So we all build websites. Perhaps we don't. Perhaps we're just involved with WordPress as a marketing expert, or a graphic designer. WordPress is useful to a whole slew of different job types which is great, but can also be a burden. What I mean by that is that there are so many hats that you can wear in the WordPress space, so many jobs that are needed to get a website up, running and maintained, that it can be hard to keep up. How do we do that...
This weeks WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing 19th August 2019
You've been using a Page Builder to design your WordPress websites and life is great. But it could be better. The Page Builder Cloud plugin allows you to save your layouts to the cloud and reuse them on whatever website you want. So you can start to build your own library of layouts and they're right there, waiting to be deployed and save you a heap of time. The plugin is also going to be able to convert layouts from one Page Builder to another, but this is not ready just yet. Check it out...
This weeks WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing 12th August 2019
This is the second episode about WordPress security. In this podcast we talk about the range of security plugins that we've heard of. It's by no means an exhaustive list, bit we cover some of the main options that you've heard of. We discuss these WordPress security plugins; what options do they offer, do we understand what they're doing and how do we pass on the responsibility for security to our WordPress website clients? Have a listen and post your comments...
This weeks WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing 5th August 2019
This is the first in a two part podcast about WordPress and security. In this episode we go over all of the potential problems that you might encounter with your WordPress website. There's the usual things such as uptime monitoring, backups and implementing a firewall, but there's also some other, more unusual topics. Do you make sure that you're keeping your client data safe? Are you expunging backups and SSH keys that you no longer require in case your system is compromised...
This weeks WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing 29th July 2019.
If you've been using WordPress any length of time, you'll have run into the frustrations that the Media Library can present. It's a pretty decent UI, but it's not as good as services that we're using such as Google Drive or Dropbox. WP Media Manager aims to fix that. Not only does it look great but it stores all of your assets in Amazon S3 or Microsoft Azure with all of the benefits that this brings... highly scalable, secure, permissions based. I think that this plugin is certainly worth a look... PS... Sorry about the poor audio this week!
This weeks WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing 22nd July 2019
Today, the podcast talks about tasks. Not so much the tasks themselves, but more the way that we approach them. We discuss the way that different people have the ability to move happily from task to task, whilst other people need to complete one task before they can move onto another one. I guess that there's no 'right' way to accomplish tasks, but it's interesting to see whether or not we think that other people's approaches are batter than our own. It's a fun episode for sure!
This weeks WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing 15th July 2019
Today we learn about how how to make your WordPress website load as fast as possible. On the face of it, this is easy to do, but there's quite a lot going on when a website loads, and so there are many steps that you need to take a look at if you want to squeeze every ounce of speed out of it. Jan Koch talks us through the work that he's done trying to do all of that. There's likely some new content in here even if you're a seasoned optimiser, so stay tuned and I hope that you enjoy this episode.
This weeks WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing 8th July 2019
In this episode David and I talk about the interactions which we have with clients. Most of the time (I hope) we have good relations with our clients. They want to work with you and you want to work with them... but this does not mean that you're always going to see eye to eye with them. From time to time you're going to have to face up to a client who is not wanting to work with your processes and it not willing to be flexible. What do we do...?
This weeks WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing 1st July 2019
Have you ever wanted to get into paid ad campaigns using Facebook or Google, but did not know where start? This podcast episode explains how you can get started and what some of the pitfalls are. There's so much to learn that it's good to have an expert on hand and Daniel Daines-Hutt is that man. Get your content seen by more people whilst targeting those people who you really value thereby saving on your ad campaigns. Check out this episode to see how you can do that...
This weeks WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing 24th June 2019
In this weeks episode of the WP Builds podcast we talk about the range of things that we consider when we buy a plugin or theme from a WordPress developer. It's clear that you need some level of trust in the product that is on offer, but how deep should that trust run? What are the things that you might want to be on the lookout for to establish some sort of trust score to make you feel confident in the purchase. Some of these are obvious and some are quite unexpected. Join us to find out...
