Is Building WordPress Websites Easy?  ## Metadata - Author: [[Mark Szymanski]] - Full Title: Is Building WordPress Websites Easy? - Category: #articles - Document Note: --- tags: [WordPress, WebDevelopment, UX, Tools, Plugins, SEO, CommunityInsights] - WordPress - WebDevelopment - Tools Author: [Mark Zymanski] Source: [Transcript from YouTube Livestream](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IAzB4mB6oE) Reference: [WordCamp, GoDaddy UX, WordPress Ecosystem, Web Design Trends] date created: 2024-09-12 11:00 --- # Title: Is Building WordPress Websites Easy? ## Table of Contents: - [📝 Summary](#summary) - [📖 Main Content](#main-content) - [🗒️ Notes](#notes) - [📖 References](#references) - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#paraphrase) - [📰 Newsletter](#newsletter) - [✅ Action Items](#action-items) - [🧪 Hypotheses](#hypotheses) - [🔍 SEO Evaluation](#seo-evaluation) - [🎯 Conclusion](#conclusion) ### References: 1. Transcript for [Is building WordPress websites easy? (LIVE)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IAzB4mB6oE) ## 📝 Summary: Building WordPress websites can be both easy and difficult, depending on factors like the user's experience, the project's complexity, and the chosen tools. WordPress offers flexibility and power for professional development, but the learning curve, plugin management, and platform-specific quirks can complicate the process for newcomers. ## 📖 Main Content: WordPress has matured as a platform, offering ease in setting up a basic site. However, for advanced websites involving customizations, dynamic data, or complex integrations, the complexity escalates. The livestream discussed how various agencies handle these challenges and how beginners often feel overwhelmed when they expect WordPress to work like other platforms (e.g., Webflow or Squarespace). ### 🗒️ Notes - **WordPress Flexibility**: Custom post types, plugins, and themes allow for expansive website creation. - **Challenge**: Managing compatibility and updates across plugins. - **Advantage**: Open-source nature and vast community support. - **Plugin Conflicts**: Issues with incompatible plugins can create user frustration. - **Example**: A user shared how a WP Rocket plugin conflicted with Fluent booking. - **Beginner Challenges**: WordPress lacks onboarding, making it hard for new users to get started. - **Solution**: Agencies provide frameworks and preset configurations. - **Agency Approach**: Web design isn't commodified; agencies need unique solutions to stand out. - **UX Problems**: Even professionals face issues with platforms like GoDaddy due to poor UX or inconsistent behavior. ## 📖 References: - [Is building WordPress websites easy? (LIVE)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IAzB4mB6oE) - GoDaddy platform UX and performance challenges mentioned during the livestream. ## 🗣️ Paraphrase: 1. **Original**: "It's confusing how difficult simple tasks like domain redirection are on GoDaddy, especially when other platforms make it a seamless process." **Paraphrase**: "The complexity of basic functions like domain forwarding on GoDaddy is surprising, considering how straightforward this is on other platforms." 2. **Original**: "WordPress has always been flexible, but flexibility comes with a price — the risk of plugin conflicts and a steep learning curve for beginners." **Paraphrase**: "While WordPress's adaptability is a strength, it introduces challenges such as plugin compatibility issues and a high barrier to entry for newcomers." ## 📰 Newsletter: *🎯 Featured in this week's newsletter* — Are WordPress websites easy to build? That's the question many developers and agency owners are asking. Join our deep dive into the balance between flexibility and complexity within the WordPress ecosystem. We explore insights from agencies, the challenges of plugin conflicts, and how newcomers often feel lost when diving into WordPress without proper guidance. Check out our latest WordPress tools, plugin updates, and SEO tips to help you create sites that are not only functional but also scalable! 🚀 [Read More](https://examplelink.com) ## ✅ Action Items: - Reflect on how **WordPress** websites fit into your workflow. Is flexibility more important than ease of use for your clients? - Consider where **GoDaddy's UX** could be improved in your business process if clients use this platform. - Explore creating **dynamic data sites** using tools like WP Rocket and Fluent, but ensure you understand plugin limitations. - As an **open-source advocate**, think about how you could support contributors in solving plugin compatibility issues or improving onboarding experiences for beginners. - Assess how this article aligns with **GoDaddy’s** and **WordPress’s** broader ecosystem, focusing on user-friendly design and DEIB. ## 🧪 Hypotheses: 1. The rise of **no-code tools** may push WordPress to adapt with improved user-friendly onboarding. 2. **Plugin compatibility** remains a leading challenge, affecting WordPress adoption rates among new users. ### 📊 Methodology: - **Survey**: Gauge the user experience of beginners navigating WordPress setup. - **Data Analysis**: Track common plugin conflicts and propose core fixes. - **UX Testing**: Test GoDaddy’s domain management features for ease of use. ### ❓ Questions: - How can WordPress onboarding be improved to match competitor platforms like Webflow? - Is there a way to simplify plugin management for beginners without sacrificing flexibility? ### 🔮 Future Research: Explore how **no-code tools** influence the broader CMS market and whether **WordPress** could lose ground to platforms with stronger onboarding and UX features. ### 💡 Implications: If WordPress doesn’t streamline its **onboarding process**, it could struggle to attract new developers as **no-code platforms** continue to mature. ### 🧠 Learning Styles Assessment: 1. **Visual Learners (Spatial)**: - **Improve**: Incorporate visuals or flowcharts into beginner WordPress guides. 2. **Aural Learners (Auditory-Musical)**: - **Improve**: Offer audio guides or podcast-style content for auditory learners. 3. **Verbal Learners (Linguistic)**: - **Present**: WordPress has extensive documentation, though more storytelling and real-world examples would help. 4. **Physical Learners (Kinesthetic)**: - **Improve**: Include hands-on tasks or interactive simulations for users to practice building sites. 5. **Logical Learners (Mathematical)**: - **Present**: Logical breakdowns in guides exist, but more problem-solving exercises would be beneficial. 6. **Social Learners (Interpersonal)**: - **Improve**: Promote group learning with peer-based tutorials. 7. **Solitary Learners (Intrapersonal)**: - **Improve**: Add reflection exercises after tutorials. ### 📊 Accessibility Assessment: - **Alt Text**: Ensure that all tutorials or guides have clear and descriptive alt text. - **Keyboard Navigation**: Improve navigability of WordPress UI, especially in the dashboard, for users with limited mouse interaction. ### 🌍 DEIB Assessment: - **Inclusive Language**: WordPress documentation should continue to adopt gender-neutral language and avoid overly technical jargon. ## 🔍 SEO Evaluation: - **Keywords**: "WordPress easy," "beginner WordPress setup," and "plugin conflicts" were used appropriately. - **Meta Description**: Summarize the content to reflect the pros and cons of WordPress usability. ## 🎯 Conclusion: Building a WordPress site can be both simple and complex. Beginners face a steep learning curve, but the platform's power and flexibility remain unmatched. The community continues to innovate, but clearer onboarding and user-friendly tools will be critical to attracting new users. Short Summary for [Is building WordPress websites easy? (LIVE)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IAzB4mB6oE) by [Merlin](https://merlin.foyer.work/) The YouTube video covers a live session with Mark Szymanski discussing WordPress websites, sharing updates, and engaging with the audience. [00:03](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IAzB4mB6oE&t=3) Weekly recap on WordPress updates and trends [01:50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IAzB4mB6oE&t=110) Building simple WordPress sites is easy [05:36](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IAzB4mB6oE&t=336) Migrating data between Google accounts can be difficult. [07:23](https://www.youtube.com/wa - Document Tags: [[mark zymanski]] [[wordpress]] - Summary: Building WordPress websites can be easy, but it depends on your technical skills and experience. There are many options and ideas to explore with WordPress, making it flexible for users. The discussion aims to help people understand how to utilize WordPress effectively for their needs. - URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IAzB4mB6oE how we doing everyone how we doing should be live here if you're here let me know if you can hear me and see me I'm quite paranoid about one day this microphone just not working so let me know in the chat if you are here let me know where you're from All That Jazz all that good stuff uh we're here every Thursday at 11:00 a.m. eastern so if you are here if you're new here welcome if you're recurring if you've seen my face on this live stream before thank you so much for coming back I greatly appreciate it uh as you can tell by the title and thumbnail of this one and I'll obviously I'll let you in here on the inside baseball it's uh it's difficult to come up with a topic every single time for these things I mean a lot is happening but you know I do feel like sometimes they get a little repetitive but I think we're always learning and if you guys ever have any ideas and stuff you want me to talk about cover or whatever definitely just let me know Charlie thank you so much appreciate that confirmation there on the AV side of things um but yeah I do have you know if you're if you're if you're new here the kind of the Cadence is obviously every Thursday at 11:00 a.m. eastern but I've also kind of started to go and do a little bit of uh kind of a weekly recap just from my perspective on like WordPress and things going on the stuff that I'm doing the stuff that other people are doing that I find interesting and then we talk about maybe a couple different topics here or there like bigger pieces so um there's a lot of really good people in the space there's a lot of really good content out there I would highly highly recommend that if you're not following a vast uh majority and like a wide distribution of people in this space I do think that it is uh it would be very productive to do so uh because I've I follow people that I don't like necessarily watch every single video of because you know there's just only so much time in the day but it is really good to get different perspectives regardless of what tools you're using or what you're doing because we all have a lot of similarities um and everything like that so Eric hello from Alabama appreciate you br thank you so much for being here thank you so much Bassam from Canada good to see you brother thank you so much