WEBVTT
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00:00:07.687There are predators circling WordPress, but they haven't been able to take it out, and that's only because it's open source.
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00:00:12.210If WordPress was not open source, it would have died years and years and years ago, right?
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00:00:16.382So what I've been saying is, hey, we better wake up, like.
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00:00:27.349I don't think this ace in our back pocket of open source is going to be there forever, because there could be other open source providers that come along with a modern environment and like the experience that everybody wants.
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00:00:30.060The WordPress is donezo at that point, right.
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00:00:32.365So we don't have a lot of time.
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00:00:33.228Clock is ticking.
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00:00:35.921We might want to start taking things very seriously.
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00:00:46.706Welcome to the Web Design Business Podcast, with your host, josh Hall, helping you build a web design business that gives you freedom and a lifestyle.
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00:00:47.368You love.
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00:00:53.049Welcome, friends, into episode 384.
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00:00:55.749This one doesn't need much of an intro.
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00:00:57.104We're going to get right into it.
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00:00:59.667Kevin Geary is back on the show.
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00:01:04.292Those of you who are WordPress users probably know he needs no introduction.
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00:01:16.628The reality is, there's a whole lot going on with WordPress right now A lot of uncertainty, a lot of questions, a lot of things up in the air, a lot of leadership conundrums, a lot of drama.
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00:01:20.009Who will sweep in to save the day?
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00:01:23.228Will it be Kevin Geary with his new product Etch?
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00:01:26.980Will that replace the god-awful gutenberg block header?
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00:01:29.406Oh, so much more is covered in this one.
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00:01:30.409Here's kevin geary.
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00:01:34.186Make sure to head to the show notes for this one to get all the links that we talked about.
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00:01:35.170We do cover quite a bit.
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00:01:45.346That'll be at josh hallco, slash 384, and if this sounds of interest, obviously I recommend scratching your edge.
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00:01:46.450Uh, that jokes right.
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00:01:52.501Here we go, kevin.
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00:01:54.066It's so good to have you back, man.
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00:01:56.251Good to take some time to chat with you here.
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00:02:01.371Let's just get into what the heck is freaking going on with WordPress.
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00:02:08.622Freaking going on with WordPress.
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00:02:09.103Let's have some fun.
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00:02:12.830If you could describe the current situation that WordPress is in in one to three words.
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00:02:16.743It can be as vulgar as it needs to be, what would it be?
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00:02:19.412And it could be three separate words and they could be three states.
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00:02:21.026What's the state of WordPress?
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00:02:27.586You know, it's like that old relationship thing where somebody just says it's complicated.
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00:02:31.846You know, that's what I would say it's complicated, it's a complicated situation.
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00:02:49.171We have a community of people that's massive, obviously, and brilliant, talented, passionate people, and those people are, for the most part I think we have to keep our eye on this ball Like, those people are responsible for the success of WordPress.
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00:03:08.580I mean, it's thousands of freelancers and agencies and DIYers and these are the people that really, really really have moved WordPress forward, along with all of the third party developers that have built all of the tools that we use on top of WordPress on a daily basis to do the work that we are doing.
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00:03:25.688I think a lot of people and Matt thinks Matt is highly responsible for all of the success of WordPress, or a big part, or whatever, and considers himself to be driving the ship or whatnot.
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00:03:32.771But I look to the third-party developers and I look to the community when I say why is WordPress successful?
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00:03:38.336And really specifically, it's third-party developer tools Element or Divi.
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00:03:45.413You cannot discount the impact that these tools have had, whereas if we say, well, what has automatic really done?
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00:03:51.219Well, there's that Gutenberg thing, you know, that most people opt out of and a lot of people are still standoffish about.
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00:03:56.887So, you know, I look to the elementers, the divvies, the third-party developers, the agencies.
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00:03:58.164These are the people moving.
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00:04:05.308So I have just stayed out of the drama and I'm like it doesn't matter, like he doesn't he, and that drama doesn't really matter to me.
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00:04:08.073I'm more concerned with what the community is doing.
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00:04:14.682So we just joked before.
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00:04:17.274I think like one second before we hit record, we said like etch may be the only optimistic thing, aside from some.
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00:04:24.591I'm excited about Divi five and some other upgrades and other builders and tools, but I'm wondering where is the optimism right now?
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00:04:25.682Is it with?
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00:04:28.451Is it with these third party builders?
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00:04:35.994Yes, it 100% is, especially with regard to Etch, because Etch brings something new to the table.
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00:04:39.132It brings a brand new experience for using WordPress.
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00:04:40.278It's not just a page builder.
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00:04:43.665It's not just like a new element or a new divvy or something like that.
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00:04:47.430There are a lot of aspects of WordPress that people are not super excited about.
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00:04:51.156There's the disjointed WP admin UI.
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00:04:59.350You know where you have half of the old UI and then in FSE land it's a completely like new modern UI and that's confusing and it's not great.
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00:05:02.601And media management that's not super fantastic.
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00:05:05.610Nobody's super hyped about media management in WordPress.
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00:05:08.045They're always asking for more features.
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00:05:09.670They're probably never going to come.
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00:05:11.564If they do, it's just going to be years down the line.
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00:05:31.687You know major stuff has to be refactored in WordPress because it's very old, and you're looking at core functionality that people really rely on, like custom post types and custom fields not being native probably never will be native, existing in what I call magic areas, and this creates a very disjointed workflow.
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00:05:32.944There's a disjointed UI.
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00:05:34.408There's a disjointed workflow.
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00:05:45.591We have the theme system, which we could get into, which I think is super archaic and should be abandoned ASAP, and you look at something like Etch, where you get everything that you need to do your job.
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00:05:54.269You get the page building experience, but you also get the code editing experience inside of that, which has never happened before, really, in wordpress.
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00:05:57.586You get the media management, you get the custom post types and custom fields.
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00:06:15.690You get you get all the things that you wanted wordpress to be in a single package and in a new layer, and you don't have to wait on Matt and you don't have to wait on automatic to find the funding or find the people or whatever they need to do that they haven't been able to do to to unify this experience.
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00:06:26.630And so, yes, when people like that's literally what we're hearing people use etch and their feedback is not like, oh, this is fantastic, or this is better than Element, or this is better, that's not the feedback.
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00:06:34.019The feedback is this is what I always wanted WordPress to be, or this is absolutely what WordPress should become Like.
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00:06:39.531That's the kind of feedback that we're getting and, yeah, that's why people are, and should be excited.
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00:06:44.226When did when did you take it seriously?
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00:06:51.439I mean, my first impression of Etch was that it was going to rival the Gutenberg and just the native block editor.
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00:07:00.572But as upon skimming your videos and hearing some real-time feedback from folks, I have a student, Antoine, who's a super fan of yours and really, really enjoys Etch.
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00:07:02.334So far he's an early adopter.
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00:07:04.846Yeah, it seems like it's much more than just that.
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00:07:05.088Enjoys that.
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00:07:05.750So far he's an early adopter.
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00:07:07.879Yeah, it seems like it's much more than just that.
00:07:07.879 -->
00:07:10.884But I guess I'm curious like when were you?
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00:07:11.204like damn it.
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00:07:12.630I got to do this thing Cause we can't wait on WordPress anymore.
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00:07:13.473Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a great question.
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00:07:26.415Um, people ask me for years to build a page builder and and I actually did a long thread on Twitter about this, uh, yesterday, um, and I said no, I said no, like repeatedly, and I'm on live stream after live stream, like every live stream.
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00:07:30.617I did cause I did weekly live streams for a long time that I would just say no, no, no, no, no, we're not going to do it.
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00:07:39.702And it's cause I didn't really have a good vision for what it was supposed to be and what, like, the next era of WordPress was supposed to look like and what the next era of page building and WordPress was supposed to look like.
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00:07:44.550And I don't like building lookalike products and Me Too, products.
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00:07:45.733Oh, you got a product, me too.
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00:07:47.175Oh, I'm just going to do it a little bit better.
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00:07:48.562We don't like doing that.
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00:07:51.572We like bringing actual innovation to the table.
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00:08:04.471And it was until last year, probably the beginning of last year, where I started to get a really clear picture of what needed to happen, and my CTO Mateo put a couple other pieces into place.
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00:08:13.846Happen, and my CTO Mateo, put a couple other pieces into place and we just started looking at the landscape of, first of all, like what was the premise that these tools were all built on and why have they made the decisions they've made?
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00:08:15.350Why do they have the limitations?
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00:08:22.726Why do you know, professionals and aspiring professionals tend to look at a lot of these tools and say I would never use that.
00:08:22.726 -->
00:08:26.505Why do they say that and why do those limitations and problems exist?
00:08:26.505 -->
00:08:31.547And we started to realize that all of that is essentially self-imposed.
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00:08:50.408These are not technical limitations, they're just self-imposed limitations because they're designing software for a specific user and that user tends to be because it's the biggest market DIY, beginner, et cetera, et cetera, not aiming at, like, the professional, because it was always like well, the professional will just live in a code editor or whatever they do.
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00:08:51.370They do their stuff over there.
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00:08:52.684They're never going to use this anyway.
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00:08:57.628That was kind of the theory or the thesis, right, and we've completely like turned that on its head.
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00:09:08.404And we know that when professionals, even coders, use an environment like Etch where they can visually see what they're doing, but they have no limitation.
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00:09:12.883That's the thing is, there was always a tremendous cost to using these page builders.
00:09:12.883 -->
00:09:14.927It was a cost in terms of your code output.
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00:09:20.250It wasn't clean code, in accessibility issues and limitations in functionality issues and limitations.
00:09:20.250 -->
00:09:27.600There was this cost and professionals would never tend to say, ok, I will accept those costs, like they don't want those costs, right.
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00:09:46.422And so we build an environment that doesn't have those costs but brings all of the efficiency and all of the ease and all of the unification where I'm not bouncing around back and forth from VS code to the block, editor to some other thing, editor to some other thing.
00:09:46.422 -->
00:09:48.586Um, all of that put together creates an environment where they're like oh, okay, this is like.
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00:09:50.931This is literally a, a new era for, for wordpress, how?
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00:09:51.272does.
00:09:51.272 -->
00:09:55.009How does edge fit in with other builders?
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00:09:56.274I'll ask some kind of basic one.
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00:09:59.947I was one questions on behalf of anyone who doesn't know really anything about this.
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00:10:01.230Like, yeah, is this?
00:10:01.230 -->
00:10:09.205Uh, again, my first thought was, or my impression was, that it was just a better block editor, but much more than that.
00:10:09.205 -->
00:10:10.970It sounds like it can replace builders as well.
00:10:10.970 -->
00:10:15.312Where does this fit in in the WordPress ecosphere?
