353 – Bye bye

[00:00:00] Nathan Wrigley: Hello there and welcome to the WP Builds podcast. You have reached episode number 353 entitled bye bye. It was published on Thursday, the 7th of December. 2023. My name's Nathan Wrigley, and I'll be joined in a few short minutes by my very good friend, David Waumsley.

But firstly, before that a few bits of housekeeping. The first thing to mention is that our black Friday page is still going. Believe it or not, there are some deals still out there. WP Builds.com forward slash black. Anything that's on the page is still available. So go and check it out before they dwindle away to nothing.

The other thing to mention is that we're doing a lot of live shows these days, probably 2, 3, 4 a week, the best place to find out what we've got and to put it into your calendar is to go to WP Builds.com forward slash Schedule, and you will find a calendar over there. Click on each of the events to learn a little bit more about it, and also to add it to your calendar app of choice. WP Builds.com forward slash schedule.

So for example, we've got Sabrina Zeidan's series all about speeding up your websites. We've got webinars series with Leo Losoviz and the Bluehost team. We've got Piccia Neri with a UI UX show. And we've also got our, this week in WordPress show, which happens each and every Monday. Every time we do something live, you can find it at the ever so predictable wpbuilds.com forward slash live.

The other last thing to mention is that if you want to get your product or service out in front of a WordPress specific audience, we're in the market for some advertisers, some sponsors. You can find out all about that by going to WP Builds.com forward slash advertise, and you'll be able to learn about what we can give you, and how we can get you all your product or service in front of a very specific WordPress audience.

The WP Builds podcast is brought to you today by Omnisend. Omnisend the top rated email and SMS marketing platform for WordPress. More than a hundred thousand merchants use Omnisend everyday to grow their audience and sales. Ready to start building campaigns that really sell? You can find out more at www.omnisend.com.

And by GoDaddy Pro. GoDaddy Pro the home of managed WordPress hosting that includes free domain, SSL and 24 7 support. Bundle that with The Hub by GoDaddy Pro to unlock more free benefits to manage multiple sites in one place, invoice clients, and get 30% of new purchases. You can find out more at go.me/wpbuilds.

And sincere, thanks go to GoDaddy Pro and Omnisend for their support of the WP Builds podcast.

Okay. What have we got for you today? Well, we've got something a bit sad. It's episode number 353. It's called bye bye. Before you start emailing me, no, it's not the end of the podcast, but it is the end of David Waumsley's journey as a regular contributor to the podcast.

He's been with me since episode one. He's been with me now for seven years. In that seven years, we've done hundreds and hundreds of shows together. Hundreds and hundreds of hours. He's been behind many, many of the topics, researching and coming up with ideas and creating the show notes. We have never once fallen out in any way, shape or form.

It has been a remarkably amicable partnership. I really have appreciated having him on the podcast. But as you're going to hear in this episode, he's got new things that he wants to try.

The podcast itself, well, I'm going to leave you until 2024 to figure out what's going on there. But needless to say, the podcast is not going away. We're doing something new and hopefully interesting. And maybe, just maybe, you'll be hearing a little bit more from David and myself in another way.

But yep, as I said, it is with a tear in my eye that I introduce you to David's last episode. I hope that you enjoy it.

[00:04:35] David Waumsley: Hello. It is the last episode of Our Thinking the Unthinkable series, and it's also my last as a regular on WP Builds, and we've saved, I know we've saved the most unthinkable to the end, which is it time to quick WordPress? Nathan, it isn't for you. I know that, but.

[00:04:56] Nathan Wrigley: No. No. Oh, heck. yeah. I want to just step in here a little bit first before you Oh, no, I'm not going to. I've, there's a lot I want to say, but I'll let you, I'll let you get into the meat and the bones of it first gone.

[00:05:09] David Waumsley: Okay, it is for me, really. I still use WordPress daily and I'm using it as my local static site generator and code organizer. But as I've disabled Gutenberg and I'm not. Using third party software or very little of it. I'm not really going the WordPress kind of new direction any longer. So it makes sense for me after seven years of us being together for me to make way for someone who knows about what's going on in WordPress.

yeah, I want to say that it's really sad for me to it was a real chore to think whether they're gonna do this because, our chats, and we've been talking about this for the last seven years. For me, they've been a pure joy. That's why I do it. And 'cause we never argue and we don't always agree, but we never even get close to an argument, not in all of these years, which is, I put a little note here saying, which is a true testament to just how little we care.

[00:06:10] Nathan Wrigley: I've got a slightly different opinion. I've hated every minute. No, I've, I've really enjoyed this. It's, but honestly, I stick at nothing in life. I'm so good at beginning things, and I expect you've got experience of this as well, but I think I'm. A pretty much a gold medal candidate for beginning things and not seeing them through.

And I, this is the thing, this WP Builds podcast is the thing that I've managed to see through for, like you said, seven years. It'll be slightly over seven years by the time this podcast episode goes out. And. We won't spend the whole episode congratulating ourselves. But, but it's, it is testament to the fact that for some reason you and I do get along really well.

We haven't argued, we've managed to talk things. Sometimes we've disagreed, but we've never fallen out broadly. I think we share more or less exactly the same perspective on in almost every walk of life. And it is quite interesting 'cause David and I. Usually talk for massive amounts of time before we hit record.

just as an example, we've been talking for almost two hours prior to hitting record today, and we go over everything we go over like politics and the state of the world, and, we always seem to agree. We have very, few situations where we disagree. So I would just like to say thank you very much.

I've really appreciated it. Now get lost.

[00:07:37] David Waumsley: you'll talk. You'll talk at the end. You're gonna need to say what's coming next. Do you know

[00:07:41] Nathan Wrigley: I'll do a bit of that. I'll do a bit of that.

