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Received — 8 April 2026 ⏭ Andrew Shell's Weblog
  • ✇Andrew Shell's Weblog
  • Defending the Open Web Is Not Enough
    This article really gave me food for thought about what's required to support the open web. 77% of news publishers now focus on subscriptions. Independent journalists are fleeing to Substack. Podcasters signed 9-figure Spotify exclusives. Not because they opposed openness but because openness stopped paying the bills. The thing we actually cared about, independent publishers reaching audiences on their own terms, isn’t coming back by being defended harder. It comes back, if it comes bac
     
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Defending the Open Web Is Not Enough

✇Andrew Shell's Weblog
By: Andrew Shell
8 April 2026 at 13:25

This article really gave me food for thought about what's required to support the open web.

77% of news publishers now focus on subscriptions. Independent journalists are fleeing to Substack. Podcasters signed 9-figure Spotify exclusives. Not because they opposed openness but because openness stopped paying the bills.

The thing we actually cared about, independent publishers reaching audiences on their own terms, isn’t coming back by being defended harder. It comes back, if it comes back at all, by being rebuilt on better foundations.

https://joost.blog/defending-open-web-not-enough/

  • ✇Andrew Shell's Weblog
  • Working on the RSS Cloud WordPress Plugin
    I’ve been continuing to work on the modern testing infrastructure so I can make sure the RSS Cloud plugin for WordPress is up to date. The maintainer rightfully wants to keep it as simple as possible, so I want to respect his wishes. The default settings for PHPCS (linting) for WordPress Coding Standards would change almost every line in the plugin. So I’ve been putting in effort to make sure I’m not just formatting things for the sake of formatting. Instead, I’m trying
     
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Working on the RSS Cloud WordPress Plugin

✇Andrew Shell's Weblog
By: Andrew Shell
8 April 2026 at 22:47

I’ve been continuing to work on the modern testing infrastructure so I can make sure the RSS Cloud plugin for WordPress is up to date.

The maintainer rightfully wants to keep it as simple as possible, so I want to respect his wishes.

The default settings for PHPCS (linting) for WordPress Coding Standards would change almost every line in the plugin. So I’ve been putting in effort to make sure I’m not just formatting things for the sake of formatting.

Instead, I’m trying to make sure that any change made is only because I was able to create a failing test that shows there was a bug. Unfortunately, sometimes I still introduce a bug. Although I haven’t sent anything to the maintainer yet, this is still part of my testing process.

One of the recommendations from the various linters and plugin checkers was to use wp_safe_remote_get/post for various bits of functionality in the plugin. Well… turns out it doesn’t like URLs with non-standard ports, or localhost when I’m testing locally.

I had manually updated this blog with my plugin, and when I posted this morning, I noticed FeedLand wasn’t picking up my post right away, so I figured something was broken.

This is just proof that I’m taking this work very seriously. Even though the plugin directory on WordPress.org shows there aren’t many people using the plugin, it’s actually installed on WordPress.com, so that’s a very large surface area, and I want to make sure it’s as close to perfect as I can get it.

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