Introduction: 00:04 WP Builds podcast, bringing you the latest news from the WordPress community. Welcome your host, David Waumsley, Nathan Wrigley.
Nathan Wrigley: 00:22 Hello there and welcome to this episode 120 of the WP Builds podcast. It's entitled, have you got WordPress plugin fatigue? It was published on Thursday the 21st of March, 2019 my name's Nathan Wrigley from pictureandwork.co.uk, a small web development agency based in the north of England and I'll be joined a little bit later by David Waumsley from David Waumsley.com so that we can have our lovely discussion episode all about WordPress plugins. Before that, a couple of things, if you wouldn't mind, heading over to the WP build.com website and at the top of that website you're going to discover a whole bunch of links. May I draw your attention to a few? If you go to the subscribe link, then you're going to be able to subscribe to us. For example, you can find a link there to iTunes and to the Google podcast app and you can, you know, listen to the episodes on your mobile device by clicking those buttons.
Nathan Wrigley: 01:20 There's our Facebook group and youtube channels as well where you can find everything that we do plus a slack channel and you can get updates on messenger, but perhaps most importantly two forms. One to get yourself signed up to the newsletter, which gives you alerts about this podcast episode coming out and the WordPress weekly news that we release on a Monday, but also and new, we have this WP Builds deals update email. It's completely separate from the other ones, so there's a completely separate form. And essentially I'm going to send out WordPress deals as soon as I find out about them because I'm subscribed to every list on the planet and I'll just pass them on to you in a plain text email with a really obvious title saying something like 20% off WP this, and you can decide for yourself from that title whether you want to been the email or take action and open it up to you.
Nathan Wrigley: 02:12 Okay. Couple of other things to say. If you go to forward slash and deals and then you will be able to get a whole bunch of WordPress deals. There's, a whole load of products and WordPress plugin. So for example, project huddle groundhogg. If, so WP Ultimo, Beaver Team Pro loads and loads more, you can get money off. So bear that in mind if you are buying any plugins in the future. The other ones I would say is we've got a webinar coming up. There's actually a Webinar today, Thursday the 21st of March with Adrian Toby from Groundhogg, but we've got a lot, got a few more coming up in the near future so you might want to go to forward slash webinars and check those out. For example, we've got social web suite, we've also got admin pages, pro and lifter LMS. They're all coming up soon, so go check those out.
Nathan Wrigley: 03:02 Sign yourself up to the at the webinar episodes and you'll get a recording if you can't attend on the day. And probably the last one is forward slash advertise if you would like to advertise on the podcast banner ads. And audio inserts is the name of the game. The WP Builds podcast is brought to you today by the page builder framework. Do you use a page builder to create your websites or the page, build a framework as a mobile responsive and lightning fast WordPress theme that works with Beaver Builder, Elementor, Brizy, and other page builders with this endless customization options in the WordPress customizer. It's the perfect fit for you or your agency. Go to WP dash page builder framework.com today and we really do thank all of our sponsors for their support of the WP Builds podcast. Right. Let's get on with it today. Episode 120 have you got WordPress plugin fatigue?
Nathan Wrigley: 03:57 You know the score. You've been there before. You've, you've been inundated with plugins. You've got six or seven options for every single thing you want to achieve. How do you know what to buy? How do you know which ones are the duds and which ones are the good ones? The truth is David and I don't know either, but it's fascinating talking about it. We talk about our struggle, how much we buy, do we buy too much? Are we too loyal or not loyal enough? It's all in today's episode and I hope you enjoy listening to it
David Waumsley: 04:27 and this discussion we're calling, have you got WordPress plugin fatigue? I want to say fatigue, French. Fatiguing. Yes. No, let's say fatigue. Keep it, keep it, keep it English and you know I guess meaning here, are you fed up with the endless troll looking for the latest and greatest or the best of a suite of rival plugins?
