugins.
Angela Bowman:
So as a developer and as a company, you’re needing to make money, you’re needing to set your sites on the future, are you setting your sites towards the future of doing more block-based or full site editing plugins? If you see this drop off in the market potentially, what’s your long-range vision for your own company?
Pooja Derashri:
For my future reason, we will be focusing more on WooCommerce part of the plugin. So it is not for Page Builder, it’s not for the blog reading, but more on the WooCommerce stuff.
Angela Bowman:
I think WooCommerce is a great niche to go into, as a WooCommerce person.
Pooja Derashri:
There are many things we need to uncover in WooCommerce. There is huge, huge market in WooCommerce that is not discovered yet. So we can test that market also.
Tracy Apps:
Yeah. And I think that, because WooCommerce, I mean, gosh, it’s been around so long. I don’t do a whole lot with WooCommerce, but when I have to, I’m like, “This is a lot.”
Pooja Derashri:
Yes.
Angela Bowman:
It gets a lot.
Tracy Apps:
It is a lot, and-
Pooja Derashri:
One part is one tenth part of [inaudible 00:19:22], it’s many things we can work alone.
Tracy Apps:
And that was one of the things. There’s a lot of opportunity, there’s a lot of things, and I’ve seen a lot of progress. Because I think I had a WooCommerce store years and years and years ago, and then I set it up somehow, I don’t know how, but I was like, “I’m never doing this ever again.” Fast-forward a couple of years, and then I set one up a couple of years ago and I was like, “Okay, things have improved. Still need some more work.” But now I am thinking I might have to check out the front-end product editor plugin.
Angela Bowman:
And WooCommerce, so I’ve been using WooCommerce. I didn’t want to do WooCommerce forever, until WooCommerce came out. And I was involved in some, oh, Cart66, some other kind of ancient… I probably blocked it out for trauma reasons, the other predecessors to WooCommerce. But when WooCommerce came out, I got excited about working in e-commerce, and I love WooCommerce. And okay, so this is my perspective as a more front-end coder. I can do a lot of manipulation with the WooCommerce hooks and all of that. I am really facile with all the stuff regarding templating or modifying various hooks, and moving stuff around that way. My experience of WooCommerce is that it’s very, very, very stable and it’s very well-developed.
And everything about it, I have never experienced a situation with WooCommerce where I was horrified. I look at the template files, they make sense. I hardly ever have to touch the template files because the hook system is so well-defined, both the action hooks and the filter hooks are just incredible. I have had to hire developers to do, beyond my skill level, to do custom development with WooCommerce. It’s been great. And I am wondering, as a developer, if you’ve experienced WooCommerce, as like you said, more stable than Elementor and maybe having more of that core stability?
Pooja Derashri:
There is hooks available that is easily customized. As you said, it is easily customizable. And we have three plugins already released on WordPress app and three, four are already in pipeline that we’ll be going to release soon. So we can simply say that WooCommerce is a coming market. It’s already running market and upcoming market for our reason. So it is definitely yes for WooCommerce, and stable version is a plus point for WooCommerce.
Tracy Apps:
One question for WooCommerce, how is the translation on that? Is there still a lot of translation or a lot of languages that it still has yet to be gone into, or is it closer to where WordPress is with translation? Do you know?
Pooja Derashri:
It’s closer to WordPress. It’s not specifically different from WordPress.
Tracy Apps:
Okay. Yeah, that’s good. That’s another big thing, is when we think about, in my lens of a kind of English speaking where everything just is “the default” in English, which it shouldn’t be, but the global lens of being more accessible to people because it is translated into their language. I feel like one of the things that the WordPress ecosystem has done really well, has put that emphasis on that to really not exclude people as much as possible.
Pooja Derashri:
In my region of India, we generally see and create website on English language, that is global. We do not create in our native language, that is accessible via everybody from here.
Angela Bowman:
And also, speaking of accessibility, we had a woman on the podcast last week who is blind, and she said the latest versions of WordPress are infinitely more accessible, from a blind user standpoint in terms of creating content, than they ever were before. And the Page Builders are not at all accessible. And that was also another plus, for as much as people are griping about the block editing… As developers, I hear a lot of complaints about, “Oh, the Block Editor, the code keeps changing. We can’t keep up. I want to give up on being a WordPress developer because of how much it’s changing.” And people are super frustrated, but it’s like, what’s the alternative? You’re going to be an Elementor add-on developer, that’s not going to make you any more happy.
Tracy Apps:
It changes more often, right?
Angela Bowman:
Yeah. Or it isn’t as stable. And it’s funny with Elementor, because I do tell people, “Stay away from all the add-ons, except for maybe a couple.” Because if the site’s going to break, it’s going to be because of an add-on. But hearing you talk, it’s not because of the add-on, it’s because Elementor is less stable and it’s harder for the add-on companies to keep up with making sure that their latest versions are compatible. This is really getting into the weeds, but what kind of developer support do you get from Elementor? Is there a team of developer supporters in the same way that you have developer support and WordPress core? Is there some place you can turn for…? And also, like WP engine, and places like that, provide developer support. There’s so much support for WordPress core development and I’m wondering what kind of support you get with Elementor?
Pooja Derashri:
In that case, I can only say that moderate support. In every release, most of time it breaks. And due to huge millions of websites on the Elementor, they have many queries and many users can reach out to them, so it is hard to give them support. There are many add-ons available for Elementor, so it’s hard to provide support to every add-on company or every developer support to everybody, but usually we get response from them. It’s positive response, and we cannot say there is a fast response or they just provide their support in one or two days, sometimes it takes five to seven days. But, yeah, they always provide.
