"Are There WordPress Echo Chambers" With Imran Siddiq  ## Metadata - Author: [[Within WordPress]] - Full Title: "Are There WordPress Echo Chambers" With Imran Siddiq - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/5dc235bf-fc94-4025-9016-8d2e2d296d1a ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **YouTube Born From Repeating Forum Answers** - Imran started a YouTube channel after repeatedly answering the same Elementor and WordPress questions in forums. - He now creates thousands of videos to help people and show alternative ways of solving problems. Transcript: Imran Siddiq Hi, I'm Imran from Web Squadron, based in the UK. I've been working with WordPress ever since it launched, really, but I used to do it as a side hustle and I gave up my day job in the NHS two years ago to go full-time on web designing and obviously I started my YouTube channel allowed me to become a content creator and reach out to people so thank you very much for inviting me here. Remkus de Vries Yeah yeah you're most welcome. Before we get into the reason why I invited you, I'd love to know a little bit more because YouTube channel, what kind of content do you focus on? What is the design, obviously, but there's so many different ways and directions you can go with that. What makes your heart beat faster? Imran Siddiq Yeah, so YouTube was a little bit accidental because I was using WordPress and primarily Elemental page builder. And I was very prominent or, you know, inside of the Elemental forums and WordPress forums. And I found myself on a daily basis helping people out, trying to problem solve, be innovative, be efficient. And I got frustrated by how I had to keep repeating myself over and over again with different answers or the same answer. So I decided to do YouTube videos so I could say to people, just watch this video. It will tell you what you need to do. And that kind of grew and it became a little bit addictive. So from June 2021, I've now released, I think it's two and a half thousand videos, live chats, podcast kind of things as well. ([Time 0:00:34](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5c152885-3c3a-46c6-9768-ebdacd2251e0)) - **Creativity Beats Regurgitated Tutorials** - Many content creators regurgitate each other's work, causing homogenized tutorials and bandwagon content. - Imran differentiates by finding creative, pragmatic workarounds and showing novel uses for page builders. Transcript: Remkus de Vries Yeah, so you do the both. You have the agency and alongside content creation in the various forms. Yeah, absolutely. Imran Siddiq I mean, I think I can proudly say that I walk the walk, you know, because I do think there are people out there that just do a tutorial video and that's about it. Whereas I can actually talk from experience of getting clients, problem solving clients, difficult clients, scope creep, you know, the feast and famine, all of that. Remkus de Vries So yeah, I been there done it i think that's interesting to remark because i i see the same thing um now obviously i have perhaps even a a different type of lens because i i look performance First uh scalability and and everything connected to those um performance viewpoints and then there's a lot of people that I've spoken to that are either content creator or, you know, Just very active on any other social platform. And it's wild to learn how little they know from what I consider a base principle. Like, this is where you start. We don't even look at design before we have a foundation of what uh you know performant uh webpress site should be if you have no grasp of that then then what are you doing next right so uh And i can and and what you just said um i think that resonates with me as well like from um from a lot of advice that you hear is like yeah but you know how much do you really know like are you Just repeating or is chat gpt really helping you find that's a really a voice or whatever or yeah that's a really interesting point you make because i find a lot of content creators they Imran Siddiq Sometimes regurgitate what someone else has said. In fact, you could say this about YouTube generally. ([Time 0:02:54](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2ba55878-14df-48b1-8ed6-c71a6678c357)) - **Choose Platforms By Maintenance, Not Just Capability** - Don't default to WordPress for every project; evaluate complexity and maintenance cost first. - Consider hosted third-party platforms when they reduce long-term instability and support burden. Transcript: Remkus de Vries Yeah yeah I always say that you you can pretty much build anything uh with wordpress the question should probably more be with well it should more be aligned with should i are there certain Things i i probably should just find a platform for um For instance, I'm looking to launch a community as well. And I'm in my pre-discovery phase of what am I going to use as a tool. You know, I can build it in WordPress. In fact, I've for over a decade highly heavily focused on building buddy press sites. Now, I don't do that much anymore, but I still know how to do it, right? So if I want to, I can make buddy press look like Circle, almost act like Circle. It's a lot of work, but I can make it happen. But the question is, should I? Imran Siddiq I have found that in that kind of instance, if I was going to be working on a member website, I probably wouldn't use WordPress. I love what we can