[00:00:20] Nathan Wrigley: Hello there and welcome once again to the WP Builds podcast. You've reached episode number four seven seven, four hundred and seventy seven entitled Classic Themes to Block Editor Lessons from a WordPress plugin business. It was published on Thursday, the 23rd of July, 2026.
My name's Nathan Wrigley, and in a few minutes time, I will be joined by Olly Campion and Tommy Rockett so that we can chat about their business and plugins and what have you.
But before then, a few bits of housekeeping. If you like what we do at WP Builds, why not subscribe? Head to wpbuilds.com/subscribe. Fill out the form, follow us on socials, whatever works for you.
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Okay. What have we got for you today? Well, today I am chatting with two lovely gentlemen from the uk, from Olly Campion and from Tommy Rockett. We're talking about their Slidey Panel plugin, but we also pepper the whole thing with a fair amount of British humour.
Slidey Panel, as you might imagine, is a panel which slides in from the side of your website. We talk about how they got into plugin development, how they divide up their business, what the risks are for people like them in the year 2026, with the advent of AI, and possibly market share being in flux, and it's a really interesting conversation.
If you'd like to leave a comment, head to wpbuilds.com, search for episode number 477 and leave us a comment there. I hope that you enjoy it.
I am joined on the podcast by two fine gentlemen. I've got Olly Campion and I've got Tommy Rockett. How are you both doing?
[00:02:44] Olly Campion: Hi, how you doing? Thanks for having us. Yeah, we're doing good
[00:02:47] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, great. Nice, Ro- Tommy Rocket, I got I'm gonna get this out the way.
[00:02:52] Olly Campion: Yes.
[00:02:53] Nathan Wrigley: sounds like a stage name.
[00:02:55] Tommy Rockett: Oh, no, it
[00:02:55] Olly Campion: does.
[00:02:55] Tommy Rockett: Yeah. It, it's got a long history of Rockets. there was a Jimmy Rocket, who's my great-grandad, and a Ruby Rocket, who's his daughter.
[00:03:06] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah
[00:03:07] Tommy Rockett: she then had a marriage with someone called Harmer. I chose to keep her name.
[00:03:14] Nathan Wrigley: Fair enough.
[00:03:15] Tommy Rockett: Yeah, Harmon was a lit- little bit less stage namey.
so I've got a load of mini Rockets as well.
[00:03:21] Nathan Wrigley: Sounds so this. I love the, I don't know, just when I saw your name for the first time I thought, "I wanna go and see him, do some dangerous thing." a tightrope over a volcano or something It
[00:03:34] Tommy Rockett: I'll tip a pint of milk over a laptop that comes-
[00:03:36] Nathan Wrigley: tip over. Yeah, there's a, that's a story. anyway, thank you for joining me on the podcast today.
I really appreciate it. So I can't exactly remember how I got you both on the podcast, but I reached out to you because I'd seen something that you were doing that I thought was really nice. We'll get into what that is in a minute. But is it okay if I just ask you to just both introduce yourself? This is, obviously it's a WordPress podcast, so I'm gonna ask you to just give us a little bit of your background.
But if we keep it related to WordPress, that would be great. So shall we go for Olly first, and then we'll go
[00:04:07] Olly Campion: Yeah. Yeah, sure. so yeah, I'm Ollie Campion. I've been programming for, since I was seven, I naturally was gonna, get into websites, And, yeah, found, WordPress in 2007, I think it was. And yeah, it's, not quite as, as long as some, but, pretty early on. And, yeah, I've really enjoyed it ever since and, building with WordPress is fun
[00:04:37] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Nice. That's great. Thank you. okay. Over to you
[00:04:42] Tommy Rockett: So I'm Tommy Rocket. I'm from a design background, 30 years of design. same thing really, naturally progressed into websites. And luckily I've got Ollie as my partner, 'cause I get to decide what it looks like. He makes it work.
[00:04:59] Olly Campion: He makes things look good.
[00:05:00] Tommy Rockett: Yeah.
[00:05:02] Nathan Wrigley: That's ideal.
[00:05:02] Olly Campion: For years
[00:05:03] Tommy Rockett: I
[00:05:03] Olly Campion: was
[00:05:03] Tommy Rockett: struggling, building things, and I think I mentioned before using Elementor and stuff like that, and, finding it doesn't work and it's not working how I want it to look.
but I have Ollie now, so I can say, "This is what I want it to look like, but I want it to actually work."
[00:05:18] Olly Campion: Yeah. And I have, exactly the same situation going on. everything that I ever ma- tried to make look good looked terrible, and now him for that,
[00:05:27] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I, often say that I can design about as well as a potato can. Li-
[00:05:32] Olly Campion: Hello.
[00:05:32] Nathan Wrigley: you could roll a potato across a keyboard and it would achieve the
[00:05:36] Olly Campion: Yeah,
[00:05:36] Nathan Wrigley: output as I would in terms of
[00:05:38] Olly Campion: okay
[00:05:39] Nathan Wrigley: Unfortunately, the same is true for my ability to code as well, but that, let's, that's more of a Swede. roll a
[00:05:45] Olly Campion: Yeah, okay.
[00:05:46] Nathan Wrigley: from the other side. Yeah, it's, they're very different animals. But it's very nice to have you on the podcast.
[00:05:51] Olly Campion: Thank you
[00:05:51] Nathan Wrigley: that. The little background was great. So I caught sight of something that you've released, called Slidey Panel, which then I reached out to you both about.