00:10:15.312 -->
00:10:24.072Like, are people going to be able to choose Elementor, divi or Etch or Bricks or Etch, or is Etch going to be the one to replace them all, including the editor?
00:10:24.072 -->
00:10:26.948I mean, is that what we're looking at Essentially?
00:10:27.068 -->
00:10:42.625yes, so we call Etch a unified development environment so you can do all of your development work in Etch when you're building a website, just like Bricks or Element or Divi allows you to build a page and you can build templates with it and so on and so forth.
00:10:42.625 -->
00:10:43.965You can do that in Etch.
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00:10:45.326You can, for sure, do that in Edge.
00:10:45.326 -->
00:10:47.548But Edge goes well beyond all of that.
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00:10:52.402You can manage media in Edge, you can create custom post types and custom fields and it's built.
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00:11:07.850It's the first environment where, instead of saying how can we build an environment that's easy for beginners and lay people and DIYers to use, which is pretty much the premise of every existing tool we are the first environment that says how can we truly innovate a professional workflow in WordPress?
00:11:07.850 -->
00:11:10.779And so we give access to the code right.
00:11:10.779 -->
00:11:19.611We create, we prioritize features like true component functionality where you have props and insane levels of conditional logic available to you.
00:11:19.611 -->
00:11:22.469You can author JavaScript, you can author PHP.
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00:11:32.049We've done things where the CSS like there are styling panels, just like you will find an element or a divvy right, so you can add an element to the page via drag and drop.
00:11:32.049 -->
00:11:39.589You don't have to write code if you don't want to write code, but you do have access to the code and if you select an element, you change the background color.
00:11:39.589 -->
00:11:48.048What we have is it's called bidirectional CSS authoring, so there's style sheets attached to the elements.
00:11:48.048 -->
00:11:58.351Right when I fill out the background input, I can see Etch writing the CSS right there and if I want to touch that CSS, I can edit the CSS and it will edit the input as well.
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00:11:59.947They're bidirectionally related together.
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00:12:03.865So there's no cost to using input panels like there are in other editors.
00:12:03.865 -->
00:12:05.607So there's no cost to using input panels like there are in other editors.
00:12:05.607 -->
00:12:11.235All everything that we are doing, the loops, the logic, all of it is designed for professional use.
00:12:11.235 -->
00:12:23.785But it's also in a package where, if a beginner wants to come and learn and this is, like I think, the biggest point, because there's two different scenarios that are going to happen as a beginner.
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00:12:34.106If you're a beginner and you're, like I, want to learn web design, ok, if you go into Elementor, you are not going to learn web design as much as you are going to learn Elementor.
00:12:34.106 -->
00:12:36.087Like it is a proprietary workflow.
00:12:36.087 -->
00:12:37.947They use proprietary names for things.
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00:12:39.807They don't follow standard practices.
00:12:39.807 -->
00:12:43.250You're going to learn Elementor and you can get confident in Elementor and all of that, right.
00:12:43.250 -->
00:12:48.807But if you really going to learn Elementor and you can get confident in Elementor and all of that, right.
00:12:48.807 -->
00:12:50.624But if you really want to learn web design, you need to go on a tool that speaks the language of web design.
00:12:50.624 -->
00:12:51.241And Etch speaks the language of web design.
00:12:51.241 -->
00:12:58.224And so when you're learning in Etch, you will come out empowered to actually know what you are doing, and then you're going to be using a tool that doesn't have any limitations.
00:12:58.224 -->
00:13:02.952So, yes, it replaces to answer your question it would replace an Element element or replace a divvy.
00:13:02.952 -->
00:13:04.913You can do all the page building stuff in it.
00:13:04.913 -->
00:13:07.235You just don't have any of the limitations of those tools.
00:13:07.235 -->
00:13:14.361And you can do other things with a unified workflow, like creating custom post types and custom fields, managing my media.
00:13:14.361 -->
00:13:19.052I don't have to go somewhere else to do those things, which that does.
00:13:19.519 -->
00:13:22.630That disjointed workflow does come at a tremendous cost.
00:13:22.630 -->
00:13:29.029You know, if you are having to stop what you're doing, you're building an about page or whatever, and you're ready to make your team grid.
00:13:29.029 -->
00:13:30.984I use this example all the time.
00:13:30.984 -->
00:13:34.312I want to create a team grid, right, all my team members on there.
00:13:34.312 -->
00:13:37.970Well, the best way to do that is to create a custom post type for your team members.
00:13:37.970 -->
00:13:39.881This is how you manage content in WordPress.
00:13:40.322 -->
00:13:48.615Well, in order to do that, I have to stop what I'm doing in every other tool and I have to leave the tool and I have to go to a different tool, usually something called ACF or Metabox.
00:13:48.615 -->
00:13:52.171Right, that's where I create my CPT, which, by the way, is an add on for WordPress.
00:13:52.171 -->
00:13:53.803You can even do this natively in WordPress.
00:13:53.803 -->
00:13:57.493And then, when I create the CPT, I need to attach custom fields to it.
00:13:57.493 -->
00:13:58.583Well, where do I go to do that?
00:13:58.583 -->
00:13:59.567We have to go to a different area.
00:13:59.567 -->
00:14:12.014So, in a completely different area, creating these custom fields, and when I'm done doing all that, I have to go to a different area to put the data in for those things, to put the person's name in and their headshot and all of that.
00:14:12.014 -->
00:14:12.390That's a different area.
00:14:12.390 -->
00:14:20.423So I'm now four different areas into this workflow before I can then go back to the tool I was already in and finally make the grid with a loop, pulling those team members in.
00:14:20.924 -->
00:14:30.072That is a very inefficient, disjointed workflow, and this happens dozens and dozens and dozens of times across normal projects, where in Etch, none of that has to happen.
00:14:30.072 -->
00:14:33.428In Etch I'm building the about page, I get to the part where I need to create my CPT.
00:14:33.428 -->
00:14:39.743Okay, just create my CPT right there in Etch and then I create the custom fields right there in Etch and it's all native in WordPress.
00:14:39.743 -->
00:14:44.272It's not proprietary to Etch, okay, and we'll talk about the block editor in just a second.
00:14:44.272 -->
00:14:45.400But I'm able to.
00:14:45.400 -->
00:14:52.971I'm even able to put the data in for my team members in that custom post type, because I can manage posts, I can manage pages in Etch.
00:14:52.971 -->
00:14:54.515I don't have to go anywhere else.
00:14:54.515 -->
00:14:57.884So tremendous efficiency, zero limitations.
00:14:57.884 -->
00:15:00.210And then, really, the icing on the cake.
00:15:00.210 -->
00:15:07.006The icing on the cake is that Etch is the first environment that liberates your data completely out of the builder.
00:15:07.327 -->
00:15:08.532Okay, so where?
00:15:08.732 -->
00:15:11.201If you build something in Elementor, it's trapped in Elementor.
00:15:11.221 -->
00:15:12.885If you build it in Divi, it's trapped in Divi.
00:15:13.006 -->
00:15:14.880Okay, all these tools, they all work the same way.
00:15:14.880 -->
00:15:28.488Etch has a feature that we call automatic block authoring, where essentially, it takes everything that you build and it converts it to core Gutenberg blocks automatically and it keeps them bidirectionally synced.
00:15:28.488 -->
00:15:32.970And so if I build a page in Etch and I hit save and I go back to the block editor.
00:15:32.970 -->
00:15:43.388That exact page that I just built will be sitting right there in the block editor and it's no longer even related to Etch at that point and the site renders with the block editor.
00:15:43.388 -->
00:15:56.528So we're liberating people's data and the block editor now becomes a very simple client editing interface where a client, if a client, needs to edit content, they can just log in, open the block editor, do some simple content editing, hit publish.
00:15:56.528 -->
00:15:59.546That all comes back into Etch, but it also goes to the front end.
00:15:59.546 -->
00:16:03.589It's just bidirectionally synced at all times and everybody has a great experience.
00:16:03.589 -->
00:16:06.731The pros can do the pro things, the clients can do the client things.
00:16:06.731 -->
00:16:09.734It's all native in WordPress and it's just a great experience.
00:16:09.875 -->
00:16:19.961Well, you just answered like five of my next questions there, Kevin I was curious about how the block editor would literally fit and work in with this, but that makes a whole ton of sense.
00:16:19.961 -->
00:16:22.264You mentioned the admin area for WordPress.
00:16:22.285 -->
00:16:22.605What about?
00:16:22.625 -->
00:16:22.846that.
00:16:22.846 -->
00:16:23.748Does that affect that you?
00:16:23.827 -->
00:16:25.291mentioned the admin area for WordPress.
00:16:25.291 -->
00:16:26.033What about that?
00:16:26.033 -->
00:16:27.235Does that affect that?
00:16:27.235 -->
00:16:27.696It doesn't.
00:16:27.696 -->
00:16:28.937It doesn't change the admin.
00:16:33.100 -->
00:16:41.107What we essentially determined was if I can, if we can just make those aspects of the admin that we think are never going to be improved or the improvements are far off into the future and people are just going to keep begging and begging and begging.
00:16:41.541 -->
00:16:47.870It's not that we need to do it, it's that we need to create a tool and a workflow where people it just makes those areas irrelevant.
00:16:47.870 -->
00:16:59.702You know, if I can manage my posts and pages in etch, I'll just do that because it's a modern interface and it's lightning fast and it's got way more control and I can see I can control the data columns and everything that I want to see the way I want to see it.
00:16:59.702 -->
00:17:02.410Why would I ever go into the WordPress version of that?
00:17:02.410 -->
00:17:09.876If I can create custom post types and custom fields, why would I ever go into ACF or Metabox and those old school interfaces and all?
00:17:09.876 -->
00:17:11.546There's just no reason to.
00:17:11.546 -->
00:17:22.009So you just avoid them and essentially what the workflow becomes is you pull up your site, you hit edit in Etch and then everything happens there and you don't have to go anywhere else, and it's just, it's nice.
00:17:25.300 -->
00:17:25.903You're a bricks guy.
00:17:25.903 -->
00:17:26.385Well, maybe until etch.
00:17:26.385 -->
00:17:26.688How's that?
00:17:26.688 -->
00:17:28.013Are you gonna leave bricks then, once that's?
00:17:28.013 -->
00:17:28.696Yes, I've already left.
00:17:28.717 -->
00:17:29.560yeah, I've already left.
00:17:29.560 -->
00:17:30.704I've already left bricks.
00:17:30.704 -->
00:17:38.531Um, I've done, I've been doing all the videos on my channel, um, for the past month or so have been in etch um.