David Waumsley: 04:52 No
Nathan Wrigley: 04:53 You're not. Oh, well that's the end of that episode then. Thanks for listening to the... I do. I'm, I've discovered this more and more recently, actually over the last, I don't know, three or four months, I've become needlessly fascinated with all sorts of different rival solutions for exactly the same thing. A really good example might be a forms plugin where I have kind of got a desire. I've got one, I've got Gravity Forms. So I constantly find myself looking at pages of the rivals, so Formidable or Caldera, Ninja and think, oh, and WP Forms, WP Forms, by the way, do a magnificent job of sending me emails, making me want it. Um, so I, I do, I definitely do. And so that's what the word fatigue means in this case, you know, am I getting a bit tired with myself for constantly thinking I can do better and find a better plugin? You know what? I think I was joking when I said no because I have felt this, but I thought I've helped myself a little bit by unsubscribing to almost every email now I clever so they don't get to me so easily. But you can't be immune to the inevitable posts on just about every WordPress related Facebook group where they ask for different opinions. You know the example here, what's the best form plugin? And if there are five replies, they're all five different replies. And it makes you think, why did it, why does that person who I know and trust, why do that? Why have they put the one that I, I didn't pick what is it about that one that they really like? And I am, I'm, you know, we've had this discussion before regarding things like Appsumo I have in the past been really addicted to getting things and I, I confess I've got multiple plugins for doing exactly the same job, uh, in WordPress and I've, I do, I have this but, but I am becoming weary of doing it and we often preach, don't we, we often talk on this podcast about getting good with one thing and sticking with it and just becoming really a bit of a professional with using that one thing. But do I practice what I preach? Absolutely not.
David Waumsley: 07:10 Yeah. Then do you know what you've really described the thing that gets me, I'm pretty good now because I have made an effort just to stick with my stack and I've had to work on it over this year to not get carried away. But there are certain people in our community, Paul Lacey comes to mind straight away. If he says something's good than I have to go and look at it.
David Waumsley: 07:33 It doesn't matter what what it is. I've never even thought about using this kind of tool or whatever.
Nathan Wrigley: 07:37 Lacy, sorry Paul. This is your cue to write a, a drip sequence of Facebook posts all about a whole variety of different WordPress plugins specifically for David's attention. Really send him off on one,
David Waumsley: 07:54 That does start me off. You know what, I've had a bit of, um, you know, I'd be spending money recently and that this isn't, this isn't really a competition issue where there's so many different page builders, which is the mind, that old problem. I wanted to look at everything this is now getting into, and Paul Lacey is to blame again for this one. But looking at tools that could be part of services that I may offer in the future.
Nathan Wrigley: 08:23 Okay. So this is things that you haven't already got, but you think, oh, there's a chance that I could spin this off into a profitable bit of my business.
David Waumsley: 08:31 Exactly. So I've been buying heat mapping tools, ab testing tools, keyword tracking tools on it goes, uh, analytics reports, blahdy, blah, right? All of these things I never had in my stack.
Nathan Wrigley: 08:45 And do you use them? Not yet. You see? That's exactly it. Exactly the same though. I recently, I've been really all over the place. I haven't actually, because I'm very tight and mean spirited, I haven't actually opened my wallet for very many of them because I've, I've noticed this trend in my own head of trying to look for everything and I could happily buy everything and I wouldn't feel a moment of remorse, but I've stopped myself. And so I haven't actually spent anything, but I have been looking all over the place and getting, you know, wasting an awful lot of time. And this is the problem in WordPress, right? For every single problem, there's 15 solutions. So we use the example of forms because it was the first one that came into my head. But it could be anything. It could be page builders. Okay. There's four or five that are really commendable. There are, um, it could be hosting, it doesn't have to be plugins. There are five or six hosting companies, which I would absolutely use it. The drop of a hat, every single thing that you could name themes. There's another example, loads of them that I really trust and respect. How on earth do we decide what's right for us? So the advice that we always give is pick one settled with it, well there's the problem, how do you pick one?
David Waumsley: 10:09 And there's always something shiny come into one of the the competitors as well. It is quite tricky.
Nathan Wrigley: 10:16 Something Shiny but so for example, I know that in the past you've had a a criteria which I adopted because I never thought it was, I never even thought about it. In all honesty, you spend quite a bit of time looking into the heritage of the company and the about us page and you work out that these guys had been doing plugins for 15 years and you go onto their Facebook page and you look and discover that these guys appear to be doing moral things and you, you make clever decisions that way. And I've started to do that. My problem is that a lot of these companies have been half a heritage and they've got a lot of morality. And so I'm still left with the problem, you know?