Do you wanna just give us a little backstory ab- about this? And then we'll get into a broader conversation about WordPress and navigations and full site editing and yada, Whoever wants to take that, just tell us why you built it, how it's built, whatever you want, whichever way you wanna take that.
[00:06:15] Olly Campion: we started off with a, with a plugin quite some years ago called Side Menu, which does a very similar job but for classic themes. And, what I wanted to do was I wanted to create like a side menu block, that was easily discoverable in the, block directory. but, yeah, they didn't like the name, so we had to come up with, quickly with a new name for for the very small plugin.
[00:06:47] Nathan Wrigley: What was wrong with the name? What was the pushback on the name? I read that in, 'cause you added to my show notes and you said that, that it got pushed back by the team. And I was looking at it thinking, "What possible, like what thing is confusing about that? Or possible toes do you tread on?"
[00:07:04] Olly Campion: w- it's very difficult 'cause they don't give you much information.
[00:07:06] Nathan Wrigley: Oh,
[00:07:08] Olly Campion: I think that, I'm pretty sure that they didn't like the fact that the two terms side and menu were so generic.
[00:07:16] Nathan Wrigley: Okay
[00:07:17] Olly Campion: but then we already had our main side menu plugin, so it, I don't know. it, is what it is, and
[00:07:24] Nathan Wrigley: yeah.
[00:07:25] Olly Campion: what we are.
[00:07:26] Nathan Wrigley: Yep
[00:07:27] Olly Campion: but yeah, yeah, we, we decided to make, the block version of this plugin, which effectively brings in a, panel from the side, and it slides it in, because there was nothing that we could find that was easy to use in existence. And Tammie likes to use it with his designs,
[00:07:49] Tommy Rockett: Yeah, I love it.
Yeah. I'm No, I think it's great 'cause it's very quick as well, and it feels like, it feels like something's coming from behind your website as opposed to overtaking it. It's like suddenly I'm getting to see a little something extra happening. and it keeps it out the way
[00:08:05] Nathan Wrigley: Do you build-- So the, two of you are combined. do you have an agency that you both run together?
[00:08:12] Olly Campion: Yeah,
[00:08:13] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah
[00:08:13] Olly Campion: Webd is our, sort of combined name. I'm the, I'm development side, he's design side. yeah.
[00:08:22] Tommy Rockett: Yeah, we've been working together I don't know how many years now.
[00:08:25] Olly Campion: 20-something.
[00:08:26] Tommy Rockett: Yeah, and
that's
[00:08:27] Olly & Tommy: loosely as...
[00:08:27] Nathan Wrigley: Well done.
[00:08:29] Tommy Rockett: that's
but loosely as, separate elements doing our own thing.
[00:08:34] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, I see.
[00:08:35] Tommy Rockett: ar-
about CS code in cafes places and stuff like that.
And then-
[00:08:39] Olly Campion: Yeah ...
[00:08:41] Tommy Rockett: suddenly we thought, why don't we just work together-" Yeah ... "properly?" Yeah. I mean
[00:08:47] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, nice.
[00:08:48] Tommy Rockett: you know, after all these years, why don't we just do it properly? Yeah.
[00:08:52] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. And so do you-- is the lion's share of your work WordPressy style? maybe it's 100% of the work, maybe it's only 50%, but do you broadly find yourself offering clients WordPress as the solution for all the things?
[00:09:05] Olly Campion: Yes, because, we could... We have had instances where people have wanted stuff done in, like another language or a different, CMS or... And yeah, we can do that. It's not a problem, but, it's not gonna be, like, efficient. we've worked with WordPress for so long now that there's little that we don't know a- about it.
for, for me from a back-end point of view, and Tommy from a design point of view. So it's, Actually, that's not true. Tommy likes to not know too much about it because he likes to try and get things done that no one's done before, and then it's my problem and I've got to-
[00:09:49] Nathan Wrigley: Bravo.
[00:09:49] Tommy Rockett: Why can't we do that, Ollie?
[00:09:50] Olly Campion: Yeah.
[00:09:51] Tommy Rockett: Because they've set it up why can't you work out how to do that, Ollie? Yeah.
[00:09:56] Olly Campion: Yeah.
[00:09:56] Nathan Wrigley: okay.
[00:09:57] Tommy Rockett: does.
[00:09:57] Olly Campion: Yeah. And
I complain a lot
[00:09:59] Nathan Wrigley: find i- in the year 2026, we're recording this very end of June 2026, is your... You may n- w- may not wish to discuss this, I don't know. I'm just wondering about the desire for people to have WordPress. I'm wondering if the phone is answered because people are phoning you up because they want a WordPress website, or do they generally want a website, and then you suggest WordPress? The bigger picture behind that question basically is about this sort of slow but meaningful decline in market share for WordPress at the moment. It went from 43% of the web, m- I don't know, like six, seven, eight months ago, something like that. We're down to, the low 40s, 40.3 or something like that. So there does seem to be this trend of people looking elsewhere, maybe AI or other platforms or whatever it may be. So I'm just firing that back to you to see if y- your phone is still red hot for WordPress stuff, or if it's just that you suggest WordPress when they phone up and say, "Build me a website."
[00:11:00] Olly Campion: We've, So yes, it's, that's an interesting question actually, but it's multifaceted, I think. you've got f- first of all, you've got the very small companies who, don't have websites at all, and there's more of them than you think, and they will literally just have a Linktree and some socials.
[00:11:18] Nathan Wrigley: Yep
[00:11:19] Olly Campion: and if you rewound, what, five years ago, that would never be conceived of. it just wouldn't be a thing. but then you've also got the small companies who are quite happy to set themselves up with a Wix or a Squarespace or what have you. and and they like that, or GoDaddy even.