In this episode of the WP Builds WordPress podcast we chat to Hahna Kane Latonick. She has a background as a software engineer but decided some time ago that what she really wanted to do was to help coders and developers to run their businesses more successfully. We all know that running a business is not the same thing as being a great developer and so Hahna is here to give you the guidance and support that you might need to both at the same time.
This weeks WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing 10th June 2019
So this episode is a little bit of a departure for us, in that it's much more personal than usual, and has very little to do with WordPress, so forgive us! When we decided to cover this topic, I (Nathan) was thinking that we'd be talking about the things in life my non-work life that I have to do, sometimes in opposition to my work life.
This weeks WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing 3rd June 2019
If you've work with WordPress websites for client you'll know that one of the hardest parts of the job is successfully communicating with clients. Today, Hannah Smith talks about her approach for doing just that. It's a really interesting take on how you can try to keep your clients happy all the time, but that's realistically possible and there's going to be times when you need to push back and say "no". It's an interesting talk with some fresh perspectives in this important business area.
This weeks WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing 27th May 2019
Have you ever thought about the fact that your personality has a direct impact upon how successful you are? Your personality type might make you better at some tasks that others and if you're building WordPress websites for your clients, it might also affect the way that you interact with them too, and have a real impact upon their success and failure. Join us as we discuss this topic; we're not experts and are just scratching the surface, but it's really interesting what we uncover.
This weeks WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing 20th May 2019
If you're a Beaver Builder users then you'll know that there are some tasks that you have to perform over and over again when building a website for a client. It's perfectly okay, but Tom Carless thought that it would be better if there was a way to make repetitive tasks go away, so he built Beaver Team Pro. Want to update all those reds to green in one click, yes, want to make all specific button have an icon, yes! It's a great plugin that will save you (and your agency) heaps of time and money...
This weeks WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing 13th May 2019
Do you struggle getting content from your clients when you're building them a WordPress website? Well, you're not alone. We all do. There are so many things that you need from them and so many ways that miscommunication can result. Even if your processes are battle hardened, chances are that they still tested from time to time. So how do you get images, copy and all the rest of it from your clients. Nathan and David discuss it, but don't expect any perfect solution from us...
This weeks WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing 6th May 2019
Have you ever had a problem with your WordPress website that you could not figure out. Something appears to have been deleted, something suspicious appears to be happening but your cannot really be sure. WP Security Audit Log is a WordPress plugin that creates logs for just about everything on your site. It will enable you to work out exactly what went wrong and hopefully give you a let up in getting the site back up and running in the least time possible.
This weeks WordPress news – Covering The Week Commencing 29th April 2019: WordPress Core WordPress 5.2 RC2 The Month in WordPress: April 2019 WPCampus’ Gutenberg Accessibility Audit Finds “Significant and Pervasive Accessibility Problems” Community WordCamp US 2019 Tickets Now on…
Web design is dead. There's no doubt about it. The tools that we have now are so easy to use, there's literally zero barrier to entry. Within a week, you can a great website up and running even if you've never used the internet before. Mmm... You're the expert, these tools are only easy to you because you've worked hard at getting to know them. Then there's marketing, funnels, hosting updates. You know what, perhaps we're safe after all. This stuff is actually quite hard you know!
This weeks WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing 22nd April 2019
In this day and age where websites are collections of content in a database, there is no reason at all that this content cannot be translated into other languages and presented to people who speak those languages. In fact, I'd be able to make a fair compelling argument that it's a really good idea to translate your website into a variety of languages if there's a market outside of your first language to do so. WPML allows you to do that quickly and easily...
This weeks WordPress news – Covering The Week Commencing 15th April 2019: WordPress Core WordPress 5.2 Beta 3 Gutenberg 5.5 Adds New Group Block for Nesting Child Blocks Community WordCamp Europe Publishes 2019 Speaker Lineup, Contributor Day Registration is Now…
In this episode David and I talk about the subject of pricing and in particular the thorny subject of putting prices up. We get started with a chat about what systems we use to actually receive payments from clients, PayPal, Stripe and good old fashioned bank transfers. We then move on to discuss what we've done in the past to up our rates. It turns out that maybe we need your help with this as there are so many areas where we're not sure what to do...