David Waumsley: 10:58 I know. And even if they're not, I mean, you know, I'm Beaver Builder user when I started using that, they had no heritage. Exactly. So you just got always followed that one.
Nathan Wrigley: 11:10 Yeah. And the other thing is with a lot of these offerings, you know, you can't, well at least I can't anymore. I can really no longer. Although I would like to, I can't really justify the cost of going out and buying them all to test them. So I have to go, Mike. What I tend to do is if I want to buy again, let's use this as an example, a forms plugin. My, my goto would be youtube usually. And I would look for tutorials that are kind of tackling a problem that I'm having or something that I think this will solve. And I'll go and look at those and see if it does. And if it does, then I'm going to be swung too to buying it. Yeah. Well I mean a lot of those,
David Waumsley: 11:54 I don't know how bad you are on this one. You know when we do narrow it down to five themes and three page builders, etc. Do you go and buy them all?
Nathan Wrigley: 12:04 I have definitely bought more than I should have done and no, increasingly these days I don't. I am like, like we said a moment ago, I'm trying to stick with what I say to do, get good at something. But even that doesn't work because this week I was presented with a situation where I could have gone to my tried and tested solution and for some reason inexplicable to me, I decided to use a rival, but I'm not going to talk about what it was necessarily. But I went and used the rival and probably spent four or five hours doing that. And then then after that period of time I thought, no, I'm going to go back to the original one. So what a waste of time that was. But something in the back of my head is saying, yeah, but next time it could be different. Next time you might try the rival and it's really, really good and you'll, you'll think, why have I been wasting my time on this? But the truth is most most commercial products these days that get onto my radar as being worth looking at are worth looking at. So you know, um, what is your little stack when you install WordPress these days? What do you tend to to put on it?
David Waumsley: 13:12 I can read it cause I go a little note here. So she'll tell you right from the top that she'll be quick. So it's all the Beaver Builder stuff, theme Plugin Thema it. I also, I do add in the ultimate add ons for Beaver Builder and Power Pack, but they often get deleted if not needed there for the first thing. And we have gravity forms, Backup Buddy, Updraft plus breeze for my caching, Short Pixel for my image optimization, Wordfence, SEO press. That's a recent change and the coming soon page pro right back.
Nathan Wrigley: 13:50 And that goes on everything. That's kind of your default.
David Waumsley: 13:53 Yeah, that you do a few. The few little plugins that go in as well. Actually now that I haven't added to that list, but they're just a lot of utility plugins that I use.
Nathan Wrigley: 14:02 Do you have that as a kind of a pre installed zipped version of WordPress so you can just deploy that or do you actually go through the process of adding them all one at a time and doing your license keys every time you start a new site?
David Waumsley: 14:14 Yeah, this is my, my boilerplate starting site that has all of these in it. Yeah.
Nathan Wrigley: 14:21 Yeah. You see, I avoid that and that's probably where my problems like is that I always, I'm, I actually, this is sad and pathetic for the admitting this. I actually quite like installing plugins. I actually quite like the process of watching it happen and so I, it's a bit mindless isn't it? You know that sometimes you just like to do things which you know how to do over and over again. It's a bit sublime. It's like playing patients. I don't know why I do it because I never win, but I like doing it. I just like turning the cards. It's a bit like that with installing WordPress, so I don't have a boiler plate one. I know what I'm going to install. So I installed WordPress and then I go and install the plugins one at a time and copy and paste in all the license keys because I like doing it. Oh that's so sad. That's so sad.
David Waumsley: 15:12 It's maybe not cause I'll tell you that it's confession time cause I think I'd even did a video or something about my, my stack or a couple of them about setting up my install, you know, to, to get rid of all the little jobs. So I'd put some tests, posts in and there were all sorts of stuff would get laid out with my word. But so many times I have started from scratch because often in my, I've gone too far with mine boiler plate and I've got too much stuff in. So I'm deleting it all the time. I think, you know, this is messy. So I do do the same.