Yeah. but for the, for, our clients, the majority of our clients are, large, have larger websites
[00:11:49] Nathan Wrigley: Okay
[00:11:50] Olly Campion: or more complicated websites, or websites that do very bespoke stuff, or websites that have been designed very badly in WordPress that then, they need it, sorting out and, fixing for whatever reason.
and so at the moment, I think we're, I think we're all good, but I'm under no illusion that with AI and what have you, especially Agentic AI coming around the corner where, with Codex or Claude, and you can literally talk your website into existence, with no nec- necessary skills in either design or development department.
I think that, yeah, the future is both extremely exciting at the moment. and I mean that because like I, I- Yeah. Yeah ... am equally terrified. I don't think I've ever been so excited about, computers since I was probably 13, and the, the latest, I don't know, Amiga was coming out or whatever, what...
[00:12:55] Nathan Wrigley: Oh yeah, I remember that.
[00:12:58] Olly Campion: They were
[00:12:59] Nathan Wrigley: great
[00:13:00] Olly Campion: whereas now, it's "Yeah, this is great, but I'm probably gonna be unemployed in a few years' time."
[00:13:07] Nathan Wrigley: So that's a really interesting debate. By the way, I was the ZX80 generation. That
[00:13:12] Olly Campion: Okay
[00:13:12] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, they were th- honestly, they're like a doorstop. They did nothing, but they were fun. I, think there's two sides to that, and it's only becoming obvious to me, like about now really, that I've had this sort of trepidation that AI was just gonna take everything and flatten everything in its path.
It's now occurring to me that people like you are and the bit that's occurring to me is that, yes, you can build it with an AI, but so far I haven't yet seen the interface to maintain it,
[00:13:49] Olly Campion: keep adapting. Yeah
[00:13:51] Nathan Wrigley: you have to keep going back to the AI prompt and say, "Can you do this?"
And then it messes that up, and, "No, not that. Okay, go back. Let's start that again." That seems, once the the manual WYSIWYG approach, the block editor or what- whatever it may be, whatever page builder you're using,
[00:14:09] Olly Campion: Yeah
[00:14:10] Nathan Wrigley: still seems superior, and I hadn't really drawn that conclusion until honestly like a couple of weeks ago when I suddenly thought, once it's built, the maintenance thereof and the adaptations and the fiddling over time and the, "Can I have a Christmas theme for that?"
And, "Can we add this particular feature?" I can't see that going away anytime soon because it doesn't... as yet, nobody's built the interface which is absolutely reliably gonna maintain the website. So I don't know if you've got any commentary on that, but that's just some thoughts I've had recently.
[00:14:44] Olly Campion: I think that with agentic AI, I think you will be very surprised what happens and very soon.
I just-- It's, nuts. I've been playing with, I, I've just-- I've actually just turned off my OpenClaw. I've, not in, a r- not in rage, or more in,
[00:15:07] Nathan Wrigley: way, Yeah
[00:15:08] Olly Campion: more in, sort of frustration.
[00:15:09] Tommy Rockett: Not that you're gonna admit to that rage.
[00:15:11] Olly Campion: No. yeah, my OpenClaw is called Brian, and, Brian is no longer. mainly because, the rate at which it tears through tokens and costs you an absolute fortune, is eye-watering. But also the, amount it gets wrong and the, just the way it just goes off on one and try, tries to If it can't do something, it tries to work it out itself, and quite often that if you don't, if you're not careful, that will take ages and lots of money.
[00:15:49] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah,
[00:15:50] Olly Campion: And, since I've been playing with OpenClaw, so OpenClaw, what, came out in November and then got rebranded as OpenClaw and came out in, February again, I think, when it was released as OpenClaw.
So since I've been playing around with it, I've gone, now gone back and had a go on, gone back to sort of Codex. I actually don't have Anthropic's Claude. I probably should do, but, I've been playing around with, Codex and yeah, it's, in-- it's pretty good
[00:16:22] Nathan Wrigley: So do you mean good in the sense of the argument that I just presented, it that, or at least you can see some, you can see some light at the end of the tunnel for the AI where
[00:16:32] Olly Campion: Yeah
[00:16:33] Nathan Wrigley: and pieces that I just said are no longer relevant because
[00:16:35] Olly Campion: No.
[00:16:36] Nathan Wrigley: can go back and
[00:16:37] Olly Campion: Yeah, so you have, let's say for example, you had your web, your, Let's say, let's give it a, a WordPress wrapper on this, right? So let's say you had, a client website that had a, like a bespoke client plugin that did all the bespoke stuff for that client's website, right? you fire up Codex in, in the, IDE, and it, y- you start a chat, and you just tell it to, if you've already s- if you've already started the plugin, then like you say, you get it to just have a look at, have a look at the code, and then you tell it what you want, to achieve, and t, and you ask it to create a plan.
And then you basically discuss the plan, and when you're happy with, what it's, come up with, you're like, "Okay, go. Do it," And, you can, pretty much get more than you can imagine done on a, ChatGPT 20 quid a month plus account,
[00:17:46] Nathan Wrigley: yeah
[00:17:47] Olly Campion: it's... And so like you say, so let's say you wanted to have put s- put a Christmassy theme on over the top of it for a month, whatever, you'd literally just have...