[00:07:43] David Waumsley: Yeah. actually well after what you've just said about us dis not disagreeing, this is probably a topic where we might start to get into that. 'cause I'm leaving

[00:07:51] Nathan Wrigley: time. Gloves are off. David, let's get into it.

[00:07:54] David Waumsley: Yeah, we've got some talking points here. We don't really know where this is gonna go, but really the key thing is, I suppose the big shakeup for me is Gutenberg. 'cause I've not gone down that route and it's a massive. Change in direction. So we'll probably talk about that a bit. Really about where, people have found themselves with this.

'cause we're in different places and you and I are in different places on this.

[00:08:19] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I guess, it, it would be interesting to learn a little bit more in this episode about what your. What your journey is going to be, what your plans are for the future and why it is that you've stepped down. let's start with Gutenberg. I obviously, I really encourage people to play with Gutenberg.

I have, from the very start, I've been really, bullish about it. I think it's turning out in a, really positive direction. I know it's not for everybody and I know that there's a whole bunch of rivals out there, but it kinda works for me. Everything that I want to do with, a few add-ons here and there.

I've managed to do, and I really enjoyed that experience. I think the future of it, is looking fairly positive. But then again, I've been, telling myself that for ages and I still think there's things that need improvement and all of that, but you, really, right from the outset, you disabled it.

You didn't really like it. You thought it was forced on the community. So yeah, let's get into that.

[00:09:20] David Waumsley: Yeah. I think maybe if, it has to be set in context of where I came into sort of building client sites and I think because what you and I share the same path, we started with doing some hand coding with, HDML and CSS and I wasn't particularly good at that. and it was painful. So when WordPress came out, and for me, it.

17 years ago when I started with that. So I've been with it a long time and effectively I'm still with it, but I'm using it almost in for what it gave me in the first place, the simple CMS to allow me with plugins to do some of the dynamic stuff I couldn't do before. Before there were, as there are today, many are APIs you can plug into.

That aren't WordPress. So it allowed me to do that. But it also allowed me to have a framework which I think almost everybody needed for where CSS and H two ML was to be able to organize how you would, create a, website. how you would have this place to have a header and a footer that was a constant through your site in one place.

So I think for that reason, I jumped on it. There was a point really in 2014 where. I thought maybe I'll not use it anymore because it was a lot of client work that was coming to me via a friend was H two ML sites and we thought, oh, WordPress even then was quite difficult. They would've to have a certain type of hosting to make sure they updated all the elements of the lamp stack, which was beyond them and all that sort of stuff.

But I went with it because my work came in from somebody who exactly wanted that. Because she didn't really have the, she ain't kept up with coding skills, so she needed an interface. So I jumped on the page builders and was really excited about that. That's why I loved all the Beaver Builder stuff, but it still had that sort of emphasis on the, it was a, quick tool, if you like, for no coders, if they wanted it simple.

And it was, something which you could advance on us if you wanted to increase your skills, as a developer, which I always wanted to, but I think like a lot of people, I didn't really do that. I just got more lazy and a bit out of touch what was going on. So for me, I think the Gutenberg was a shakeup, but I think it was already a shakeup anyway, because I think things like Elementor made WordPress a, a.

A place where people came to it because of page builders. I think a lot, because it was for non coders, for DIYs could do so much more. And I think Gutenberg taking a direction made me think, do I want to go this route and learn Gutenberg or do I just want to get back to the basics and static sites, which was.

Growing at the same time as Gutenberg came in. this return to static sites and serverless hosting and all that alternative. So yeah, that's where I ended up going in a way. So that's my story in the context of it. It's, I don't really need WordPress, so it brings in. Extra maintenance and costs and stuff where I might as well just sharpen up my HTML and CSS skills.

Particularly what's really done it is the fact that CSS has just transformed over the last few years. it's just incredible what can be done with it.

[00:12:32] Nathan Wrigley: It's interesting because obviously now that you and I have got seven years. Under our belts doing this podcast. It's interesting how, many revolutions you've been through during that time. So you and I started chatting all those years ago, and both of us were like headlong into page builders and it was all about the ui.

We didn't really, I don't think any of us talk about CSS and HTML and the. Dorm and all of that JavaScript. It was, that was just off the table. We were just concentrating on what add-ons you could get and what features you could add and where the settings were and all of that. And, we just really got into that.

And then I could sense that you were getting a little bit. Weary of that and you were trying to figure out a way to, to integrate it into your business. So there was this period where I think we did a whole series where you described your, new approach where you were gonna work hand in hand with your clients and it was gonna be about teaching them the page builder.

And that was gonna, enable you to. Work with the clients. You show them how to do it and then you, clear off and they get on with it. And then at some point that, I dunno if that just didn't work out or you had just found interest elsewhere, but over the last two or three years, I think you've been really interested in a way which I don't know many people are.

I think you are quite unique actually. You've been really interested in. Just like what the WC three are doing. what is HTML? What is CSS? What are these new things that are coming out? And you've gone down that rabbit hole, which has then enabled you to find, importance there. so things like.

Moping your skills with HTML, upping your skills with CSS, getting back to the roots of what the web can provide without the need, and I guess that's what you've learned is that you don't need, A-A-C-M-S if you know how to produce the HTML. If you know how to do the CSS, maybe dabbling of JavaScript here and there, and if you've got that interest and you've figured out a way to make it so that you can write that stuff in a timely fashion, then.

You don't really need WordPress. And also your client base just doesn't need that complexity, does it? May, maybe they'll need a blog, but you are basically building sites, which are brochure sites. So why, would you have the overhead of all of that? So it has been quite interesting watching your journey.

you've definitely gone through a whole different set of cycles over those years, and it's been entirely the opposite of me. 'cause all I've just done is drone on about WordPress the whole time.

