08 May 2025
WordPress Planet
Do The Woo Community: Bits and Pieces of the Channel with BobWP
In this episode, Bob discusses updates for WordCamp Europe, including minor show name changes, a new host announcement, and the relocation of daily posts to his personal blog.
08 May 2025 1:46pm GMT
Do The Woo Community: Daily Posts Packing Up and Taking a Trip
Taking a break on these posts for a couple of reasons.
08 May 2025 8:34am GMT
07 May 2025
WordPress Planet
Akismet: Version 5.4 of the Akismet WordPress plugin is available now
Version 5.4 of the Akismet plugin for WordPress is now available. This update contains the following improvements:
- We've added a "Compatible Plugins" section to the Akismet settings page that shows any other installed and active plugins that are compatible with Akismet, along with links to documentation on how to ensure they're working together.
- The stats pages now use the user's locale instead of the site's locale if they're different.
To upgrade, visit the Updates page of your WordPress dashboard and follow the instructions. If you need to download the plugin zip file directly, links to all versions are available in the WordPress plugins directory.
07 May 2025 4:38pm GMT
WPTavern: #168 – Hari Shanker on Understanding and Showing WordPress Contributions
Transcript
[00:00:19] Nathan Wrigley: Welcome to the Jukebox Podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.
Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress. The people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case understanding the nature of WordPress contributions and making sure that contributors understand where they might be needed.
If you'd like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast player of choice, or by going to wptavern.com/feed/podcast. And you can copy that URL into host podcast players.
If you have a topic that you'd like us to feature on the podcast, I'm keen to hear from you and hopefully get you, or your idea, featured on the show. Head to wptavern.com/contact/jukebox, and use the form there.
So on the podcast today, we have Hari Shanker. Hari has been a member of the WordPress community since 2007, and has contributed in various capacities, including as a full-time contributor for several years, working with Automattic, working with initiatives like Five for the Future, and supporting numerous community events around the world. He currently volunteers his time as a community program manager, helping to grow and support the WordPress ecosystem from his home in India.
If you're involved in the WordPress project, you likely know how vast and complex the contributor ecosystem can be, but you might not have heard of the WordPress Contribution Health Dashboards. An experimental initiative aimed at making sense of all the communities moving parts by gathering, visualizing, and sharing contribution data.
But why does WordPress need something like this? Well, it could help new and existing contributors figure out where to pitch in, and how their work might guide the project's future growth. Hari's here to explain.
We start the podcast by going off on a tangent, discussing the landscape of WordPress in India. India is experiencing a huge upswell in community activity, innovation and youth engagement, and it's exciting to hear about.
We then dive into the main thrust of the podcast, the Contribution Health Dashboards. How the idea came about. Who helped drive it forwards. Why it's proving so challenging to build, and the massive value it promises for contributors, team reps, project leadership, and anyone curious about where WordPress needs help.
We look at the practical aspects too. What tools are, and aren't, available? The difficulty of tracking data across the many platforms WordPress uses, and what kinds of skills, and volunteers are needed to push this work forward.
Hari shares his vision for accessible visual dashboards that can guide contributors of all skill sets, and help make the best of every single contribution hour.
If you've ever wondered how to make your WordPress contributions matter even more, or how the project could be better supported by data driven insights, this episode is for you.
If you're interested in finding out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading to wptavern.com/podcast, where you'll find all the other episodes as well.
And so without further delay, I bring you Hari Shanker.
I am joined on the podcast by Hari Shanker. Thank you for joining me.
[00:03:53] Hari Shanker: Thank you for inviting me to the podcast and I'm so excited to be here, Nathan.
[00:03:58] Nathan Wrigley: I am really pleased that you've joined me. We had aspirations of doing this podcast from Manila, but things conspired against us, and so we are doing this via an online call, let's say a Zoom call or something like that. So I'm really pleased that we could finally hook up.
The intention is to talk today about something that I suspect many people in the WordPress community will not know a great deal about. So it is called the WordPress Contribution Health Dashboard, or dashboards I should say. And we'll get into that in a moment. What it is. Why it exists, and how that project is moving along.
But before then, Hari, would you mind just giving us your little bio, your introduction to who you are, where you live, what you do in the WordPress space. As much as you like, really over to you.
[00:04:44] Hari Shanker: Thank you so much, Nathan. So my name Hari Shanker. I live in the south of India, in a city called Kochi. I've been with the WordPress community since 2007. I've been contributing actively since 2016. I have been contributing full-time. I had been contributing full-time from 2020 to 2024.
At this point, I'm a volunteer contributor. I used to work with Automattic for a while, from 2016 to 2025. At this point I'm not employed, I am a volunteer contributor, very much excited to work on WordPress. And I've done a bunch of things with WordPress. WordPress is one of my biggest passions.
My work has mostly been in the community team. I am still a community program manager, which means I approve events, I support events, and my work has mostly been in the contributor experience of WordPress. I led the Five for the Future initiative for quite a long time. And I was also working on the WordPress Contributor Working Group, where we held three editions of the WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program.
As I said, I live in Kochi. I have a wife and I have three cats. I absolutely love it here. They call Kerala Gods own country, and I love the state, I love where I live. And I love the fact that I can work on the best open source software in the world, sitting in my lovely little city, in my lovely little apartment. That's all about me.
[00:05:58] Nathan Wrigley: That's so nice. That's really lovely. Can I just segue a little bit and steer away from the conversation that we're intending to have? And ask you about WordPress in India?
Now, obviously you may not have your finger on the pulse of everything that's going on, but I'm curious. Not having been to India during the period I've been using WordPress, I have an intuition that it's a thriving community over there, dare I even say, a growing community.
But that's just based upon the little bits and pieces that I've captured from friends, and articles that I've seen. And there seems to be this big upswell in plugin development, and agencies that are really doing great work. So there isn't really a question there, it's just more, tell us about how WordPress is going in India.
[00:06:40] Hari Shanker: Absolutely. So you got it right. WordPress, the WordPress economy, the WordPress ecosystem is really thriving. As you said, it's everywhere. Like, the plugin ecosystem, we have VIP agencies. We have so much innovation happening in WordPress. We have companies like InstaWP. We have agencies like rtCamp, Multidots. There's so much innovation happening. That's just the tip of the iceberg.
There is also so much community activities happening. We've had so many of these events, so many innovative WordPress events, we've had WordCamps.
So I was involved in setting up an event called WordPress Photo Festival, and we've had a WP Campus Connect. We've had a host of women's day events that were held on March 8th. Again, that's the tip of the iceberg. There's so many activities happening. So be it innovation in plugin development or theme development.
And again, themes are big in India. We have had, Astra theme comes from India. So many of these activities happening. And it's not just centered in one city, it is really all over the place. So in Kerala where I live in, we have very thriving community. We have folks who've come up from the community, and who've built things that have made waves all over the world. And again, across different cities, be it Mumbai, Pune, Ahmadabad, Kolkata, Ajmer.
So India is, as you know, is a big country. So we have a host of these local WordPress meetup groups and several thousands of community members. And I do not use the word thousand as a euphemism. It really is, like we actually have thousands of community members who are doing cutting edge work. And I can tell you, it is so inspiring to see. I mean, as an open source fan, like it really gives me the energy to keep going.
So yeah, you are right. WordPress is thriving. And we have WordCamp Asia coming to India, in Mumbai in 2026. I am very excited about that.
I was actually the mentor of WordCamp Asia for a short while, but this point I've stepped down. I have applied as an organiser and I hope to be in the organising team as well. So I think it's the best time for WordPress in India, and we still have heights to conquer. The best is yet to come. Super excited about all that.