You probably could just give it those words,
[00:17:58] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah,
[00:17:58] Olly Campion: For a month
[00:17:59] Nathan Wrigley: have
[00:17:59] Olly Campion: and it would come up with a plan. Yeah. And it would come up with a plan, and you would be, I think you would be surprised that you'd probably have that done in half an hour or what have you
[00:18:09] Nathan Wrigley: So if that's the case, it's the opposite of a rising tide carries all boats. This is I don't know, an emptying harbor brings all boats into the mud. does that, do, does that then make you... Are you casting around at the minute then for other things to do in the AI apocalypse that may follow for our industry in particular?
Or do you still think that there's any place for somebody like the pair of you?
[00:18:34] Tommy Rockett: I, I-- So can I... Yeah, so I was talking to Ollie the other day about this, and I was saying that I think that our strengths are in our bespoke service, and how from a design perspective and a development perspective, yeah, you can get AI to do stuff. And like you were saying, you ask it, it gets it wrong.
You ask it, it gets... There's this human element to working with people that's quite powerful when you're, building anything, whether it be a website, a video, a brand. and I think that we've still got that talking to the client side that the AI can't do, can't actually... You, it-- you can't just leave them prompting AI to fix their website
[00:19:17] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, so that leaves, leaves us as like the middle man i- in effect. Yeah, yeah. Okay, all right. That's interesting. Yeah, so we can't have a film without a film director.
[00:19:28] Tommy Rockett: Yeah
[00:19:28] Nathan Wrigley: website without a website director,
[00:19:31] Tommy Rockett: Kinda
[00:19:31] Nathan Wrigley: the role that we all take on is, just this interface for being able to create a, decent prompt from what you just told us. Oh, that's really interesting. here's a... Go on
[00:19:48] Tommy Rockett: because, from what Ollie was saying, like he, he can sit there and have a chat with these things, discuss... He can do that. I couldn't do that.
[00:19:50] Nathan Wrigley: No, I can't. No, no
[00:19:52] Tommy Rockett: And so I would balls it up. Yeah.
would be Easter, not Christmas. Who knows? But, I wouldn't, everywhere.
it is- ... I wouldn't be able to do it.
He's, thinking from his perspective. He finds it easy
[00:20:07] Nathan Wrigley: here's a couple of other wrinkles I think which go in the mix. And, th- the first one is absolutely unquantifiable, and I'm just gonna throw it out there, and I have no proof to back up whether this will be true. But I have, I have young adults, and I, don't know if it's just a coincidence that the, th- that they and all of their friends have a massive, dislike of AI. they've got this whole environmental angle, so they see it as something which is, if unfettered and unchecked, is gonna just consume all the energy and pollute all the rivers and what have you. they're young. Everybody's ili- idealistic when they're young, so maybe that won't come to pass. but there's also this stolen future thing that they report to me. It's like your generation is coming up with a technology which is gonna undermine of our abilities to have jobs in the future. And it's, a pointing finger, a bit like how dare you undermine our future. i- so I don't know if there's anything that you agree with there or
[00:21:16] Tommy Rockett: disagree
I totally do, yeah. I've got young adults, they t- they hate AI.
[00:21:21] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah
[00:21:21] Tommy Rockett: new musicians really hate AI.
[00:21:25] Nathan Wrigley: And so the sense that it's inevitable because a bunch of people who are technology, say it's inevitable,
[00:21:34] Tommy Rockett: Yeah
[00:21:35] Nathan Wrigley: turns out that we all vote with our feet and stop using it, I'm finding that argument hard to believe. I think that what is economically the most viable will probably, that's where we'll land, and that means AI everywhere. But I can equally see that, in the same way that we in the UK, we vote in the Tories, and then we swing and we vote in Labour, and then a few years later we vote in the Tories and we vote in La- that kind of thing, that could happen here. And it may be that, the environmental debate or the stolen future debate, maybe there's a future in which that wins.
I, I don't know
[00:22:10] Olly Campion: I think the only way that the future looks fantastic after AI has stolen all of the energy, water jobs
[00:22:20] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:22:23] Olly Campion: is, Nice ... is if we end up in a Star Trek universe with universal basic in- income. But that
would require, all of the billionaires to actually say, yeah, we might actually need to give some money to other people."
[00:22:40] Nathan Wrigley: All right. I, think, we'll put a pin in that, but, let's just say you share my intuitions. let's talk about that when we finish this conversation, 'cause I think there's a hole there then. 'Cause we've gone totally off the rails.
[00:22:52] Olly Campion: Yes
[00:22:52] Nathan Wrigley: talk about your plugin, Slidey Panel. Let me just firstly read it into the record.
So it's a plugin which is on wordpress.org. So as usual, wordpress.org/plugins/slidey, and that is spelt with an E, so it's S-I-L-D-E-Y dash panel. You can go and get it over there. So I... you said, te- a little bit about why it came to be, but I'm just wondering if we had a decent offering for a, menu or something like this in Core, s- this wouldn't have existed.
Obviously Core is not there to satisfy everybody. It's like an 80/20 proposition. If 80% of the people need it, then we'll build it. If not, then we won't. But, this a case of dogfooding a problem which just ke- kept coming up with your own client websites? there is no decent way in a block-based theme to offer something like this.
Were you dogfooding the problem that your clients gave you, basically?
[00:23:51] Olly Campion: Absolutely. But, it started, way before we got the block editor because, with the sister plugin, side menu, which does a incredibly similar job just not in the block editor. or it didn't. Now, it does. But,
[00:24:14] Nathan Wrigley: Okay.
[00:24:15] Olly Campion: but the, we would hijack existing theme, burger menus, for example.
so you could add your own, open button for the, side menu or side panel. or you could choose, if you had a compatible, classic theme, then you could choose to over-override the existing theme's burger menu so that it came out in a, in a similar manner.