00:17:38.531 -->
00:17:47.993You know we're that far along, like my uh, the digital gravy site is rebuilt in etch um and the my garyco site is being rebuilt in etch right now.
00:17:47.993 -->
00:17:52.900Like we're building real sites with it, which we said our goal was one year to build brochure sites.
00:17:52.900 -->
00:17:57.910We're way ahead of schedule on that and the brochure sites thing is even going to like it's.
00:17:57.910 -->
00:17:59.794We're even well beyond that.
00:17:59.794 -->
00:18:03.426I mean, we have the most powerful components of any environment.
00:18:03.426 -->
00:18:07.054We have an extremely powerful conditional logic engine.
00:18:07.054 -->
00:18:11.571We have the most robust selector system out of any environment like this.
00:18:11.571 -->
00:18:17.429You have the free code editing, you have the auto block authoring, so much of the magic is already happening.
00:18:17.429 -->
00:18:22.922So, yeah, it's going to be quick, is it a theme or again?
00:18:22.962 -->
00:18:24.568I'm going to stick with some very elementary questions.
00:18:24.568 -->
00:18:25.702Is it a theme or is?
00:18:25.742 -->
00:18:26.163it a plugin?
00:18:26.163 -->
00:18:28.672Going to stick with some very elementary questions Is it a theme or is it a plugin?
00:18:28.672 -->
00:18:29.595A really good question.
00:18:29.595 -->
00:18:30.155It's, um, it's both.
00:18:30.155 -->
00:18:32.020So the, the entire environment, is a plugin.
00:18:32.020 -->
00:18:39.481So you add the etch plugin, but for the auto block authoring and to hook into WordPress's FSC system.
00:18:39.481 -->
00:18:48.731Because, again, if you make a template in uh, let's say, you make a blog post template in Etch, that template actually exists in WordPress FSC.
00:18:48.731 -->
00:18:52.336Like, if I go into FSC's template area, I will see that blog post template right there.
00:18:52.336 -->
00:18:53.416It is all native.
00:18:53.416 -->
00:18:56.314Everything that you're doing is converted to native WordPress, right?
00:18:56.314 -->
00:19:04.023So that aspect of it, in order to hook in, has to be done through a theme, because that's WordPress's architecture.
00:19:04.023 -->
00:19:10.253So essentially, what we give you is the plugin, which does pretty much everything, and then the theme, which is just a blank block theme.
00:19:10.253 -->
00:19:12.717Essentially, that enables the block functionality.
00:19:12.876 -->
00:19:21.042Okay, I was just curious if there is a way to use a combo of Etch and something like Divi or a page builder for like.
00:19:21.042 -->
00:19:33.970If we were to use Divi for like, certain pages, if that's what somebody's comfortable with, but then use Etch for blog posts and repeating content and client stuff, sounds like that setup wouldn't work, though right, I don't know if they could.
00:19:34.220 -->
00:19:37.130I mean, maybe theoretically they could exist side by side.
00:19:37.130 -->
00:19:44.962It would be a situation where the site was already built with Divi, for example, and you wanted to tack on a landing page that you wanted to build with Etch.
00:19:44.962 -->
00:19:54.943Maybe you would have them exist side by side, but if you're starting a new project, it just you wouldn't need Divi at that point, Like Divi wouldn't be required for anything that you're going to do on the project.
00:19:55.586 -->
00:19:57.450So it's plugin and the theme.
00:19:57.450 -->
00:19:57.871Is that right?
00:19:57.871 -->
00:19:59.422Are there two uploads?
00:19:59.442 -->
00:20:03.208Yeah, the theme essentially doesn't do anything related to what you're.
00:20:03.208 -->
00:20:06.273All it does is hook into WordPress's architecture.
00:20:06.273 -->
00:20:06.875That's all it does.
00:20:07.079 -->
00:20:20.615Well, I want to just highlight what you said a little bit ago which is crucial and I think I don't know of anyone else in the industry is doing this to where you have the options available for the pros and an option for the clients with the basic block editor.
00:20:20.615 -->
00:20:25.702I mean you could do similar things with Divi and other builders, as you know, to create like a basic template or just use the text editor block editor.
00:20:25.702 -->
00:20:28.826I mean you could do similar things with Divi and other builders, as you know, to create like a basic template or just use the text editor or block editor.
00:20:28.826 -->
00:20:32.792But I mean we're running into so many problems now that we're years into WordPress.
00:20:32.792 -->
00:20:38.904I have my own issues with joshhallco, which is Divi 4, slow and unscalable.
00:20:38.904 -->
00:20:40.047I've made it unscalable.
00:20:40.047 -->
00:20:42.990You would not have been happy with Josh, you know.
00:20:43.010 -->
00:20:45.89510 years ago, when I came out with that site, but I didn't know any better.
00:20:45.895 -->
00:21:04.423So, um, it is interesting because now that we are years into particularly WordPress and a lot of these agencies are running so many different sites with certain builds, I mean I do feel like you are on the forefront of a lot of happy people in 10 years, you know like looking back and like thank.
00:21:04.423 -->
00:21:10.473God, we didn't create a blog or a podcast that has, you know, 500 episodes using one builder.
00:21:10.473 -->
00:21:12.973It's a native platform, yeah.
00:21:13.821 -->
00:21:14.625Yeah, absolutely.
00:21:14.625 -->
00:21:29.403Plus, you know we're getting into the era of AI and obviously that's going to be a big part of people's workflow going forward, be a big part of people's workflow going forward.
00:21:29.403 -->
00:21:36.061I really feel strongly that if you are going to use AI to assist you in your workflow, you should absolutely be using a tool that speaks the language of web design.
00:21:36.061 -->
00:21:36.523Why?
00:21:36.523 -->
00:21:38.731Because AI speaks the language of web design.
00:21:38.731 -->
00:21:42.962Ai doesn't speak Elementor, ai doesn't speak Divi or anything else.
00:21:42.962 -->
00:21:49.113It speaks the language of web design, and the examples that you're going to get, by the way, are supplied in code, okay.
00:21:49.113 -->
00:21:58.063And so if you're asking Grok or Claude or ChatGPT, hey, can you build me a nav menu that looks like this and has these requirements?
00:21:58.063 -->
00:22:02.096It's going to spit back HTML and CSS and JavaScript.
00:22:02.457 -->
00:22:18.247Okay, the ability to import those things into another builder not so much, whereas in Edge I can literally take the HTML it gives me and I can paste it in and everything just renders and I can attach the CSS, because we're going to have a we already have the prototype for it, but we're going to have.
00:22:18.247 -->
00:22:34.489We're going to be the first environment that I know of where you can literally import HTML and then scan a URL and say find the style sheets that are on this URL, find the styles that belong to this thing I just imported, and import just those things, and it will import it.
00:22:34.489 -->
00:22:42.067And then that section that you're trying to import, or that component or whatever it is, will just come to life with no bloat, with no excess stuff being imported.
00:22:42.067 -->
00:22:49.207You're gonna be able to just take HTML and CSS and even JavaScript from anywhere and just plug it in and play.
00:22:49.207 -->
00:22:54.112You're gonna have AI in the interface where you're saying, hey, I need you to do this.
00:22:54.319 -->
00:22:57.250Ok, it's going to do it all inside of Etch, with Etch's native controls.
00:22:57.250 -->
00:23:05.193That is vastly different from an experience standpoint than trying to use a builder that does not give you code access.
00:23:05.193 -->
00:23:15.853Because when you don't have code access and AI spits back we know AI is not perfect AI is going to spit back something imperfect and you're going to say, ah, it's not exactly what I wanted.
00:23:15.853 -->
00:23:19.089And then you're gonna have to reprompt it and then reprompt again.
00:23:19.089 -->
00:23:32.074And then we all know also that as you reprompt and it fixes those things, it's like tends to break other things and it's like, man, if you just gave me the code, I could fix it, like I can make it the way I want to, but you can't touch the code in these other environments.
00:23:32.074 -->
00:23:34.375That's a really important point too with the AI thing.
00:23:34.375 -->
00:23:40.144Just because, like, there's Divi AI and does Elementor have AI, they probably do, I feel like every, every page, a lot of it.
00:23:40.244 -->
00:23:54.383Most of it is just content related, though right now I think it's not structural much, yeah, and said it's it's based off of that builder.
00:23:54.403 -->
00:23:55.747So, yes, no, that's a great, great point.
00:23:55.747 -->
00:24:00.760I'm really curious because I feel like you're still using circle for your inner circle, right, yes, so it's a very it's.
00:24:00.760 -->
00:24:22.022It's not fair to compare them because circle is so different from wordpress, of course, in every regard, but the last couple years, I think, probably around the time when you really made Etch a priority and a focus, I've just realized these other companies are just light years ahead with innovation and getting things out quickly.
00:24:22.022 -->
00:24:36.262I am like astonished by how slow and fragile and like stuck the wordpress team is from the leadership down, and again, I know, you know I would.
00:24:36.323 -->
00:24:37.906I'm not envious of that role.
00:24:37.906 -->
00:24:53.865It's 44 percent of the internet still right now, plus maybe, um, you know, because of all the third party builders and apps and developers, that every little decision has so many layers behind it, but still, I just I don't know.
00:24:53.865 -->
00:25:00.280I guess, hearing you talk about when you did this, it just kind of felt like we all got to a point where like, okay, this is just not going to get better.
00:25:00.280 -->
00:25:04.291It's just not, gutenberg is never going to get to a place where it's like this is awesome.
00:25:04.900 -->
00:25:08.627Yeah Well, a lot of people don't realize they've been doing it for seven years.
00:25:08.627 -->
00:25:11.374You know, the Gutenberg project started seven years ago.
00:25:11.374 -->
00:25:13.406It still doesn't have responsive controls.
00:25:13.406 -->
00:25:16.823It still doesn't have a lot of the basics we just figured out.
00:25:16.823 -->
00:25:21.205Because we're adding SVG support into Etch, it has no support for SVGs.
00:25:21.205 -->
00:25:24.067You can't add an SVG element in the block editor.
00:25:24.106 -->
00:25:32.583After seven years, this craziness, it's lunacy and it's because they hide behind the.
00:25:32.583 -->
00:25:36.039It's an open source project and we all have to come together and you need to be a contributor and da, da, da, da da.
00:25:36.039 -->
00:25:38.244I think a lot of that is.
00:25:38.244 -->
00:25:49.248They like the advantages of open source in terms of free work and marketing and you know, just open source attracts a lot of attention in those ways.
00:25:49.248 -->
00:25:54.915But when it comes to actually getting things done, that's what they hide behind that wall of excuses.
00:25:54.915 -->
00:25:58.530Well, I mean, you know it doesn't even make any sense.