for being here um but yeah like I said I have a little bit of a agenda here we'll talk about the stuff if you guys have anything drop it in the chat we'll we'll talk about it as well and pleasure to see you thank you so much thank you so much for being here uh but yeah so here's what I would say for this past week it's been a little I would say it was like by my estimation a little like relatively quiet I would say per like BAS off of the other weeks that we've had recently there's been a lot of stuff going on um and you know occasionally I feel like we get these these little dips and there's still obviously great content coming out but nothing crazy I was talking to Matt madus at WP minute yesterday he's like you've been a little quiet man there's not much not as much drama so that's been like kind of a two-fold thing there hasn't I feel like this week there wasn't anything like extremely crazy that happened we do have some things to talk about but uh that and then also uh just I've been thinking I was launching a client site we can kind of talk about that to today a little bit and just a lot of other things that I was doing kind of like Off the Grid so to speak off the uh out of the scene here uh that may or may not interest you guys but like I said we'll chat about all that and um yeah uh got a question here already thank you Eric uh simple WordPress sites are easy but if how is building a data driven site like a News website especially one that has multiple reverse relationships so um thank you for that great question right off the bat there um that would so I don't know if I can answer that like specifically because it's a good point right there right but like that is kind of very similar to like what made me think of this whole the you know the title so to speak of this video which is like is WordPress easy um and like what does that actually mean I tweeted about it we'll go over it um there's just there's a lot there so I'm going to I'm going to Star this I'm going to come back to it because it's going to be the main topic that we're going to be talking about here a lot uh and then if we have specifics we can dive into that as well at some point John from Greece thank you so much for being here appreciate it appreciate it um Eric like your video about making the portfolio website was a great idea uh how to deal with objects and post types that are relationships to each other yeah you know what I'll drop this here because I like I said I have like a list of random stuff we can kind of go over briefly but I don't know if you guys have seen this yet I think I'm dubbing this this series that I did the wp if you go to WP dynamic data. and I'll bring it up on the screen here as well um I am dubbing this series the most underrated the most underrated Dynamic data series on on the internet word pressed D I mean it's new it's two months ago or whatever but my point is like I love Dynamic data I love what it like did for me as a website builder and I just think if you go through this you're going to be way further than you are and then go out and watch other people's content to I'm not saying don't watch other people's this isn't the end all be all but this is like how I would have loved to learn this and I had to like piece it together so there you go it's free go check it out if you don't know about that all right so that's the first thing I'll check that off my list here talked about the quiet week another random thing that I was doing this week too is uh there's been like some Google debates and always been but like Google like having control and like using like being bought into Google I'm going to I'm going to you know confess that I am like pretty much fully bought bought into Google I'm using Chrome I'm using Gmail I'm using Google workspace uh Google Voice uh I don't really have too many problems with it I know Google is kind of a shitty company in certain ways the way that they do things just because they're so big but I haven't had enough reason to like switch and then I'm a big concision like con concise and cohesion guy so you may be wondering why don't I use apple which is a you know separate conversation but like if you go all Google or all Apple you're at least going to get that cohesion uh I've seen a lot of people like be switching from those and like putting together like 16 different like apps now that they have to like somehow either just manage independently or whatever that's just not somewhere where I'm at right now and the reason I'm bringing this up is because there is annoyances with that I was trying to move my wife's uh account from like her her like maiden name like Gmail to like a married name Gmail as an just like one account to the other it's just such a pain in the ass like there's there's no good way like they haven't thought of those types of situations migrating the data is difficult it's pretty much impossible in certain instances so I just wish that uh you know like to tie that into like a WordPress dat WordPress thing like data Liberation I love that concept where you kind of can flow um freely I mean I wasn't even trying to go to a different you know platform in that case right uh I'm trying to you know compare these two different things here but that's just a whole another conversation that uh that we can have maybe sometime but just another random thing that I was doing because I was literally trying to do like Drive Gmail password um you know YouTube data YouTube music data and like so so much of it was like oh photos like it's a nightmare like there's just so much data and even when you're trying to go just from one account in Google to another account there are ways to a Google takeout and all that sort of stuff but a lot of it still is kind of like manual and just annoying um so I don't know just if you're if you're in that market I mean I'm happy to chat about it at some point but if you're in the if you're in that stage where you're trying to do something like that just know that you're you're going to be in for some work you know to say the least so there's that um there's just a random aside there uh we got from Ann here I would I would love to refas your topic to is building professional websites easy yeah 100% so um yeah we'll dive into that that's that's another good point there because there is a distinction there and I think a lot of times like we kind of forget that and I want to make sure that we try to preface the thing the conversations that we're having appropriately so I do think that there's there's there's a good bit of nuance there Jackson appreciate you being here ch as well thank you so much uh what we got here we're talking about the Google debate let me let me slide back over to our um our screen here for a second just a couple quick announcements that we're diving into more the topics here I was on the tonic last week great gang as always first time chatting with uh some of these guys specifically Jason over from uh WP engine extremely smart guy um you know hope to learn more from him and a lot of other people moving forward in this space but um this was a good chat uh I felt this was like very insightful in a lot of ways if you haven't caught it I dropped the link in the in the chat there but a lot of different topics that we were kind of talking about at the beginning talking a lot about like kind of the things that I'm going to speak to a little bit here in this stream just kind of like WordPress and you know it's just a again every week is not as eventful as others but there's always things that we're talking about because we're always trying to move this type of thing forward I guess and just kind of give our perspectives and our opinions on everything so that's pretty there's nothing new there it's just we're we're always just we're always just talking about it I feel like so which I think is good um and then I'm excited for this later with um with uh Kevin Gary uh on the top on the tonic here in about like an hour or so so that'll be kind of uh interesting to see because again I love everyone's perspective it's awesome um so we're going to check those off there and then a couple other random things Brendan and I Brendan oconnell if you're not following him already on YouTube you should definitely do that he sent me over this thing and and um this is just a super high level thing if you guys want to see more of this I'll talk about this maybe a little bit later as well I've been struggling kind of personally with my uh I'll drop this link in here and then I'll I'll kind of talk about what I'm talking about I've been struggling personally with trying to find like my area we'll say like my my my specialty in like kind of the WordPress landscape from an agency side but more so from like a content creator side and like kind of just what I want to do because I'm like trying to I'm in that phase of like you know just seeing you know trying to understand everything right so um I've realized that I'm definitely not a designer I've realized that I'm definitely not really like a developer so to speak I kind of have that mind a little bit more than than the I definitely have more of a developer mind than a designer mind but I'm not really in that realm so where this where this really breaks down and where you guys kind of like really come into the picture here is like I want to make sure that I'm continuing to provide value I know one thing I really like to talk about these weird like psychological philosophical like big topics like these macro things so I'm not going to stop doing that I love that I think I hope you guys have appreciated that to some degree but I also want to make sure that I'm still providing like tangible value as well if I can so I think one of the ways that I'm going to experiment with that further is things closer to like more the dynamic data type of like situation um and the way this all re revolves back to and relates back to what I just posted there that little apis thing is like uh Brenan oconnell uh shot me that over there the other day because I I think we should do some more content around that because I think there is a Gap there where people and this is going to this is all going to play in there's a lot of preamble to what we're going to talk about with the WordPress stuff like being easy is like there is a lot that you can do with this platform regardless of what you think about each individual piece of it there's a lot you can do with a lot that I've done with a lot of other like Bren and other people have done with it it's amazing and but you have to know that it's possible you have to understand that it's possible and then you have to go figure out how to do it so um this API thing is something that I hear a lot about the WordPress API creting other apis D whatever and I want to dive more into the things that are more dynamic because I am terrible at making things look pretty but I'm pretty good at making things Dynamic and making things cool in that way so I want to dive into that more I want to talk more about that I want to explore