[00:08:36] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, that's really great because it does seem in different parts of the world, and maybe this will feed into the conversation that we're about to have, it does feel in other parts of the world. So I'm in the UK, and it does feel that the community side of things has definitely taken a bit of a hit since the pandemic, so 2019 and beyond.
Those meetups that happened in some cases have come back, but in the majority of cases, they still are either dormant or perhaps have been abandoned. And I feel that the same might be true across Europe and North America. I can't speak to whether that is accurate or not, but that's the feeling that I get.
It does feel, like I said, the news that I see, the articles that I read in WordPress journalism, it really does feel like India is exactly as you've described it. But also it feels like it's not just confined to WordPress, it's tech in general. It feels like there's, well, maybe renaissance is the wrong word, but there's just a huge pivot in all things tech over to places like India. You know, whether that's, I don't know, SaaS apps and so on, but CMSs as well. It does feel like India is definitely on the rise in all manner of tech.
[00:09:41] Hari Shanker: Absolutely. I think there's a bunch of reasons for it, but in my mind, I think a big reason for that, I wouldn't call it the biggest reason, is our very young population. India's population at this point is over 1.4 billion. I'm not aware of the latest number, but I think it's around 1.5 billion. So off the top of my head, I think at least 50% of it is a young population. They are less than 35 years of age.
All these young folks, they're coming in with so much energy. There's an abundance of human capital. And we are in the internet age, and one good thing that happened after COVID-19 is a lot of these folks got connected. And India has really cheap internet. I mean, of all the places that I've traveled to, internet in India has been the cheapest that I know. So it's really easy to get connected.
And a lot of these people who are connected, they're using it very productively. That is one of the reasons why you're seeing this spurt of activity. And there's been a lot of these inspiring stories, which is really inspiring the youth. And WordPress being what it is, is seeing a lot of this innovation coming in.
But I think, again, we're really at the tip of the iceberg. The best is yet to come, because I see a lot more people coming into the community. And my hope is with WordCamp Asia happening next year, we will see a lot more of these young folks embracing WordPress, not just tech, but embracing WordPress, and doing a bunch of innovations. So I think the goal for the Indian community is to get all these young people to WordPress.
[00:10:53] Nathan Wrigley: It's interesting that you mentioned the young people. I was just wondering if there was a connection between, for example, education, you know, school and the emergence of jobs. I don't know what age you leave school in India, but in the UK it would be typically 16 or 18. And at that point you're perhaps going on to higher education, so university, something like that, or finding a job.
And I think there's been a real effort in the UK to supply education in tech. But it doesn't really seem to pivot around open source software. It tends to pivot around, can I use this already existing product? Often a kind of Microsoft version of something, in order to create wealth or a job. But I don't know if there's more of a pivot in India to use open source things to teach those kind of things.
So again, there's no question there. It's just more of an observation really.
[00:11:41] Hari Shanker: Yeah, so I think your observation is pretty astute. But I think India has a bit of a USP here when it comes to open source. We have had an open source movement since time immemorial. I mean, specifically my state of Kerala, we have a very uniquely liberal government. So they sort of stepped away from proprietary software and embraced open source software as early as in the nineties.
So Richard Stallman, when he used to be active in the community, he used to visit Kerala almost every other year. And we, as a result of that, have a pretty thriving open source community in my state.
All sorts of open source from Linux distributions, to Python and WordPress of course, and Drupal, and we have all these communities very active and thriving.
And a lot of the young people, they get their introduction to tech through these open source communities, which have local chapters. It's not just related to my state, even though my state has a pretty high population of this, a lot more people doing this. I would say that the open source movement is pretty active all across India. So we have these big open source conferences in some of the big universities. We have these small local chapters where people get active. So at some point or the other young people who are interested in tech, they get some introduction to open source. And a lot of people are enamoured by the philosophy.
Now, coming specifically to the WordPress community, we have recently had some really good events. So these are in a youth camp format. I was involved in one of them. And there was an event called WP Campus Connect that was held in Ajmer, Rajasthan, which is held by Pooja Derashri. So these events, they were experiments really, but they've been quite successful, especially I would say the WP Camps Connect event. It's been fantastic.
Like, it was an event series, and as a result of those events, I don't know the numbers, but off the top of my head, at least 200 to 300 people, 300 kids, they got introduced to WordPress directly. I'm not just talking about, you know, setting up websites, they got an introduction to the community. And those efforts are really paying off. We are seeing these people coming into the community and being active.
So the gist of what I'm saying is, yes, you are right. We are seeing an open source movement and we, a lot of these young kids, I mean of course a lot of them, as you said, they move to proprietary technology, but they have more of a window into open source as they blossom.
[00:13:40] Nathan Wrigley: The interesting thing I suppose about that is, given the long march of history and having many decades into the future, that groundswell amongst the younger people now is going to paint a really interesting picture in a couple of decades time. So in the 2030s and the 2040s, it'll be interesting to see how that movement, the young people obviously going into the marketplace, and getting a job in some industry or other, it'd be interesting to see how that all plays out.
Because one of the things that I always notice when I go to WordCamps is that age thing. The demographic of age, it always seems to skew older rather than younger, you know? If you were to say, how many people here are over, I don't know, let's say 45 or 50? I think there'd be quite a few hands. And if you would say, who's under 20? Very few. Certainly in my part of the world. So it will be interesting how that shakes out.
But how positive is that? That's such a great way to begin this podcast. I don't know if you want to, if you've got anything more you want to leverage into there quickly before we move on, feel free to.
[00:14:40] Hari Shanker: I just want to add a quick comment. That is a huge opportunity, and to be honest with you, even in India, even with the huge population, the WordPress events that we have, we still haven't seen that influx yet. But the good news is that it's changing. It definitely has an effect because when I started organising events for the community in 2016, we got a lot of the young kids and I am seeing them.
So it's been eight years. I'm seeing the same people, they're making waves. I know three or four specific examples of folks who got into the community as college students and then really went places. So if we are able to, when I say we, I'm referring to the WordPress community, or specifically the Indian WordPress community. If we are able to leverage it well, and if we manage to keep the momentum and grow it, I would say the sky is the limit. So I am super optimistic and extremely excited about where the future lies for WordPress in India.
[00:15:25] Nathan Wrigley: So that was supposed to be like a one minute aside, and there we go. We've had a really interesting conversation about what WordPress is doing in your part of the world. Thank you for that. That was really interesting.
Let's pivot now to the article. And I'm going to, in the show notes, I'm going to link everybody to an article which Hari wrote towards the latter part of last year, so 2024, September. And it was called WordPress Contribution Health Dashboards: An Experiment.
Now, obviously if you are in the WordPress ecosystem and you've been here for many years, you will have no doubt figured out how complicated and tangled WordPress is. Not just the community, but the software, the code, the events, the different teams which make up WordPress, the multitude of ways that you could become involved.
And I think it would be fair to say that if you were new to WordPress, that could be pretty overwhelming. It would be fairly easy to sort of step into the community and think, what? Where do I belong? Where do I fit? Where is my experience best used? Where would I find the most, fun or engagement, or meaning in the WordPress space?
And so it feels like these contribution health dashboards might be some version of trying to get an understanding of what WordPress is, where the gaps are, where the holes are being filled, where the holes in the future might emerge and so on. But just unpack it for us. Who's involved? What is the idea of a contribution health dashboard?
[00:16:54] Hari Shanker: Great question. And thank you for the excellent introduction, Nathan. I think you did a great job of explaining everything.