00:25:58.530 -->
00:26:04.353Like you can, you can literally have a team the way you have in any in any software company.
00:26:04.353 -->
00:26:07.489You can literally have people assigned to do things like I.
00:26:07.489 -->
00:26:18.026Just just I repeatedly hear that wordpress, from an organization standpoint, is a lot of people just kind of wandering around, just doing, kind of working on what they want to work on and there's not a lot of direction.
00:26:18.066 -->
00:26:23.431I feel like it's a commune like I feel like, you know like they're just all in like robes and it's very like.
00:26:23.431 -->
00:26:25.940Well, bro, what should we do today?
00:26:29.450 -->
00:26:30.112it's a lot of that.
00:26:30.112 -->
00:26:35.445I mean, I've heard it from insiders that, like you know, yeah, that's kind of the, it's kind of the vibe.
00:26:35.445 -->
00:26:37.810So yeah, I think it's a leadership issue.
00:26:37.810 -->
00:26:41.482For sure it's not a funding issue.
00:26:41.482 -->
00:26:42.926It is now.
00:26:42.926 -->
00:26:53.271It is now they've pulled the funding because of the WP engine and all of that, but it was not a funding issue before, it was just an organization issue and a leadership issue and an excuse making issue.
00:26:53.412 -->
00:26:58.547You know there's a lot of excuses for like why something can't get done or why it hasn't been done or whatever.
00:26:58.547 -->
00:27:05.789And you know like they always I've been told 15000 times like, well, go contribute the feature.
00:27:05.789 -->
00:27:09.946So many people have contributed features and they go absolutely nowhere.
00:27:09.946 -->
00:27:26.163And there's no transparency on who actually, at the end of the day, approves or disapproves a feature from being included, and so there's no guarantee that if you spend all the time working on the feature that it's actually going to be put into core and it's just a it's, it's a distraction, it's like, oh, here's a guy complaining.
00:27:26.163 -->
00:27:33.750Let's just let's send him down a rabbit hole of go go work on the feature yourself and then maybe he'll just get lost in that rabbit hole and we'll never see him again.
00:27:33.859 -->
00:27:35.827I think that's literally why they tell people that.
00:27:35.827 -->
00:27:43.839So yeah, it's never going to, it's not going to get better, it's a very, very slow thing and it's not going to change anytime soon, in my opinion.
00:27:43.839 -->
00:27:46.048So we have to just build on top of it.
00:27:46.048 -->
00:27:54.142That, just build on top of it.
00:27:54.142 -->
00:27:55.144That's what I've always said, like that's already.
00:27:55.144 -->
00:27:56.348Where the success came from was building on top of it.
00:27:56.348 -->
00:27:59.278If Elementor didn't, it did not exist, and and Divi and Beaver and all of those, a gigantic portion of WordPress's community would not exist.
00:27:59.278 -->
00:28:04.861Those are pivotal, pivotal tools in that era of WordPress and we can't discount that, and it's going to stay that way going forward.
00:28:04.942 -->
00:28:11.522That's a great point and I do think there's a lot to say about the, the respect of the, the first round of page builders especially.
00:28:11.943 -->
00:28:32.144I mean I was I've been using divi since early 2014 and yeah, I mean, back in those days it was just an absolute game changer, but yeah, I mean that that's literally what empowered people to do to transform wordpress from a blogging engine into something where people are actually building huge marketing sites, dynamic websites, e-commerce sites like that.
00:28:32.144 -->
00:28:34.690Automatic didn't do anything to facilitate that.
00:28:34.690 -->
00:28:38.547That was all third party developers coming in and enabling that to happen.
00:28:38.547 -->
00:28:52.948And if that did not happen in the third party market, it was going to be gatekept by coders, essentially because and that's still if you, they tell me all the time like, oh, the block header doesn't do that thing that you want it to do Open VS Code and make a custom block.
00:28:52.948 -->
00:28:56.390No, come on man, this is 2025.
00:28:56.390 -->
00:28:57.926Like, this is not what we should be doing.
00:28:57.926 -->
00:29:04.289It should not be like oh, our basic thing doesn't get the job done, so now you got to open a completely different environment and hook into this thing.
00:29:04.289 -->
00:29:04.971Come on man.
00:29:13.680 -->
00:29:14.021This is craziness.
00:29:14.021 -->
00:29:14.885This is not going to move anybody forwards.
00:29:14.885 -->
00:29:17.157What's interesting is the change of the DIY landscape recently, over the past couple of years in particular.
00:29:17.157 -->
00:29:24.981I don't think there's any coincidence that late 23 is when things shifted from what I saw in WordPress and just web design in general.
00:29:24.981 -->
00:29:27.666But you mentioned the DIY thing earlier.
00:29:27.666 -->
00:29:31.834Now I don't see WordPress as a DIY solution at all.
00:29:32.119 -->
00:29:33.182I mean as you mentioned.
00:29:33.644 -->
00:29:37.532Divi Elementor, more so than Divi, even as far as like DIY is doing it.
00:29:37.532 -->
00:29:46.432But to be honest, if you're a small business owner and you're trying to tinkle around with yourself, or even if you're just a very, very newbie web designer or junior, there's these tools.
00:29:46.432 -->
00:29:48.067I mean Wix Studio.
00:29:48.067 -->
00:29:49.714It gets a little more complicated.
00:29:49.714 -->
00:29:55.750You can with wix studio, but squarespace show all these others are so much better positioned for diy tools.
00:29:55.750 -->
00:29:57.413So wordpress.
00:29:57.413 -->
00:30:05.634I think the the real conundrum they're in is like, yeah, do they just go all in helping the pros?
00:30:05.634 -->
00:30:07.303But I mean, you're taking that seat for them.
00:30:07.303 -->
00:30:07.923Like what, what?
00:30:07.923 -->
00:30:09.886They can't, they're not going to help the pros.
00:30:09.886 -->
00:30:10.989I think they're in a very.
00:30:10.989 -->
00:30:15.688They're stuck in between a rock and a hard place with, like our DIYers are fleeting.
00:30:15.688 -->
00:30:17.279We've got these builders.
00:30:17.279 -->
00:30:19.669Our core stuff is just terrible right now.
00:30:19.669 -->
00:30:22.328So Kevin's here to save us all.
00:30:22.328 -->
00:30:23.846You're here to save WordPress, aren't you?
00:30:24.099 -->
00:30:25.080I said years ago.
00:30:25.080 -->
00:30:27.903I said years ago wordpressorg.
00:30:27.903 -->
00:30:30.025There are two different forms of WordPress.
00:30:30.025 -->
00:30:31.906There can be, and there can be many, many, many of them.
00:30:31.906 -->
00:30:51.188Actually, WordPressorg is the core software, but nothing is stopping a hosting company from like automatic Automatic is a hosting company, okay, Nothing is stopping them from taking the core WordPress experience and transforming it into a different experience for a specific type of user.
00:30:51.188 -->
00:30:54.666Okay, and that's what wordpresscom does.
00:30:54.666 -->
00:30:57.520In a lot of ways, it does it poorly, but that's what it does.
00:30:57.520 -->
00:31:01.800It's what it attempts to do, and any hosting company can actually do that if they want, if they want to do that.
00:31:01.800 -->
00:31:10.394And what I told people years ago and the person I told it to and a bunch of other people looked at me like a goldfish and.
00:31:10.394 -->
00:31:11.355But it rings true.
00:31:11.355 -->
00:31:15.950It's still true to this very day and it's proving itself to be more and more and more true every day that goes by.
00:31:15.950 -->
00:31:19.500Wordpressorg is a professional platform.
00:31:19.500 -->
00:31:20.823It is a platform for.
00:31:20.823 -->
00:31:26.594It is not a platform for my mom or her cousin or anybody else off the street.
00:31:27.020 -->
00:31:30.743And you could just look at the fundamental aspects of this, why you got to choose a hosting company.
00:31:30.743 -->
00:31:34.843Well, they're already my mom's already out on that right there, she had no idea what you're talking about.
00:31:34.843 -->
00:31:36.788You have to one click install it.
00:31:36.788 -->
00:31:41.569Then, as soon as you log in, you have to understand this concept of plugins and themes.
00:31:41.569 -->
00:31:55.815You have to go through an entire theme library not realizing that the theme you're choosing is not just look and feel, but it's actually architecture, because WordPress made the brilliant, brilliant decision to marry look and feel with architecture in themes.
00:31:55.815 -->
00:32:02.428Okay, that, which is another massive mistake which they're continuing to make with the block editor.
00:32:02.428 -->
00:32:02.769I don't know why.
00:32:02.769 -->
00:32:11.074Um, and then if you've finally picked a theme which also kind of picture architecture, you're then in a situation where it's like, okay, I need, I need plugins to add on functionality, because that's not core.
00:32:11.074 -->
00:32:17.450And if you just pick any piece of functionality, like I need a slider, Okay, Well, it's not just go find a slider plugin.
00:32:17.450 -->
00:32:27.987It's literally like how about you try out 10 slider plugins and see which one actually is going to do what you needed to do versus might have some deal breaking limitation that you don't even know about?
00:32:28.948 -->
00:32:29.890Navigating this.
00:32:29.890 -->
00:32:32.273There's so many prerequisites.
00:32:32.273 -->
00:32:36.151There's understanding posts versus pages, understanding permalink structure.
00:32:36.151 -->
00:32:40.866These are all very, very technical things and WordPress does not make it easy.
00:32:40.866 -->
00:32:42.426There's no onboarding experience.
00:32:42.426 -->
00:32:48.012And that has led me to conclude WordPressorg is for people who know what the hell they're doing.
00:32:48.012 -->
00:32:52.006It's not for my mom, it's not for the mom, it's not for the rando business owner.
00:32:52.247 -->
00:33:00.605Okay, Rando business owners that are on WordPress are on WordPress most often because they hired somebody who said we're going to build your site on WordPress, and now they're a WordPress user.
00:33:00.605 -->
00:33:03.137Okay, they didn't choose WordPress, they didn't go.
00:33:03.137 -->
00:33:06.508Oh, that looks like the most friendly environment Wix, Squarespace.
00:33:06.508 -->
00:33:16.545They are dominating WordPress in the beginner and the DIYer market because they have a unified experience that takes all of those technical hurdles and gets rid of them.
00:33:16.545 -->
00:33:23.369And WordPress is unable to do that, completely unable to do that, except for WordPresscom or any hosting provider.
00:33:23.720 -->
00:33:28.806So I said for a long time and this is what killed me about it the block editor especially, by the way.
00:33:28.806 -->
00:33:34.229So they built this whole native block editor thing and it's super simple and dumbed down.