that look forward to more content like that if you have any ideas there or anything you're struggling with let me know we'll do our best to uh make that happen with some examples some different live streams videos whatever uh but it's something I'm thinking about so uh I'm looking into this API situation cuz I want to see I would love to do stuff with the YouTube API I think that might be a little little little intermediate rather than beginner is but um we'll start somewhere and we'll play around with that so just wanted to throw that guy that out there because that's something we're we're thinking about and if you guys have any thoughts let me know Eric good to see you brother uh thank you so much and yeah definitely let me know about the dynamic playlist if that helps at all um thank you for being here appreciate it and content around Dynamic data would be great it's astonishing how few people know simple it is once you figure out yeah 100% I mean there's just I mean there's a lot of power there regardless of what you're using obviously again with the dynamic data series it's like custom post types custom Fields uh relationships so that's like I would say more like level level oneish and then I feel like getting into apis and things like that is probably like the next step up because there are some tools that make it easier but you have to like understand you have to understand a little bit more maybe you have to get closer to code certain aspects it just you know it's a little more daunting upfront I feel like at least for me uh so that's why I want to jump into that because I think we have a lot of opportunity there um breaking it down for people will open up worlds 100% am I developer uh I would say the easy answer to that question is no I know HTML I know CSS I know a little bit of JavaScript I did use actual I did code in Java when I was in college but do I write code every day no can I read code depending on what it is yeah but I would not classify myself as a developer um um design code web I would not so yeah um but yeah Brandon appreciate you being here brother yes sir um thank you for adding little the hashtag Q on there design code web appreciate that yeah definitely definitely uh good practice there sweet so yeah okay uh another thing and going to love this here is um I actually had a a chat with uh Thomas kwiz of grade co-founder I believe right is this title um and uh fantastic convo that was on Friday and we talked a little bit about grade because we did the speed bu Build Challenge together and I had never really I mean I'd seen gr a little bit talked to Ann everything like that obviously about it we had the bridge Builders episodes recently you guys go see that on Matty Eastwood's Channel um but grade is I mean we're not going to I'll do a separate thing or maybe we'll do something together or whatever like a live stream with Thomas and like whatever we want to do here like more deeper dive on on grade but I'm going to give my top level opinion on this right now based on what I saw and and actually I have a Dev environment Now set up with grade just like kind of on on the dev server just to kind of play around with this uh but I'm going to give you the high level okay based on the few hours of experience that I have with the platform talking to people that use it talking to the you know members of the team and things like that because I really uh I really really like just like to just like to give you some thoughts so if we look at grade here for a second let me explain what this is uh grade is I hope I explain it decently this is my interpretation grade is like I'm going to liken grade and I think it's important to use kind of a comparison and then you can dive into like what the specifics grade is not like it's more like generate press than it is like bricks so to speak okay grade is a theme and a plugin and a Litany of other things okay I'm definitely simplifying here but it is it extends the block edit it utilizes the block edit extends that extends like Gutenberg and like that type of thing okay now regardless of what your feelings are on that okay regardless of what your feelings on like the core of wpr I promise you that if you go download grade for free and you play with it you will be blown away by like what it is I'm not saying switch from whatever the hell you're using that's not what I'm saying okay I'm saying if you're if you are the type of person that's heard a lot about like WP core and the Gutenberg project and you watch different things and you're like wow this is like this is hard to do and all that sort of stuff and it's limiting if like the word limiting at all comes into your vocabulary you have to at least like download grade for free and watch it I'm not getting paid to say any of this okay I would I will let you know moving forward if I get paid to say any of this stuff but it's always going to be my opinions um like I just I just talked to Thomas I've talked to an I've seen it in action and I'm thinking this is all of the stuff that I hear people talk about when they say like hey what would you change about WordPress what would you put in there and people are like oh I want ACF Pro functionality baked in I want like a really good form Builder I want Da whatever I don't disagree with any of that I'm just saying like grade is one of the ones that I've actually used and maybe the other ones do have it as well I've never I haven't dove into generate press at all either but grade is like it opened my eyes when I actually saw it a little deeper um Thomas gave me the demo I've played around with it for for a few minutes I watched an use it there's just a lot of potential there and there's a lot of different things that are going on not to even mention the idea of the ecosystem so to speak and the like functionality that gives you as a as an agency okay um and I'm and I don't use grade yet like like I said I'm in the very infancy so these opinions may change like we may see whatever but like my point is that it is I'm just trying to bring a little bit of awareness to it because I do think that like for some people this would be something that they would absolutely be like wow that is really interesting uh you'd have to do your own research you have to dive in more you have to see if it works for you I'm just telling you that like to me as putting my agency hat on and thinking about I'm like this is really interesting because because it's closer to core it extends a lot of things it gives a lot more functionality in a lot of certain ways and it also makes it's built for like somebody that wants to be a professional like agency web developer web designer you know web admin and have all these different sites kind of like either connected via multisite or connected via you know a different way there's just a lot there okay there's a lot of conversation last thing I'll say about it is that this page right here the grade pricing page is the thing that always comes up from the conversations that I've seen with grade and I even brought up to Thomas and there's a huge conversation to be had about this concept here but this is startling to some people and the reason I think it's startling is because traditionally if you look at everything everything is extremely underpriced for the value that we can create for the amount of money that the tools are that's a big nuanced conversation again we're just we're just scratching the surface of all this maybe we can talk more about this and other more specifics in future streams and videos but I'm just saying like you can download thing for free you can see everything but then if you want to jump into it you can see like $69 per month for up to 12 sites 24 uh or 240 uh 9 per month for 36 sites and then the big one you know is like 4 450 a month for unlimited sites I just I need to say this as well I truly appreciate this typ type of model and like the actual pricing things to like more of a sustainable level because if you are charging 450 a month for unlimited websites like you know that this money is going to actually help them sustain the product make it better and things like that this is obviously we're using grade as the example here but I I would be happy to pay more money if it meant that you know this if I if I knew that the tool that I was using was going to be more sustainable like the actual business behind it was more sustainable so I do think that we're seeing that I've seen people talk about like inflation and stuff like that in the WordPress realm I don't I personally don't even think we're at inflation level like I don't think this is inflation I think this is like proper Brit business practice like that type of that type of model there we can all we can all have a a whole discussion about that like I said if you have thoughts let me know but if you think about and you run those numbers if you pricing your stuff accordingly then then they then those tools become they're still insignificant the numbers so this is definitely different than a lot of other things you may have seen um but it's something to consider it's something to uh to think about because I do think that as more companies start to realize that they need to sustain their businesses and their their development teams and all that sort of stuff and we're using these tools to make money you're going to see more of that so just a high like like I said High L overview of what I've seen so far with grade what I've experienced um you know kind of the the pricing model and things like that I'm looking forward to making more content talking more people about it seeing more demos and seeing how people utilize everything but I will leave it with grade is very interesting to me that's that's the high level there um Rob Cooper thank you so much for being here appreciate it uh I've been doing this for a long so so long that I remember when everyone switched to subscriptions rather than one single price I think it was Pippen uh sport yeah I mean so that's a that's a good point there too I thought about this a lot because some people are like really like anti subscription and I don't disagree with that entirely however I wonder because again I'm I'm at the point now where like I I I like I just know that most things are going to be a subscription right but I wonder I I literally wonder about this and I and and don't get me wrong I definitely love a good LT okay but at the same time like I would probably never offer an LTD if I had a product Because unless it like a super like once in a while type thing because that literally makes no business sense like sustainability wise you have to support somebody that that bought the thing for like you know $200 or something for the lifetime of all of all like I mean I I don't know maybe somebody maybe I just smack my microphone maybe somebody can tell me differently but it just the subscription model makes sense to me from the sense of sustainability for the business and actually giving a about your product because then you have to pay the people like this stuff