[00:15:07] David Waumsley: It's funny though. I think, WordPress has, its kind of different audiences that, I still see that there is no rival, I think to WordPress at the moment. If, you are, an organization, I think I. I think NASA's come on board, hasn't it? That's

[00:15:24] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, they have. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:15:26] David Waumsley: And, some other people as well who have bought their own, CMSs and come over to WordPress, and if you are that organization who needs multi-author publishing.

going back even to its original blogging roots with, WordPress, I don't think there is an something else that can replace that. I think when it comes to what I do, which I never saw WordPress as doing, I always felt that was partly my skills. And then I jumped on page builders a bit later was the, Designing of those pages, sales pages. I don't think that should be DI wide. I don't think it should be templated. 'cause I've always brought, even though I have ignored it quite a lot, I've, I was brought up with this idea of, going through a user's journey and you create that by understanding what it is they need and the importance of ui, how that's different from, printed material.

So a lot of the stuff with the Gutenberg stuff, it will serve a lot of people. Maybe nasa. Beautifully. I don't know. I didn't really follow that, but, when it comes to the stuff, as a replacement page builder, I think, actually it's just easier for me to go back to CSS now only because that's so much improved.

So there, there are some downsides with the WordPress, which I was. Coming against, things like when I started to look after to make money to look after people's sites 'cause they couldn't do it themselves. You get stuck seven years on, I definitely need to move everybody to a new server.

That's a big, pain or something. Updating all elements of the lamp stack is, a pain. And then if you start to get into the JavaScript stuff of the React stuff, if you really wanting to get really delve into building your own blocks. Really that's not needed. and at the moment, of course it's been challenged as well as a bit of a get back to basics.

We don't really need react. We've got things like, HT mx, coming in. What's that? Is that right? HT M lx, I think.

[00:17:26] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, that's right.

[00:17:27] David Waumsley: And we've also got things like new exciting stuff coming through with, view transitions from, it's only in Google at the moment, in their Chrome browser. Yeah. But, it's, Fascinating stuff. it's, you, can see this really taking a place of a lot of stuff where you might want that interactivity that you would expect only to be able to do through something like React or something. So yeah, all that stuff really fascinates me. and the beauty of it is that you've lose all the dependencies, so you know, it's as cheap as chips because the, hosting costs next to nothing and there's no software to be, supporting and maintaining.

So that. So that's really where I did the split. I thought it's gonna be hard, but I'm gonna have to learn to, just get back to the code again. I.

[00:18:17] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I do know what you mean. I'm sure that in your situation, it all makes perfect sense. I don't feel entirely like that. Everybody's gonna agree with that because I think many of the people that have been attracted to WordPress, especially in the era of page builders, have been just really fascinated by the fact that they don't need to learn HTML and they don't need to learn CSS, and they've been able to either.

Construct their own website, or they've been able to construct a business on the top of it. And it may be that, they wish deep down that they had more of an understanding of those technologies and they wish that they could write things by hand, and they wish that they had a firmer understanding of SEO and Google's core web vitals and all of that kind of stuff.

But at the end of the day, their enterprise is just to put pixels on the page and they don't really care too much about it. Whereas your journey. Your journey's really different. you, hank for I, it feels like almost I don't know. you want back the classic car kind of thing, whereas everybody else seems to want to be driving around in the, modern Ferrari.

You want the, the nice, comfortable Rolls Royce from the 1960s or something like that.

[00:19:31] David Waumsley: Or, the other way of looking at it. I mean I think, when it comes to the W three C and they're really only supporting languages are HT M-L-C-S-S and JavaScript and I think, they determine the web of which everybody else including WordPress follows. And I think, this idea of getting back to what is there, so I.

I rejected Gutenberg for exactly the same reasons the W three C rejected it for consideration for their new blog. And that is simply is that they don't need their developers to have to bother learning react because the classic for what they need it for, the standard W three C. code is all that they need.

And there is a little element of me, which I made that mistake of learning Adobe's flash,

[00:20:19] Nathan Wrigley: Oh yeah.

[00:20:21] David Waumsley: to me, well, I feel like react could be, this, Facebook's react is almost the same sort of thing. it takes you one stage. PHP does anyway in that sense, but it's just. the output is simply, the, standard code.

But when you get into React and you get into the virtual dom and all of that stuff, you are one, extraction away from the basic code. And I think where you need that, and of course, react is probably, the most. Sought after from companies who need to do really complex stuff with apps or you need the next Facebook.

But given that I'm not that really the Gutenberg route makes no sense, learning JavaScript deeply makes no sense given that most people are saying, it's the opposite now. It's going into CSS, what you needed JavaScript for. Particularly things like view transition. So I think, for what I needed.

For right now, it doesn't make any sense. So I've gone that way, but I feel, do you not feel as, in one way I agree with you on one thing is that if I was looking at this now and coming into it, thinking about WordPress, I would probably be going the Gutenberg route without any of the add-ons. I know that would be a tricky ride, but in the same way that.

I treated WordPress when I first came in, so we probably agree on that. And I don't think, if I was moving to another page builder now, I'd be looking to all the ones that I've, there's loads of 'em have appeared after Gutenberg. So obviously those people think there is an alternative to, Gutenberg.

the bricks breaks down the on. Builder, craft builder, builders, and there's a whole bunch of these other ones appearing who obviously think that Gutenberg isn't gonna be for everybody. and there's gonna be something else. But I wouldn't be going down those routes any longer, I don't think I.

[00:22:13] Nathan Wrigley: What you would, be, if you were new to WordPress, you'd be encouraging people to, stick with just core blocks.

[00:22:19] David Waumsley: I think so. Yeah, I think I would stick to less plugins and stuff because there's this whole ecosystem which has to interact with each other. So now if you were going into WordPress, I think I would be inclined to go the full Gutenberg and to limit it down to stuff that I knew were the plan, isn't it? To have more of these sort of.