00:33:34.229 -->
00:33:37.309And I was like why is it so simple and dumbed down?
00:33:37.309 -->
00:33:40.189Why can't a professional actually do work in this?
00:33:40.189 -->
00:33:42.268And they're like well, you have to think about the layperson.
00:33:42.519 -->
00:33:49.486And again, I'm like the layperson who's not using wordpressorg because it's so technical, because all the other 10 hurdles they couldn't get past.
00:33:49.486 -->
00:33:55.384So you have to get past 10 technical hurdles to make it to what they call is like a dumbed down super basic environment.
00:33:55.384 -->
00:34:00.704None of that makes any sense, it's not been thought through and we need to abandon that completely.
00:34:00.704 -->
00:34:03.711We need to accept wordpressorg for what it is.
00:34:03.711 -->
00:34:15.150It is an open source CMS for professionals to do professional work on, and sure you can onboard people onto it like the professional can onboard somebody else and help them and assist them and all of that.
00:34:15.150 -->
00:34:20.626But it's not just for people off the street to walk in and sign up like it's fucking Wix and have a good experience.
00:34:20.626 -->
00:34:21.369That's not going to happen.
00:34:21.590 -->
00:34:22.574Yeah, it's so true.
00:34:22.574 -->
00:34:40.088We had a family friend who, about our age, like pretty savvy too and I remember just she couldn't even get wordpress installed and it was just like, I mean, most people, yeah, it's to us, it's like, oh yeah, you go here and you're here, but to delay, and yeah, even a basic install is like rocket science.
00:34:40.088 -->
00:34:45.465So, yeah, very, very interesting times that we're living in with wordpress.
00:34:45.465 -->
00:34:48.980Do you know the statistics, like where are some of these other platforms?
00:34:48.980 -->
00:34:51.329As far as popularity?
00:34:51.329 -->
00:34:53.688I mean, I know, obviously population is growing.
00:34:53.688 -->
00:34:55.025That means more people are online.
00:34:55.025 -->
00:35:00.273So, you know, percentage may be skewed, even if the numbers are down for WordPress.
00:35:00.273 -->
00:35:04.711But where's, like, the best place to see the latest stats?
00:35:04.711 -->
00:35:06.367Do you go to, like W3Tech or whatever it is?
00:35:06.940 -->
00:35:07.885You can go to BuiltWith.
00:35:07.885 -->
00:35:11.630You can go to BuiltWith and check the Wix stats.
00:35:11.630 -->
00:35:13.286You can check them against Squarespace.
00:35:13.286 -->
00:35:15.909Wix is dominating in a lot of ways.
00:35:15.909 -->
00:35:19.847A lot of people are hype on Framer.
00:35:19.847 -->
00:35:32.302I think mainly it's designers that they don't really know anything about the coding side of things, because Framer's code output is absolutely atrocious and there's a lot of limitations with it, and it's just here's the thing like WordPress.
00:35:33.105 -->
00:35:34.590Why does WordPress still exist?
00:35:34.590 -->
00:35:36.045Because it's kind of a dinosaur.
00:35:36.045 -->
00:35:41.927It doesn't have an onboarding experience, it's really only for professionals, but it continues to dominate.
00:35:41.927 -->
00:35:46.507It continues to dominate because it has the ace in its back pocket, which is it's open source.
00:35:46.507 -->
00:35:57.331So if you look at Wix, it's not open source, squarespace not open source, webflow not open source, and so that's the linchpin of WordPress that they've been essentially surviving on.
00:35:57.331 -->
00:36:07.507I mean, it's like we have there are predators circling WordPress, but they haven't been able to take it out, and that's only because it's open source.
00:36:07.507 -->
00:36:12.027If WordPress was not open source, it would have died years and years and years ago, right?
00:36:12.027 -->
00:36:20.360So what I've been saying is hey, we better wake up, like.
00:36:20.360 -->
00:36:27.168I don't think this ace in our back pocket of open source is going to be there forever because there could be other open source providers that come along with a modern environment and like the experience that everybody wants.
00:36:27.989 -->
00:36:32.186The WordPress is done, though at that point Right, so we don't have a lot of time.
00:36:32.186 -->
00:36:33.028Clock is ticking.
00:36:33.028 -->
00:36:39.989We might want to start taking things very seriously, whether that's via Edge, and of course, automatic's not going to take it seriously.
00:36:39.989 -->
00:36:46.001We already know their MO, so I think Edge kind of positions this as all right.
00:36:46.001 -->
00:36:51.550We've got the open source thing and now we have a modern environment that sits on top of it and we can do our work.
00:36:51.550 -->
00:37:02.505And, by the way, the client, the beginner, the lay person who's being onboarded, can come in and use that very simple block editor to just do their content edits and hit publish and call it a day, right.
00:37:02.505 -->
00:37:06.380So everybody's happy and nothing huge needs to change.
00:37:07.262 -->
00:37:18.190We both run communities and I don't know anyone who has joined my community under probably 25 who uses WordPress.
00:37:18.190 -->
00:37:23.681I mean, there is a massive, massive, and that may not be completely fair to say.
00:37:23.681 -->
00:37:25.809We may have a few, but but that may be more of like.
00:37:25.809 -->
00:37:30.507They looked up web design on Spotify, I saw my podcast and then I, you know, helped get them into wordpress.
00:37:30.507 -->
00:37:36.701But what I'm trying to say is the generation coming up is not going into wordpress.
00:37:36.701 -->
00:37:37.943It is a dinosaur.
00:37:37.943 -->
00:37:42.481It's viewed like that, it's labeled like that, it is like that in a lot of ways.
00:37:42.481 -->
00:37:45.030Um, what needs to change?
00:37:45.030 -->
00:37:45.490Is it etch?
00:37:45.490 -->
00:37:45.932Is it?
00:37:45.932 -->
00:37:46.193Is it?
00:37:46.193 -->
00:37:47.356Is it the onboarding?
00:37:47.356 -->
00:37:48.119Is it the positioning?
00:37:48.119 -->
00:37:49.766or is it fair to just not worry about that positioning?
00:37:49.766 -->
00:37:50.528Well, it's the positioning?
00:37:50.719 -->
00:37:54.952Or is it fair to just not worry about that and just be the place where the pros go?
00:37:56.021 -->
00:37:57.304Yeah, that's exactly it.
00:37:57.304 -->
00:37:58.148It's the positioning.
00:37:58.148 -->
00:37:58.889It's positioning.
00:37:58.889 -->
00:38:07.068If you try to continue to position WordPress as a Wix competitor or a Squarespace competitor, wordpress is going to lose that battle every single time.
00:38:07.068 -->
00:38:13.657And it's not just going to lose the battle on the onboarding experience and people actually being able to technically do things on the platform.
00:38:13.657 -->
00:38:18.231It's going to lose in terms of marketing Wix's marketing dollars versus what's put into work.
00:38:18.231 -->
00:38:22.797I mean, it's like it's like a it's a behemoth against a child Like it's, it's, it's.
00:38:23.378 -->
00:38:24.561it's not even a competition.
00:38:24.561 -->
00:38:25.485It's not even a competition.
00:38:25.485 -->
00:38:27.088How does WordPress?
00:38:27.168 -->
00:38:28.472even market, by the way, I don't.
00:38:36.519 -->
00:38:36.780I competition.
00:38:36.780 -->
00:38:37.764Um, how does wordpress even market, by the way?
00:38:37.764 -->
00:38:37.925I don't.
00:38:37.925 -->
00:38:38.867I don't know if I honestly really does not.
00:38:38.867 -->
00:38:39.329It doesn't, it doesn't.
00:38:39.329 -->
00:38:40.112So we go back to why is it successful?
00:38:40.112 -->
00:38:41.958Um, it's successful because millions of agencies and freelancers onboard people.
00:38:41.958 -->
00:38:45.347They, they use the software as professionals and the and clients come to them all the time.
00:38:45.367 -->
00:38:49.126I mean this used to happen to me over and over and over again hey, we need a new website?
00:38:49.126 -->
00:38:51.311Okay, great, what's your existing one on?
00:38:51.311 -->
00:38:52.193It's on GoDaddy.
00:38:52.193 -->
00:38:55.110It's like, okay, well, we use WordPress, here's why, here's all the benefits.
00:38:55.110 -->
00:38:56.264And then I'm like, oh, yeah, sure.
00:38:56.264 -->
00:38:57.027Well, guess what?
00:38:57.027 -->
00:39:12.523Now that person's a WordPress user, now their site's on WordPress, and we're just constantly doing this popular.
00:39:12.523 -->
00:39:12.905It's because of us.
00:39:12.905 -->
00:39:14.331It's because of us, right, and people are educated on that, like I would.
00:39:14.331 -->
00:39:14.672I would probably.
00:39:14.693 -->
00:39:31.173It would stand to reason that those young people that you're talking about haven't done a lot of thinking on open source philosophy, haven't done a lot of thinking on why should I be on an open source platform, what does it mean to own my content and own my website and not have to lease it from somebody else?
00:39:31.173 -->
00:39:38.773And if I'm going to build a real, actual business, why should I do that on my land and not somebody else's land?
00:39:38.773 -->
00:39:46.887Those are like very important philosophical discussions that young people typically don't tend to have, and so they need to be educated on that.
00:39:46.887 -->
00:39:48.052Well, who educates them?
00:39:48.052 -->
00:39:51.525Well, I automatically not doing any marketing, wordpress not doing any marketing.
00:39:51.585 -->
00:39:57.416So they have to watch WordPress being for professionals, you know.
00:39:57.416 -->
00:40:06.161If they're deciding I don't want to be a professional, like, I just want a website, okay, well, like they're not going to watch the pro tutorials and adopt WordPress and all of this.
00:40:06.161 -->
00:40:08.659So, yeah, we have to focus on our people.
00:40:08.659 -->
00:40:13.530Our people is do you want to be a professional web designer on the modern web and an open source platform?
00:40:13.530 -->
00:40:18.036Then you need to be using WordPress and now we take those people in and we don't worry about anybody else.
00:40:18.036 -->
00:40:21.621The other people will be onboarded by the people that we get.
00:40:22.282 -->
00:40:23.184Yeah, you're totally right.
00:40:23.184 -->
00:40:29.594You just you just laid out a beautiful marketing strategy for WordPress.
00:40:29.594 -->
00:40:36.856It's very similar to how I recommend that web designers sell the value of a website compared to social media when clients are like what do I need a website if I have a Facebook page?
00:40:37.436 -->
00:40:38.418It's rented land.
00:40:38.418 -->
00:40:43.474It's not your home, it's you know you're at the mercy of their whim.
00:40:43.474 -->
00:40:47.583That is truly the marketing gold for WordPress, I think.
