This seems a little odd, 'Do we even need WordPress', given that we're a WordPress podcast. But, there's actually quite a lot to be said here. Both David and I have been using WordPress for years (David, quite a bit longer), and perhaps it's time to think about whether WordPress is always the right choice for our website building projects. If the site is a simple brochure site that's really never going to get updates, is WordPress really the right option? After all, you'll be needing to maintain the website, patch for security, update themes and plugins, when all that you really needed were a few lines of HTML, CSS as perhaps some JavaScript. David's been exploring taking his sites more in the 'static' direction lately, and whilst you can do this with WordPress and some plugins, David's finding the joys of writing his own HTML and getting back into what the w3c have to say. It's a fun chat and something that you might not have looked at closely, so go and have a listen and leave us a comment.

Deal Alert: Get 10% off MasterWP Workshops using the coupon code 'wpbuilds10' - it's valid until 15th April 2023. On the podcast today, we have Rob Howard. No, not the film director, but the one from MasterWP. If you've not heard of MasterWP before, then you're missing out as they're on a mission to create a heap of WordPress related content. They've got workshops, tutorials, a fast-growing blog and a podcast! The podcast today is in (more or less) two halves. First up, we chat about the community that Rob and his team are trying to build up in the WordPress space. Then we talk about the MasterWP workshops, and how they're creating workshops and courses on a very regular basis. It's an interesting chat with Rob, and I hope you enjoy it!

So, there's no denying that WordPress Page Builders have taken the community by storm over the last decade. Whether you use them or not, they're popular, and dare I say it, used on more WordPress sites than site not using a Page Builder? But, as the title of this episode says, are they the scourge of the internet? We chat about this topic from a whole variety of different angles. Do they typically add bloat to the HTML that we output? Do they offer clients a poor, and inconsistent, experience? Are they difficult to scale up for larger projects? Do they keep up with the technologies that modern browsers are introducing? Do they devalue our profession? There's a lot there, right? And there's a lot more in the podcast to get your teeth into. Check it out.

Some of us love working with CSS. It's fun, pretty easy to learn, and gets the job done. Others… not so much. It's boring, hard to master, and you end up doing things incorrectly all the time! Over the years, there's been many attempts to make CSS easier to write and work with… literally dozens. Today on the show we have Kevin Geary, the founder of Automatic CSS (ACSS), which is a utility framework for WordPress page builders. Its aim is to make modern CSS available for all to use, and to implement this inside of the tools that you're already using - Page Builders, and to grow the number of page builders which they support. Currently, they cover Oxygen and Bricks, but hope to grow to cover Gutenberg, Zion Builder and Cwicly. The idea is that they do a lot of the heavy lifting for you, so that much of the regular work that you might have to create right at the start of a project is taken care of. We get into what the project can do and how it can save you time. What can it control and how 'heavy' it is, or isn't?