[00:24:45] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah
[00:24:46] Olly Campion: and yeah, we found that people were loving that, and they, kept asking us, to, make it compatible with, new themes like Divi and other, things like that
[00:24:56] Nathan Wrigley: built the code so that you could-- Was that a bespoke like theme by theme project or is there some hook in WordPress that you could hook into which enabled you to just blanket cover most of the themes that were built in, like I'm doing air quotes, the WordPress way or did you have to enable it for Divi?
Like from your point of view, did you
[00:25:13] Olly Campion: have to write
[00:25:13] Nathan Wrigley: the code so that Divi w- Oh gosh.
[00:25:16] Olly Campion: Yeah, so every s- the w- don't, w- you know, we didn't, there weren't that many. there's, I think, probably 20
[00:25:22] Nathan Wrigley: handful
[00:25:22] Olly Campion: at most. But yeah.
to do about 20, and then you've covered, God knows how many million installs, so
Yeah
you're all good. But, yeah, people, liked it.
And, and the moment the block editor came out, we created a, like a, block that just really just created a, like the short code. So it was a... And actually quite a lot of blocks these days s- even n- now still do that, whereby it's not really a block, it's just a wrapper around a, short code.
and so we'd had, we had already done that. But yeah, what we wanted to do was having the, have something that was literally in the editor, so you could search for it in the block directory, install it in the block directory, po- pop it in, add your button, in, add the content to the panel, done.
[00:26:11] Tommy Rockett: Yeah, and no mucking around either, just works.
[00:26:14] Olly Campion: Yeah.
[00:26:15] Tommy Rockett: I love that.
[00:26:16] Nathan Wrigley: okay. So does it hook into the WordPress... Like, how do you build the menus or whatever it is that ends up inside that area? How does that actually work? So I know we're on an audio podcast. It would be a lot easier if we could see the screen, but I'm guessing because it's called Slidey Panel and not Slidey Navigation Menu, that you can drop more than just the navigation menu in it.
I'm guessing, I don't know, buttons or icons or who knows, another website entirely
[00:26:42] Olly Campion: Yeah
[00:26:43] Nathan Wrigley: that's what we all need. is that true? And do you build what comes in the little panel on the, in, in this case that I saw from the right?
[00:26:51] Olly Campion: Yeah, originally we would've used, And we do use, inside menu we use a, a custom post type,
[00:26:59] Nathan Wrigley: Okay
[00:27:00] Olly Campion: to manage, the different posts, that, you can choose as, side, side man- menu, s- slidey panel, content. but with the block directory, you aren't allowed to have pretty much any PHP at all.
In fact, as far as GitHub is concerned, the plugin is a JavaScript plugin, which is mad. I, don't think I've ever... yeah. So as such, and you're, not allowed to create custom post types, and you're not allowed to do this, and you're not allowed to do that. what w- what we did is we just got it so that you choose a, a page that exists in the,
[00:27:46] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, neat.
[00:27:48] Olly Campion: Yeah.
[00:27:48] Nathan Wrigley: so you j- like you just drop a page in. Whatever's
[00:27:50] Olly Campion: Yeah.
[00:27:51] Nathan Wrigley: is in the...
[00:27:52] Olly Campion: Yeah.
neat
the reason why we chose, the reason why we chose that rather than, So the block, the WordPress block way would be to have, a template kind of thing that
[00:28:04] Nathan Wrigley: yeah,
[00:28:05] Olly Campion: you can still edit in the editor, which is the way... I don't know if you've seen the new, WordPress 7, navigation
[00:28:12] Nathan Wrigley: Overlay,
[00:28:13] Olly Campion: Overlay, yeah.
yeah
that, I th- I'm pretty sure that is done with like a, separate sort of template thing. But if we wanted to go down that route, it looked like it was only gonna be compatible with WordPress 7 and above, which of course we didn't really want. We want to be able to be compatible with, all those WordPresses going back to...
when did the block edits come out? 5.8, something like that? Yeah, something like that. So yeah. So that's why we did it. So there... You do have to go off, the editor to create your page that you want to, to ing- to have the content pulled in on, or from rather. But, but once you've h- got that page ready or what have you, adding the block, choosing which page it is, done.
[00:28:56] Nathan Wrigley: So
[00:28:57] Olly Campion: that
your brain, starts going "What can I put in a
[00:29:00] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, that's exactly what happened to me. Yeah.
[00:29:02] Tommy Rockett: page?"
[00:29:03] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:29:03] Tommy Rockett: Whatever I can put in a page can now appear in the side panel.
[00:29:05] Nathan Wrigley: So presumably the only limitation you've got to impose upon yourself then really is like the vertical space that's available on a device. You've got to, think, "Okay, if I keep adding to this, it's gonna scroll and that'll be weird." But also everything's got to be the width of a panel that slides in. So if you write full paragraphs, that's gonna be a bit weird. But putting in buttons in, you hit Return, you get a new block, you add a button block, you hit Return, you get a new block, you add a button block or whatever, and you can just stack these things one, one on top of the other.
I'm presuming that's like the structure of it really is one thing and then another thing and then another thing all stacking, But the sky's the limit then in that case. You can put... If it's available inside the block editor, it's available inside your slidey panel as well.
That's
[00:29:57] Olly Campion: Yeah.
[00:29:57] Nathan Wrigley: neat
[00:29:58] Olly Campion: Yeah, so you can have a, a contact form. You could have an accordion block
a collection of details blocks.
[00:30:05] Nathan Wrigley: yeah. okay, so accordions.