Core led, plugins and stuff. But that does, give all the power really to automatic in that, in the sense of the WordPress community. So I don't, it'd be half-heartedly. I would be commending this 'cause I think, it needs that, competition variety there.

But yeah.

[00:22:56] Nathan Wrigley: nice thing about going down that route, and obviously there's a whole bunch of Gutenberg plugins, for want of a better word, that enabled you to add extra functionality. But if you just went down the, route of using core blocks in itself, that's a bit of a skill, isn't it?

you could just become really skilled at using core blocks to get. Almost any pixel, anywhere you want it, a pixel perfect design. And that, that, that seems to me a completely legitimate career. Now I know it's not the one that you would want anymore, but that does seem to me to be a legitimate way of, using WordPress and building a business.

[00:23:35] David Waumsley: I think there's, yeah, I can't be that 'cause I just don't have those skills. I don't, I don't have enough skills to, I'm a one man band mostly, and, I wouldn't want to depend on something for the actual build. And I think. that's the big change at the moment. There's a sort of split, I think outside of WordPress, if you like, between there always has been the front end developer, if you like.

There's been this division that happened, which has been commented on a lot, where people have often gone the kind of reactor JavaScript framework route and those who are stuck with the H-D-M-L-C-S-S. Playing route and the almost the front end developers got changed. if you get into WordPress, I would need somebody with, if I wanted to create my own custom modules and make sure that everything laid out, I would need somebody with more skills.

But for all the projects that I'm ever going to need to do, I don't need to learn any of that. I can just simply go with the core. W three C languages, which are of course making it easier all the time for me to do it, particularly with CSS. So there's no logic to it, but if you were a big enterprise organization coming in as an agency, particularly if they needed, some kind of multi authorship of that, then, then probably a Gutenberg WordPress route would be the only route for you.

[00:24:53] Nathan Wrigley: Have you enjoyed your recent learning? Have, has it been, 'cause I know the answer, right? I'm just priming you to, to say what you're gonna say. But, but you, have you enjoyed it? Has it been has it rein, reinvigorated you and given you some sort of, I don't know, a little bit more energy when you wake up in the morning sitting at the computer to get on with your working day?

[00:25:16] David Waumsley: Yeah, I was just saying to you, I've got. Really, there's only sort of three projects that I put out live that I've actually built with my own hands with the help of organizing the code with WordPress. But, that makes me feel now it's almost a year on since I started this, that I'm an okay front end developer with, but now this new stuff, which isn't even in, It doesn't have the browser support with this interactivity, and I think it's taken me down a path that's, I haven't really thought about much as a page builder user. I haven't really thought about, like this dark mode. On my next one it, it recognizes people's preferences on their ui and I'm going to get into other things that go.

Kind of with that reduced motion of typography changing according to preferences of the user and all that UI stuff excites me and all the interactivity there is just with learning CSS particularly, I think, and the new stuff. So it really, is. Sighting and I think there's only one CSS event in the year, which is CSS day.

And I've watched the talks on that for a couple of years now, and literally every one of them has me at the edge of my seat, excited about what they're doing and the delivery of these things. And many of them are watch over and over. So yeah, it's really invigorated me because it's, exciting and it's nice to feel that you're doing it with your own hands.

Do you see what I mean?

[00:26:39] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, it is like an artisan

[00:26:42] David Waumsley: yeah, exactly. and it's in line with what the web, and I think for me, we've been talking about this for some time, as I said, moving towards certain trends which I ignored as a page builder user, this kind of agile project management way. and this kind of UX design, which I didn't really take seriously and I'm still not very good at ui if you like, making the interface as best as it could be.

And I think this is like a whole, almost a new. Profession if you like to come out of it. But it's rooted in where I started. So I all of that. It really excites me. 'cause I might just for once actually be good at something eventually.

[00:27:21] Nathan Wrigley: That's great and how have your clients received it all? So when you go to existing clients and you up on their website and say, actually, I'm not gonna be probably, you, I don't think you really need WordPress for this anymore. Or indeed new people coming in and they've heard that you are the WordPress guy and then you say, actually I'm not doing that anymore.

How have they been? And I'm guessing the answer is probably. I expect from a WordPress point of view that they're probably less annoyed by that than we would hope they would be.

[00:27:55] David Waumsley: Yeah, it's, it's interesting. I'm losing some people that I, took on that were, came from. Somebody else anyway. And I'm really mostly just been hosting and maintaining the WordPress sites and a lot of those I'm quite happy 'cause I, I wouldn't do the rebuild for them. I don't think it would work out.

So they're going off to new people. The one side that does depress me about the whole no code stuff, which. we have to get real on this. No code doesn't really exist. It's code bloat and it's not very green, is it? to allow somebody to build their own websites means that you need to put more code than is necessary.

but that whole movement, I think as led to what slightly frustrated me with this, is that move towards WordPress. When I started, it was a bit of a sort of niche thing that developers helped to contribute to, and it became a more, this. Globally known, DIY solution for many. So that devalued what I was offering, to the point where I think one really stuck out.

And I mentioned it I think on another episode where somebody said, they came in as a new person to the organization on this, quite custom build that I did, even though it was done through. Beaver builder and said, we want a new look. Can we change the theme? And worst of that was the fact that this was a person recently hired who came from a web agency and thought that was all there was to it.

It was just simply a case of just swapping it with a new modern theme.

And I thought, yeah, I thought, maybe I just wanna distance myself from that expectation on me. But in terms of the other people, they don't really know. I think some people are fine because, there are a lot of broken, partly 'cause of some of the changes of Gutenberg.

Some things have been abandoned. So I, it's quite easy for me to convert new people who are coming to with a WordPress site to say, your WordPress site is broken. Do you want to. fix the WordPress site or do you wanna go my route where we'll just skip WordPress altogether? And that's probably quite easy argument to say, okay, we'll skip it.