do with it, but I always find that, like you mentioned, BuddyPress, MemberPress, so many other solutions out there, I always find that they come with a lot of complications. And when you start to have a mixture of plugins and things going on and plugin updates and WordPress core updates over and over again, things start to feel a little bit unstable sometimes. ([Time 0:06:02](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a459ef1c-c537-4035-a037-56da9ea67c71)) - **From NHS To Full-Time Web Creator** - Imran left his NHS day job two years ago to run a web design agency and create content full-time. - He traces his web interest back to the early internet and finds WordPress empowering compared to old tools like Dreamweaver. Transcript: Imran Siddiq Think the thing that we can both agree on, and I think millions of people around the world will agree, is that WordPress gave the power and authority to so many people. It empowered us to be able to build websites. So if we go back, you know, before WordPress, I was messing around with Dreamweaver and things like that. And, you know, I hated it i really really hated it because i made so many mistakes and i kept thinking what am i doing here you know i'm a young lad i should be out there enjoying myself why Am i staring at this screen trying to understand c programming and stuff like that what is this wordpress gave us the ability to make magic with our fingertips oh yeah for sure for sure Remkus de Vries And then it's funny you say dreamweaver uh i started building my first website probably 97 just raw html uh bit of front page work it was okay for you know for what it was i didn't mind working With it but then dreamweaver became the thing everybody was using it like yeah no and i actually stopped building websites for probably four or five years like didn't touch them like I'm not doing this it's funny you say 19 one yeah sorry go yeah i was gonna say 2001 i started playing with uh mambo and then joomla and then wordpress but but yeah that whole Dreamweaver Thing, I was like, get out of my face. This is not for me. Imran Siddiq No, 1997 was actually the first time I experienced the internet. I just started university. ([Time 0:09:22](https://share.snipd.com/snip/79b16af1-3b73-42b8-bedd-4f24ce8bb9b1)) - **Validate Page Builder Changes Against Workflow** - Test new major page-builder updates against your workflow before committing. - Insist on features like per-widget custom CSS if they matter to your design process. Transcript: Imran Siddiq I'm looking forward to it. I'm playing around with it. I've done some tutorial videos on it. I think it's good that they have now embraced the global class system and all of that. It's about time. But I do have a few reservations in that I'm not sure if they're going to implement this new setup for every widget or are we going to have a mixture of version 3 version 4 widgets and my big Bugbear and i keep repeating this is that we have now lost the ability to have custom css per widget now everyone will say you can just use the class system and i go no but it's not the same You know if i want to put some particular css for this heading i don't want to have to go to site settings i want to only do it for that heading so that i know when i go to that heading i can see The css i don't want to have to go to site settings or theme customizer so i have concerns that it's not there yet and there's no sign of it coming either yet. ([Time 0:13:21](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9054eed4-b22f-481f-b26b-cf066e134e86)) - **AI Shifts Skills Toward Strategy And Prompting** - The rise of AI will shift web roles from manual build tasks toward prompting, strategy, and analysis. - Practitioners must plan 3–5 years ahead to reskill for AI-driven workflows. Transcript: Imran Siddiq No but it is something that i do see as part of my evolution in that at some point I will have to get a bit dirty with that, I think. It's something that is mentioned quite a bit by some of my community members. And I always say, but I'm OK just working with Elementor at the moment, building what I need to build. But I do think at some point, I will have to dabble with it. And I think a lot of that may come from decisions I make once I know exactly what's happening with version four of Elementor, and also the future as well. You know, I'm thinking three, four, five years down the line in terms of ai the impact on websites the younger generation that are using websites less and less a little bit and relying On social media and tiktok and things like that where's the direction going um and where do we need to pivot you know because um we don't want to become not redundant but we don't want to Become like, you know, like, oh, old news. So where do we have to start changing our skill sets? ([Time 0:16:39](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d09833eb-1273-401a-9a50-7ac1f3f9adc8)) - **Use AI For Snippets, Not Always Full Products** - Use AI to augment coding tasks by generating snippets and combining solutions, not necessarily to build full products. - Avoid creating plugins you must support unless you plan to handle ongoing security and support responsibilities. Transcript: Imran Siddiq I'm i i'm not overly keen so so i feel like there's two schools of four no there's three schools of four with all the coding you have those that want to create apps those that want to create