[00:30:08] Tommy Rockett: yeah.
or, products, like book now, here's your tickets. oh, what do I want to buy? Featured product, whatever.
[00:30:17] Nathan Wrigley: can you... Okay, My mind's gone in lo- lots
[00:30:20] Tommy Rockett: Yeah
[00:30:20] Nathan Wrigley: here. The first thing, can it be configured such that a different page, let's say I'm on the homepage, that the slidy panel which gets invoked on the homepage is different from the slidy panel on, let's say, the About page or whatever it may be?
In other words, where I am on the website, can that influence what the panel has as its content
[00:30:40] Tommy Rockett: If I have anything to do with it, at a later date, yes.
[00:30:44] Olly Campion: actually, you,
[00:30:45] Nathan Wrigley: Okay.
[00:30:45] Olly Campion: it's, it, it, already is actually. Okay. because, and it all depends on, on what you mean. Because if it's the same button that opens it, then, then it's, then the, content that is displayed is then the content from the page, right?
so at that point, you just have to, decide how the content is displayed on the front end, right?
are plugins that already do that. So for example, I think it's called, Block Logic, and that one, it's not one of ours, but, you can, there are certain conditions that you can, choose whether a block appears or doesn't appear.
So it can be like, it can appear on the homepage or n- or not, or appear on the About page or not. So you could have a couple of groups of s- things on this, on this page for your, slidy panel. and it would, and it would decide, which group it, it displays depending on the,
[00:31:49] Nathan Wrigley: see. Okay, so in theory, you could have like multiple slidey panels on the same page, and if presumably, I don't know, a CSS selector or something like that is... I don't know how that works. Is it a How's it invoked? we'll get to that in a minute. But the, the point is you could have multiple panels on the same page, and if I click over here, I get that one, and it's red, and it's got different content.
And if I click on this one over here, it's blue, and it's got different content. One's a navigation menu, and one's just, I don't know, a form that you need to fill out to get in touch with us or something
[00:32:21] Olly Campion: Ah, so on the same page with different buttons, that's our upgrade
[00:32:27] Nathan Wrigley: okay. Yeah, okay. let's get into that then. So n- no, let's not. Let's park that for a minute. There, but there is a path for doing that. You can have
[00:32:36] Olly Campion: Sure.
[00:32:36] Nathan Wrigley: content available, and we'll
[00:32:38] Olly Campion: On a different-- oh
[00:32:39] Nathan Wrigley: the upgrade. Yeah, Okay. And so the, way in which I saw it being used was the sort of traditional hamburger menu.
So I went to your website, there was a header, there was logo left, hamburger menu and I clicked the hamburger menu and boom, there it was. It slid in as you'd imagine. So I that it was just some ver- version of the WordPress navigat- WordPress menu system. Now I know that it's not. occurs to me that could be invoked in all sorts of different ways. I don't know, if you add... you're in a WooCommerce site and you click, I don't know, add to cart or something, that could invoke the slidey panel to show the contents of the cart or something like that.
[00:33:20] Olly Campion: Yeah, WooCommerce have their own, side panel for,
[00:33:24] Nathan Wrigley: true.
That's
[00:33:25] Olly Campion: the mini cart, already. but yes, in theory you could absolutely have, as many buttons as you wanted to produce as many different ... and coming in from the left or the right,
[00:33:39] Nathan Wrigley: Okay
[00:33:39] Olly Campion: and different widths and
[00:33:41] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah,
[00:33:42] Olly Campion: background colors.
Yeah,
[00:33:43] Tommy Rockett: I like the fact that it doesn't take up the whole screen. It's
[00:33:46] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah
[00:33:47] Tommy Rockett: 40% or whatever, and you can still ... You know you're still where you were. You've just got a thing that's giving you extra information. I like that.
[00:33:54] Nathan Wrigley: I've, I've settled on the hamburger menu and the panel as the, best way of navigating almost anything. that idea of stacking your menu horizontally next to the logo, for me, that now seems like a bit of wasted real estate on a webpage. I love the idea... it, it grew on me from mobile devices because it was always there. And then when I started to see it being deployed on desktop, desktop sites, I thought, "Actually, you know what? That's what I want as well." and so when I saw what you were doing, that I think was probably what intrigued me. But I really like the fact that it's a page, and the fact that you can just build stuff in a page. so I guess a further question would be then, let's talk about your upgrade. Do you, have a pro plan or something which enables you to do stuff beyond what the, the plugin on the .org repo will do?
[00:34:50] Olly Campion: Yeah, there's a, So the upgrade path is actually back via our original side menu plugin. and the upgrade is called Side Menu Block Premium.
[00:35:01] Nathan Wrigley: Okay
[00:35:01] Olly Campion: and, it's, yeah, it's a, just, I think it's from... I think it's a discount at the moment for 15 pounds, but it's, usually 19.99 for
Nice.
[00:35:15] Nathan Wrigley: doesn't start in a nine then? starts in a nine now. At least a nine. That's great. Well done. That's brilliant. I've got the URL actually. It's, it into the show notes. It'll be a lot easier than reading it out, but it's on your website, webd.uk, and then there's obviously some links put into the show notes that you can follow over there. okay, and do you have, a roadmap for this? Is there stuff that you're gonna be building into the future? It sounds what you've been saying between you that Tommy's got ideas that he wants it to
[00:35:49] Olly Campion: Yeah, he's not...
[00:35:49] Nathan Wrigley: pages and...
[00:35:50] Tommy Rockett: I don't have to build it, so I can come up with loads of great ideas and then Olly's got to actually realise it. Yeah. So that's the roadmap at the moment. Can we do this, Ol?