isn't free the support isn't free the you know the de the further development of the product isn't free and I feel like as we're all business people like we should kind of understand those Concepts um and uh my question would be like super simple super simplified just on this topic here real quick is like back when like Windows or whatever just has whatever whatever the an example of something that used to be one price and now is a subscription when you when you were back then and you paid like let's just make up a scenario $100 for Windows maybe that's like a yearly thing so it's not a great idea but like something that was subscription wise but you pay one time like do you was the concept that they were never going to fix any stuff like they didn't have to pay anybody to improve that maybe that again maybe that's a bad example I'm just saying like if I only paid like one time for Netflix why why do I think that they would give me more for like what would that price even be you know what I mean I don't know it's a different discussion we can come up with some examples and we can chat about that at some point but that's that's just my high level on that WP WP minute mattos go subscribe to WP minute um it's easy if you're an agency owner and you want to leverage the entire grade stack plus process 6K a year to serve your entire client base is an easy trade 100% yeah I mean uh I'm not saying it's for everyone I'm not saying it's even necessarily for me right now I'm just saying it's interesting it's an interesting for multiple different reasons uh but you have to think and this this goes back to kind of what Ann said earlier because everything starts to mold together as far as like professional agency building more things being more of a presence in the space whatever like you have to want to build a lot of websites or like you want you have to be profitable value and profit like Matt mados always tells me right so you have to like want that you have to you have to plan for that you have to strategize for that and if this is something that you bought into right then the 6,000 a year or whatever the number comes out to like that would make sense like hypothetically if you were using and leveraging this and you made one website for $10,000 you're profitable I'm oversimplifying again but my point is that like you have to be of the mind that you're going to build websites that are going to be profitable based off of the tools that you're using and the prices that you're paying for the tools you're using so um I don't know I would love to dive more into that if you guys want to see more content I don't know how many like actual agency I'm lost on the demographics at this point like I don't know who in this in this in this community but in general like there's agency owners there's product owners there's people that just mess around with WordPress there's people that are developers in WordPress there's a whole hodg Podge here it depends on what we want to talk about but I'm I love talking about the process side of things because that's just kind of how my mind you know kind of works I feel like um i' a couple videos I think I did a live stream before on like agency process and stuff like that it's on the channel you can search for it but um I'd love to talk more about that stuff if it if it makes sense for people just uh whatever you guys kind of feel like at some point too uh there are some PL plugins I bought once and it just keeps working one old plugin became a security wrist uh I had an AI update and it's fine yeah I mean that's you know this is a that's the beauty of of a lot of the things that we kind of have I guess I mean there's there's those options to um I don't know if you want to call it like an open source benefit to a degree like kind of with something a little bit like that but like yeah I mean if stuff works necessarily you know there's an argument there and not fix it as well um but yeah I mean there's uh there's all sorts of things there I'm glad that AI was able to help that's that's helpful uh Charlie 2 point LTS work uh as generally a lot of people buy them but then never use the product also it helps you bootstrap product no for sure I think they're I think that's definitely a really good a really good um strategy to consider there I've seen that many times where like a product comes out and they for an LTD for like a limited time um I just think that if you sold it to everyone then it might be a little rough because how are you going to continue to have like a sustainable uh income with those types of things so I think that's definitely definitely a strategy to consider and maybe one day if I ever get to the product level I will consider that as well all right so let's dive into this couple of these other things here obviously we scratched the surface a little bit um let me quickly go over to my screen here see if there's anything crazy that we uh that I missed just from this past week I mean again a lot of good content here um and I I should drop my like subscription list somewhere at some point so you guys can all subscribe to everyone but a lot of good things from jamy Jackson um obviously Mt over WP minute um trying to think if there's anything crazy that stood out to me again like I said just kind of a just kind of a a chill week which is nice for a change right can we all agree I was getting a little tired all right so let's so let's let's jump over here all right so a couple things that I want to kind of talk about and then we're going to go through my my Twitter feed here if you're not following me on Twitter definitely go or what do I keep calling on Twitter it's called X now um if I go um if you go over there and follow me I'd appreciate it but there's some interesting things that I talked about and real quick I want to kind of mention that there is this concept it's not really a concept just something that happens like sometimes like you'll you'll tweet something thing okay and you will get picked up by the algorithm like the for you section and you'll get like way more like views on the thing than you actually have followers that happened to me this week we'll talk about that and and again it all runs in line with like is WP like easy and everything like that the first thing I want to talk about um actually we'll just we'll just jump into it here and we'll uh we'll kind of talk about that type of thing first we'll read this from Peter here uh subscriptions are good one issue I run into is features that I that I want but are only available in more expensive subscriptions options that also add a lot of site licenses yeah I'm not like super keen on that either that is definitely a critique that I have of certain subscription models uh the way that they lay them out and everything that that's that's kind of annoying because um yeah there's definitely examples of that where like you're paying a ton and you're not you know you're not getting uh you're not utilizing all the licenses but you needed the features so I defin I definitely understand that in certain cases um don't know if there's a way around that I don't know if you can just I don't I don't know better way but um yeah I'm not I'm not a super big fan of that but I kind of understand it but yeah I'm not a super fan so something to consider for sure there uh all right so let's talk about these couple big things here like I said I launched a client website this week and uh we'll go we'll go in reverse chronological here real real quick here so I launched this client website and uh the high level is that I ended up tweeting this and that was kind of funny but um but I I should actually probably like talk maybe a little bit more to uh Courtney over at GoDaddy or or GoDaddy directly or whatever but I but but I want to talk about this for a moment because I I think it's a there's a bigger conversation to be had here so I tweeted it's actually kind of amazing how awful how every how awful every experience I've had with GoDaddy has been now you know I it's a little it's a little it's a little much it's not that bad but godaddy's big company but but um little snarky I'll give you that but here's my thing I launch a website that website is doesn't have anything to do with GoDaddy like the actual main domain it's actually Network Solutions which is also kind of shitty uh but but then I launch that website and that's fine and then I go over to GoDaddy because there's like a separate situation like a domain that needs to needs to redirect all I'm trying to do is redirect a domain that has a website built with like website uh website builder on GoDaddy over to this new website basically just a new domain a specific page on the thing I will take blame I'm happy to be proven wrong or take blame on any of this but the the go but it's kind of like a joke at this point right I feel like like a running joke how like bad like pieces of God Daddy are you know whatever like so much so like I hear it a lot okay so I'm again I'm in the observation thing I'm not trying to on it necessarily I'm just trying to like give my perspective so I've heard that and then I actually I have to deal with it occasionally right because some clients have like domains and stuff and I don't normally have like a crazy amount of issues but every single time I go in there there's like just some sort of issues I'll give you literally this case two nights ago I try to go on there and I can't even log in to the client's delegate access piece like I have access full access and every time I'm going in there like nothing is loading okay this is this is the thing is like we talk about and we give like WordPress like sometimes or like we're critiquing things about that and then we go to we deal with a company like GoDaddy who to my from my understanding is a large corporation with a ton of money and the stuff doesn't work when like a professional needs to do something with it like it literally wasn't loading I'm like I'm trying to go into the domain I click the manage domain thing which the UI is a cluster but like I click the manage domain thing and the stuff doesn't even load now again I looked into like maybe like I have a extension that's messing with something maybe I have like all sorts of stuff I tried it okay I tried everything I'm I'm not like an idiot okay I'm not like a beginner either this and this is the other thing I know I'm know I'm all the place here but this and I'm not picking on this one specifically I'm trying to give you like I always do this I try to like use one example and make it more macro I am not a beginner can you imagine how bad this would be for a beginner they wouldn't know what the hell they're doing theyd be calling support like it's just a bad business practice to have the be confusing or not work and I'm not saying it can't I'm not saying it always needs to be perfect I'm just saying I've he this isn't the first time I've heard this you know what I mean so it's just confusing the whole the whole process is confusing to me as far as where we're at with that so I try to go in