Provided they're happy to live without the content management system and, most of them are

[00:30:04] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, it's interesting 'cause from, our side, I guess we, there's a kind of expectation. We take it for granted that. That WordPress is just, that's just how you build websites. It's what I've been doing for years. it's the best CMS. It's a fantastic tool. And of course clients, yeah, just like you've said, I expect there's a whole bunch of the who just yeah, I don't really care how it's built.

Just build me a website and show me it when it's done and I'll have a critique of it at that point. Don't need a blog. No, it's fine. I just need a five page website with a contact form. Off you go.

[00:30:37] David Waumsley: Yeah, and I've, so many different audiences for WordPress, as I say, those enterprise things where they need that multi authorship, there's no competition with it. That's not me. So I've had to look up who I've got and the big changeover was realizing the clients I had who instinctively back.

To, almost 10 years ago now, I felt did they really need the CMS and the responsibilities and the costs that might go with that? And ultimately what I'm finding out is that actually they don't want to update their own content. If you can offer them the option to say, look, I'll be around and I will do that and I'll make sure that what's put up there will be, SEO friendly, that all the right.

Data goes in there and that would be done with speed. And they say, yeah, okay, you do it. And that's my people, so I just think, yeah, I have to move where it's gonna be easiest for them and it's gonna serve them much better than sticking 'em on WordPress where they're actually not getting the benefits of having a CMS anyway.

They never used it.

[00:31:38] Nathan Wrigley: Interesting point. So if they want to make an amendment at Christmas, 'cause they've changed the phone number or something, they just, they're just gonna communicate with you and the reality that you've discovered, at least. Anyway. And I'm, I can attest to this, is certainly true. The amount of people who we draw in with the notion that, oh, you can update your website and then you realize.

Two years later that they've never made a single amendment ever. And then, one day you'll get an email saying, what was my password again? Haven't logged in forever, ever. And yeah, it makes sense.

[00:32:11] David Waumsley: I think you know, the interesting thing is there's the other side of it though. and this is true of me, to a certain degree, I needed WordPress 'cause I couldn't, if all I had was VS code to make the websites I'm making now. I'm, really royally screwed with that because it's just too complex to be global headers and footers and this little section of, frequently asked questions which would drop down and this pop up over here.

Trying to put that all on one page or something. You need a system, don't you? Which is why I'm still personally dependent on my local installer, WordPress, to organize the code in that way. And I think when it comes to this move towards static sites, which is a threat to. A lot of beaver built, sorry. A lot of, WordPress users.

It's, there isn't an easy solution there. Is there, there are a lot of static site generators out there, but no one clear leader.

[00:33:09] Nathan Wrigley: So how are you actually building your sites at the moment then? 'cause you alluded there to the fact that there's WordPress lurking in the background somewhere, and presumably that's more to do with stuff that you. You haven't had to do yourself yet, so if you've done it once, you probably don't need WordPress ever again to achieve that thing.

Is that how you're doing it? Are you going through a process of stepping through all the hoops until finally you've, figured out how to do every component of a website, but it was the output code from a WordPress site that got you there?

[00:33:40] David Waumsley: Yeah, I mean if people wanna come off WordPress, which there might be more of those 'cause you can get cheaper hosting and put the money to something else, it's a good route knowing WordPress. So I'm going that route. So for example, the site that's. I'm gonna be putting up very soon.

It came with something like 300 blog posts in it all on WordPress. Now, if I was to try and turn that into a static site without WordPress, it'd be a pain. But fortunately, I could just copy that and strip out the page builder that was there and all the other stuff on there. And I still got the basic content and the URL structure for those.

And most of those don't need touching or styling anywhere. I just need to wrap them in their own container and make sure that they're using the same fonts for my CSS. And that's done. And then the other page is, again, I'm using the, I'm using, short codes, really, which is fabulous. Effectively, I'm using short codes in the same way that a lot of developers make components by using the shadow dom with JavaScript to put these little sections in so I can, Put in, WordPress in my case, I'm using WP Code box to put code snippets in there, and then I'll output that snippet into the page wherever I want it. Same with the Heather and the footer. I'll construct it with HTML, but put it in a shortcut and then put it in WordPress, so, still that organization.

Of WordPress is still useful, but I mean there are alternatives. Obviously, there are all these static site generators who allow you to do that, but there are some merits in, I think in WordPress, not least if you are converting a WordPress site.

[00:35:17] Nathan Wrigley: So are you gonna keep using WordPress to do this? Is that gonna be the way to do it in the future? Or have I misunderstood? Are you, just doing it as an interim solution until your. coding chops, let's call it that. Get to the point where really it's now a more of a time sock going into WordPress than it is just writing it myself.

[00:35:39] David Waumsley: I think at the moment, my hope is, but this is where, this is one of my kind of issues with Gutenberg. I wish it'd have been brought in as a plugin. I see no reason why it had to be forced into court, and I didn't really see any reason why you had to put a limited life on the classic editor.

Why not let us all have. And, and the same issue at the moment, I feel that there will be some classic editors still used for me to, put all my short codes into there and to for the blog posts and stuff. So if that gets removed eventually and I can't replace it, although I do know how I could replace it with my own version, then that's fine.

There might be another issue. Again, when we change, this seems pretty sure that the admin is going to change in WordPress and whether that has a knock on effect, whether everything becomes. A kind of react based builder for WordPress, but if it doesn't, as a simple home-based PHP thing, the thing that I originally liked about it remains true.

Then I, would use it indefinitely because it's nice that side of stuff is very stable and I can build, it's a great static site generator and particularly great if you. Take in what is an existing WordPress site, so I've no reason to move unless moved, but if I am, then I'll have to go to something like Astro, which is I think one of the better static site generators that will allow me to do the same.