Angela Bowman:
Yeah, so they always provide support to the developers?
Pooja Derashri:
Yes.
Angela Bowman:
Because part of their success has been based on developers like you, and Form Vibes, which is one of your original plugins I think, which people had to use with Elementor to store form submissions. Now it’s built into Elementor. Elementor has the add-on developers to thank for so many of their new features that they’ve taken and rolled into their core plugin.
Pooja Derashri:
It is an interesting story behind Form Vibes. We got response from one of the user that it would be great if we can store our Elementor form data. And we think about that and we thought, “Why wouldn’t we create that plugin?” So yes, we started plugin for Form Vibes, and we created plugin Form Vibes and provide support for Contact Form 7, then Elementor form and then many other form plugins. That’s how it came in the picture.
Tracy Apps:
I always love that because the theme of this podcast is that, yeah, it would be great if someone did that. So I just did that.
Angela Bowman:
Yes. I’m so curious about your coding background. Where did you learn to code? We know you got into WordPress in 2013, but what’s your educational background, and what kind of coding did you learn? And what kind of coding are you feeling like you’re needing to learn more of now, PHP versus JavaScript React? Where’s your focus and where did you start?
Pooja Derashri:
It is completely different, what I learned in my college. I have engineering background, I did engineering and electronics and communication. Totally different. But my roommate was in college, she was computer science background and she was learning PHP. I was just curious to see that PHP is so easy and I also created interest in that. So I started learning from her. Then when we were looking for a job, it was like my interest converted completely into the coding field. And my first job was as a PHP developer in one of the company. I worked on many other PHP framework, like Magento and Expression Engine. Then one day my boss assigned me a project of WordPress, and it was like surpasses all other CMSs. It was very easy, well documented and it is very easy to just create website with using it. Then I just explored more and more and deeply dive into the code, and never look back from WordPress.
Tracy Apps:
I get that. So especially with doing plugins and having to work with the Block Editor, are you having to try to learn React now?
Pooja Derashri:
Not yet. Not yet.
Tracy Apps:
Okay, that’s good.
Pooja Derashri:
Actually, now I’m not actively involved in the blogging. My team is doing that, but I’m more involved in the other stuff.
Angela Bowman:
Like running your company. Are you more like the CEO? Are you just bossing people around? Is this is what’s happening now?
Pooja Derashri:
Actually, me and my husband divided our role. He’s managing development team and I’m managing more content and marketing team, and also leading the contribution work. So yeah, we divided our parts here.
Tracy Apps:
That’s great. That’s good, yeah.
Pooja Derashri:
To be more focused.
Tracy Apps:
Yeah, honestly, it’s better for your sanity.
Angela Bowman:
Yeah.
Pooja Derashri:
I agree.
Angela Bowman:
So he’s the one who gets to struggle with changes made to how blocks are dealt with. And yeah, he would be an interest. But he’s still into it, so he’s not complaining too much. He’s enjoying himself.
Pooja Derashri:
Yeah, he’s more in development. It’s always a collaboration work. If he changes everything, he passes that info to our content team and we update our documentation and article according to that. So it is something we are involved, but not actively in developing code.
Angela Bowman:
Yeah. Well, I’m so curious too about just, so you’re in Rajasthan, India, what is your community like there? And we know you do core development work, but are you still actively involved with any meetups or WordCamps in India?
Pooja Derashri:
Yes, there are many Word Camps in India happening. If we talk about Rajasthan, there is four or five meetup groups in Rajasthan. My current city is Ajmer, it’s a district of Rajasthan, and we run a Ajmer meetup group here. Before Covid, it was regular and we run meetup every month. But after Covid it is like we run Meetup in two, three months, because people are more involved in their work instead of meetup and involving the community. We are struggling to getting the vibe to the community. We are just focusing on involving other contributors, other company, agencies, to join our meetup group.
Tracy Apps:
Nice. So just, what kind of things are you excited about, either with your business or just personal, about the future of WordPress and development, et cetera.
Pooja Derashri:
Personally, right now I’m enjoying contribution part. I’m very much passionate about contribution. My half of the time goes into contribution.
Tracy Apps:
I love that.
Pooja Derashri:
And right now I’m co-testing that, I contribute in plugin reviewing. I’m also part of program support, formerly known as a community deputy [inaudible 00:33:35]. So right now I’m more enjoying that part of contribution.
Tracy Apps:
It’s so needed too. That makes me so happy. I love that.
Angela Bowman:
And you get to meet people all over the world, and that must make your world bigger.
Pooja Derashri:
Yeah. If I talk, I work 40 hours a week, then my 15 to 20 hours goes into contribution.
Angela Bowman:
That must feel great. Yeah, I heard so many people tell me that we needed to talk to you. It’s been a fabulous conversation. And so where can people find you and where can they find your plugins?
Pooja Derashri:
I’m available on, I’m actively, check, Make WordPress Slack. You can also find me on Twitter. My Twitter handle is Pooja Derashri, P-O-O-J-A D-E-R-A-S-H-R-I, Pooja Derashri, and our company profile is WPVibes, W-P-V-I-B-E-S. That is where you can find our plugins. Wpvibes.com is our website, there all the plugins are hosted.
Angela Bowman:
I will put all those links in the show notes.
Tracy Apps:
Thank you.
Pooja Derashri:
I’ll share link with you.
Angela Bowman:
Thank you.
Speaker 1:
Thanks for listening. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter, or join our Facebook group. We would be honored if you subscribe to the show. You can find us on Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, and iTunes. Finally, if you want to be on the show or know someone who would, visit our website at womeninwp.com. Until next time.