00:40:47.583 -->
00:40:58.338Very, very interesting point there, and I only mentioned that because I'm just wondering younger entrepreneurs getting into web design or marketing today.
00:40:58.338 -->
00:41:07.284I don't know if maybe there's just more of an emphasis on design and aesthetics or if there is just an aura of wordpress being old.
00:41:07.284 -->
00:41:20.101I mean, I say this because one of my younger web designer pro members was like I logged into wordpress and it just looked awful and I was like yeah, yeah, yeah, I, I get it, I can't yeah, I get first, like I understand.
00:41:20.181 -->
00:41:22.231So, yeah, they log into etch and they won't.
00:41:22.231 -->
00:41:23.436There won't be the problem.
00:41:23.657 -->
00:41:26.309Yeah, because I think you end up going with framer or one of those.
00:41:26.309 -->
00:41:29.036So, uh, yeah, it is another interesting.
00:41:29.036 -->
00:41:37.090Just you know, as as I'm really thinking about the next five to ten years, as far as we can just looking at the landscape, I think that's another hurdle.
00:41:37.090 -->
00:41:38.490But I think you're totally right, kevin.
00:41:38.490 -->
00:41:43.393Like, like, the core of WordPress in people terms is already there.
00:41:43.393 -->
00:41:52.340There are, you know, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of solopreneurs and agencies using WordPress as their main builders.
00:41:52.340 -->
00:41:58.184So I feel like it's really just a matter of strengthening the core, what's already there to help it succeed.
00:41:58.204 -->
00:42:11.197Strengthening yes, strengthening the core, actually putting out very helpful content, pushing professional development forwards and really appealing to people who want to be professionals, which, by the way, includes designers.
00:42:11.197 -->
00:42:16.717And this is a good point that you made, because this is how Webflow really kicked WordPress's ass.
00:42:16.717 -->
00:42:31.115For a very long time, they appealed to and actively recruited very talented designers, and when very talented designers come in, as you know, you can build a great looking website on almost anything, right?
00:42:31.115 -->
00:42:38.951So, yeah, the technical side of it might be hugely different, but somebody just surface level looking at like, oh, there's a website on the internet.
00:42:38.951 -->
00:42:43.518You can build a very beautiful, awesome, modern website on pretty much any platform, right?
00:42:43.518 -->
00:42:57.650So if you have a bunch of talented designers rushing into Webflow, building these beautiful sites on Webflow, and then people are like it creates a culture of like Webflow, good design, modern, goes to get like.
00:42:57.650 -->
00:43:06.818That's a narrative that people attach onto and it attracts more talented designers and more talented people, right, wordpress is the opposite.
00:43:06.818 -->
00:43:12.197Wordpress does not attract, it attracts everybody and it attracts a lot of people.
00:43:12.269 -->
00:43:18.476And this is crazy to me, like I went to WordCamp WordCamp, eu right, were you at EU last year?
00:43:18.476 -->
00:43:19.077Okay, okay.
00:43:19.077 -->
00:43:26.338The running discussion underlying everything was have you seen the WCEU website?
00:43:26.338 -->
00:43:27.742Have you seen it on mobile?
00:43:27.742 -->
00:43:30.054It's awful looking.
00:43:30.054 -->
00:43:32.041It didn't work on mobile.
00:43:32.041 -->
00:43:34.356This is a WordCamp.
00:43:34.356 -->
00:43:38.193This is an official organization sponsored event, not like a local meetup.
00:43:38.193 -->
00:43:39.554Yeah, and I was like guys, I was like you got to understand this.
00:43:39.574 -->
00:43:41.195Like this is an official, organization sponsored event, not like a local meetup.
00:43:41.195 -->
00:43:43.197Yeah, and I was like guys, I was like you got to understand this?
00:43:43.197 -->
00:43:49.925Like do you think Webflow would be caught fucking dead with a website looking like this for their platform?
00:43:49.925 -->
00:43:52.175No, like, what are we doing?
00:43:52.175 -->
00:44:01.463And people look at that and that contributes to the oh, I see a dinosaur looking website came out of a dinosaur looking CMS.
00:44:01.463 -->
00:44:02.769What is the conclusion?
00:44:02.769 -->
00:44:10.137That every single person is going to come to, not the one we want them to come to, right, and so we're not doing ourselves any favor in that regard.
00:44:10.137 -->
00:44:13.976I'm talking about people at the top and the people putting these organization events together.
00:44:13.976 -->
00:44:16.302Like we got to get our shit together.
00:44:16.302 -->
00:44:18.213We've got to get our shit together and stop.
00:44:18.514 -->
00:44:30.251Stop shooting ourselves in the foot like this so I have a two-part question and it's together here because I want to ask you, like when and if there is a time to not use wordpress, you chose circle, like I did for your community.
00:44:30.251 -->
00:44:35.972Why did you choose circle and not just use an lms or something on wordpress or a community plugin or something?
00:44:36.554 -->
00:44:38.336yeah, it came down to technical stuff.
00:44:38.336 -->
00:44:48.012With regard to like I, first of all, I think communities, like community functionality and you look at things like push notifications is a very simple one.
00:44:48.012 -->
00:45:02.143It is a it's, it's, it's an app based thing, and trying to do this on WordPress not that you can't, it's just you're sticking a square peg into a round hole is what it feels like, and like you might be able to cram it in there, but it's just not going to be.
00:45:02.143 -->
00:45:08.891It's not the best fit, you know, and there's a lot of overhead and there's a lot of maintenance and there's a lot of keeping up with everything.
00:45:08.891 -->
00:45:15.554And so I look at something like Circle where I'm like, okay, all right, this does everything I needed out of the box.
00:45:15.554 -->
00:45:20.425It's not going to be perfect, but it's going to be 95% of what I want and what I need, and it's a great experience.
00:45:20.425 -->
00:45:21.887And it's got the app to go with it.
00:45:21.887 -->
00:45:25.717It's got the push notifications, which is very important for making a community successful.
00:45:26.059 -->
00:45:30.393Like the idea that somebody has to log into a computer to like that's not good.
00:45:30.393 -->
00:45:33.235You know, they need an app, right, and they need to be able to do this stuff on the go.
00:45:33.235 -->
00:45:35.257So that was all very, very important.
00:45:35.257 -->
00:45:39.039And it's so fast to set up and no maintenance and so easy to maintain.
00:45:39.039 -->
00:45:39.500It's just like.
00:45:39.500 -->
00:45:42.822Let's do it and people will be like, well, you don't own your stuff.
00:45:42.822 -->
00:45:43.362I'm like I do.
00:45:43.362 -->
00:45:45.105I have every single person's email address.
00:45:45.105 -->
00:45:46.606I have all my content archives.
00:45:46.606 -->
00:45:48.387I can move anywhere I want to at any time.
00:45:48.387 -->
00:45:53.947If they decide they didn't like me and shut me down or whatever, I can move it.
00:45:53.947 -->
00:45:54.528It's fine.
00:45:54.528 -->
00:46:05.030But it's on WordPress.
00:46:05.050 -->
00:46:07.378All my websites are on WordPress, Something that's on the side, like that.
00:46:07.378 -->
00:46:08.340I feel like I can use a platform like Circle.
00:46:08.340 -->
00:46:09.603So when is the time to not use WordPress?
00:46:09.603 -->
00:46:12.590What use cases would you recommend today?
00:46:12.590 -->
00:46:24.143That maybe another solution is all right, and I ask this because I don't know if you know that Circle I think I can say this publicly Circle's coming out with a builder oh, okay, A builder on top of their stuff.
00:46:24.143 -->
00:46:38.061Siteground just released I mean, tons of hosts are releasing like actually fairly good builders for something simple, not something scalable and, you know, super legitimate, but by golly a portfolio landing page or something could probably go up there just fine.
00:46:45.230 -->
00:46:46.635What are some use cases that maybe don't need to be on wordpress?
00:46:46.635 -->
00:46:50.512Um, I mean, it's hard to ask me because, like, people will say, like, oh, I use this for simple sites and I use wordpress for a bigger project, like that's what I'm getting to.
00:46:50.532 -->
00:46:54.806Yeah, I'm wondering like, yeah world, where that works, or I mean I get it.
00:46:54.887 -->
00:47:11.621For some people, like for me personally, I'm so involved, involved in experience with WordPress that I can spin up a single page landing page on WordPress as fast as I could actually probably faster than I could do it on any other platform so it would slow me down to go try to use a different platform.
00:47:11.621 -->
00:47:13.172Now, that's not the case for everybody.
00:47:13.172 -->
00:47:21.318Um, I would say, if you're a small business owner, uh, you're a lay person and you're like one, if you don't have a website of consequence is what I call them.
00:47:21.318 -->
00:47:26.175Like there's no consequence to the website disappearing or performing, like it's just a hobby kind of thing, whatever.
00:47:26.175 -->
00:47:29.373Okay, like, yeah, sure, you don't have to use WordPress or whatever.
00:47:29.793 -->
00:47:41.581If you're trying to validate a concept, validate an offer, validate a landing page, and you don't want to hire somebody yet you don't have the technical skills, you can put that together with any other tool that you want.
00:47:41.581 -->
00:47:48.259Like, I mean, go to go to, uh, uh, what's that design tool that everybody canva, canva.
00:47:48.259 -->
00:47:52.699You can make a website with canva these days, right, like, go do that If you're just trying to validate a concept.
00:47:52.699 -->
00:47:58.557But if you are doing something of consequence, that's serious, that you want to own, I would say it should be done on WordPress.
00:47:58.557 -->
00:48:01.802It doesn't matter if it's one page or 100 pages, like it should be on WordPress.
00:48:02.103 -->
00:48:09.751Yeah, that's a good point, Good rule of thumb and, like you said, for folks who are really really proficient with a certain tool even though technically it's more complex.
00:48:09.751 -->
00:48:13.137There's no reason to jump ship for something simple when you can just bust it out yeah.
00:48:13.157 -->
00:48:13.759It's like what would I?
00:48:13.759 -->
00:48:19.467I mean, even even if I went to Canva like I would want, it would be uh, horribly like.
00:48:19.467 -->
00:48:24.081I would just hate it, probably the way I've hated somebody like I try to use canva.
00:48:24.081 -->
00:48:31.722I try to use wix pro uh, which is like their professional version, like wix studio is what it's called and I was like this is frustrating as hell.
00:48:32.311 -->
00:48:46.900um, and it's just, like I would be 10 times slower than anything else and and by the way, that's I'm not saying that it's a brick-specific thing, or even etch Like I could do it in bricks, I could do it in etch, I could probably do it in Divi faster than I could do it anywhere else.