Agents to do jobs for them and the third option which is where i sit is i just want to use ai to help me create a code snippet or do something extra with a page builder or wordpress that stops Me having to go to a third party solution so i can build it to exactly what my requirements are so i i love using ai encoding but i use it more for like what's good for me or my clients or for The community i'm a little bit scared if i'm honest of ever building anything that becomes an app people keep saying to me why don't you build a plugin you know you built you built this Amazing thing for, you know, converting images or creating inverted border radiuses. No one's ever done that. Why don't you create a plugin and sell it? And I go, well, number one, I'll have them be responsible. I'll have to deal with support requests when there's a vulnerability or a security issue. Have to do it and i don't want to get involved into that you know it's stressful enough you know making sure i've got pepsi max in the fridge without having to handle plug-in issues you ([Time 0:18:53](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b60e8dda-0a90-43e5-b0de-60765023ca0b)) - **Generational Gaps In Effective AI Use** - Many people still underutilize AI for troubleshooting and technical help even on simple issues. - There's a generational gap in how effectively people can prompt AI to solve problems. Transcript: Imran Siddiq I mean it's so many so many people i mean what frustrates me is there's a lot of people that are asking questions in WordPress forums on Facebook, other areas. And all I can think of is why don't you just ask AI? Your question's not complicated. AI could help you out. And I think a lot of people still don't understand. Like they say, I updated a plugin and I got an error message or I hovered and nothing happened and i'm like record a video upload it to ai and ai will watch the video and will probably tell You what was wrong or what the error was and i feel like people still are they're even nervous or i think they're the i think there's a slight problem there's a generational issue so I've Mentioned this in another video where I said, I believe that people aged over 40, we were of the generation where we grew up without the internet in a way. You had to go to a library to learn, to read a book, to ask questions. Inquisitive and you know we um we we are seeking the answers to our questions so we will go in and ask our question i feel like the younger generation because they've grown up with mobile Phones they're so used to just having the answer there that when they have a problem they don't know how to ask ai i feel like they they don't know how to articulate what they want. ([Time 0:24:32](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5a84174f-e238-4efc-b6b1-634aa8c084ca)) - **Echo Chambers Narrow WordPress Discourse** - Imran observed an echo chamber in WordPress where the same voices and approaches get amplified. - He warns this narrows discourse and hides equally good alternative perspectives. Transcript: Imran Siddiq Yeah, so it's a topic that's been bugging me for many, many years. I'd probably say way before COVID ever happened as well. And I just started to notice that like either events or newsletters or promotional things that were going out, it always felt like either the same people were being promoted, or there Was always like one way of describing how to approach whether you're building a website or plugins and things like that. And it started to feel very much like an echo chamber, like people just talk about how to build things in one way and they don't want to embrace the fact that you can build in other ways. And the second part was that I also felt like some people always it felt like they only ever promoted the same people and it got to a point where I started unsubscribing from lots of newsletters Because I always felt like you knew who they were going to promote and it just felt like you're disregarding that someone else might have done something better or differently. And it just started to feel very much like you scratch my back, I scratch your back. And I am also aware of how I don't want to go into too many details, but I was part of a little group of content creators where it felt like if I do something or I release a new product or whatever Or a course or something, we will promote each other. But it became very apparent that some people only promote other certain people. And I just felt like I got a bit fed up of it. And I feel like there are some things, sorry for my long answer, by the way, but there are some things that we, that we do need to talk about. You know, we talk about plugins, we talk about security, Gutenberg, you know, things going on, elemental, performance, XYZ. ([Time 0:32:35](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5aa60a6d-d8a1-4953-8cb6-0e6d36bc622f)) - **Audit Your Editorial Focus Regularly** - Content creators should audit their editorial focus and ask what they're excluding and why. - Ensure focus stems from deliberate editorial choices rather than favoritism or closed networks. Transcript: Remkus de Vries Yeah i mean first of all i don't think you're ranting i think you're touching something that needs to be spoken about which is why i left you a long comment on the on the video which is why I turned that long comment into a blog post because you are you are absolutely % correct. However, there is an immediate but. There's nuance. And since I am a content creator, I do have a newsletter with 1840 whatever subscribers. So there's a fair amount of people listening to me. Also touches a little bit on how I see my role in that not as a as a as a victim but more as a you know there's there's this nuance of how there's different ways of looking at the concept of an Echo chamber so in my particular case I focus on WordPress core uh and the the wordpress way in in in the vast majority of the items that i feature in my newsletter and that for me for instance Means there's no design i do not touch community i do not touch page builders with the one exception now i really enjoy what etch is doing so that's pretty much the only one i will feature Alongside um full site editing so that's a conscious decision right so but then your video it you know it automatically forces you to think about the choices that you make like okay but How much of an echo chamber am i and how much is has has that grown into more of an echo than i intend to have and you know that that that part triggered me into writing what i wrote i'll add It to the show notes but the the article i wrote is called the fine line between editorial focus and echo chambers in wordpress and i encourage you to read it because I think I articulated In the article slightly better than I'm doing here, but the topic itself is something I think we need to put in the forefront of our minds more often. I don't think it's a bad thing in of itself. And I agree. I see this. So there's echo chambers and there's tribes. And inside a particular tribe, and whether that's automatic or awesome motive or any of the companies that have a large number of people working for them, you will see them be participating In multiple echo chambers. And sometimes the only thing they're echo is their own stuff. I don't think it's fully inaccurate to say what you said about automatic, but I think the same goes for quite a few other companies where you just essentially only see them promote, talk About, tweet whatever on whatever social media channel that is an extension of what the thing is that they do um i also think there's a big difference between the lurkers and the content Creators like and i for for full measurement i include people regularly engaging and creating either comments or posts on the social media as content creators. Because if we don't have those, there's nothing to look at. There's nothing to digest. There's nothing to report on. But yeah, I think the problem you highlight is a good one to have highlighted and then for us to be more considerate of, but what does that really mean? Like, what am I excluding? And am I excluding it for the right reasons? Or is it just my favoritism and I just want to push on my idea onto anybody? And the only thing that I do in that particular case is say, you need to start building your site from a performance standpoint first. ([Time 0:37:21](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1a70e259-f1ce-4f81-887a-14f733517342)) - **Events Trend Toward Promotion Over Platform Education** - Many modern WordPress events feel commercialized and focused on product promotion rather than practical platform education. - That trend risks making events less useful for attendees seeking deep WordPress knowledge. Transcript: Imran Siddiq So I'm talking about, you know, the Atrium event, the page builder event, the WordCamp event, or all of the virtual events that are meant to be about WordPress. When was the last time you went to an event where it actually felt like the speakers, the talks, the seminars, the workshops were actually about WordPress? I feel like you could look at the last events we've had in the last three, four years, and maybe 80% of all the speakers on there are just promoting a product. You know, GoDaddy might be there, or another host provider might be there, or someone's there talking about security, but they're not talking about the security of WordPress. They're just talking about a security thing that's nothing actually to do with websites. And what I find is that, and again, I'm not going to name names, but there are some people who seem to be at every event and they're just there to sell their course, which has nothing really To do with web designer. It's like, how can we create a lead magnet that people will buy so you can make lots of money? And I'm one of those people that when you're part of like a product or an ecosystem, which WordPress is, I'm very passionate that if there's going to be in a WordPress event, let's make It useful for the people, whether it's a free event or a paid event, make it about WordPress, make it feel like you're now going to learn about clients. You're going to learn about how to sort out malware. You're going to learn about vulnerabilities you need to think about or performance. Performance for you is so important let's get back onto what can make us evolve and learn and become better i just feel like i mean when i look at the word camp events and i look at the speaker List i look at it and go what's the point of going to that there's an event for the first time in a long, long time. There's an event in London in September when it was announced. Yeah. When it was announced in March, I was waiting for details. And now I look at the details. I look at it and go, why would you want to go to that? I'm being