This weeks WordPress news – Covering The Week Commencing 8th April 2019: WordPress Core WordPress 5.2 Beta 2 Gutenberg Team Publishes RFC Document on Widget-Block Interfaces Community WordSesh Returns May 22, 2019, Speaker Application Deadline is April 19 GoDaddy Acquires…
Joe has been in the WordPress space for years and years. Working as a freelancer at the start, then as a member of a large agency. All of that is now behind him and he's got a whole heap of different things that he's doing. He's a podcaster, a creator of videos for himself and for third parties, but perhaps most importantly he's a creator of online courses in the WordPress space. If you want to find out why he's so successful then listen to this episode...
This weeks WordPress news – Covering The Week Commencing 1st April 2019: WordPress Core WordPress 5.2 to Make Gutenberg Block Editor Use Mandatory for All WordPress Sites“Since its initial release in WordPress 5.0, WordPress fans have used the new Gutenberg…
When you sell your WordPress websites to your clients, do you push the logical or the emotional? Do you talk about technical details or how easy and beautiful it will be? It's so easy to go down the route of the technical details, the SEO and caching that you'll put in place - this will all be good, but maybe your clients want to hear about cool it's going to look and how it's going to make people stop and marvel at the design. David has a problem and we try to solve it...
This weeks WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing 25th March 2019
Do you post your content to multiple social platforms? If you do, I'm almost certain that this task is a little bit on the dull side. Is it isn't it? It takes time and is repetitive. Social Web Suite is a WordPress plugin that hooks into your social media accounts just waiting for your to publish something. As soon as you do, it gets to work making the social media posting nightmare evaporate - it does it all for you. Check it out.
This weeks WordPress news – Covering The Week Commencing 18th March 2019: WordPress Core WordPress Ends Support for PHP 5.2 – 5.5, Bumps Minimum Required PHP Version to 5.6“WordPress has officially ended support for PHP 5.2 – 5.5 and bumped…
If you're a WordPress user then you've used heaps of plugins in the past. They enable WordPress to do anything don't they? That's WordPress' greatest strength and it's largest curse! There are so many to choose from, and all that choice leads to plugin fatigue. You never quite know if the plugin that you're using is 'the best' and so you're constantly on the look out for a newer, shinier plugin. The problem is that this cycle does not have an end...
This weeks WordPress news – Covering The Week Commencing 11th March 2019: WordPress Core WordPress 5.1.1 Patches Critical Vulnerability“WordPress 5.1.1 was released yesterday evening with an important security update for a critical cross-site scripting vulnerability found in 5.1 and prior…
Email marketing is usually the domain of expensive SaaS apps. Well, not any more. With the Groundhogg WordPress plugin you can automate all-the-things from inside your website! It's got lots of customisation options and works with a visual builder, just like the services that you're currently using. Adrian comes on to tell us about how it all got started and how the plugin works and what scenarios it might be useful for...
This weeks WordPress news – Covering The Week Commencing 4th March 2019: WordPress Core Introducing the WordPress Triage Team“As WordPress has grown, the volume of tickets in Trac has naturally increased. While the number of open tickets on its own…
There are so many ways you can get paid for building WordPress websites, and if you've been in this industry for any length of time, then you've perhaps tried a few out? Do you charge on-off fees or use a model which judges the value that you add to the client's business? Perhaps you perfer to work on the basis that the website is an ongoing cost and the recurring revenue is really where you should be getting paid? We have no idea which is best, but it's fun chatting it all though...
WP Builds Newsletter #52 - Blocks management, image creation and free videos
It's all the rage isn't it? Set up an online course and teach the world about the things you know! You've seen the Facebook ads. You've sat down and thought about all the great content they you'll teach to your students, made some videos, created some handouts, even devised some tests that the students will have to complete to graduate. But then the daunting question arises... how do I actually get this online? Lifter LMS might be the answer...
WP Builds Newsletter #51 - WordPress 5.1 released, plugin updates and AI gets really scary
Do you glaze over when someone talks about internet security? Well, you're not alone - it's quite a difficult subject to understand. Thank heavens then that there's people like Oliver Sild who will understand it all for you. His company, WebARX has built a product which get all of your WordPress websites secured. They have one central dashboard which shows you all of the activity on your sites. Their firewall will drop suspicious traffic and keep you safe.