[00:36:01] Olly Campion: Yeah. Yeah. That's a microcosm of everything really. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:36:05] Nathan Wrigley: okay. But just, just pivoting it a bit to WordPress project as a whole. It, it-- I'm wondering if many people listening to this podcast would me for what I'm about to say, would wish that there was no need for this because the, block ed- version of WordPress which shipped 7.0 at the minute, 7.1 soon, a capable system in it from the get-go. And it does feel like we're moving towards it. I've got to say, I like the implement... As you've described it, I like your im- implementation a lot because, in the WordPress block, editor, a bit like the old menu system that we had in WordPress, you can add in your bits and pieces and then drag them around, move them, and finally save it, and what have you. is there a bit of you which also wishes that this didn't need to exist because the WordPress project had something credible? Because it really hasn't had something credible until very recently.
[00:37:01] Olly Campion: Yeah, I think there's a way to go with the navigation block still. we've, got another plugin in the, WordPress repository called Options for Block Themes. and it hasn't got the most enormous amount of options in it, currently, but, w- we've got plans for that as well.
But one of the things it does is it allows you to have s- like collapsible submenus in the default, navigation block in the overlay. I've s- I've got to test that on, version 7 just to make absolutely sure. Mind you, I've, got quite a few people who use it, so I'm sure they would've told me if
[00:37:40] Nathan Wrigley: been complaining.
[00:37:41] Olly Campion: it
[00:37:42] Nathan Wrigley: yeah. Yeah, it's still working in that case, Yeah,
[00:37:45] Olly Campion: didn't work. But, the way that we get... the way that we do that is rather than reinventing the wheel, which is what we've done with Slidey Panel, m- with that, what we've, what we do is we hook into the existing navigation block, and pop in little, options, in a, another panel below the, below, in, below the block settings, like a toggle for, this one, for example, just to, turn on collapsible, submenus.
And then there's another one as well, and I can't remember what it does off the top of my head, but there is another option for the navigation menu. But, but yes, what you've said about the navigation block is something that we hear quite a lot, so
yeah.
[00:38:35] Nathan Wrigley: I, in a way I'm really glad that, how to describe this? If WordPress did everything superbly, there really wouldn't be much of a market for plugin developers to extend it. And so in a sense it's quite nice that it hasn't been able to do that because it's allowed people like you to paint your own canvas onto the plugin marketplace and build something like that. Speaking of the plugin marketplace, how do you... you've got some upsells, but you've got a lot of stuff which is just on the wordpress.org repo. how do you market this stuff? I'm fairly confident in saying this is the first time you've been on a podcast. I could be completely wrong about that, but it sounds from what you were saying in the preamble that this was the first podcast that you've been on.
I, I just wondered if you did go into marketing, if like the, plugin business is a significant bit of what you do, or is it like a you build it, you maintain it, but it's not really a thing that you market much or put too much of an effort into? I don't know how that works.
[00:39:33] Olly Campion: the plugins that we've got pretty much all have, exist because our clients have required them.
Great
not, we're not cha- the fact that other people like them and then upgrade them- is great. we're really ... That's great. but it's luckily not something that we have to rely upon because our day job is building other people's websites.
but, marketing plugins, yeah, I would ... If we had to market our plugins, I, d- f- It's ... There are a lot of rules in the plugin guidelines so that y- you ... And quite rightly, 'cause nobody wants to be, nagged the whole time to upgrade a plugin, although you are quite often. But,
[00:40:22] Nathan Wrigley: I was gonna say that doesn't... definitely not
[00:40:25] Olly Campion: everybody's sticking to those
[00:40:26] Nathan Wrigley: rules.
[00:40:28] Olly Campion: there are rules about that.
And, when you're, trying to get a plugin, approved for the first time, if you've got, a, banner that comes up on every single admin page and can't be dismissed, you're n- that plugin's not gonna get approved. and so what you have to ... So your marketing has to be relevant, and it has to be, This is within the plugin itself. It has to be relevant. It has to be minimal. and, yeah, you've gotta, you've gotta respect the fact that other people are, using your plugin and don't wanna be annoyed the whole time. so yeah, this is the first time we've been on a podcast about a plugin.
Yeah. Or, on a podcast at all, actually. Oh, yeah.
[00:41:13] Nathan Wrigley: it's interesting because, I've, been talking to product makers and, other content creators and things like that, and I, don't know if you've followed, the WordPress news particularly, but there does seem to be a real moment of difficulty for people who've stacked their business on a single plugin or a single use case plugin.
In other words, the plugin does that thing. seem to be in real danger, especially from AI. so we were talking about that a lot earlier, but the idea that, now you can basically ask AI to achieve this thing, now doesn't seem that far away. I want a plugin to do this one thing.
I know exactly how to describe that one thing, and it will build it, and probably it will be reliable. And because you're the only person to have it on the website, you might not need to worry quite so much about, I don't know, attack vectors and things like that. But, the people who've got plugin businesses where they've got, an, a buy-in, you're using our thing, you have to use our thing because it's got so many tendrils and so many different bits and pieces. that means that your website business, I think, is probably more important than it was even, couple of years ago, because those single use plugin houses really do seem to be struggling in the advent of AI. And so the fact that your, entire business basically sounds like building people's websites and the plugin bit is a bit that you've added onto the side, it sounds like that, with the benefit of hindsight, was probably an incredibly wise decision even though you didn't know that AI was gonna come and eat everybody's lunch.
Yeah.