there I try to click manage the the domain and it the stuff doesn't load like I can't even get to the point where you say like redirect the domain forward the domain whatever so I forget about that until the next day which if that was an actual situation and that was you know urgent it wasn't but if it was urgent now what am I doing am I contact support like what it's just it's I don't know I try to not contact support with every product because I don't want to bog them down I know it's there for a reason but I try I'm the type of person and I know people that are the complete opposite okay I'm the type of person that I'm going to try this 10 different ways before I contact support and I feel like that is the customer that you kind of want to have because you don't want to be flooded with stupid requests in your support but there's a lot of people especially when the when the platform is not either optimized or or you know just is is rough in certain ways like you're going to get a ton of that so I'm just I'm just thinking about all this right I can't click manage I click it go to the next day next day I come in the same environment it's not a it's not a a a an extension issue I hop in there I'm able to get in there I'm like okay that's super strange but whatever so I get in there and then the way in which the the redirection everything like that works is you can connect the site to something else it's not even really clear off the bat if it is using the website builder that that GoDaddy has that's in kind of a separate PL place I think they've recently changed the again to like a GoDaddy pro hub situation so there's all sorts of that going on and then you go in there and like somehow I changed some I disconnected it from the current site well the first thing I did was I tried to forward it to the to the URL the page that I wanted to go to and for 12 hours it was just offline like it like it was there was something going on there all I did was I changed did followed the exact tutorial that a beginner would would would I put the you know an HT GPS uh 301 permanent redirect to the thing and for like 12 hours that site was offline like you couldn't you went to this this uh secondary domain that I'm talking about and it wouldn't redirect to the page I wanted to again it wasn't big deal in my case just based on my circumstances but it was still like what the hell I thought DNS is a sometimes right it's got a propag I'm like I'll just let it I'll let it sit there so none of that happened it didn't work like I don't know what the hell was going on then I go back in and I'm like okay let me just like basically rip out everything for the most part cuz I don't need this other website anymore let me rip out everything and then redirect it like rip out kind of the DNS and I and I disconnected something and somehow I'm not in the DNS portion I'm in like the redirect portion and I clicked the button and it took all of the goddamn DNS records out for the Office 365 stuff that that still is needed on that domain and I'm like what the that is not how any other like good DNS situation setup I've ever dealt with it doesn't redirecting has nothing to like I know it has something to do with d NS but I'm saying it doesn't like have anything inherently to do with like those records that you would think like if you're redirecting something you're not even like you're not even close to like the MX situation of what you're of what you're messing with which I know I've done it before a long time ago right I've screwed up MX records it's not fun right but I'm saying like that whole thing the ux is the ux is it's un it's remarkable and I go back in DNS settings like I didn't I purposefully did not come over here to with any of this stuff and now my records are gone fortunately huge up here I'm not trying to just be all negative there is a way that you can just go it's like if you if you purchase the the office through there Office 365 you click basically one button it puts all the DNS settings back because it's like hey your emails aren't going to work luckily it knew that and it put it all back but I'm just saying that's that's rough so then after all of that I ripped out again like the forwarding things the rules that had on there or whatever and then I put in the new forwarding Rule and eventually it ended up working still one problem and I and I researched this and I saw things that I I know would work but still don't it's not where it needs to be when you want to redirect abc123.com to another URL the problem that you're going to run into is abc123.com cont about right if it was a previous website which in this case that was the situation now what happens in this setup that I've been talking about for the last 10 minutes is abc123.com doeses redirect to where I wanted to go that's perfect however slash contact slout whatever gives a 404 now in I know that there's ways to do that via like hxs or whatever it was built with website builder I'm not going in and around with whatever that is and I don't even know if it like has specifically hosting or whatever whatever like kind of handled it because it wasn't WordPress it wasn't any of that my point is this is so much more difficult than other platforms have made it when I used to have Google domains and even like other other things like you could just say redirect every W like a wild card redirect everything after that redirect it and I don't understand why that's not possible at least in the current go anything so I'm done venting about that bitching about that whatever all I'm saying is that it's it's crazy how like difficult that simple situation was and I think about it as me and it's like okay I figured out whatever it's fine but everyone else is going to be so pissed off like so many so many beginners because that's where that platform is marketed to is are going to be so pissed off about that situation and then you have what I would what I would classify as a lot of professionals that I'm sure there's some that love it but like a lot of professionals that get pissed like this and then they're just like annoyed by it so I'm trying to look at the meta of that situation um you know I wish everybody a good you know continued success and everything but like that's I I just don't know how to I don't know how to react to that so I know we got some comments so let's see um bam you're right the staff doesn't always load or the the stuff doesn't always it's just it's confusing I don't understand yeah please do talk to Courtney Robinson she Rock sorry I had to drop off yeah all good appreciate being here an um yeah I know Courtney does fantastic fantastic job over there and it's awesome that she's in the community so I definitely want to talk more about it um I'm not trying like I said I'm not trying to like be completely shitty towards GoDaddy I'm just trying to like understand all those things that I was talking about like why why is it like that like what are we like it's it's not like I'm trying to do something crazy you know what I mean like I feel like that's like a very regular thing so I don't know could you not add Cloud flare name servers than manage through CF I mean 100% so that's what I did for the main site um and thinking about it yeah that's probably the way I will just give you a bit more Nuance to this certain situation there is an IT provider that's in the mix as well so I already had to tell them about the claf flare situation on the other domain that was the Network Solutions area so now I have now I would have to like move this one over to Cloud flare as well this website doesn't even have like a um like a website built into it so I mean yeah it definitely could Clare is 100% a viable option but like for this level of Simplicity like the like the smallest thing that I was trying to do I I I could have done that but I don't see why I would have had to because nobody's going to that website they're just they're it's just a it's just not anymore they're just moving through it so definitely a good definitely a good suggestion there Charlie I just don't feel like it was it would have been necessary but probably would have saved me some time and some some energy possibly I don't know um often run into services that try to make everything easy by anticipating and thinking for you and that ultimately makes everything so much more difficult um once you stray away from their methods yeah and I mean honestly pertaining to this situation again not trying to go super deep on on on GoDaddy but they are the example here like I don't even feel like they try to make it easy in this case like they're just it's just like there's it's marketed as easy it's marketed as like I feel like to a beginner sense and then they have the pro piece of it I guess now as well they do have a lot of cool things like a lot a lot of there's certain ones don't even have delegate access and all that so that's cool that concept uh but but yeah it's just there's like 177,000 buttons to click you never know where you're kind of going and um I don't know really more than anything like I said it's just for me it's just it's just a really cool and interesting case study into like how a large company operates I think a lot of times I might have like a weird like a weird um misconception about how good big companies actually are at like understanding their customers and providing good products but really they're just good at selling like that's really what it is like at the end of the day I'm not saying that's a that's a gross overgeneralization but I'm saying and I'm not I'm not saying that GoDaddy does doesn't have value obviously they provide value they're they're a big company but I'm saying like those little minutia things that like we take for granted I feel like at least myself is like so simple and so easy and like is probably like 95% of the people on their platform are going to have to do at some point and it's not it's not a revolutionary concept and it's not easy it's like it's a weird it's a weird thing in my head that I just can't fully wrap my head around uh go data definitely that has issues and and used to be even worse uh they are also a great supporter of WP have folks directly involved in sponsor events it's frustrating how good and not they can be at the same time yeah yeah again kudos to everyone Courtney Love Courtney Love Every everything everybody does not talking about anybody specifically I'm just talking about the platform in general and I know the devs that work on the platform probably great people I'm just going to assume all of that because I because I believe to be reasonably true until proven otherwise I'm just saying like that it again it's a very interesting uh combination of thoughts that I have on all that cuz it's just it's just a wild situation so pray for improvement I'm often wonder how many support resources at a place like good add exists solely to help end users navigate the UR yeah I mean that's a t that's a tough thing too like I mean I literally watched the video and followed the exact steps said