00:48:46.900 -->
00:48:49.396Like it's just, I just.
00:48:49.396 -->
00:48:51.922These other builders don't make a lot of sense to me.
00:48:51.922 -->
00:48:55.938They don't speak the language of web design, they just they drag you, put it down.
00:48:55.938 -->
00:49:05.672It absolutely positions everything.
00:49:05.672 -->
00:49:06.414It wraps it in 18 000 divs.
00:49:06.414 -->
00:49:06.574It just.
00:49:06.594 -->
00:49:07.536it's a nightmare um, so not the way I work.
00:49:07.536 -->
00:49:08.097So for me I can't do that.
00:49:08.097 -->
00:49:09.561But I understand people off the street, you know, maybe they can.
00:49:09.561 -->
00:49:11.751How are you positioning etch with everything we've talked about to this point?
00:49:11.751 -->
00:49:19.922I mean like, and particularly with the amount of agencies who, like, like my agency, we've got hundreds and hundreds of sites using divi.
00:49:19.922 -->
00:49:21.405It would.
00:49:21.405 -->
00:49:27.521It would require a massive change to to move from a builder to etch.
00:49:27.521 -->
00:49:30.213Now we can start with that on some new sites and things like that.
00:49:30.213 -->
00:49:34.856But I guess I'm wondering, like I don't want to say how you're going to compete with those, because maybe that's not even the goal.
00:49:34.856 -->
00:49:35.739But how are you?
00:49:35.739 -->
00:49:37.894How is etch?
00:49:37.894 -->
00:49:49.197How do you envision the marketing of Etch over the next few years, with things like Divi 5 coming out, elementor probably eventually revamping some things, the block editor not changing at all?
00:49:49.197 -->
00:49:49.871How you know?
00:49:49.871 -->
00:49:50.492How are you going to?
00:49:50.492 -->
00:49:53.981Where's Etch going to fit in on how this is positioned, moving forward?
00:49:54.650 -->
00:50:05.277Yeah, in my experience one is you know a lot of people told me that people that use page builders they are afraid of technical stuff and that's why they use a page builder.
00:50:05.277 -->
00:50:11.422And if you talk technical to them or you position like you have too many technical features, they'll run away.
00:50:11.422 -->
00:50:13.036They're just they're not interested in that.
00:50:13.036 -->
00:50:21.918And and I did this free course called Page Building 101, which anybody can go look up on YouTube it's just like hundreds of thousands of views at this point.
00:50:22.110 -->
00:50:23.596Yeah, we'll link that in the show notes too.
00:50:23.635 -->
00:50:37.722Yeah, for sure it's a really like anybody that really just wants to learn for free, like the most, like you will know, at the end of that course, more than 98% of people building websites in the modern era like on, especially in WordPress or in a page builder environment.
00:50:37.722 -->
00:50:39.978So tremendous education.
00:50:39.978 -->
00:50:47.054But the biggest thing that's come out of that is the feedback and I'm literally watching elementer user after elementer user.
00:50:47.054 -->
00:50:48.376I get the emails all the time.
00:50:48.376 -->
00:50:51.416The Divi user after Divi user, beaver user after Beaver user.
00:50:51.416 -->
00:51:02.838They are saying one is like you know how long I've had like imposter syndrome where, like, I can put the sites together but I really don't know what's going on under the hood.
00:51:02.838 -->
00:51:12.697And now they feel free of that and they're like they actually are running towards technical tools and technical knowledge because they love feeling empowered.
00:51:12.697 -->
00:51:19.155They love feeling of they actually know what they're talking about when they talk to their clients and when they're advising their clients and when they're building sites.
00:51:19.155 -->
00:51:33.773They love the fact that the sites they're building now are scalable and maintainable so that when things need to iterate and change, it's easy for them to do that and it's not a nightmare and a hassle and they're not having these awkward conversations with clients like, ah, we didn't really build it to be able to do that, you know.
00:51:33.773 -->
00:51:36.217And like that's not a conversation you ever want to have.
00:51:36.217 -->
00:51:44.248So they're empowered and they're running towards technical stuff and so all we have to do with etch is demo it Like I don't even have to sell it.
00:51:44.349 -->
00:51:53.418Literally, as in the same thing happened with automatic CSS I just build things and do tutorials, and the tool I do it in people are like what the hell is that?
00:51:53.418 -->
00:51:54.300What was that?
00:51:54.300 -->
00:52:00.161I want that thing, right, cause, they see and this was the intro to page building 101 was literally like hey, open your page builder.
00:52:00.161 -->
00:52:03.239Like, let me, I'm going to open mine, I'm going to open and I'm going to open all of them.
00:52:03.239 -->
00:52:12.891We'll look at the seven different ones and I want you to see the clear differences between something like an Elementor and a Bricks, right, I want you to see the differences in the code output.
00:52:12.891 -->
00:52:15.932I want you to see the differences in what this class system allows you to do.
00:52:15.932 -->
00:52:25.398And, by the way, people should recognize because I've said this as well it's clear that we're entering a new era because for the longest, what was I?
00:52:25.398 -->
00:52:28.298A proponent of A class-based workflow.
00:52:28.298 -->
00:52:31.561Okay, when we use classes and then variables.
00:52:31.740 -->
00:52:34.382Oh, hold on Okay you're going to lose me for a second.
00:52:34.382 -->
00:52:35.202It's all right.
00:52:35.202 -->
00:52:36.123It's all in video.
00:52:36.123 -->
00:52:36.844I'm in here.
00:52:36.844 -->
00:52:37.804We'll keep it rolling.
00:52:37.804 -->
00:52:38.123I don't.
00:52:38.123 -->
00:52:39.885I don't edit anything out of the podcast.
00:52:40.344 -->
00:52:45.748I'm in Florida and I'm on my B set up and my B set up as a Sony camera that likes to overheat.
00:52:45.748 -->
00:52:51.030Okay, so that's what happened.
00:52:51.030 -->
00:52:51.831It overheated, um it, I turned it off it.
00:52:51.831 -->
00:53:00.056It'll hopefully come back to life in just a minute, um, okay, so essentially we have, you know this, class-based workflow variables, components, loops and logic, yada, yada, yada.
00:53:00.056 -->
00:53:03.980Okay, what is Elementor now coming out with?
00:53:03.980 -->
00:53:04.960A class system?
00:53:04.960 -->
00:53:07.163They are they are migrating.
00:53:07.182 -->
00:53:08.242DB5 is very similar.
00:53:08.262 -->
00:53:11.766DB5 is going with this variable first approach right.
00:53:11.766 -->
00:53:16.710They're moving towards this era which is, by the way, away from, and I'm going to.
00:53:16.710 -->
00:53:18.873I think it's going to be very interesting to watch.
00:53:18.873 -->
00:53:26.702They have a giant community of kind of DIYers and lay people who chose that tool because it was less technical.
00:53:26.702 -->
00:53:31.507And now they're making the tool more technical and I'm curious to watch how that happens.
00:53:31.507 -->
00:53:35.760But again, I just have to demo Etch and people just love it and they want to use it.
00:53:35.929 -->
00:53:46.344Well, a recurring theme for this conversation that I love that you've been circling back to is it's just good to know web design, like the core principles.
00:53:46.344 -->
00:53:52.110Um, it's funny because my top tutorial on my youtube channel is how to manually migrate a wordpress website.
00:53:52.110 -->
00:53:59.217I threw it together in like an hour thinking you know, whatever, I just this is how I know to do it no plug-in, no, no premium, anything.
00:53:59.217 -->
00:54:03.237It's just you go into the database, use my sequel and that's how you do it.
00:54:03.237 -->
00:54:07.652To this day, kevin, people are like this is the only tutorial that worked.
00:54:07.652 -->
00:54:09.978Uh, even though it's, you know, seven.
00:54:09.978 -->
00:54:11.420No, it was 2017.
00:54:11.420 -->
00:54:14.233So, yeah, seven years old and it's still killing it.
00:54:14.233 -->
00:54:17.260It's the only one that is like it stands the test of time.
00:54:18.021 -->
00:54:20.092I do think there should be a real emphasis on standing the test of time.
00:54:20.092 -->
00:54:34.617I do think there should be a real emphasis on standing the test of time with web design, just knowing those good old classic principles For those who do want to know those, like what you need to know, regardless of any platform, any tool, maybe for those who are getting into web design.
00:54:34.617 -->
00:54:38.094Now, what are just like the basic categories that people should know?
00:54:38.094 -->
00:54:41.050Html, css, a little bit of Java, what?
00:54:41.070 -->
00:54:41.331do you think?
00:54:41.331 -->
00:54:47.282Yeah, yeah, yeah, I said that the mandatory requirements are HTML and CSS.
00:54:47.282 -->
00:54:48.994Those are the mandatory requirements.
00:54:48.994 -->
00:54:55.396Page building does a lot of heavy lifting in terms of PHP and a lot of heavy lifting in terms of JavaScript.
00:54:55.396 -->
00:54:56.518So those tools will.
00:54:56.518 -->
00:55:00.331They will get you very far, but you should start to.
00:55:00.331 -->
00:55:11.498You don't have to learn all of JavaScript, but you have to understand the basic fundamentals of JavaScript in terms of, like, what is actually happening, you know, like, when I click this button, how is this other thing changing?
00:55:11.498 -->
00:55:13.697Just kind of understanding how it works.
00:55:13.697 -->
00:55:19.123But when it comes to HTML and CSS, you really need to practice those.
00:55:19.123 -->
00:55:25.161You need to be an expert at them, because HTML goes into and this is why you can't just rely on a drag and drop environment.
00:55:26.110 -->
00:55:33.715Html has semantics, html has accessibility requirements and these things have to be decided by the person building the site.
00:55:33.715 -->
00:55:36.342They can't be decided by a drag and drop tool.
00:55:36.342 -->
00:55:38.434Willy nilly.
00:55:38.434 -->
00:55:41.931If I drag in a heading and let's say it defaults to H1.
00:55:41.931 -->
00:55:45.059Okay, well, the user could drag in 50 of those.
00:55:45.059 -->
00:55:48.012So now I have 50 H1 headings on my page.
00:55:48.012 -->
00:55:50.563The page builder doesn't know, like you know.
00:55:50.563 -->
00:55:57.302It doesn't know where you're putting these or why you're using or whatever, and so most page builders to to fix that default to H2.
00:55:57.302 -->
00:56:02.867So I can drag in 50, but then a user might end up with no H1 because they didn't know to change it to H1.
00:56:03.130 -->
00:56:07.938This is just somebody that doesn't know semantic HTML and the very, very basics of it, right?
00:56:07.938 -->
00:56:11.219And you can take this deep into the rabbit hole of HTML.