To summarise, the idea behind the contribution dashboard is to have sort of like a cockpit or bird's eye view of WordPress contributions. WordPress, as you know, has around 20, 22 contribution teams, and these teams are doing a bunch of different activities. As you said in your introduction, it's very hard for everybody to follow this.
So the hope of this project is to build a dashboard, or dashboards, which provide anyone, not just contributors, really anyone in the community to get an idea of where things are with WordPress. So it involves updates on the release, latest releases. It involves activities from various teams, like Core, community, training, photos, meta, et cetera.
So to give anybody who is coming from any part, with any experience, to give them an idea about where things are. Because at this point it's very hard to follow. We have these blogs, we have Slack, we have Trac, we have GitHub. When those contributions to spread out across multiple places, it's very hard, even for experience folks to follow. So the hope behind this project was to simplify this with the help of data, and specifically data visualisation. So that is the project specifically.
Now, as regards to who is involved, I will need to share some history and I promise I'll be brief. So this started as a collaborative effort with a bunch of folks, I should say Courtney Robertson's name. Courtney has been a real force for good for this project. Like, she's been very active. So Courtney Robertson, Naoko Takano, myself, Isotta Peira, and a bunch of contributors all over the world.
We all came up with this idea. This idea has been floated around for a long, long time. We need dashboards. It could be helpful. But we were not able to make a ton of progress.
So around WordCamp Europe 2023, there was a question asked in the keynote to Matt Mullenweg and he advocated for it. He said it would perhaps be good to have dashboards, which will bring all this information together.
So that was when all these efforts really gathered momentum. So Courtney was one of the first people to be really excited about this, she really led this forward. And since I was working on contribution health, I was part of the Contributor Working Group, I was also very excited about this. So Courtney and I, we joined hands and we kicked off efforts.
So we first looked at having a tool that will help set things up. But that is when we realized that it could get really complicated, and a lot of the existing tools out there, it may not really fit the bill. But we also needed to find out what we need to measure. What should be there in these dashboards? That was a big question that we had.
So we published a couple of blog posts in the Sustainability Team and the Meta Team. We got a bunch of ideas from the community. We did a lot of on the ground research. Progress was very slow, but we eventually found a tool called Bitergia. Bitergia is a paid tool, it costs a lot of money. Automattic were kind enough to sponsor the tool for the time being.
So we got a paid subscription with some of us having access to it. And we looked at the data, we crunched numbers. But the limitation of Bitergia was that it only looked at GitHub, like the WordPress GitHub. So if you look at the dashboard, the data for that needs to come from various sources, right? The Make WordPress Slack, there's the P2 blogs, there's Trac. So this tool was only limited to GitHub.
So after a lot of discussion with the community, and we held several project health hangouts all the way, Courtney Robertson, myself, Naoko Takano, Isotta Peira, , all of us, we decided to do, with support from Josepha Hayden, who was then Executive Director of the project, and Chloe Brigmann, we decided to do an experiment.
We picked three teams, which was the Core Team, Community Team, and the Training Team. And we identified some KPIs, or progress some metrics, which we found out by discussing with the team members. We used the tools that we have, which includes Bitergia and some data that was already available. For instance, for the 6.6 release, we had the spreadsheet which developers always release once a release comes out, like you have the list of contributors. So we crunched numbers, we did some visualisations, and we published the blog post that Nathan, you've linked in the show notes.
So that is what we've done in short. It's an experiment. We've shared some data that we have on what we've collected. We've identified some KPIs.
So the challenge that we have is, building a full fledged dashboard is time intensive, resource intensive. The Bitergia dashboard that we have, it's very limited. It does not give out out the whole information. That post really is a snapshot. And we have data from January through September, 2024.
So the post, the content that we have, those are really snapshots of the project of contributions for the Core Team, Training Team and the Community Team, as well as stats for WordPress 6.6.
We went out, we put it out there, we hope to get feedback. So that's what we've done. We've not moved ahead from there. But that's a whole executive summary of the project and a history of what we've done.
We did get a lot of positive feedback from folks who were fascinated to find some of the information, which is not previously available. The good thing that we've done is we were also able to set some KPIs. But the work has not progressed since, we are still there. And it's a resource intensive project, it needs more contributors and more work to be done in order to move forward. But that's a brief summary of everything that we've done.
[00:21:48] Nathan Wrigley: Perfect. We'll get into that bit in a moment, the resource intensiveness of it. But just an observation from my point of view is that, typically, I think if you were to do this experiment in a corporate environment, the data would go to the board of directors, if you know what I mean. So that they could inspect that and figure out how to, I don't know, cut out waste, or figure out who needed to be employed, where people needed to be pushed around in the organisation in order to maximise things.
But whole point in a corporate environment would be the data would end up going north. It would end up towards the senior management way of looking at things. But this is not that. This is a democratised way. In effect, it's kind of the opposite. The data is intended to be open for absolutely everybody, so all people can see all of the things.
And if somebody new were to drop into the project, yes, they might not understand what all of the data means, but at least they might get an understanding of, okay, that team over there looks as if it's really fallen on hard times. That team over there, they seem to be doing great. Okay, maybe some of my time needs to be given over here. But the point being, the data is not so that senior management can do things if you like. It's so that everybody would be able to see the same view. I hope that's what it is anyway.
[00:23:04] Hari Shanker: That is exactly what it is, but we also hope to influence the senior management there as well. And when I say senior management, it's not just for this project leadership, it's also the contributors, the folks that keep the lights on. So that would mean Core committers, team representatives, anyone really.
And again, like you said, the beauty of WordPress, it belongs to everybody. So that's the way it's supposed to be, right? So we want to make sure that anyone can benefit something from it. So if it's a new contributor, they can find out which projects need help. They should be able to identify the areas that they can contribute directly to.
For leadership, they should be able to see the leading indicators or like the areas where the project is doing really well. And the lagging indicators, where a project needs help so they can make better decisions. And they should be able to change the project goals alongside, by understanding the data. So essentially it is aimed at everybody, not just the top down folks. And that is the hope that we came to this with.
[00:23:55] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, perfect. Now, anybody that's been in the WordPress space or contributed in any way you will have come across all the tools. You know, there are so many. There's Trac, there's P2, I suppose, if you're working in that environment. There's Slack. There's probably a bunch of others as well. I'm sure you could list a whole bunch more.
And if you've ever wrangled with APIs or, I don't know, web hooks or whatever it may be, trying to wrangle data, it's a hard task. And it does require a lot of human intervention at the beginning.
I'm wondering, is the intention of the project to get it to the point where the human intervention can kind of step away? Because the hard work has been done. We've now understood how to capture the data. How to regurgitate the data. How to display the data. So that at some point it will be less about figuring out how to make the data meaningful and more about, okay, now everybody look at the data and draw conclusions from the data.
But it sounded from your description as if we're still in the, how do we even get the data in? How do we recycle the data? How do we pull it in, regurgitate it and display it ?Again, is that about right?
[00:25:03] Hari Shanker: You are 100% right. That's exactly where we are in at this point. I think I shared some of the background earlier. The challenge is, we are working on data, it's a lot of work. I know this because I did a lot of the work in creating the pages that we have.
Unfortunately, we do not have a tool that gets all the data from all the sources. Any tool that we have, it will need to be customised extensively, and that needs developer help. We do not have a ton of data engineers in the WordPress community. We do have some folks, but they are not in the position to contribute their volunteer time towards this.
So this needs investment in terms of developer hours, in terms of more tools, in terms of integrations. So in short, this is a huge endeavor. This needs investment from several organisations working in WordPress for this to really succeed, at least to the vision of what we have. That is the realisation that we had.