the outcome was going to happen and it didn't happen and again I'm not trying to be a complete reductionist here or whatever like I understand the web is very complex place and there's no way you could create like resources that that that are so nuanced that they're going to work in every situation I get all that maybe there's something really weird about that account that I was dealing with perhaps but again with my experience and knowledge like I couldn't see any of that and again I don't even know if I'm the main person dealing with you know that with that product that platform so like the main demographic dealing with it so it's very it's just all whole very interesting um did I miss what you're trying to do I ared late what's up Andrew thank you for being here um no it's kind of just talking about uh god daddy I was literally just trying to redirect and forward a you a domain to a new website it was a website build with GoDaddy website builder and that website is no more so I was just trying to redirect it and I kind of just went on a preamble of like the three different times that I tried to do it uh it was just overall frustrating um not really trying to throw D grow daddy completely under the bus you might think that it's not really the case I'm just trying to explain like on a macro level like how how do those things continue to get better like why are they like that with large companies um and uh I would just love for that process to be easier because I feel like a lot of people are doing that and a lot of them aren't going to try like all the different ways and debugging that like you or I or anybody on this would there's a lot of people that are just like I just want my website to work so it's just an interesting conversation uh WP tots Paul thank you for being here brother um god daddy lost me as a customer when they started calling me and when I put the phone down they phoned me back and spent 10 minutes arguing it yeah I don't I I trying to think if if they've ever I've never I don't know if I've ever actually been a customer I think I bought my my first domain there but other than that I don't think I I think I had hosting at name.com originally and then I moved to cloudways and then grid pain so I don't think I ever really bought too much but again like I said if you're doing agency work you're doing work for other people it is almost statistically impossible I would say that if you build more than like 20 websites not one person is going to have some sort of GoDaddy product I've already had it happened with at least six like people so it's like you're going to get brought into there you're going to get into that into that system system and again I love experiencing different things I like to try to rain things in cuz I want to try to be a little bit more um buttoned up like I used to tell people go go go Google domains and then we'll do you know Cloud flare we'll do this whatever now it's like really the one that I've personally seen like pork bun is pretty good but for most like beginners the other big one that I've seen is like name cheap there's a million others I don't you I'm not affiliated really directly with any of them but my thing is like just like one that is you don't need something super crazy there like God Daddy is actually extremely impressive in what they've done like the like how wide I feel like they've gotten and all the offerings but it's like again please just let me redirect a domain easier you know what I mean like it's crazy um but kuster I mean uh I mean for domains and never hosting yeah yeah I wouldn't I wouldn't I wouldn't do it I'm I would actually I'd love to play devil's advocate here though or just have or answer the question like who I know there's obviously like a ton of people that use like GoDaddy shared hosting as an example but like who could make an argument like as to who that is actually for you know what I like obviously I think a lot of times I I do a lot of introspection on these I think a lot of times I do think like I don't I think that everybody's building like multiple websites which is not the case right you know we go to the WordPress meetups which are great we see people that are building just like one website for their business and they're like trying to navigate WP and it's that could you could write like 16 documentaries on like that on like situations like that like it's just very interesting but um like who is that actually for like who is that self like shared hosting at like a GoDaddy or any other one like actually really benefiting I think it's really just it I feel like to me could could you actually could could you like could there be an argument that shared hosting should be rebranded at least said to be like entry level hosting like is that is that I don't even know I just I don't it's a weird situation but yeah um Andrew Palmer uh let's see what we got here uh yeah go Daddy can be difficult if you don't use it regularly I have to I've had a bad experience I've not had bad experience with them I have a few clients who give me delegate access and it's all good yeah I mean I don't know it's just different I mean like I was said I I think I said before you got in Here Andrew like I mean I literally logged in I clicked I had delicate access I logged in the thing wouldn't even load like and again I checked uh extensions all that the next day the exact situation wasn't loading again I understand the web sometimes happens totally get it but um just weird you know the the reliability piece of it seemed a little weird too but um I'm happy that other people have good experiences uh that's I I like that um I've had to use their support on half on behalf of clients they are pretty helpful but I wouldn't use them hosting and moving uh move domains pork bun yeah I've heard good things about pork bun I've I've heard good things I mean maybe I've used GoDaddy sport maybe once or twice too I think their support is good I hope their support's good because absolutely needs to be um cheap asses on shared hosting uh Pros for Pro Hosting it's actually pretty good interesting okay yeah so I mean um yeah I mean I don't know that's that's the other thing too is like I mean I know it's cheap and everything like that I'm just I'm wondering like is there is there validity to the idea of like saying shared hosting as like entry-level host in and it should obviously maybe as a company you're not going to sell it like that but like if you ever say the word shared hosting and you're at and you're unbiased like should you always kind of like also say hey you're probably not going to be on here forever because it doesn't scale well like what's the limit I literally didn't know any of these questions the that I talk about is the stuff that I had to learn from you know guys like Paul guys like whoever like like just the stuff that like you would literally have no idea coming into this into this into this industry and you're just like uh yeah I mean shared host like it's sometimes it's like we we don't lie about it but we're like not 100% honest about it's like shared hosting I got like like five people on my website at one time I got one person on my website while I'm in the back end and it useless like it's like it's confusing I don't understand I don't like we like what's the what is the the reality of the situation so we don't like you know kind of tell these tell these people oh yeah go grab this and then it's like in five minutes you're going to be like you know assuming assuming you're trying to build up something and get people to your websites like in five minutes you're going to be like oh this sucks you know what what can I do and then and then you'll lose business because people can't it's just it's very strange whole different topic and of itself but we should probably talk about that one day um haven't seen tests in a while but it feels worse slower than other shared hosting I've tried yeah I don't know I don't have data here I don't have data so we're speculating to a certain degree completely agree as the as the name change at your level is a great name yeah I mean I think that's just the way that I've seen it I mean it was literally entry level for me it's really good to get your feet wet and see how to build or like what hosting actually is um but it very quickly if you want to do anything more than just like if you want to have more than one person on your website I'm again I'm maybe exaggerating there but literally that was the type of experience for me like it was so slow to update everything it was slow to to do any content at it's uh just because of the nature of that of that technology like this this situation of shared hosting I'm not saying it should go away I'm not saying nobody should ever have it but you have to like go into that or at least be quickly understand that that's kind of I feel like the way it is and everybody here knows that it's just I feel like that's another situation that uh is interesting in our space so yeah uh all right so let's um let's dive into this here real quick so we talked about GoDaddy again I wish him the best got to talk to Courtney and everybody more about that um like I said no no no harm I'm just I'm just giving my experience uh a couple things here this is so I I talked about this a little bit earlier and I like you're not following on Twitter sometimes I post funny things or insightful things maybe I don't know depends on who you are what you think but this was the one recently that I thought was really interesting uh that it got kind of like slightly picked up or whatever I mean you know by the algorithm so it's got like 3,000 or some views or whatever and it's always little like this it's always like weird little sightful questions I'm going to try to start posting them more often some of them are good some of them probably suck but this question here uh if you if you gave your thoughts on it appreciate it if you liked it whatever appreciate that like is building WordPress websites easy I have to give you the context on this and then we can go through some of these and we can kind of talk about some different stuff and things like that because there's a lot of different good ideas and thought processes and perspective on here um and we'll just kind of like kind of run through a couple things um so let's let's dive into that let me read uh let me read these real quick brenon unpopular opinion but restrict number restrict number and types of plugins allowed on shared hosting it gets a bad reputation from people trying to run learn Dash and woo while importing 2K records I mean 100% are you saying do that because I think I mean I think that that's a good idea um yeah I mean we dive into the concept of like should you like how much are you letting them do anything anyway right like install their own plugins and stuff like that I mean there's like we I mean I haven't even heard that we haven't even dove into that recently I feel like it's always been like don't touch it or at the content I mean adding plugins and stuff now it's