00:56:11.219 -->
00:56:17.391There's a lot like when I make a card grid that actually, semantically should be a list it should be a UL with LIs inside of it.
00:56:17.391 -->
00:56:18.072And semantically should be a list.
00:56:18.072 -->
00:56:19.014It should be a UL with LIs inside of it.
00:56:19.014 -->
00:56:25.143And most people don't know that and many page readers don't even allow you to change the HTML tags to make it correct, right?
00:56:25.143 -->
00:56:32.420These are the limitations that we talk about, and this is because people don't know the fundamentals.
00:56:32.420 -->
00:56:33.547And so, yes, you should learn the fundamentals of HTML.
00:56:33.547 -->
00:56:35.132You should learn the fundamentals of CSS.
00:56:36.114 -->
00:56:38.559W3schoolscom is usually my recommendation.
00:56:38.559 -->
00:56:40.751Do you have another recommendation for learning the basics?
00:56:41.652 -->
00:56:44.057uh, I, I love, I love youtube, like I.
00:56:44.057 -->
00:56:47.371I really think that people should he's back, I'm back, I'm back.
00:56:47.371 -->
00:56:47.751I put that.
00:56:47.751 -->
00:56:48.152I put the.
00:56:48.152 -->
00:56:51.338I put a fan on it back there, I'm babying it right now.
00:56:51.338 -->
00:56:54.351Um, so, yeah, I, I I love youtube.
00:56:54.351 -->
00:56:58.259Find somebody you like, who, you like their personality, you like their personality, you like their teaching style.
00:56:58.259 -->
00:57:11.923I will also say this instead of using AI to answer all of your like spit code back at you, you can open AI and ask it to teach you the fundamentals of something.
00:57:11.923 -->
00:57:12.686You can ask it to quiz you.
00:57:12.686 -->
00:57:15.753You can ask it to explain things to you like you're five.
00:57:15.753 -->
00:57:23.914You can say, hey, give me a thing that I need to build as like a test project, right, and then grade it when it's done.
00:57:23.914 -->
00:57:33.972You can use AI now to teach you the fundamentals of these things, and that's what you should be doing, versus asking it to just answer every question for you and spit back every solution.
00:57:34.454 -->
00:57:35.356I couldn't agree more.
00:57:35.356 -->
00:57:36.119That's a great point.
00:57:36.119 -->
00:57:37.202I'm so glad you said that.
00:57:37.250 -->
00:57:51.161before we wrap up, I'm going to ask ChatGPbt explain etch for wordpress to me it may not be trained on it yet, because it's so new, I don't even know what it is I'm on 4.0, so let's see yeah, maybe not.
00:57:51.181 -->
00:57:52.684plus, we've been very secretive with it.
00:57:52.684 -->
00:57:53.932There's not a lot of published.
00:57:54.233 -->
00:57:58.213Yeah, there's no documentation or anything like that yeah, there's some videos.
00:58:00.018 -->
00:58:00.478Yeah, what is it?
00:58:00.478 -->
00:58:00.960What does it say?
00:58:00.960 -->
00:58:01.440I'd be curious.
00:58:01.440 -->
00:58:02.003What is Etch?
00:58:02.003 -->
00:58:07.762Etch is like a magical clipboard that helps people build websites for everything they need.
00:58:07.762 -->
00:58:08.443It's hallucinating.
00:58:08.443 -->
00:58:11.277They need from their clients without all the back and forth emails.
00:58:11.277 -->
00:58:11.617I don't.
00:58:11.617 -->
00:58:12.280Is this right?
00:58:12.280 -->
00:58:14.235No, this is this can't be right.
00:58:14.235 -->
00:58:20.952Imagine you're building a lego castle.
00:58:20.952 -->
00:58:22.358That's your website, but you don't have all the lego pieces.
00:58:22.358 -->
00:58:22.960Etch is super smart, okay.
00:58:22.960 -->
00:58:23.521No, this is something else.
00:58:23.521 -->
00:58:24.304There must be a different edge.
00:58:24.324 -->
00:58:25.548So, yes, well, it just makes it up.
00:58:25.548 -->
00:58:27.956I mean it just yeah, right it hallucinates all the time.
00:58:27.976 -->
00:58:28.737Yeah, like, don't remember.
00:58:28.737 -->
00:58:30.550I will keep an eye on when.
00:58:30.550 -->
00:58:40.340Etch is uh, as you know, available in the uh in the ai world for for some uh yeah, yeah, for sure um, your page building 101 free course real quick.
00:58:40.340 -->
00:58:43.536Does that lead to bricks or are you going to do an updated one for it?
00:58:43.876 -->
00:58:44.378Yeah, it was.
00:58:44.378 -->
00:58:49.038It was done in bricks Cause that was the best tool at the time, uh, to teach those kinds of things.
00:58:49.038 -->
00:58:52.873But it's going to be redone in edge, so I'm going to take the bricks version down.
00:58:52.873 -->
00:59:04.396And another reason I it's not just to redo it in in our tool, um, but a lot of feedback was like it's 19 episodes and I think almost all of them are like 45 minutes to 60 minutes long.
00:59:04.396 -->
00:59:13.873Okay, uh, which I know is a lot for people Like they're very detailed and so it's also hard to find certain things when you're going back later in that format.
00:59:13.873 -->
00:59:19.536Yeah, and I've explored different formats in the inner circle for things lately and what I found is very granular.
00:59:19.536 -->
00:59:25.972It might be 60 videos, right, but it's so granular that one they're easy to digest and two they're easy to find later.
00:59:25.972 -->
00:59:28.338And that's how I'm going to redo the second version.
00:59:28.498 -->
00:59:28.840Same.
00:59:28.840 -->
00:59:36.431I'm learning, I'm about to revamp, like all my courses, which is incredibly overwhelming, but I know it's time that it's.
00:59:36.431 -->
00:59:41.262It's the smaller granular bite size super filterable, super searchable.
00:59:41.262 -->
00:59:46.083Um pat flynn is actually I think it's releasing soon.
00:59:46.083 -->
00:59:47.690He has a new book called lean learning.
00:59:47.690 -->
00:59:50.041I'm gonna oh nice, I'm gonna check that out.
00:59:50.041 -->
00:59:58.322Just because I do think that's where online education is going is like not that, because attention spans can be fine as long as someone's hooked in it.
00:59:58.322 -->
01:00:04.400But I think the quick win, the nature of quick wins, the like okay, I'm through a three minute video, move forward five minute.
01:00:04.400 -->
01:00:06.873I I'm probably as guilty as you like.
01:00:06.873 -->
01:00:13.215My course lessons are like 20 to 30 minutes and I realized one course lesson has like five topics in it.
01:00:13.436 -->
01:00:15.059That could be five to seven minute videos.
01:00:15.119 -->
01:00:17.492So, yeah, yeah, what do you know?
01:00:17.492 -->
01:00:19.898Do you have any idea of when the new 101 is going to come out?
01:00:19.898 -->
01:00:22.103Going to come out Cause I, we can definitely recommend this, but I'm just wondering.
01:00:23.050 -->
01:00:32.364Yeah, I mean what I, what I did with the last one is I announced it and then I did it like just every every week I'd release like one to two, I'd record them and just release them as they were done.
01:00:32.364 -->
01:00:42.443So I don't like doing it all up front and then, you know, releasing it, and I also like to feel it out like how people are keeping up with it and if we need to pivot somewhere in there.
01:00:42.443 -->
01:00:49.349Cause I can outline it, but the outline is just a theory, you know.
01:00:49.349 -->
01:00:49.610It's like.
01:00:49.630 -->
01:00:51.333You know, once we get into it, I realize, oh, there's a lot of questions about this.
01:00:51.333 -->
01:00:52.713That was kind of already covered, but people are still stuck on it.
01:00:52.713 -->
01:00:59.081I might do a follow up, you know, I might stick another video in there or something like that, and I can only do that if I'm kind of monitoring how people are going through it.
01:00:59.081 -->
01:01:02.646So I I'm thinking about starting it probably after summer.
01:01:02.646 -->
01:01:11.130So when the fall starts, um, because we'll be, september is literally scheduled to be V1, like the official V1 of etch being launched.
01:01:11.130 -->
01:01:18.496Uh, we'll be much closer to that, and so, um, there shouldn't be any limitations with what I need to teach in it and we'll be able to just get started there.
01:01:19.217 -->
01:01:20.599Kevin, thank you for your time.
01:01:20.599 -->
01:01:21.561Dude, Good to catch up.
01:01:21.762 -->
01:01:22.643Good to see you again.
01:01:23.675 -->
01:01:24.242And there we have it.
01:01:24.242 -->
01:01:27.559My friends, I think that is a good, honest, real world.
01:01:27.559 -->
01:01:30.137Take on where WordPress is right now.
01:01:30.137 -->
01:01:34.353What's going on, the pros, the cons, the goods, the bads, all of the in-betweens.
01:01:34.353 -->
01:01:37.637Big thanks to Kevin for taking some time to come in on again.
01:01:37.637 -->
01:01:44.764I know he was, I believe, in a vacation spot and he made some time to come on for the podcast.
01:01:44.764 -->
01:01:46.465So big thanks to him again.
01:01:52.750 -->
01:01:57.742If there's anybody who is on the leading edge of what's going to help WordPress, particularly for professionals who use WordPress, kevin is somebody I recommend checking out.
01:01:57.742 -->
01:01:59.755You can go to his website, gearyco.
01:01:59.755 -->
01:02:08.420And if you would like to check out what we talked a lot about in this episode his new product Etch go to etchwpcom.
01:02:08.420 -->
01:02:11.460That's E-T-C-H-W-Pcom.
01:02:11.460 -->
01:02:16.762That is where you can get on the list to find out more and more about that.
01:02:16.762 -->
01:02:23.117So all those links and more are mentioned at the show notes for this one, which will be at joshhallco slash 384.
01:02:23.597 -->
01:02:29.867If you're a WordPress user, regardless of what builder you use, whatever camp you're in, I'm sure Kevin would love to hear from you.
01:02:29.867 -->
01:02:32.235I would love to hear your feedback as well on this one.
01:02:32.235 -->
01:02:35.271You can leave a comment at joshhallco slash 384 as well.
01:02:35.271 -->
01:02:36.994All right friends, thanks for joining.
01:02:36.994 -->
01:02:39.978Stay subscribed, because we've got some other doozies coming up ahead.
01:02:39.978 -->
01:02:47.980We're going to have a fun summer on the podcast, so I hope you pull up a beach chair, grab a drink of your choice and have a good time.
01:02:47.980 -->
01:02:49.364All right friends, see you on the next one.