But yes, the goal, if the project were to succeed, we should ideally need automated tools that automatically show data. Because if you were to publish this data manually, it's a lot of work. I am not sure is the best returning because like, I worked with volunteers when I was working on the Contributor Mentorship Program, and I respect volunteer time.
They have daily jobs, even sponsored contributors. They have a ton of things to do. Everybody's overloaded. That time is very precious, and using the time and creating these dashboards, trust me, it's extremely resource intensive. Like, between Courtney and myself and, Isotta and Naoko, we took a lot of time to prepare the dashboards that were out today. So we did that as an experiment to inspire folks so that we can get things done.
But if you ask me, is it worth it to keep updating it? I'm not sure. Because I'm not sure if it's worth the number of hours. Maybe we can do it. Maybe if there's more folks to help out, it can be continued. But my hope would be to create an automated tool. I'm convinced that it is going to benefit folks.
[00:26:49] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I mean, I guess that if you do everything manually and you draw the conclusions manually, you've got those one set of conclusions. And really what would be ideal is a portal, for want of a better word, where people can go and see and mine the data for themselves, and display it in interesting ways, and can consume it, and then decide how they're going to display that and drill down in different ways. And obviously that requires automation.
So, okay, we're recording this kind of the gap between May and April in 2025. If you could, and I should probably say, you know, the listenership to this podcast is fairly wide. If you could ask for people to come and assist with this project, what kind of people at this moment in time are you looking for. You mentioned that you know, there's not many people who are really interested, maybe in data manipulation and what have you, in the WordPress project. Just give us an idea of who you would wish to speak to you after they've listened to this podcast.
[00:27:45] Hari Shanker: Anyone really. I'll share why. The beauty of WordPress, and I think I've explored different open source projects and I think the beauty of WordPress is there's something for anyone. So a big part of what we need to do is research. And in the sense of, what do people need to measure?
So any feedback that folks can give on what they would like to see in a dashboard, that would be helpful. So if you are a listener to this podcast and you have ideas on what you would like to find out, that feedback itself is a big contribution. That will go a long way. That is a big part of the information that will help us.
On the next level, I would like to have developers who are familiar with Python and data visualisation and things like that. We have explored different ways to do this. I've spoken with several Core committers and folks like Jb Audras who, I mean, Jb Audras does a ton of this amazing work. He publishes release information.
So I was inspired by that. And the 6.6 dashboard that I published was very much built on his work. He does a lot of that work. So he's just published something on WordPress 6.8 in his blog, and he regularly publishes the, a month in Core, year in Core posts in the Make Core blog, which has some of this information.
So folks like that who have time to spare, who are really good with visualisations, that could be really helpful. And what Courtney and I, and Isotta and Naoko, what we had identified, what our group had identified was that we need a tool, we need an external tool. It's very hard to build something from scratch.
What would really help is to manipulate a tool. And there's a bunch of open source tools. There's GrimoireLab, which is, it's an industry standard tool. It's an open source software. It powers several open source projects. And there's a company called Bitergia, which builds on GrimoireLab, to, provide like a sponsored alternative, which is the one that we are using.
We reached out to them to see if they can build something for us. They quoted a very high price. Currently Automattic is paying €1,000 per month. They quoted upwards of 30 to €40,000 to build this integration. That's a huge amount of money and I don't think we have the bandwidth to do it.
So what we need is to bring, again, for folks listening, if you're a developer, if you're interested in data visualisation, I'd like to bring you all together to discuss what would be the best way forward.
So first, once we have the KPIs clearly identified, let's see how we can collect all this data and how we can display it. Maybe we can build something. We are in the era of vibe coding. So I think it's a lot easier than when we started this project in 2023. It's not impossible. Perhaps we can build something, build some very simple dashboard, identify some core KPIs. Maybe have two or three dashboards per team, which can be really filtered. Maybe that is possible. Maybe we don't need a tool.
So we need those developers, and folks with experience in data visualisation. Even like Core developers, like folks who have significant experience tinkering with Meta and Core and all that. So all these folks, if we are able to bring them together, I think we can do that. So I invite all of them to work on this.
[00:30:29] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. So if any of that is making sense to you, can I just ask you to go to WP Tavern. Search for the episode with Hari, H-A-R-I. That's probably all you need to know. Search there in the Tavern search and hopefully this episode will pop up. And from there you'll be able to link in the show notes to the piece that is described where you can find all of the links to the people contributing, but also Hari. Are you open to people contacting you directly and beginning conversations with you one-to-one?
[00:30:57] Hari Shanker: Absolutely, absolutely. So at this time, as I shared on the beginning of the podcast, my time is slightly limited, but I'm more than happy to bring people together. That is my strength. And Courtney Robertson, she's also very interested in this project. So like, between both of us, I think we can wrangle something and we can keep this moving.
Because I firmly believe that WordPress needs this. And if folks are able to volunteer their time, I'm more than happy to bring people together and to keep this project moving. So please, feel free to ping me directly. I'm Hari Shanker in the Make WordPress Slack. That's H-A-R-I-S-H-A-N-K-E-R. As you said, Nathan, folks can comment in the Tavern blog post as well. So any way you can find me, I will find you.
[00:31:32] Nathan Wrigley: It feels to me like, you know when you go into a great big store or a shop, and I'm going to use supermarket as an example, where you've never been to that one before. You're looking for a particular item. And you can literally spend so many minutes, hours even just searching around. You know, where's the aisle? Okay, I found what I think is the right aisle. Now, in the aisle, which shelf am I looking for? And then, where is it?
This feels like that. It feels like signposting to, here's the thing you want. You're standing at the door and I'll just grab you by the hand and I'll take you to the thing that you need to purchase right away. It feels like these dashboards are going to be something akin to that. Just a way of alerting people to the project as a whole, think the supermarket in this case, and how to just make that journey a little bit easier. Make it obvious to everybody what needs help? What doesn't need help? What's working? What isn't working?
How is it going to be manifested? This will be my last question really. What will this look like? Are we going to be looking at spreadsheets full of numbers? Are we going to be looking at charts? What is the intention? Because when I hear dashboard, I'm kind of immediately drawn to like line graphs and things like that. That's what I'm imagining I'm going to end up seeing. But what would be the intention? Because some of this data would probably fit in that, but maybe some of it is just not going to be that. It'll just be paragraphs of text, I don't know.
[00:32:47] Hari Shanker: I will share my vision for the dashboard, and it might be very different from what we end up building.
I would like to build visualisations in the best possible way. So it involves charts, it involves charts of various kinds, pie charts, line charts. So the best form of information depicted in a very visual way, which gives folks a clear understanding of where the project is headed.
In the current version, we've included some text because we wanted to sort of like share our findings. But I think as you shared earlier in this podcast, we want folks to find out the data for themselves. And Bitergia currently allows folks to download the data directly as a spreadsheet or in a CSV format. We'd like to give folks that option too. So if you're not comfortable seeing, or understanding, the data that is in front of you, you can download it and you should be able to manifest it or manipulate it in the way that you want.
So what I have in mind is a very visual dashboard full of charts. And the goal is to not over complicate things, which is why we are really looking at some certain KPIs for teams and for the project itself. For instance, if you look at the project, market share could be a KPI. It's not necessarily what I, I'm just using it as an example.
So identifying certain key metrics and building charts of various kinds which manifest this data, and to make it as user friendly, and as accessible, and accessibility in the strictest sense of the world. So that anybody with any size sort of accessibility requirement should be able to view this data and understand it. That is the vision that I personally have, and I think Courtney also has a very similar vision. So yeah, that's what I have in mind.
[00:34:18] Nathan Wrigley: It feels like in the year 2025, where we are at the moment, it feels as if, and we don't need to go into the reasons. It does feel like contributor hours are more precious than they've ever been. And so that in and of itself is a fantastic reason to have data like this available.