like they're actually editing like the technical you know aspect of the website like I just saw somebody say today like what would you change about WordPress and they were like plug-in conflicts I'm like I haven't had a plug-in conflict in I don't want to say years but like nothing that I've built recently is had a plug-in conflict because my stack is so tight right like there's certain little tiny things here and there but never something like that actually like destroys anything but you could absolutely have that happen with one activation tap in the in the directory so I that's that's a whole another conversation but that's an important thing I would 100% but I mean the one thing I would say there about that Brandon is that I don't know enough about wordpress.com but I feel like isn't that kind of sort of what that is like where you can't like maybe maybe it's different now or maybe it's different on different tiers but like that concept is good and I don't and I don't disagree with it and I feel like it it just makes total sense and maybe it's already in certain certain ones maybe maybe not every platform maybe like wordpress.com I can't I feel like it it used to be like that but regardless I I think that is a good strategy but I also think that that concept is is bigger like it's a bigger conversation that actually goes beyond just the technical nature of the the resources it goes more towards like the actual business practice so to speak and like just making sure your life doesn't suck I don't know uh I have a client on unlimited blue host shared hosting it's a nightmare and I charge at least three hours for a 10-minute amend that uh is how long it takes yeah I mean it's just everything is slower it's crazy it's wild so I definitely I I feel for you there hell yeah Isaac yeah man got the you got the hell yeah on the uh on the thing over here on this uh on this tweet so so yeah so we got um is building WordPress website's easy we have a ton of great people here that have that have shared the perspective we'll go through some of the cool ones here um real quick let me give you kind of the context that kind of inspired that and it's it's related it's not like a Ono one but it's interesting I had a consultation type call with um somebody that is outside of the WordPress space they are in the marketing space more so in like we'll call like like video though and they're trying to get more into digital so I would say like video would be just like more like you know video marketing digital is more like um uh more holistic okay and it's niched right so it's niched to a particular industry and that type of thing dabbling with that awesome I love more people trying to do cool okay the the the the call was about WordPress um because this individual doesn't really like have like a lot of like like WordPress so to speak knowledge a lot of marketing knowledge but not specifically WordPress and as we know WordPress can be a little bit of a like bunch of stuff going at you all at once and there's like a million different ways to do everything and if you're brand new to it very powerful but also very very tough to to navigate or do well um so we know that and then so the question becomes like at a high level is like should we go web flow for this like agency offering should we go a different platform should we go WordPress and there's a lot of agencies that are actually doing this with WordPress and they're doing it well obviously and I'm and I'm not but I'm not talking about I don't need to go super deep into this in in this example I feel like for you guys to understand what I'm talking about when I say is word is building WordPress websites easy obviously there is a super vague question okay it's meant to be vague because I want I want the people to to express their thoughts on it I love asking vague questions because sometimes with certain things because then it gives people the opportunity to like interpret the question and give their perspective on it specific questions have their own place but like the vaguity like like it it it helps understand kind of like what the people's like quick reaction are right and the reason I asked it was because that is what I got out of the call that I had with that individual because it was like I was explaining WordPress I was trying to be slightly I was trying to be much more realistic than optimistic about what WordPress is WordPress is a beast it can be simplified and I could like think of a strategy to like to like deploy for like a you know a digital niched agency that the problem is though this is where like I feel like a lot of times word press people depending on your level of like business savvy or just business interaction like how much you give a about business versus technical this is where like it really breaks down for a lot of people a lot of times they think that the technology is just going to be easy like it it like that part is not important or not that it's not important but like the website isn't as important as like maybe the paid ads or like the other pieces maybe it's like a video offering maybe it's like a graphic design offering whatever and it's just like what can we do for like the simplest minimum viable product of a of a of a website the answer to that question is so goddamn vast like I could answer that a million different ways like I don't even like it's a hard question to answer because it has so many answers like viable answers so like in that in that specific conversation I brought up a another agency that was uh known between the two of us and was referenced and I was like well the best I can do for you is I can tell you exactly how this other agency is doing it from a technical perspective okay so I brought up the other agency I brought up some case studies and I was like all right they're using uh they're using Avada they're using uh WP rocket they're using rank math they're using WP engine for hosting they're using this whatever okay and I'm like I don't I literally don't know what else to tell you because if you go into a situation like that where you want to make money as a digital agency in a niched environment and you don't have the technical this isn't this isn't a dig I'm just saying if you if you objectively don't have the technical uh knowledge in that realm to build that you are going to be so when you get in there and you think I can just spin up uh some hosting I can throw a vot on there I can build a template I can clone it and I can do it I'm not telling you not to do it okay I think I always lean a little bit more towards I'm thinking of all the problems that could happen rather than all the than opportunities in the pros there probably some good and bad in in that line of thinking but I just I just can't like I'd rather go into a situation knowing like thinking about how bad this could be rather than like how great it could be and then I'll go in I'll know the things to look out for and then I'll just make sure that I'm kind of moving in that direction so I don't know it I it's a very it's a nuanced topic but the reason I'm asking the question is because of that and again we can go through some of the things I don't know if any of that kind of specifically made sense or resonated with any of you guys but that is I have this conversation pretty frequently with people outside of the WordPress realm and it's difficult because I know what it can do and I know how to do it but it's like I've been here for a while right and you guys a lot of you guys have been here longer than I have it's like what do we tell these people like that are that are that are newer and they want to spin stuff up and they think and and then there's a secondary piece of this I'll touch you on I'll read the comments and we'll go back to the other stuff we'll go back to the comments and stuff like that on the thing the last piece that kind of ties it all together is this is this is a different way of thinking about all this other that we've been talking about for the last months okay the the difference here is that the people that don't know WordPress are thinking about WordPress in terms of the other let me explain what I mean I asked the individual on the call let me ask you a question if I told you right now let me preface real quick the pot the the the previous the previous like websites and everything like that the experience we'll just say it's been like web flow maybe other platforms too but at least web flow okay so I said let me ask you a question if you wanted if I told you right now you have to you have to build a WordPress website right with the information that we have and maybe the stuff you garnish online what are you going to do and off the bat the first first answer was they weren't going to do it they were going they were they would have like an assistant to it or whatever which is which is I wish I I wish I delegated better so Props there but my second thing is if I he's like if if if I have to do it then I'm probably going to create a WordPress account some link that into hosting and then go from there and right there I understood that that is a huge disconnect and I'm not saying that a Content doesn't exist on the internet on how to start WordPress websites okay like obviously hopefully that would be the first thing Google it watch a WP toots video watch you know like something else and and figure that out okay but I'm saying like the the the reaction the the the the the instinctual reaction is I have to set up an account like I do with web flow with the Squarespace or whatever and I mean obviously you can go to wordpress.com and do that but then then I kind of went into a little bit of Riff like difference between wordpress.com.do that is what we're dealing with I feel like in a lot of ways and it's not and it's past the point of like is it good bad and different whatever it is just the reality of the situation the world is going like one way in One Direction with a lot of th those thought processes and and WordPress is like a different beast and it's like we while we want it to be for everyone and there's a lot of great things to that there's also these preconceived like mentalities and like thought processes that we are literally completely going against because the other 95% of like those types of products are not doing the the same way again I'm not saying this isn't a better way I'm not saying it's not like a a a good strategy I'm not saying all like open source I'm not saying any of that I'm just saying like we have to be realistic with the reality of the situation this is why I always bring up this rose-colored glasses and everything like that it's like we we just I feel like so much of the mentality is like we're still living in the world where these things weren't more prevalent from a from a an outsider's perspective that's what I'm saying hopefully some of that made sense um Isaac here hot take webflow is reaching serious maturity CMS and scalability for long-term SEO and business goals I don't know enough about web flow's current situation um the only