Nathan Wrigley: 15:43 Yeah, that's a very good point. Because there might be a couple of things in there that you actually don't wish to include. And because they're in your boilerplate and you've also, in all honesty, you've got the inevitable your boiler plates going to be. So out of date, but by the time you, um, yeah, by the time you put it in there, you'll have every single one of those plugins will need to be updated and you might as well have just installed the original. But I do that and I revel in the, you know, I, I love to just drag because the way I do it is I go to the website, download the latest version and it sits in the bottom of chrome and I quite Oh, more sadness. I quite enjoy the process of clicking in the bottom of chrome and dragging it onto the Upload Button and the upload button on my Mac turns blue. Then I click install and activate and I just enjoy that. It's a mindless bit of time that I really like to like to do. And um, and then I go through and I do the kind of, I delete the, you know, the, the, the dump, the dummy post. I delete, um, Akismet usually in hello Dolly and I set up a home page and I set up a blog page and all of that kind of stuff. Anyway, I'm sort of getting off the point here, but if I did what you did, I bet I wouldn't have quite so much. Uh, should I install this page builder? Should I install this form plugin? Because you've just done it and it's done for you. Yeah, that makes quite a bit of sense. I quite like the idea of doing that. So do you find yourself going out looking for brand new shiny things? Is this something, because there is a serious point here, right? If you're developing sites for clients and you're building sites for your customers, you should know what the latest and greatest stuff is. So it is a bit disingenuous of us to say, go out and find the best tool and stick with it. Because what if that tool turns out to be utterly eclipsed by arrival, which is just so much better and everybody should use this hands down. It's, it's uh, you know, it's a home run. So I think there is some part of us that should be doing this testing all the time.
David Waumsley: 17:42 I think so. But I think if you like testing you'll probably just say I need to be keeping on top of things. Cause I, I was just reminded recently when a client of mine, this just shows how clients are concerned about being on top of the latest big thing. You know, someone was asking me to install on their head or they said they wanted that horizontal scrolling texting that you get to persuade them not to do that. Yes I did put it away. Did Not. But you know the, the thing is clients probably not that concerned. I mean they're going to be, you know what, 10 years behind us, most of the time, not a few months. So I think we justify it with the fact that we need to keep on top of the latest thing.
Nathan Wrigley: 18:26 That's just purely self justification. You don't think it does like actual merit. I'm hoping you're going to say, oh no Nathan, there's low to merit and just constantly trolling the Internet for the best blogging. Please say that. Cause there's got to be, there's got to be some worth in it. Surely at some point.
David Waumsley: 18:42 I don't know. You can look at two ways. Can you, could I, this is my theory now because it did occupy me and I did get a fatigue, but I've tried to narrow my focus now and stick with what I've got. So I'm holding onto that and I think my justification now is that if this is going to be a big, big change, I'm going to know about it. Yes, I'm connected to all these people so I can ignore the sort of chitter chatter. But when I see everybody's talking about the new thing and they're giving me really clear reasons as they will do, then I'll look at it.
Nathan Wrigley: 19:18 Okay, so let's go to this idea then. Um, what about loyalty? Being a kind of rod for your own back? Is being loyal a good idea just because of itself. Should you be loyal to a plugin or should you throw it under the bus? The moment a rival comes along that is objectively better.
David Waumsley: 19:41 Ah, do you know what, that's an interesting thing, isn't it? Because, you know, as soon as this competition, those whoever's got the new shiny thing that everybody loves, you're pretty sure that the person who you are as with is eventually going to adopt what is good. Yes. From that. So stay where you are might be was the sensible move.
Nathan Wrigley: 20:02 Yes. So the example here, which is constantly talked about in our Facebook groups is the battle of the, the page builders, which we won't get into the specifics of it, but you know, we, you and I have both been very committed users to Beaver Builder. So although we won't talk about that in specific terms, you get some kind of loyalty, don't, you've been into their support, you've made friends with the people, you actually know this stuff. And then along comes a rival. Do you, do you feel a bit of guilt? Do you stick with it even though you know, you feel that there might be some benefit in trying something else?