So for example, I don't know, let's imagine that I'm an enterprise agency and I want my contributions to really count. Well, I could throw my staff in all different directions and not really know whether they were being deployed in something which was already completely fine, or whether there was an area which really needed a bit of work. It might not be the most glamorous piece of work in the world, but it needs that work to be done.
And because the contributor hours at the moment are, let's use the word struggling, something like that, then having a window into what is needed, it does feel like this project has more importance now, perhaps even than just a year ago when you were sort of in the weeds of setting the whole thing up.
[00:35:16] Hari Shanker: I cannot agree more, because I've tried to collect this data together, to put this together. And I've seen the information that it can help companies. So you mentioned organisations or companies who are contributing through Five for the Future. So I was working on Five for the Future for a long time, and I was mentoring quite a few organisations who are stepping into WordPress.
So this data that I picked up, it really helped them. I was able to guide people into the areas that. We had folks who were doing other things, like they were able to contribute strategically, which I have specific cases of organisations who were able to improve their place in the WordPress economy by making strategy contributions.
So this is all very linked. And again, that's where I'm coming from. I mean, and as you said, contributor hours are very precious. I personally feel that any time or effort set towards building data oriented solution could go a long way. It is a very impactful way of contribution, and if folks are there to help it out, the potentials are limitless. That is where I'm coming from.
[00:36:10] Nathan Wrigley: There are so many dots being connected in this episode. So we talked at the beginning about the fact that, you know, WordPress is a growing and interesting thing for the younger generation in India, but the project obviously needs contributors.
Those contributors need to fit into the holes in the jigsaw, the bits of the jigsaw, where the pieces are missing, if you like.
And so there's this kind of virtuous cycle going on here where, if something like the dashboard can meaningfully impact where those contributors go, the jigsaw grows. The pieces where there's blank missing pieces, they get filled in. And so, like I said, there's this wonderful virtuous cycle nature to this whole thing. And what a fantastic project.
It's hard to encapsulate in words what you're trying to do, but I think we did a pretty credible job of doing that. So one more time, Hari is going to be available to whichever way he described. I will put in the show notes the links to the pieces and Hari's contact details and things like that.
What an interesting project, one that many people I'm sure haven't heard of. Is there anything that you wanted to say before we sign off?
[00:37:11] Hari Shanker: Well, all I want to say is, if you're interested in data, please consider looking into this project, or if there's anything that you can learn from the data that we picked up. I know it's a little old at this point. As I said, this is a project that anybody can contribute to. So even if you have insights on what data is missing or what data that you would like to see, that feedback really goes a long way.
So feedback is the best gift that you can give in, again, in an open source project like WordPress, especially for an initiative like this. It goes a long way. So it's a very impactful way of giving back to the project too. And I see contributions as investments, so if you would like to invest in WordPress in your free time, it's a great way to do it by helping us build these dashboards.
[00:37:51] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, as you said, it's like an impactful but kind of curious, interesting, powerful way of helping the community. And perhaps it's something that you'd not heard of before. So Hari Shanker, thank you so much for explaining all that to me today and joining me on the podcast. I really appreciate it.
[00:38:07] Hari Shanker: Thank you so much, Nathan. It was truly an honor to be here, and I absolutely enjoyed talking to you about my favorite topic.
On the podcast today we have Hari Shanker.
Hari has been a member of the WordPress community since 2007, and has contributed in various capacities, including as a full-time contributor for several years, working with Automattic, working with initiatives like Five for the Future, and supporting numerous community events around the world. He currently volunteers his time as a community program manager, helping to grow and support the WordPress ecosystem from his home in India.
If you're involved in the WordPress project, you likely know just how vast and complex the contributor ecosystem can be. But you might not have heard of the WordPress Contribution Health Dashboards, an experimental initiative aimed at making sense of all the community's moving parts, by gathering, visualising, and sharing contribution data.
But why does WordPress need something like this? Well, it could help new and existing contributors figure out where to pitch in, and how their work might guide the project's future growth? Hari's here to explain.
We start the podcast by going off on a tangent, discussing the landscape of WordPress in India. India is experiencing a huge upswell in community activity, innovation, and youth engagement, and it's exciting to hear about it.
We then dive into the main thrust of the podcast, the Contribution Health Dashboards, how the idea came about, who helped drive it forward, why it's proving so challenging to build, and the massive value it promises for contributors, team reps, project leadership, and anyone curious about where WordPress needs help.
We look at the practical aspects too. What tools are, and aren't, available. The difficulty of tracking data across the many platforms WordPress uses, and what kinds of skills and volunteers are needed to push this work forward.
Hari shares his vision for accessible, visual dashboards that can guide contributors of all skill sets, and help make the best use of every single contribution hour.
If you've ever wondered how to make your WordPress contributions matter even more, or how the project could be better supported by data-driven insights, this episode is for you.
Useful links
WordPress Contributor Working Group
WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program
WordCamp Asia in Mumbai, India in 2026
WordPress Contribution Health Dashboards: An Experiment
07 May 2025 2:00pm GMT
WordPress.org blog: WordPress Campus Connect Expands
WordPress Campus Connect, initially launched in October 2024 as a pilot program, has now been formally established as an official event series due to its resounding success. The inaugural program, spearheaded by myself, Anand Upadhyay, garnered immense enthusiasm from 400 Indian students who were eager to engage in hands-on WordPress training.
WordPress Campus Connect transcends the conventional workshop model by fostering a holistic learning community. It couples on-campus event learning with a diverse range of post-event activities, including meetups, website challenges, scholarships, and volunteering opportunities, all geared towards nurturing student development. The program's efficacy has prompted other organizations in India to express interest in replicating its structure.
Looking ahead, multiple local WordPress communities in India aim to reach more students in India through WordPress Campus Connect events. The curriculum will include beginner content, delve into more advanced WordPress concepts, and feature specialized sessions tailored for students with prior WordPress experience.

The official recognition of WordPress Campus Connect as an event series paves the way for further expansion, giving the series similar support and standing as WordCamps but with a student education-first goal and focus. Future plans include organizing large-scale student events, establishing WordPress clubs on college campuses, and facilitating mentorship connections for students.
To support these ambitious goals, volunteers identified several key next steps:
- Volunteer Handbook Development: Creating a comprehensive guidebook to equip volunteers with the necessary resources and information.
- GatherPress Integration: Exploring the feasibility of integrating GatherPress as a tool for student groups.
- Volunteer Recruitment: Actively seeking and onboarding volunteers to support WordPress Campus Connect initiatives through activities such as:
- Creating a workflow and guidelines for processing Student Club applications
- On-site facilitation or assistance for WordPress Campus Connect events
- Landing Page Creation: Creating a landing page describing what WordPress Campus Connect is all about
- Student Groups: Drafting a framework for students to create their own groups for hosting WordPress events and activities.
The overwhelming success of WordPress Campus Connect and the enthusiasm it has generated serve as a testament to the transformative power of passion and dedication. As WordPress Campus Connect continues to evolve and expand, it holds the promise of shaping the future of WordPress education and community engagement.
If you're interested in helping shape the future of education with WordPress, join us in the #campusconnect Make Slack channel today!
07 May 2025 12:40pm GMT
Do The Woo Community: How the Friends Plugin Turns Your WordPress Site into a Decentralized Social Hub
The Friends plugin for WordPress lets you create your own private social feed, sharing posts with friends while keeping everything decentralized and in your control.
07 May 2025 9:01am GMT
Do The Woo Community: Migrating CPT’s to Posts
Waiting on some work done before I move these daily posts to my new personal blog.