[00:42:55] Olly Campion: Tammie's the same as me, in that we don't just, I don't just have one thing that I do. and when you're self-employed and, and, if you want to continue being self-employed, you have to have other things because if something fails, you just ha- you have to be able to shrug your shoulders and move on to the next thing.
I have a food festival that I run in my local town called Rye Bay Scot Week.
[00:43:26] Nathan Wrigley: okay.
[00:43:26] Olly Campion: I,
[00:43:27] Nathan Wrigley: that coming.
[00:43:28] Olly Campion: I'm
[00:43:29] Nathan Wrigley: That's
[00:43:29] Olly Campion: I, I create a local, a lo- I create a local tourist map for, my hometown in Rye, and sometimes I sell tea towels of it. This is
there's, I have an enormous number of things that I do. I don't just, build websites, and if I did just build websites, I would be very concerned about the next few years, I think.
Yeah.
[00:43:52] Nathan Wrigley: that's interesting. Yeah, okay. That's really interesting. Yeah.
[00:43:56] Olly Campion: what I'm doing at the moment, is hoarding old 1980s, Macs and Amigas and- It's a shame you can't, a shame you can't show everybody. Yeah. But I was saying-
[00:44:09] Nathan Wrigley: going for the classic car approach. Are you bubble wrapping them,
[00:44:12] Olly Campion: Yeah.
[00:44:13] Nathan Wrigley: them
[00:44:13] Olly Campion: all there, yeah. My wife has no idea how many are in the, attic. There's so many. But,
[00:44:18] Nathan Wrigley: do? Do you buy them, do you buy them, as new and just stick them in a box? Or
[00:44:22] Olly Campion: I,
[00:44:22] Nathan Wrigley: you,
[00:44:23] Olly Campion: I have, got them from multiple different locations. And the, first one actually I got was a 1984 Mac, 512K. And, was on Marketplace, and it was just this black bag. And I'm like, "What the hell is that black bag?" And it was for free. And I, and, and I realized that it was like, it was this, really early, Macintosh that I'd, actually...
I, didn't, I wasn't even, aware of Macintoshes back then. I was, I was seven. But, yeah, I went and picked it up, and, and I just started restoring it. And, got the, I got the thing up and running in the end. and yeah, it's great. And I just thought, "Yeah, I kinda like this." I feel like I'm back, doing something that I did, decades ago.
[00:45:11] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:45:12] Olly Campion: And, my dad used to, one of the things that my dad used to do, is he used to be, like, an antiques dealer.
[00:45:19] Nathan Wrigley: Oh,
[00:45:19] Olly Campion: okay.
[00:45:19] Nathan Wrigley: It's in your veins.
[00:45:21] Olly Campion: It's in your
honestly, he would be absolutely amazed if he thought that, the future for me was a weird kind of antiques dealer restorer
[00:45:31] Nathan Wrigley: is a-- Yeah, isn't that weird? Future antiques.
[00:45:34] Olly Campion: But I feel like AI can't take that away from me. Oh. AI can't take my Macs away from me or my Amigas away from me. I see what you do.
house
[00:45:42] Tommy Rockett: fire can do
I see, what Elliott does with the Macs as the same as what you do with code. Where you get your soldering iron out- Yeah ... you rewire that and make that do the, it's like your- Yeah.
It's just the same thing- ... but like retro.
[00:45:55] Olly Campion: Yeah.
[00:45:55] Nathan Wrigley: When I was a, when I was a kid, I, used to collect Star Wars figures. And so I had loads of Star Wars figures, and I had this Star Wars gun that I got for Christmas, and it was about three feet long. It was entirely made of plastic. The thing was held together by... it wasn't well made, probably built cheaply somewhere on planet Earth. Anyway, I loved it and then, used it and what have you. The other day, for no reason at all, I was looking around at, Star Wars stuff, and that, that gun came up. $24,000.
[00:46:33] Olly Campion: Oh, geez. Wow. Wow
[00:46:37] Nathan Wrigley: I know. And it's in a... It got compacted into trash many years ago. The point being, y- you've no idea, have you?
[00:46:44] Olly Campion: No
[00:46:45] Nathan Wrigley: you just toss away easily just be a massive hit. So the Mac that, you paid, I don't know, $1,000 for, and then it becomes obsolete, so you toss it in the bin. Who knows how many people with enormously deep pockets at some point in the future will, will to have that? That's so interesting. I'm quite jealous. I chuck everything away, and it's not, it's not that good for me. Okay, there we go. We'll knock it on the head there. Thank you very much. I will put into the show notes, I don't know what the episode number for this is, but if you're listening to this and you've got this far, go to WP Builds, search for the episode.
It's probably gonna be easiest just to search for Olly, O-L-L-Y, and Tommy, T-O-M-M-Y. That'll get you the episode, I'm sure. you'll be able to go and see what it is that they do and where they do it, and I'll put all the links into the show notes. Olly and Tommy, thanks for chatting to me today. That was really interesting.
Cheers.
[00:47:40] Olly Campion: Thank you very much for having us.
[00:47:42] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. That's all we've got time for today. I hope that you enjoyed it. If you did, head to wpbuilds.com. Search for episode 477, and leave us a comment there. You can leave us a comment if you didn't like it.
Don't forget, we'll be back next Thursday for a podcast episode, and we'll also be back on Monday for This Week in WordPress.
If you'd like to get in touch about advertising on WP Builds, head to wpbuilds.com/advertise, or drop me an email [email protected].
Okay, we'll be back next week. You stay safe. Here comes some really, really tacky tech, no cheesy music. Have a good week. Bye-bye for now.