[00:37:01] Nathan Wrigley: So we, know now that you are a complete traitor, so we figured that bit

[00:37:06] David Waumsley: yeah.

[00:37:09] Nathan Wrigley: but, but what do you think you'll stick around in this community? I don't know. Know, in all honesty, apart from having a chat, that we do every couple of weeks, I, don't really frequent Facebook groups and all of that anymore.

That's just become a, not really a part of my life too much. So I don't know how busy you are in the community broadly. I'm just wondering, are you dropping away from all of that? You're gonna put your efforts into, I don't know, CSS communities online instead? Or are you gonna still be lurking in the WordPress spaces?

[00:37:42] David Waumsley: Yeah, I'll probably lurk around a bit. I've dropped out a lot anyway because it, is really so diverse in WordPress that it's hard to find a little corner where, and the, there's, as you can imagine, there's few corners where I will sit in beautifully. 'cause I'm going. Often a completely different direction to most people.

No. yeah, it's difficult, but I do keep, abreast of what's going on there. I think it's interesting, certainly at some point, I'm trying to construct my own easy to build round WordPress set up so I can, almost have the sort of speed of page builder. I could be popping back to you saying, Nathan, can I talk about what I'm doing with WordPress there at some point?

[00:38:29] Nathan Wrigley: Gonna be no.

[00:38:30] David Waumsley: of course.

[00:38:31] Nathan Wrigley: No.

[00:38:32] David Waumsley: But.

[00:38:33] Nathan Wrigley: You've crossed that Rubicon, David, you've crossed that Rubicon. No, of course. Yeah. We'd love to have you back. I was just looking at the, the front of the WP Builds website and from day one, although the design. Has changed modestly over those years.

It basically has only changed once. It's always said, Nathan Wrigley and David Wamsley present the WP Builds podcast. What the heck?

[00:38:55] David Waumsley: I know I've been up there far too much. I, get too much credit. My face goes along with all sorts of stuff that you do, and I've absolutely nothing to do with.

[00:39:03] Nathan Wrigley: I know I've completely usurped your, the image of your face, it always looks to me like you were standing somewhere like ankle. What? When that picture was taken, the one that we always use everywhere, there's some sort of statue in the background and I've always imagined it was some sort of come statue, but it maybe isn't.

[00:39:18] David Waumsley: it is about 10 years old that I think, and it's, it's in India somewhere.

[00:39:22] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. So it's definitely not and what, in that case, yeah, but I you what You will be lurking a

[00:39:27] David Waumsley: I'll be lurking around and keeping That's the interesting you said about communities there. I, think that's, it's, the thing that where press kind of most values or seems to do at the moment, the community, I'm not quite sure exactly what that means 'cause it's lots of, various different views sometimes arguing within that community.

But there is something. True about the fact that the, it is a, center point for a lot of people, which I can't quite see in CSS or something. I don't see an equivalent kind of, community to join. So yeah, I just look around everything else following the top people's, posts on that, but don't have a connection with anybody via it.

[00:40:11] Nathan Wrigley: So we're, 35 minutes in. I think it's time. David, you've spent seven years not offloading about, you've been very politically correct. Do you think it's time to, just offload a little bit, get some of that bitter deep resentment about the way that the WordPress ecosystem works?

The, any, anything? Or are you just gonna be polite and say nothing?

[00:40:34] David Waumsley: I'll probably be quite polite. I, I, think for me it was, I, think Gutenberg and it's, and the management of this, I think the fact that it's, I feel it's a shame that it doesn't have, and it is not been allowed to have some sort of community, led such situation. We have the.

Benevolent dictator for life model, and I think WordPress has become commercial. And I think, the buying up of, all of this kind of main software by hosting companies is because, like automatic, it's a hosting company. And in these days where static sites and serverless. is an option for your hosting.

I think they need to make sure that they've got people who are dependent on their platform and that, so I think a lot of WordPress is being commercially led. So that's, but I think that's just obvious, isn't it? that's the only thing that I don't like. And I feel with Gutenberg, we'd lost something, there, because I think lost opportunities, like I'm still using it, but I feel under threat all the time that I'll be able to use it in the future.

[00:41:52] Nathan Wrigley: And what about your, the, what, how do you view the industry as a whole? I'm thinking really about. The, possibility that in the near future, all of us are gonna be out of work anyway. Because, the ability for AI to come along and just make us a website by merely thinking that you need a website and it'll just happen.

What do you think you've got? Do you think your job's gonna be secure given this new route or

[00:42:20] David Waumsley: Yeah, I do. I do. I think, yeah, actually I wanted to talk about that. Thank you. No, 'cause I think what I I felt a lot of insecurity about WordPress changing and what build I'm going to use and how I do the work. But I think, I. As we talked about before with Agile, I found and UX I found.

But I think as I go on, and I, heard someone else talking about this with ai, I don't think AI will replace anything because I think that's the problem with templated and non code stuff is it's not web design. Web design is. That taking a user and communicating with them, understanding their journey, making the UI an interactive experience, which is a joy.

This requires a lot more skills than picking out, a pretty template and it means a lot more. and I think if you focus on that sort of stuff. AI cannot replace that. It can only really give you a template based on stuff that other people have thought is a good idea. So when I've used AI to create a template for some of the, sort of sites that I've been doing recently, it turns out something which is making all of the mistakes that I've discovered that if you think about it logically or do some SEO research isn't the best way to lay out your website.

So AI is churning out what it's seen. Not thinking about this particular company. So I don't think AI's a threat in that way. But I also think where people say, it was raised, 'cause at the time we're recording this, it's not long after Matt announced this sort of, a hundred year hosting option for wordpress.com and that got people thinking a little bit about, the future again with this.