07 May 2025 6:52am GMT
06 May 2025
WordPress Planet
Matt: Remember Gravatar?
Gravatar has always been about giving people control over their identity online. One avatar, one profile, synced across the web, verified connections, with a fully open API.
Gravatar is a true open identity layer for the internet, and now for AI.
For developers, we've rolled out mobile SDKs and a revamped REST API that lets you fetch avatars and profile data with just an email hash. Whether you're building a blog, a community, or an AI agent that needs to understand who it's talking to, Gravatar provides the infrastructure to make identity seamless and user-centric.
It's free, open, and built with developers in mind. We believe identity should belong to the individual, not be locked behind proprietary platforms. Gravatar is our contribution to that vision.
If you haven't checked it out lately, now's a great time to explore what Gravatar can do for your app or your online presence. And think about how your apps can drive more Gravatar signups.
06 May 2025 4:27pm GMT
Gravatar: Build Your AI Identity with Gravatar’s New Tool
Your Gravatar profile has always been your digital business card for the web.
And now, it's becoming your identity for AI.
With our AI Profile Builder, you create a simple, portable version of you - your background, interests, preferences, and links - ready for AI tools to use. Build your profile once, and take it everywhere. From chatbots to content generators to recommendation engines, AI agents can finally understand who you are.
For developers, scroll to the end to learn how to use this in your app or website, too!
How it works
The AI Profile Builder takes what makes you you and translates it into a format that AI systems easily understand:
- Fill out your Gravatar profile
The more fields you complete, the smarter your AI experiences get. - Set your preferences
Choose how you like to communicate - tone, depth, and humor. - Copy your AI-ready profile
We hand you a tidy little markdown file. Portable and paste-ready. - Paste into any AI tool
Voilà. Personalized AI without all the constant tweaking.
Real-life use cases
Here's a video showing how Gravatar profiles can personalize AI responses when filling out PDFs and scheduling daily briefings.
This isn't just convenience - it's giving you control over your AI interactions.
Here are a few more examples:
Hobbies and Interests
- Generic response: "Here's how to get started with photography."
- Personalized response: "Given your interest in outdoor adventure and wildlife, I'd suggest focusing on landscape and nature photography, and here's a specific guide tailored to that."
Location-Based Recommendations
- Generic response: "Here's how to prepare for severe weather."
- Personalized response: "Considering you live in Florida, here's a personalized checklist to prepare your home specifically for hurricanes."
Communication Preferences
- Generic response: "Here's what happened today in the stock market."
- Personalized response: "Since you like it short and snappy with a side of sarcasm: the market took a tiny nap today - slightly down overall. Apple and Tesla dropped 1-2%, probably just tripping over their own hype again."
For developers
Want to personalize your product instantly?
Just a few lines of code, and your app can adapt to each user's communication style, bio, even verified socials.
https://gravatar.com/{EmailHash}.md
You can grab Gravatar profiles via a simple markdown request, our REST API, or mobile SDKs - and yep, as part of the open web, they're free to use.
Own your AI identity today
Unlike black-box AI systems that build hidden profiles about you, Gravatar's approach is transparent and user-controlled.
Ready to personalize your AI experiences?
Head to your Gravatar dashboard and spin up your AI-ready profile.
Devs - we've got integration docs and guides waiting for you.
Happy AI-ing!
06 May 2025 2:34pm GMT
Do The Woo Community: All Things WordCamp Lisboa 2025 with Marco Almeida and Hacer Yilmaz
In this episode, BobWP chats with WordCamp Lisboa organizers Hacer and Marco about the upcoming event, highlighting the new Community and Contribution Day, diverse sessions, language inclusivity, and the importance of community spirit.
06 May 2025 2:05pm GMT
Do The Woo Community: AI Hallucinations
Hallucinations, it's all a matter of perspective.
06 May 2025 9:12am GMT
05 May 2025
WordPress Planet
Gravatar: How to Configure Gravatar Image Size Across Your Site
So, you've decided it's time to improve the Gravatar images on your site. Maybe they're too small, stretched oddly, or don't match your stylish new design.
Whatever the reason, pic size matters. It can shape the feel of your comment threads, how fast pages load, and how polished your entire site looks at first glance.
Small tweak. Big impact.
Luckily, you don't need to be a developer, designer, or go rage-Googling CSS selectors to pull this off. You just need a smart approach, and that's exactly what you'll find here.
In this guide, we'll show you how to:
- Make site-wide Gravatar changes using WordPress's built-in functions
- Use CSS to finesse specific sections (think: Comments, author bios, anywhere Gravatar images show up)
- Go responsive, so your Gravatar images look fabulous on every screen from the iPhone to large 4k monitors
Let's get started.
Default Gravatar sizes and why you might want to change them
By default, Gravatar hands you an 80×80 pixel image. WordPress then ups that to 96×96, because… reasons. But here's where it gets messy: Your theme probably has its own ideas. Some use 60px. Others? 80px.
The result? Inconsistency. And that's the enemy of good design.
Here's why resizing is worth your time:
- Visual hierarchy: Want admin replies to stand out? Bigger avatars can subtly guide the eye.
- Mobile friendliness: On smaller screens, smaller avatars = less chaos.
- Brand consistency: Everything should look intentional, including your floating faces.
- Engagement: Well-sized avatars make people feel seen (literally), boosting community engagement.
And let's not forget performance. Larger images = heavier pages = slower load times. Too small? You risk pixelation when scaled up via CSS. Lose-lose.
Luckily, many modern themes (looking at you, Twenty Twenty-Five) let you adjust avatar sizes right from the design panel - no code required. Just head to the "Comments" section and tweak away.
But what if your theme lacks this functionality? Or if you want finer control?
That's when custom solutions come into play via WordPress functions, a dash of CSS, or the occasional PHP snippet. Don't worry, we'll walk you through it.
Let's get into the how.
Method 1: Changing Gravatar size using WordPress functions
If you want full control over how big (or small) your Gravatars show up - without relying on your theme's whims - WordPress has your back.
Under the hood, WordPress talks to Gravatar's servers using a handy little parameter: s= or size=. That's how it tells Gravatar exactly what size image to serve up, rather than grabbing one and awkwardly stretching or shrinking it in the browser.
If you want to make a site-wide change, add this simple snippet to your child theme's functions.php file:
function custom_avatar_size( $avatar_defaults ) {
return 120; // Change to your desired size in pixels
}
add_filter( 'avatar_defaults', 'custom_avatar_size' );
Voilà, just like that, every Gravatar across your site obeys your chosen size like a well-trained pixel soldier.
Want to go a step further? You can tell WordPress to serve up different sizes depending on where the avatar appears. Here's how:
function context_based_avatar_size( $args ) {
if ( is_single() ) {
$args['size'] = 150; // Larger on single posts
} elseif ( is_archive() ) {
$args['size'] = 80; // Smaller on archive pages
}
return $args;
}
add_filter( 'pre_get_avatar_data', 'context_based_avatar_size' );
Why this approach rocks:
- One change = site-wide consistency
- WordPress handles all the caching and optimization behind the scenes
- You can tailor avatar sizes by context (posts, archives, comments, you name it)
- It taps directly into Gravatar's API, so you're getting the cleanest possible image at the right size
Bonus round: Smart Gravatar sizing in the comments section
Want to get really clever? Try creating a visual hierarchy in your comments section. For example: Larger avatars for parent comments, slightly smaller ones for replies. It helps users follow the conversational flow without even thinking about it.