WP Builds Newsletter #50 - WordPress 5.1 RC, multiple vulnerabilities and AI gets scary
Are you the type of person who always does what your clients ask of you, or do you get angry with them? It's hardly a binary answer is it, but it certainly feels like it is sometimes! We've all been there... you've worked really hard on their WordPress website and you think that you've done everything right, but then the client comes back to you with a difficult email and your serenity is blown out of the water! What should you do...?
WP Builds Newsletter #49 - New Gutenberg blocks, Wordfence Central and DuckDuckGo rising
Adam has been on the podcast before, but on that occasion he was talking about his life as a freelancer, not as the owner of a SaaS app! He's founded a company called 'Split Hero' which is laser focussed upon one thing - split testing your WordPress website pages and gain meaningful data back about which one wins! Hang on a minute though... what is a 'split test'? Well, I'm glad you asked...
WP Builds Newsletter #48 - WordPress 5.1 Beta 3, Plugin updates and Google dominates
Should we be available on the phone to deal with client issues for our WordPress website business? I have had this conversation so many times in the past with so many people! We all know that, in the right hands, a phone can be one of the best ways to engage with your clients. But, in the wrong hands, the phone can be a scary thing that wastes your time and causes you stress and anxiety. See what we think...
WP Builds Newsletter #47 - WordPress 5.1, Gutenberg and Page Builder updates and new Google Search Console features
Phil Singleton is one of those guys who seems to do 15 things all at once, and doing them really well. His background, like many of us is not web design and development. He started in finance and insurance and hated it. Now he's an SEO specialist with a projects under his belt. We chat about the fact that SEO has changed over the years and what strategies you can employ with your WordPress website clients to ensure that their sites rank well, as well as being able to pitch SEO as one of your services.
WP Builds Newsletter #46 - Automattic announces Newspack, WordPress 5.1 feature and Gutenberg layouts
In this discussion episode with David and I, we discuss an idea called "The Magic Email". It's a really simple email that you can send to get something... anything back from a client who has gone AWOL. Simply, the email is designed to be deployed with the minimum of effort from you, but in return you'll get clarity if the email is replied to as well as if the email is not replied to! It's 17 words long and brings up some interesting points...
WP Builds Newsletter #45 - WordPress 5.0.3, we're no longer bloggers and free GitHub
Today we have not one but two people on the podcast. Baptiste Debever and Francois Forest are WordPress plugin and theme developers based in France. During this podcast we discuss two of their products, a WordPress theme called WOffice and a SaaS app called Feedier. They both do completely different things, one is a WordPress intranet and the other is a feedback SaaS app... so let's get started...
WP Builds Newsletter #44 - WordPress marketing, image optimisation and a super detailed image
Happy New Year 2019! In this episode of the WP Builds WordPress podcast we take a bit of a look back at some of the things that we thought we important in 2018. Now I don't mean to imply that David and myself have any special insight here, it's just what occurred to us as important for 2018 and the way that we use WordPress. Some of this might not seem all that important to you, and undoubtedly we've missed a whole bunch of stuff out, but hey, you never came here for expertise did you!
Today we have an episode that deals with something very dear to my heart, writing blog posts - like this one! One of the problems that I have is that I write a post like this in WordPress and then publish it. It goes onto the website and I hope that people like you will read it and listen to the podcast episode. However, we're all busy people these days and it might be that you miss this post. I could roll over and accept that you've missed my wonderful content, or I could try to make sure that you see it at some point in the future. That's what Ben Dell's SaaS app, Missinglettr, does...
This episode is a little bit of a departure for us as it was inspired by the people in the WP Builds Facebook group (which you should join BTW). It is all based upon a in which David asked the simple question, "What's the one thing you love about building client websites?" Well, I think that both of us thought that this might get one or two comments, but in fact they poured in - 119 of them at the last count. It was really wonderful to read all of the varied things that you love about the work that we all do. We've got a lot to be grateful for, woking as we do building websites with WordPress.