And I think. Yeah. whether we'll have websites in the future, that's been a fear. Will AI change how Google interacts? Will we get visitors from that? I think if you invest in a good UI and all these things that I didn't do, as I talked about before, dark mode and user preferences and making stuff that works well on mobiles and stuff, I think.

There will always be a need, even if websites aren't quite the way that we expected. Brochure sites aren't there in that way or as popular. There'll always be the need for an online interface, and I'm pretty sure that online interface will always have a, its core HTML and CSS because. all of the influence that comes in through the W three C, all of the big companies, Google and the like, or contributing to that.

So I think it's a safe route. So I think yes, using your psychology of design, if you like, design thinking as it's called, lead with that. And I think also concentrating on the technicalities of CSS with the ui, I think it will, the, these things will always be required because we'll always need a device that communicates with people.

[00:45:05] Nathan Wrigley: I know what your game is. David, I think you are gonna go off after this. You are gonna start a podcast just called builds.com. You're gonna just it scrape out the WP set up your own rival podcast, and you'll become more famous than Kanye West.

[00:45:21] David Waumsley: featuring David Sey and not Nathan

[00:45:24] Nathan Wrigley: That's right. Yeah, not him.

[00:45:25] David Waumsley: I put your picture up with a big crossover.

[00:45:28] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, the, I love this little bit you've put in the right at the foot

[00:45:34] David Waumsley: Yeah.

[00:45:34] Nathan Wrigley: footer, of the, the little show notes that we share.

this sort of Monty Python esque, what has WordPress ever done for

[00:45:42] David Waumsley: Oh yeah.

[00:45:43] Nathan Wrigley: That's a nice way, I think we probably should round it off fairly soon, but that kind of feels like a nice way to round it off because it's a, it's like a farewell with a. Farewell. You've been good to me feeling. So yeah.

Do you want to just go through the, what has WordPress ever done for us? What did the Romans ever do for

[00:45:59] David Waumsley: know. I love all that stuff. it made the di well, definitely for me, this was the thing. It made dynamic web accessible to millions.

[00:46:08] Nathan Wrigley: Yep.

[00:46:09] David Waumsley: that's definitely, that's what brought me in. and, I think, still the thing that allows a lot of the graphic designers to move to the web that I couldn't do before.

it is okay for me saying I'm interested in CSS, but there's still gonna be a lot of people who fundamentally need the graphic design and don't have the skills. So it does a good job at that, doesn't it?

[00:46:28] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Surely does.

[00:46:32] David Waumsley: it allow, this is the thing I don't like so much, but it does allow DIY websites and, blogging.

Of course. I still think blogging what WordPress initially was is still something where it doesn't need people like me to design stuff. Bloggers just need to publish their content. They, their words.

[00:46:47] Nathan Wrigley: I've got a feeling and I could, I, you can check back in five years time and prove me utterly wrong, but I've got a feeling that at some point blogging might come back as a thing. I.

[00:46:59] David Waumsley: I do. Do you think it's ever gone?

[00:47:02] Nathan Wrigley: I think it, I think a lot of it, a lot of the energy that people would've put into blogging ended up on social media.

So I'm talking about your own blog where you realize that it's your turf and you are doing it on your domain. I've got a feeling that at some point we may get a bit tired of. The likes of putting everything on Facebook or Instagram or X as it's now called, or whatever platform you like. I think maybe there'll be a bit of a resurgence of that.

Like I say, I could be wrong, but I think maybe, and if that happens, WordPress will be, will be in good shape to pick up those people.

[00:47:39] David Waumsley: Yeah, I think you're right on that. I think people have got, they've jumped from platform to platform, believing the next one will be a little bit better. So I mean they may have some of those issues with WordPress itself, 'cause you're rely on a certain, but I do think it gives you more control and ownership, doesn't it?

Obviously. So I think still with it's blogging, it's, yeah.

[00:47:59] Nathan Wrigley: put, it this way, my, my children who are, fast approaching adulthood. If I was advising them, if, they were wanting to create content of some kind, I don't know, to, for their business or just for hobby projects, I definitely wouldn't be saying, yeah, put your best efforts into a social network because I.

Because that's their, their whole job is to, put it out, and then as soon as it's no longer causing ad spend is to just bury it. And so it's never gonna surface again. all of that kind of stuff. Whereas if it's on your own. Own site, then you've got a chance. And I do see some, particularly like in the pop industry, I see some people bringing their blogs back to life and writing and talking about their own stuff.

And they've obviously got the, idea that they want it to be theirs and they want to own it. yeah. a bit of an aside that, sorry.

[00:48:54] David Waumsley: Did you know, that's, I, if I've got the gist of it this'll be our date of course by the time this goes out. But I'm sure Matt gave an interview recently where he was talking about how a Tumblr, it is, got a new wave of people and how he thought that they, some of those might go onto blogging via something like WordPress, bringing in, much needed youth into WordPress.

so I think he's got a, an inkling that blogging. You know that those people on those kind of social networks might move 'cause they are bloggers effectively, aren't they? On

[00:49:25] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I guess the benefit of being on a social network is that you can just simply start posting and you might immediately. Get millions of views, which would be really, difficult to do. But I guess you're, it's, more about being in it for the long haul, isn't it? You've got it there and you can always link to it from all these other social networks.

Anyway, sorry, an

aside.

[00:49:44] David Waumsley: so bad episode in this episode. Yeah. yeah. Created a community.

[00:49:49] Nathan Wrigley: yeah, this is my, this is the bit I've enjoyed the benefits of so much.

yeah.

it's been amazing, hasn't it? You and I have met a whole bunch of people, some of whom I stay in touch with regularly. Some have come in and gone a little bit more, you and I have been doing this for seven years and we met because of WordPress.

Nothing else. There's no way I would've met you despite the fact you went past my front door on a boss every morning as a child, which we didn't know when we first met.