Here's a quick function that adjusts avatar size based on comment depth:
function comment_depth_avatar_size( $args, $id_or_email ) {
$comment = get_comment( $id_or_email );
if ( $comment ) {
$depth = 1; // Default depth
if ( isset( $comment->comment_parent ) && $comment->comment_parent > 0 ) {
$depth = 2; // Reply
}
// Set size based on comment depth
$args['size'] = 140 - (($depth - 1) * 20); // Parent: 140px, Reply: 120px
}
return $args;
}
add_filter( 'pre_get_avatar_data', 'comment_depth_avatar_size', 10, 2 );
Suddenly, your comments section feels less like a block of text and more like a layered conversation.
Pro Tip: Nudge users to create their own Gravatar
Lots of users will unintentionally default to the "Mystery Man" look if they haven't gotten around to customizing their Gravatar profile. Want to fix that? Add a friendly prompt under your comment form:
function gravatar_comment_form_note( $defaults ) {
$defaults['comment_notes_after'] .= '
Need a profile picture? Create a free Gravatar.
';
return $defaults;
}
add_filter( 'comment_form_defaults', 'gravatar_comment_form_note' );
Now you're not just upgrading your design, you're also helping your community show up in style.
And if you're feeling adventurous, there's room to dream even bigger. Think: Larger avatars for top commenters, custom styles for admins or team members, maybe even a "featured contributor" badge with its own Gravatar flair. Totally doable.
Just one golden rule: Always add your code to a child theme. Editing the parent theme directly is a one-way ticket to heartbreak when updates roll through. Protect your tweaks, keep them safe, and your beautifully resized avatars will live to see another theme update.
Method 2: Styling Gravatar images with CSS (aka the quick-and-clean route)
So maybe PHP isn't your thing. Or maybe you just want a faster win - less code, more impact. Enter CSS: The styling powerhouse that lets you tweak how Gravatars look without changing how they're fetched from the server.
Now, fair warning: This won't change the file size of the image being downloaded (Gravatar's still sending the default size), but it will control how those avatars show up on screen. Think of it like wardrobe tailoring for profile pics - same body, better fit.
Here's how to get started:
- Head to your WordPress dashboard
- Go to Appearance > Customize
- Click on "Additional CSS"
- Drop in your magic below
Want to resize comment Gravatars? Easy:
.comment-avatar img { width: 60px; height: 60px; }
Want to ditch the boxy default look and go full circle-chic? Say no more:
.avatar { border-radius: 50%; border: 2px solid #ddd; }
Designing for mobile, too (as you should be)? Add some media query magic:
@media (max-width: 768px) { .avatar { width: 40px; height: 40px; } }
And just like that, your Gravatar images adapt to screen sizes like design-savvy little shapeshifters.
Ready to get extra? Let's talk hover effects
Once you've nailed the sizing basics, there's a whole world of style upgrades waiting. You could create a hover effect that reveals a mini bio - or even a clickable "Gravatar card" with links, job titles, or a cheeky quote from their profile.
With the right mix of CSS and PHP, you can turn every Gravatar image into a micro-interaction that deepens community engagement without sending users off-site.
Imagine: Someone hovers over a commenter's face, and a sleek little popup shows their Gravatar bio, links, or even their other recent comments. Trust, familiarity, and engagement, all from a 60×60 pixel image.
Bottom line: CSS is your best friend when you want fast, flexible avatar control - no server changes, no code anxiety. Just pure visual finesse.
Go beyond size: Turn Gravatars into engagement powerhouses
So, you've nailed the sizing. Your avatars are looking slick, snappy, and totally on-brand. But, plot twist: Gravatar isn't just a pixel-perfect profile pic tool - it's a full-blown identity engine. And you're only scratching the surface.
Gravatar profiles come loaded with gold: Bios, websites, social links, even job titles. All that data lives on Gravatar.com, just waiting to be pulled into your site.
What can you do with it? Oh, just a few small things like…
- Auto-populate author bios with real backgrounds, no manual copy-pasting required
- Create hover cards that spill the tea (professionally, of course) when you hover over a commenter's face
- Build a community directory that looks like LinkedIn, but without the corporate cringe
- Add verification badges to reward users with full, legitimate profiles
The result? A more cohesive, more connected site experience, with less work for your users and more trust baked in.
Gravatar's "update once, sync everywhere" model means no more tedious form-filling. Users update their info once, and it syncs across every site they interact with, including yours.
And if you're running a site where you want users to change their avatar without leaving, Gravatar Quick Editor adds a sleek popup editor right on your site. Very user-friendly.
Unlock the power of Gravatar
Now you've got resizing down, it's time to have some fun. Use the code examples from this guide as your launchpad. Build confidence with each tweak. Try new things. Break stuff (safely). Learn. Repeat.
And when you're ready to go full power-user? Gravatar's developer docs are your secret weapon. They're packed with everything from API tricks to integration ideas that'll help you turn avatars into fully-fledged community features - everything you need to explore the full power of Gravatar and supercharge your site.
Gravatar isn't just an image. It's identity, personality, and participation, all rolled into one little square (or circle, thanks to your shiny new CSS).
Let's turn those pixels into something powerful.
05 May 2025 4:01pm GMT
Gravatar: 5 Ways Top Consultants Build Their Personal Brands
Consultants today face an intense competitive squeeze. On one side, established consulting giants with massive resources and brand recognition. On the other, a flood of independent specialists is expected as the consulting industry expands rapidly, now approaching $1 trillion in value with over 838,000 management consultants in the US alone.
Yet, amid this competition, certain consultants consistently attract premium clients and command fees significantly above the industry average of $212,000 per consultant. Their secret? Strategic personal branding that showcases specialized expertise rather than mere availability.
These successful consultants understand that clients aren't simply looking for someone who can help - they're searching for the definitive authority who can solve their specific problems.
In this article, we'll show proven methods that top consultants use to build authority and attract enterprise clients, helping you establish verified professional credibility across platforms.
5 ways top consultants command premium fees through personal branding
Successful consultants understand that it's not enough to just offer services; true success lies in creating a strategic personal brand that fosters trust and commands premium fees. In a consulting marketplace approaching $1 trillion in value, the difference between average and exceptional often comes down to brand positioning.
The most effective consultant brands aren't created by accident. They're built through deliberate strategies working in concert:
- Creating a verified consulting presence across multiple platforms.
- Strategically collecting and showcasing client testimonials.
- Developing authority-building professional partnerships.
- Using content marketing to demonstrate specialized expertise.
- Measuring and optimizing branding efforts based on revenue impact.
Each of these approaches contributes to a cohesive brand that positions you as the go-to authority in your field. Let's explore how successful consultants implement these strategies to attract high-value clients and command rates well above the industry average.
1. Build authority with a verified consulting presence
Top consultants leverage a multi-channel strategy to establish credibility and demonstrate expertise. This approach extends their reach while creating multiple touchpoints for potential clients to discover and validate their authority.
The most effective consultant brands maintain a consistent presence across various platforms:
- Professional website: Your digital home base showcasing your services, expertise, and client results
- LinkedIn: Publishing thought leadership articles that demonstrate specialized knowledge
- Industry publications: Contributing expert insights to respected publications
- Speaking engagements: Presenting at conferences to build visibility and credibility
What sets exceptional consultants apart is their ability to maintain a consistent voice and messaging across all channels. When potential clients encounter your content on LinkedIn, then visit your website, they should experience the same professional tone and expertise.