David Waumsley: 20:43 Yeah, well I do get that, you know, that feeling when I've had a really day and I'm not gone in Facebook and you know, actually did some proper client work and I'm proud of it. Um, you know, full of goodwill. I shall go and check in on the Facebook and then there'll be somebody dissing my page builder and that's it. My Day's ruined. But, you know, I, I now let it come and go over me now, so I don't, I don't think I was, I was fiercely loyal to the programs I use. I think I'm getting it a little bit more level headed on that now.
Nathan Wrigley: 21:18 Mm. I'm faced with a, uh, a difficult, an interesting dilemma in that because I'm doing this podcast quite a lot and I'm also making videos and doing these kind of demonstrations and the contribute episodes and so on and so forth, which I'm going to plug shamelessly. Uh, then I kind of feel that it's part of my role now to, to know a bit about all of them, no matter whether I've used them or not. So, uh, you know, as an example, being the form builders, I should spend a bit of time with all of them just so that I've got, I found on them. Um, that of course presents it's presents a different and unique set of problems because I probably will have my preferred one, but it's also quite good for me to know all about the different ones. So I am a bit torn and I never, never know which way to go. But in life I am, I'm quite a loyal person, you know, if I'm, if I'm your friend, I'm your friend. And I do feel the same is true for these commercial plugins and I don't know quite how that, how that occurred in life, that commercial WordPress plugins became something that I associated myself with and it became important for me to defend them.
David Waumsley: 22:41 Yeah. Where do you want, I think the tools that you're using, you want the company to succeed, you know, because you, you want to stay with them and you, you hope that you're not going to have to shift because, because they went out of business. So I think there's that there's a good, a good point. Yeah.
Nathan Wrigley: 22:57 Commercial incentive to being loyal because it at least keeps it, keeps it fresh and updated. Yeah.
David Waumsley: 23:04 Yeah. So I think that's it. I know. I don't know. It's, it's interesting this time we've been public, uh, I've learned a bit about myself because I feel that I do get aggravated when people are not pushing forward. Some of the benefits of the tools that I've picked, you know, um, you know, they're kind of flippant about other tools and, but I don't feel the same need to interject now. Um, because I think it's almost impossible isn't it, to, to help people with, I don't always, people ask what's the best, but it is a really dumb question really, isn't it? Because it's just best, best for what always. And the best you can do is try and find out about, and the you can really ever do is to put forward what you've got, how to, something, you know, what you felt good.
Nathan Wrigley: 23:52 Uh, do you feel that your stock has sort of settled permanently or are you, well, I know the answer to this because you alluded to it a moment ago. Are you constantly on the lookout for new things? Um, outside of WordPress as well? So new little SasS apps, AppSumo, that kind of thing?
David Waumsley: 24:12 Yeah, I've really got into those. Yeah. I think last time we talked about mainly your addiction to um, those kinds of things. I was saying, no, I'm quite reserved, but I've suddenly got into it now because I found, I think this is my feeling. And again, Paul Lacey's feature and again, cause he wrote something about the fact that he thinks our time is up. We're just building websites. Someone's going to take over, they're going to be so easy to build that we need to be offering other services. And because of that it's maybe expend, expand looking towards the future to what other things we can do with tools that will help our clients more than I would have done before.
Nathan Wrigley: 24:52 So, for example, things like heat maps, offering that as an add on to your clients and more interesting ways of presenting analytics data and a/b testing and all of that kind of thing. Yeah. I'm because of the fact that I'm spending more and more time doing the podcast, I think our roles have reversed. You've become a bit more addicted to getting shiny new things. I've dropped that a little bit and now I'm, the new things are becoming more difficult for me to buy, although I'm looking at everything and Ooh, exciting. I am much more now sticking with what I've got. If you like, even though I'm always got like glancing over my shoulder to see what there is. So what have you bought lately? What are some of the things that you have actually purchased?
David Waumsley: 25:38 Oh Gosh. Should I name them? That's competitors.
Nathan Wrigley: 25:42 So well in which case you pick the one that you've enjoyed them, that is not going to cause us a problem. Um, I the heat mapping tool. Yeah. And is it called cooks? Cooks. Cux.io, okay. There's a plug for them. Yeah.