[00:50:16] David Waumsley: Yeah. And and I have a lot of misgivings about how that community is and, fractured it can be and sometimes upsetting to be in, but I've not found anything else where you can find people who interested in some of the things you do, like you can with that. yeah, yeah, definitely that one.

creative business opportunities, of course. for me, I honestly, I don't think I'd be, being able to work still with clients. if it wasn't for WordPress, it had give me the leg up that I needed to be able to do that. what else have we got here? What did I write here? Oh, yes, I've already

mentioned

[00:50:57] Nathan Wrigley: below the fold, David, below

[00:50:58] David Waumsley: Yeah. The last thing I've already mentioned that I still think it's probably still the best multi offer. Publishing and blogging system, those out there, there isn't really a rival is there for that if you need that kind of stuff.

[00:51:14] Nathan Wrigley: yeah, I think you're right. I think you're right. You know what, it's at this point that I wish I had millions of dollars so that I could have bought the rights to the Frank Sinatra song My Way, so that I, no, the end is near. It's, nobody wants to hear me singing. I wish we had that moment, but,

[00:51:35] David Waumsley: I know, It's the end of an era. anyway, we'll still be friends anyways.

[00:51:40] Nathan Wrigley: so you

[00:51:41] David Waumsley: unfortunately your listeners will not have to listen to me every week.

[00:51:46] Nathan Wrigley: I dunno about that. Yeah, I've got some news about that. We will be obviously replacing David. It was trivially easy to do actually.

[00:51:56] David Waumsley: yeah. Thanks for that.

[00:51:57] Nathan Wrigley: No, I'm joking. The, we, I, do have, some ideas up my sleeve and I think what will happen is that your biweekly slot, is that a word? Fortnightly, biweekly. Slot will be taken over by not just one person, but a whole phalanx of people. And I'm going to be, rotating the co-host. I won't get into the names yet, but we've got some nice word pressy people.

And so we're gonna go in specific directions. So I've, lined up one person for this aspect of the WordPress ecosystem, and I've lined up this person for this aspect and so on. So we'll be cycling through those. So I'll have, multiple co-hosts.

[00:52:39] David Waumsley: Yeah, no, it'll be good and I'll bet I'll listen into some of that.

[00:52:44] Nathan Wrigley: yes. I might well embargo you from listening 'cause that's, yeah, no, it, it's been, an absolute pleasure. Like I said, it really has been, one of the only things that I've stuck to, in my entire life. And, I'm tearing up David, I'm tearing up and, it's been a pleasure.

I do hope that we manage to continue. Talking, you know that we still have these regular exchanges. Even if we're not recording them, we can actually say what we think then.

[00:53:13] David Waumsley: Yeah.

[00:53:15] Nathan Wrigley: You'll probably get very messy, but, yeah, at it goes without saying. If you've got any, any condolences for David, if you wanna drop him a message, please do that on the WP Builds.com website.

You could search for this episode. I don't know what number it'll be at that point, but search for the episode number and leave him a message there. And, It'd be nice to, nice to think that at some point, at some distant part in, in, in a galaxy far, away. We'd, we'd do another episode, but no.

[00:53:46] David Waumsley: We might do something, at some point, but yeah, thank you really honestly. Thank you for anybody who has tolerated listening to me over any of these years. 'cause I dunno why you do that, but, but it's, but I'm thankful and no one's, ever been nasty to me about doing this show.

not

[00:54:06] Nathan Wrigley: No, they really have actually, I've just, I've, I've, prevented the, those messages. Getting to you the comments. Honestly, David, sometimes I have to delete them and they're, they, terrify. No, of course not. No. An absolute pleasure. We probably could go on for the next 45 minutes. Just trying to say, finally, it's like you put the phone down.

[00:54:25] David Waumsley: I know it, isn't

[00:54:27] Nathan Wrigley: No, you put the phone down, so we'll knock it on the head there. That has been David Worsley, and I hope that you've enjoyed the ride. Take it easy, mate.

[00:54:35] David Waumsley: Thanks a lot. Bye-Bye.

[00:54:37] Nathan Wrigley: Well, I hope that you enjoyed that. As I said at the top of the show, it has been an absolute pleasure speaking to David week in, week out for seven years. Like I said, we've never fallen out. We've never so much as grumbled with each other. We've always had a very amicable relationship. He's done loads of the heavy lifting, making this podcast happen. I am eternally grateful to him.

What's in store for the WP Builds podcasts without David? Well, you'll have to wait and see, but we have plans afoot for 2024. It's going to be new. It's going to be interesting. There's going to be more people involved. So stay tuned for that. And as for David and I, well, again, stay tuned in 2024. Maybe something new and interesting will be dropping there. But sincere, heartfelt thanks. From the bottom of my heart to David Waumsley for all that he's done for WP Builds.

The WP Builds podcast was brought to you today by Omnisend. Omnisend the top rated email and SMS marketing platform for WordPress. More than a hundred thousand merchants use Omnisend everyday to grow their audience and sales. Ready to start building campaigns that really sell? Find out more at www.omnisend.com.

And by GoDaddy Pro. Go daddy Pro the home of managed WordPress hosting that includes free domain, SSL and 24 7 support. Bundle that with The Hub by GoDaddy Pro to unlock more free benefits to manage multiple sites in one place, invoice clients, and get 30% of new purchases. You can find out more at go.me/wpbuilds.

And we do thank GoDaddy Pro and Omnisend for their support of the WP builds podcast.

We will be back later in the week, we got loads of shows lined up. You can find out more at wpbuilds.com forward slash schedule. Go there and put some of those events into your calendar. Hopefully we'll see you. Hopefully you'll join in on our live page and give us some commentary. But stay safe. We'll be back next week with an interview. No more, David. Bye-bye for now.