things that I would cite would be like those recent layoffs and stuff or whatever that note that I didn't fully read um I don't know the context around that so I'm not going to go deep on that I'm just cating I don't know if that has anything to do with like their actual business trajectory but that would be the one thing and but yeah I mean I've seen pieces of it I know that a lot of people use it and build great stuff so I don't know that's just I think we'd be silly to not continue to like be real with ourselves on on those types of things uh pav good to see you thank you for being here uh hey Mark I'm facing an issue where I have uh where I've added fluent booking calendar event to free consultation page the issue is is now now due to W rocket event calendar is not opening I excluded the page from the Y still success okay let me read that one more time uh facing an issue I have with fluent booking calendar event okay I think I tried that once free consultation page the issue is now due to rock down calendar event is not opening H um I want to say that's a pretty tough one to diagnose from the comment there uh pav um maybe um I don't know if you can I can't I don't think you can send a link in here you can probably send a link or something if you like remove like the dot like the dot portion or whatever if you can do that or just a little bit more context on that it's Pro I mean I don't I haven't used rocket too much and I used fluent booking I've tried to use fluent booking calendar it's a whole another topic I want I want to use it cuz it's like a basically a cly clone but um but on like more you obviously in Word press but um send me a um why don't you just why don't you do this uh why don't we real quick here I want to I want to I would like to look into that why don't you if you have X shoot me a message on there like with a link or whatever um or more info and we can kind of diagnose that um yeah or fluence support that's a great idea d123 um I will actually that just made me remember something okay when I tried that I think maybe in that video that I talked about if you saw that one I have no idea but um I would I would potentially contact support because if you're having that problem somebody else is definitely having those problems those are not like rarely used plugins I'm sure like sure somebody else is using those two things um the here's the thing that I would say about fluent I'm not saying this is still like this however when I used it I actually had a problem with grid pain like the host like the way that grid pain security kind of is set up and I'm not I'm not I'm not blaming it's just this is one of those conflict things there's a security situation there where I was trying to like hook in uh my Google account do the Google off and it wouldn't let it for that sort of reason so I do think that there's probably potentially like a known thing there or like they might have a really good uh concept of that unless it's some sort of like weird just like WP rocket setting so so yeah definitely take a look at that Brandon appreciate you being here brother go to some work LOL um okay uh what else here is easy okay so let's let's let's just go back over here real quick and we'll kind of we'll kind of slow down and wrap up here with this last one also random thing this this friend thing this is a like a AI thing that you put around your neck and then you have like a friend and you go like talk to it it'll text you and stuff crazy world world we're living in but props to this guy for doing that cuz he's probably getting a ton of publicity uh so yeah it's a really interesting one um let's just go back here and just read a couple of these and then we'll kind of we'll sign off here uh probably pretty soon is building WordPress websites easy again from the context that I had also had a different tweet here that is web design a commodity in 2024 very interesting topics that I'd love to dive into more and actually get more people's opinions on because everybody has a interesting take on everything so um just real quick um when shouldn't it be when when should it be shouldn't it be who defines easy it's great point there from Courtney um I mean I feel like this is a fair question who defines easy at the same time though there is a lot of like I mean there's probably like a colloquial definition of easy especially in a platform where we are trying to get beginners into it and again this is this is way more like deeper than just the core thing I'm I'm not talking about Gutenberg at all here I'm just talking about like the general situation of like WordPress versus the other thing um first part is extremely important though when should it be when shouldn't it be I just think there's a lot of uh conversation to be had there and I don't I don't necessarily have those answers uh hell yeah from Isaac uh Matt says yes great great answer there from Matt uh yes it is develop uh using HTML and CSS need something to be done from Lex here um PHP came I think he had another one as well said yes it is and no it isn't I love that that's what I'm talking about right there yes and no appreciate that um let's just scroll through some of these Brandon it's easier than it has ever been true uhu it's also not easy enough compared yes so I mean it's a yes and a no obviously it's a vague question there are some people that are like staunch like you know in one way or the other um easy if you have the right tools um not at all it's funny um and let's see we got any other ones here based on your goals no and yes uh depends on we know FSC is not beginner friendly at all um I feel like fsse is just different from the time I from a time I used it I I feel like I could understand the structure it was just different than the way Page Builders do it but I don't know searching for how to start WP site is a really major part in all this tutorials can send new users on a very specific path and therefore cause confusion quickly when there are tutorials when other tutorials are viewed that is a really important point there uh Peter and I appreciate you bringing that up yeah it's just tough cuz like I don't know how I don't know how we are I don't know I don't know how we go um I don't know I don't know how we educate people without also like there you can't you probably you can't educate people in every situation in WordPress because there's a million of them so you got to like lean into one pick one and then see what goes from there it's like it's kind of a pros and cons there it's tough I don't know web design on any platform is not easy yeah I'm sorry uh I'm sorry to those that think having a website is a human right it's not yeah yeah so that's that's what I mean is like I think we're at the point now where like it's kind of being commoditized and there's you know like borders maybe on like that whole human right like as an example which is an interesting way to put it like but it's not really like we're just this idea of I I put another tweet out where was it at um did I tweet it yeah this one I wish this one would have got picked up I wish this one would have got picked up but has gotten literally nothing um but I'll tweet it again at some point what are the pros what pros and cons have the web development industry experienced as a result of the immense encapsulation abstraction created by no code tools now again I probably could have worded that differently but my my concept there is like similar to what we're talking about here like there's probably a ton of Pros but there's also probably a ton of cons it's like how do we how do we balance that how do we make sure that like we're not encapsulating to death abstracting things away to death because we can't I feel like we can't lose this the sight of the underlying things that are going on in in the space in the like in the technology of it uh I don't know it's just it's like a weird weird weird spot that we're in but but yeah I don't know there's uh there's there's a lot there's a lot to talk about here probably endless amounts of stuff but um trying to see if there's anything else on my side here I think that's pretty much it I mean I think the verdict is it's it's it's easy and hard um there's a lot of differences in opinions and skill levels and I don't know if weever ever I don't know if we will ever find an actual answer um Andrew Palmer WordPress is essentially a platform rock in a hard place as there's literally no onboarding WordPress yeah yeah I mean that's that's another thing I've heard people talk about about to is you know should we should we uh have an onboarding thing I mean there's there's I feel like there's an argument to be made for like very simple basic onboarding of like just understanding what WordPress is but it would pretty much start and stop there like it'd be like it's a platform you can do a bunch of on it have fun you know like it's it's like I don't know how much more you could get like there's there is some things and depending on how much more they put into it you know there's a way to do that but um it's a wild it's it's a wild place um can't wait to see how it continues to evolve and uh you know hopefully we'll be here for uh you know a part of it and uh hopefully we'll contribute to the conversation in some form but um yeah guys this has been great I appreciate all the comments all the thoughts all the perspectives I really appreciate it um I love hearing about it and uh if you have any more definitely let me know uh you know hit me up or next every Thursday 11:00 a.m. eastern we will be here we'll be chatting about this and a bunch of other things if you have any topics you want me to cover specifically let me know like I said earlier I've kind of been re-evaluating my life so to speak in the WordPress realm I want to make sure that I'm keeping add adding value but I want to like lean into things that I feel like I'm the best at or can provide the most value in so still searching on that also I know it's approaching rapidly I don't know how we're already in August I will be at word Camp Us in September if you are there I would love to see you I'd love to meet you guys in person uh it's going to be very surreal to meet all these people that I've just seen on a computer screen in real life super duper excited for that so uh super uh I don't know just a lot lot happening um if we had onboarding the OS Community would go mental uh and accuse uh melan wig of taking over yeah yeah I don't I don't know if there's a uh a tidy way to do that we'll see if anything happens um we'll see if anybody has if we can if we can have any influence on that or just like kind of like percolate ideas uh or if something comes with that but I'm I'm super interested to see how it continues to evolve so I'm going to head out I'm probably going to go uh watch a little bit of the tonic episode and uh maybe do some work I don't know maybe do some work I don't know we'll see but um but yeah so sweet awesome guys thank you so much, Is Building WordPress Websites Easy?, Mark Szymanski, 01j4eyws613kdxfjvf8gg8c790.