David Waumsley: 25:59 Yeah. That came up as a special deal and that's, I think it's quite exciting. I don't know how well that one will do because it's got a shiny feature we were looking at just before we started recording, but uh, that doesn't seem to be in all the other tools where you can measure any event that's measurable on your website. Anything could use us done against other things. So it's really cool.
Nathan Wrigley: 26:22 Yes. Having said all of that nonsense about not me not buying things, I actually did buy that because I had a genuine need for it and I, I really like it, although I'm yet to sort of make use of it perfectly. Um, I'm wondering if we flip this on its head, it, you know, where the end users, we buy these plugins and we consume them and you know, and we give our opinions vocally in Facebook groups and you know, this is far better than that. This must be utterly exhausting if you are the developer of a plugin this possibly so. Well, it must be amazing when your plugin is the one that everybody's talking about and you are the center of everything. But it must be so demoralizing when somebody comes out with a better one or a one which for one reason or another gains the traction and yours is suddenly left and you feel a bit kind of, where did my audience and my community go?
David Waumsley: 27:15 Yes. Now I can see that. You know what? That's really interesting cause I think, I think um, most of these plugin developers are quite visual though round when they've got the new product. And I think probably by the time they hit five years of being out, they disappear a bit. I saw it happen with Genesis. I've seen that happen a bit with Beaver Builder recently. I think the same would have happened with gravity forms. So all these big players who everyone's talking about, they seem to be around more and then they kind of disappeared. But the tools are still just as great as they were. Um, but it's just that they don't want to be in the public eye so much.
Nathan Wrigley: 27:52 Do you think that's what it is or do you think it's that maybe WordPress is growing to such an enormous extent that you know, 33 basically a third of the entire top 1 million or 10 million websites or whatever it is, but there's just, there's so much money in it. There's so much commercial incentive to develop these plugins that rivals come along and they can still take a sizable chunk of the market and be profitable. Whereas maybe if you go back five or six years where they were one, maybe two really strong contenders in forms or themes, those days are over because the market's grown and everybody realizes that you can do all this stuff in WordPress, so there's a whole bunch of rivals and we don't know where to where to settle now.
David Waumsley: 28:39 Yeah, it could be that. Oh, I'm surprised. It's not more of a mess than it is. I'm surprised we still probably, if your page builder user, you can still get it down to about five themes that you're going to choose from. Mostly yes, because they work well with page builders. I'm surprised it's not more given that it's jeep, GPL and, uh, we have so many developers around the world who can undercut very easily. Yeah.
Nathan Wrigley: 29:04 Well I know for a fact that there are quite a lot of plugin developers out there who would desperately like their product to be recognized and known. But they really, really struggle with that side of things, you know, for, so for one reason or another, it hasn't, it hasn't been mentioned by the right person in the right blog posts. It hasn't been mentioned on a, on a famous youtube channel or whatever. And they've got this stellar product, but they just can't get it into people's consciousness and they don't have the money to advertise it because that's contingent upon the sales. And the sales don't come because they haven't got enough marketing budget. And so it goes and, um, I, and there's, there's something about that which is dreadfully sad. You know, these people have poured their heart and soul into their project and it just hasn't, it hasn't materialized. It hasn't become popular. And, and I, I know because I now get emails from some of these people and it's terribly difficult just sort of turn them down and said, well, I can't just start making videos about your product or whatever because I haven't never really used it. And so on and so forth. It's hard. It must be really, really hard. And I think for a lot of these people, just keeping at the front of everybody's mind is, is their job. You know, if they've got some notoriety and people know their name, just trying to stay on top, I mean, you've only got to go to a WordCamp and you see all these companies that just, a lot of them are just, they're just so that you don't forget about them.
David Waumsley: 30:34 Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And some of the fatigue is actually the marketing, but the marketing is what's making those plugins a success. You know, I, I, I, marketing does tire me.
