On the podcast today we have Alex Standiford. He’s a web developer originally from Dover, Ohio, and has been tinkering with web technologies for years, but started his career as a web developer in 2015. Alex has built WordPress plugins, websites, and web applications, and is an active contributor to the WordPress community, making updates to documentation errors, and participating in the organisation of WordCamps. He's here today to talk about how he’s noticed a shift over time in his own content creation. He’s put less effort into his WordPress site and has posted most of his ideas on social platforms. This however is something that Alex has decided to stop doing. For a variety of reasons he wants to take back control of his own content and make his website the centrepiece of his endeavours. We talk about how platforms open platforms like Mastodon are making this possible; how he’s using plugins and his own coding skills to make it possible for cross posting of posts and comments between Mastodon and his WordPress site. It’s a really interesting conversation about the recent surge in popularity of these distributed social networks and how WordPress can become a first class citizen in your digital life.