Another great tactic is to expand their influence through alternative content formats on the various platforms:
Content type | Benefits | Example | Platform |
Webinars | Demonstrates expertise in real-time while capturing qualified leads | "Three Proven Financial Models for SaaS Startups" - live workshop with Q&A | Zoom, WebinarPress (for WordPress sites), GoToWebinar |
Video content | Showcases problem-solving skills visually; reaches an audience that prefers watching to reading | "How to Implement Zero-Trust Architecture" - step-by-step tutorial repurposed from conference talk | YouTube, LinkedIn Video, Vimeo |
White papers | Positions you as a thought leader; provides depth that articles can't match | "Navigating Supply Chain Disruptions: A Framework for Manufacturing Resilience" - research report | Your personal website, SlideShare, ResearchGate |
Newsletters | Creates regular touchpoints with prospects; builds an owned audience asset | "Weekly M&A Insights" - curated analysis of industry deals with your expert commentary | WordPress.com, Substack, Mailchimp, Beehiiv |
Comments and opinions | Demonstrates real-time relevance and thought leadership without requiring extensive content creation | Expert analysis on breaking industry news or trending topics | LinkedIn, Medium, Industry forums |
Community platforms | Creates high-value relationships with potential clients; positions you as the center of a knowledge network | Exclusive mastermind groups or premium Q&A access to your expertise | Discord, Circle, Slack, Mighty Networks |
Technical platforms | Essential for technical consultants to demonstrate practical implementation skills | Code repositories with documentation and examples solving specific problems | GitHub, Stack Overflow, CodePen |
Subscription content | Creates recurring revenue while pre-qualifying serious prospects | Monthly industry analysis or toolkit access for paying subscribers | Patreon, Podia, Gumroad |
2. Create a professional Gravatar profile
As already mentioned, a consistent online presence is one of the main components for consulting success, but it doesn't come without its difficulties. For once, managing your professional image across dozens of platforms can be time-consuming. Thankfully, this is where Gravatar becomes invaluable for consultants looking to maintain brand consistency.
Gravatar (Globally Recognized Avatar) functions as a centralized profile management system that follows you across the internet. Instead of creating separate profiles for each website you visit, Gravatar allows you to establish one professional identity that appears automatically on supported platforms.
For consultants, Gravatar offers several key advantages:
- Centralized bio management: Create a compelling consultant profile highlighting your specialties, expertise, and professional background - update it once, and changes reflect everywhere
- Verified professional connections: Link to your verified social profiles, portfolio, and professional certifications in one accessible location
- Consistent visual identity: Your professional headshot automatically appears when you comment on blogs, contribute to forums, or interact on platforms like GitHub and Stack Overflow
- Time efficiency: No more maintaining separate profiles across dozens of websites - establish your brand once and focus on client work
Gravatar is integrated with major platforms, including WordPress, Slack, and GitHub. When potential clients encounter you across these platforms, they'll see a consistent, professional image that reinforces your expertise.
Setting up your Gravatar takes just minutes but establishes your consulting presence across thousands of websites instantly. Visit Gravatar.com today to claim your professional digital identity.
3. Showcase client success and testimonials
Social proof is perhaps your most powerful consulting asset. Research shows that 72% of potential clients place significantly more trust in a service after reading positive testimonials - making client success stories essential for consultants looking to command premium rates.
The most effective social proof for consultants takes two forms:
- Case studies: Detailed narratives that showcase the problem-solving process and measurable results.
- Client testimonials: Direct endorsements that build credibility and trust.
Unlike generic "they were great to work with" testimonials, effective consulting social proof must demonstrate concrete business impact and ROI. Quantify your value with specific metrics: revenue increases, cost reductions, efficiency gains, or other tangible outcomes.
These success stories can appear as LinkedIn posts for wider visibility or as dedicated pages on your website for in-depth exploration. For consultants with broad specialties, consider creating industry-specific testimonial portfolios that target different client segments, allowing you to speak directly to distinct audience needs.
Develop a systematic approach to collecting case study material during projects. Document key challenges, strategies, and outcomes as they happen rather than scrambling to reconstruct them later.
Remember that confidentiality is paramount in consulting relationships. Always obtain express written permission before using any client information in marketing materials - even anonymous case studies require careful review to prevent identification of sensitive details.
4. Strengthen your authority through strategic partnerships
Strategic partnerships offer consultants a powerful way to multiply their authority and extend their reach. By forming alliances with complementary experts, you can create value propositions that neither partner could deliver alone.
For example, a management consultant specializing in digital transformation might partner with a data privacy expert to offer comprehensive tech modernization services. This partnership creates multiple advantages:
- Enhanced expertise: Combined knowledge fills gaps that clients might otherwise need to source separately
- Premium positioning: The unique combination justifies higher fees than either consultant could command individually
- Authority-building opportunities: Co-created research, whitepapers, and industry analyses demonstrate thought leadership while sharing production costs
- Expanded audience: Each partner gains access to the other's client network and followers
These partnerships work best when each consultant maintains their distinct brand identity while clearly communicating the collaborative relationship. Use your Gravatar profile to maintain a consistent professional presence across platforms, cross-linking to verified profiles of your strategic partners and collaborative work.
The most successful consulting partnerships start with clear agreements about lead sharing, revenue distribution, and service delivery responsibilities. Begin with small collaborative projects to test compatibility before committing to major initiatives or formal business structures.
5. Measure and optimize your consulting brand's ROI
Building a personal brand without measuring its impact is like navigating without a compass - you might be moving, but you won't know if you're heading in the right direction. Savvy consultants treat their personal branding as an investment that should generate measurable returns.
The most immediate indicator of effective personal branding is typically an increased rate of inquiries. When your brand resonates with your target audience, you'll notice more potential clients reaching out through both word-of-mouth referrals and inbound marketing channels. However, this surface-level metric only tells part of the story.
To truly understand your branding ROI, track these critical metrics:
- Client acquisition cost (CAC): Calculate how much you spend on marketing, networking, and content creation to acquire each new client. As your brand strengthens, this cost should decrease.
- Lifetime client value (LCV): Measure the total revenue generated from an average client relationship, including repeat engagements and referrals. Strong personal branding attracts clients who stay longer and spend more.
- Project value trends: Monitor how the average value of new projects changes over time. Rising project values indicate that your brand is attracting higher-quality opportunities.
- Time-to-close: Track how quickly leads convert into paying clients. A strong personal brand builds trust faster, shortening the sales cycle significantly.
Set up systematic tracking through your website analytics, CRM system, and contact forms. Create a simple dashboard that connects these metrics to specific branding initiatives, allowing you to identify which elements of your brand strategy deliver the strongest ROI.
Review these metrics quarterly, looking for patterns that emerge alongside your branding activities. Did that series of LinkedIn articles correlate with higher-value inquiries? Did your speaking engagement at an industry conference shorten your sales cycle?
Use these insights to refine your approach - double down on high-performing channels and pivot away from efforts that aren't delivering results. The most successful consultants continuously adjust their branding strategy based on data, not assumptions, creating a virtuous cycle of improvement that steadily enhances their market position and fee structure.
Start winning better clients: Develop your brand action Plan
The difference between struggling consultants and those commanding premium fees isn't luck - it's strategic personal branding. Now it's time to transform these insights into a focused action plan that elevates your consulting practice.
Start by implementing each of the five pillars we've covered:
- Build your verified presence across multiple platforms where your ideal clients spend time
- Create a professional Gravatar profile that follows you across the internet with consistent branding
- Document client successes with measurable results and compelling testimonials
- Form strategic partnerships with complementary experts to expand your reach and capabilities
- Measure your brand's ROI using clear metrics that track business impact
The consulting landscape rewards those who demonstrate authority through high-value content distributed across carefully selected channels. Your insights should solve real problems, showcase your expertise, and position you as the obvious choice for complex challenges.
Begin today by creating your free profile at Gravatar.com!
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