Nathan Wrigley: 30:46 I get so many emails from some plugin houses, let's say blog in agencies and to the point where you end up on subscribing. And then there are some which are just written really well. And you want to read them and they're very informative and what have you. So it's a bit of a mixed bag, but I do, I do wish that some people had more success. Um, and equally, you know, I suppose if you're a plugin developer, you've just got to look very carefully at the market that you're jumping into. And if there's five or seven incumbents, you know, who've been around for ages, maybe that's, maybe that's not the best place to go. Having said that, you know, it is a big, it is a big pool and if you can develop something which can get a bit of an audience, you could, you could very well make a career for yourself.
David Waumsley: 31:34 Yeah. Do you know, I think, I think we've said this before, but I wish plugin developers actually tried to isolate their market a little bit more that say that they really concentrated on this type of person. So in some ways either build a slightly do that they have gone or they're kind of double down recently on agencies like and what their requirements will be. So there's an assumption that people may be, have a few skills in CSS or something like that. Right?
Nathan Wrigley: 32:03 Right. Yeah. I think that's probably the way to go. Well, if you're struggling and you're not, um, you're not the number one blog in that everybody thinks about, then that certainly seems like a good way of growing your audience. And then of course, this can all just change overnight. It feels to me, this is complete garbage what I'm about to say, but I think there's a kernel of truth in it. It can change overnight with a bit of very clever marketing. So for example, over the, the Black Friday period of 2018 this plugin, which no doubt everybody's heard of called Seo press, did this crazy crazy deal where you are there $99 was it? Yup. $99 where you could get an unlimited license. And so I kind of got this feeling that everybody on installed Yoast and put Seo Press on. I don't know if that's true or not, but incredible.
Nathan Wrigley: 32:53 Um, but is that sustainable? Who, who knows? But our plug in which a few people had heard of overnight, well five or six nights went to a plug in there everybody had heard of and so maybe that was really clever. I actually worked out how much money, um, that probably raised for them and it was a bit jaw dropping actually. It was kind of, Oh, you could quite happily retired. I would never do anything with SEO press. Never again. But now that his product is everywhere on everybody's lips, then presumably that will drive more sales for people in the future because everybody's familiar with it. Oh, we'll use SEO press. We, we worked on it on somebody else's site and it now that's going to be our default one. So there you go. Yeah. Yeah. Do you know what the thing is?
David Waumsley: 33:38 Um, you know, advice still stands I think learn, pick one and learn it well and just keep an eye out for changes. But I think change is do, there was nothing revolutionary about that particular change to Seo Plugin. It effectively did the same kind of thing. There's still a lot of nuances. What difference is between each of them, but, um, they're minor ones, aren't they? Yep. There's the big shift was obviously page builders, wasn't it the recent years?
Nathan Wrigley: 34:06 Okay. Should we knock it on the head there? So the, the general consensus I think is, uh, still get good at something. Probably don't waste too much of your precious time trolling on other things. And, um, and if you do waste a lot of time trolling around other things, for goodness sake, will you just send me an email and tell me what the best thing is? Cause then I don't have to waste any more time and then I'll forward that on to David and he doesn't need to waste any more time. And, uh, together as a community. We'll work it out. Yeah. We're too old. We're too old. Really aren't. Maybe that's it. Yeah, we're not, we're not the cool kids anymore. We, uh, we need other cool kids took to build this stuff and then let us know about it. Right. That's it. I will say. Thanks David. That was fascinating. Thank you.
Nathan Wrigley: 34:50 Well. Thank you very much for listening to today's episode of the WP Builds podcasts. Certainly fascinating having a chat to David about plugins. I learned that I've got too many and that I'm a bit sad because I like to install plugins, walnuts, a time at the beginning of every single project. How do you do it? Let us know in the comments. The WP Builds podcast was sponsored today by WP and up warming. Four of us will be directly affected by mental health related illness. WP and ops supports and promotes positive mental health within the WordPress community. This is achieved through mentorship, events, training and counseling. Please help enable WP and up by visiting WP and UP.org forward slash give together. We can press forward and we do sincerely thank all of our sponsors on the WP Builds podcast. You really help and you make this podcast possible. Okay, I appreciate you listening. There's only one thing for me to do and that is to feed in the cheesy music. I think I've managed to find the worst one yet. So if cheesy music at the end is your thing, this is an absolute humdinger. So bye bye for now.