WP Builds Newsletter #43 - Updates WordPress 5 already, PHP updates and social media is news
This week we have Mor Cohen on from Washington State in America and she's with us because she has a new course that she's launching called "The GeneratePress and Elementor Design Course". This course is designed for people like me, and when I say that it's unlikely that you need this course as much as I do because I have the design skills of a peanut! I can see what makes a design good, and I can appreciate a good design, but I cannot seem to be able to make a good design. That stuff is hard, or so I thought. Mor thinks otherwise!
WP Builds Newsletter #42 - WordPress 5.0 is out, nobody dies and Google stepping into WordPress
This is a little bit of a departure for us today because we take a deep dive into the life of our guest - Rebecca Gill. Typically on the podcast we chat about plugins and themes and talk to developers about their ideas and their code. Not today, well not just that today! Today we listen to the story of how life has shaped Rebecca, and I can tell you that so much has happened to her that it's amazing that she's still able to get up in the morning. Many people faced with a poor start never recover from it, but others seem to be able to rise above it, they have a tenacity that enables them to keep going, to take charge of their own destiny and to flourish. Rebecca chose to flourish. Find out how...
WP Builds Newsletter #41 - WordPress 5.0 RC2, Plugin vulnerabilities and FBI takes down ad fraud network
We talk to Paul Lacey and discuss with him what UI is. Both David and I work as independent freelancers and this means that we have a process that has worked for us over time. Paul however is part of a growing agency called DickieBirds and this means that he has to think about all this more than we do. It's a wide ranging discussion which might resonate with you if you are working with WordPress to create client sites. We know that other people who are really successful follow a whole bunch of processes which makes their life easier. I don't, but Paul does, so listen in...
WP Builds Newsletter #40 - WordPress Release Candidate 5.0, new blocks creator and VSCode course
This week on the podcast we have a man that I have no doubt that you've seen before? He's got a very popular YouTube channel called WP Crafter. It's a channel in which Adam creates videos explaining how WordPress plugins and themes work. It's really popular, like really popular. Okay so that's why you've heard of him, but it's not why he's on the podcast today. The reason that he's on is because of a new and interesting plugin that he's selling called CartFlows which is going to change the way that you do eCommerce. Find out more...
WP Builds Newsletter #39 - WordPress 5.0 beta 5, GDPR plugin hack and comments in Google SERPs
We all have things in our lives that we want to quit, but we're limiting this conversation to your work as a WordPress professional and the moments in the day when you start to do things that you know that you shouldn't! Perhaps it's too much Facebook. You've set up email notifications to appear, and appear they do, with alarming regularity. Several time an hour you get pinged and go to read what you hope will be something of weight and importance. We're all guilty of it, as Mark Zuckerberg's accountant can testify. Or perhaps it's trying to keep up with the latest trends, or time wasting, or office hour or podcasting!
WP Builds Newsletter #38 - WordPress 5.0 update delayed, multiple security concerns and do you earn enough?
Today we welcome Matt Mullenweg on to the WP Builds podcast. Matt has been using WordPress as long as anyone else, with one exception! He is the co-founder of WordPress along with Mike Little, so he knows a thing or two. We talk about Gutenberg, why Matt thinks that we need it, and why we need it now. We go on to chat about how it's divided the WordPress community, especially from the perspective of users with accessibility needs. We finish with a discussion about how the community can reunite after this 'schism' and what Matt thinks of the recent ClassicPress fork of WordPress.
WP Builds Newsletter #37 - Gutenberg accessibility updates, PHP 5 dead and Red Hat bought
In this LIVE Webinar we celebrate the 100th episode of the WP Builds podcast! It was a bit of a technological disaster! David Waumsley and I both got kicked out of the webinar before it had started and then we in a webinar all alone for 28 minutes as the webinar tech support worked out what went wrong. Jim and David McCan held the fort until we returned - very cool! We discussed what we think are the things that will happen in WordPress over the next two years or so. It's a bit of a ramble, but I can promise you that next week we'll be back to normal!!! Who'd have thought that we'd get this far? Who cares that we did anyway! Thanks for sticking with us!