really blunt here. Why would, what are you really going to get from that? What are you paying for? You know, you know, is there any benefit? You know, you might network, you might get a drink and a sandwich, but is it really going to make you come out of it a better WordPress designer or a WordPress developer? ([Time 0:42:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/38452218-bdf4-40cc-b61f-9d3c3145de1e)) - **Conversations Over Talks At WordCamps** - Remkus attends many WordCamps and values the human interactions more than most talks. - He often watches talks later at double speed and focuses on conversations at sponsor booths and meetups. Transcript: Remkus de Vries Um i think i think for the vast majority of word camps that i've gone to and they're and it's about 70 in total um the vast majority has been about the people more than the talks. Yeah. And that is partly driven by my ability to check out the talks that I hear have gone really well. And every single WordCamp, I do see a couple of talks. There are sometimes friends that I'm curious for their insights or there's other ones that I go, this could be really interesting. So I do see a couple. But I don't sit in the audience from dusk till dawn. Part of that is because I can watch them on twice as fast as speed on WordPress TV afterwards, which is a big plus for me because oftentimes I find it to go too slow. That's because I'm used to, you know, processing information at a fairly high rate. So that just helps me personally. But what I, what I absolutely enjoy is the human element of it. And that I find between the talks at the sponsor booths and in the conversation that I have with people. So I get way more out of that. And there's learnings about WordPress in those as well, right? So we don't just talk about everything. We also talk about WordPress. And so I'm probably not the best person to ask specifically about the talks. ([Time 0:46:42](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2253af52-741b-41e0-82e2-4eb3b196939d)) - **Pick Events By Size And Audience Fit** - Choose which events to attend based on size and desired outcomes; smaller camps feel more intimate and actionable. - Use well-known speakers as levers to attract attendees, but keep seeking diverse voices. Transcript: Remkus de Vries There will be a WordCamp in the UK again. WordCamp London didn't happen because of budget reasons and things changing and dragging on and then changing. So I know the background story there i'm not going to share that because it's not my place but i know there's been a valiant effort to make it happen and for sure it'll happen again but i Suspect it's not going to be london i suspect it's going to be like manchester or leeds or edumbra or something like that but uh but yeah i mean there's a difference right when when and And you know first of all i'll never claim that you have to go there i think it's an enrichment if you can um and and that's essentially how i i i would advise anybody if you can find the time Then you will for sure and i and i'll even include luke luke con for that for you um i think you will find that if you were to go, you will get way more out of it than you can possibly judge from The roster or whatever. And that's because I know Brian, one of the organizers, Brian Richards, main organizer, and I know how he values actually the exact same points that you're raising. So from that perspective, I would recommend you to go. But yeah, the thing is real where, you know, from the outside looking in and you're not getting the stuff that's in between, you know, the layer that's in between, then it's very difficult To derive value from that. I can see that. Imran Siddiq No, you make a fair point. You make a fair point. Remkus de Vries I try to. I'm going to say, having said that, I also don't see the solution out of this because the types of WordPress in the last, let's call it six, seven years, has gotten quite a bit more professional, Meaning there's a different crowd that goes to the events than it when than in its early days which was very much open source driven a different person was coming there's a different Type of person coming now uh i feel and and that's something that uh inherently means there's different topics there's different speakers, and they are looking for the familiar voices. So, you know, it's a mix. It's like you want to have something innovative. You want to have something that brings the added value. You want that out-of person. But if they're not presenting themselves as, hey, I'm available, or they have some bit of a following, it's kind of hard to putting them on a roster where people potentially looking Into coming are going to go, yes, I want to see that person because I know they are knowledgeable about what they say. If you were to have somebody like Jono Alderson, you know for sure you're going to be treated really well on the topic of seo like thoroughly and so jono is a good reason for um you know having Him on stage is a good reason for somebody to join the the event just an example right but uh jono is a good friend of mine um and i i can vouch for the quality of the types of presentations He does. And there's more like him. So if you have one of those, that for sure is going to be on the, you know, on the, what do you call it? ([Time 0:52:31](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f3479e87-18fe-4a3f-8a08-40535f86e8e6))