WP Builds Newsletter #36 - WordPress 5.0 Beta, getting bored with WordPress and video news
Today, we get to meet Laura Elizabeth. She’s a designer turned plugin creator that has some good ideas for you! Like I say, she’s a designer and her latest product, Client Portal, is a great way to help you and your clients to stay on the same page. If you build WordPress websites for clients, then I think that you’ll know this problem… you get out of sync with your clients and all the communication seems to go all over the place. Some people want you to send them email, others would rather that you use Slack or Dropbox or Google Drive or some other system that you’ve never heard of! The long and the short of it is that you’ve got many clients all needing you to communicate with them in a variety of ways and Client Portal makes that process much easier!
WP Builds Newsletter #35 - Twenty Nineteen close, accessibility concerns and a super fast camera
There are some people that you're drawn towards aren't there? People that you like to listen to, people that you like to read about. When I started to use WordPress a few years ago, I was constantly on the lookout for people who were producing great content that I could consume to further my understanding of how WordPress worked and of how I could make it do what I wanted it to do.I'm sure that you have your list of people who fill this criteria, the people that you want to listen to and read about? Carrie Dils is one of those people for me. She's be creating content in the WordPress space for ages and not just that, she's been producing a whole load of different forms of content.
WP Builds Newsletter #34 - Help needed with Gutenberg, Elementor adds Cusomt Fields integrations and DuckDuckGo on the rise
I don't know you, but I know for an absolute fact that I'm hopeless at marketing. I'm not very good at it and it find it really hard to do, or to get excited about. It's a something that I've struggled with for a long time. I'm lucky in that I have enough work (right now) to keep me going and it comes my way largely through word of mouth. Because I'm a study in mediocrity, this is fine by me; I have not needed to market too much to keep my head above the water. But I'm hoping that you're not as satisfied with mediocre, as I am - you're a get-up-and-got type aren't you? You want more out of life than I do? Well guess what, you're going to have to market yourself in order to get, because you can be sure that competitors will.
WP Builds Newsletter #33 - Gutenberg release date, WordCamp Europe and Google pay Apple a lot of dollars
If you’re a regular listener to the podcast then you’ll know that I was once a heavy user of Drupal. The reason for this is simple, Drupal is really rather awesome. I know that this is a WordPress podcast, but there’s just no denying it; Drupal does heaps and heaps of stuff really well, and dare I say it… sometimes better than WordPress does! Okay, now you can put those pitchforks away, ‘cos I’m not trying to convert you over to Drupal, because, after all, I left and don’t use it anymore. Drupal has a module (aka plugin) called Views, and I’m not exaggerating to say that it’s very very very cool indeed. When I came to WordPress, I could not understand why there was nothing like Views. Something that you could point, and click at and get data out. Until I discovered Query Wrangler by Jonathan Daggerhart...
WP Builds Newsletter #32 - Gutenberg 4.0, PHP 7.3 and 50m Facebook accounts hacked
In this episode, we return to the ‘good old days’ in which David and myself just used to drone on and on! We decided that we had not done nearly enough droning recently, and so… I give you episode 95! We go over our thoughts about how we cope when a client asks us to do something that is completely new to us. I’m guessing that we’ve all been in that meeting, or been on that call when you realise that the client is asking for something that you don’t know that you can pull out of that WordPress hat that you’ve been wearing. Perhaps it’s something that you know can be done, but you know that you’re not able to do it. Or maybe it’s something that you simply cannot understand and don’t even know where to start.
WP Builds Newsletter #31 - Gutenberg Cloud, WPForms buys forms plugin and robots on asteriods
I've often pondered the idea of setting up some kind of SaaS product, something that I could build and then turn it over to the public and they would be able to purchase it from me on a monthly basis. I think that when people do this with WordPress it's called WaaS. Is that right? Well, one of the things that I've always wanted to do was to set up a system where clients could sign up to a monthly / annual website plan, pick a theme that they liked, pay and it would all be automated - done for them (and me) as if by magic. Arindo Duque has built such a thing and, honestly, it's a little gem that you ought to explore if this idea has ever tempted you too.