So in the last episode of the WP Builds podcast we were talking about how WordPress hosting has changed. Today it feels like more of the same. Kinsta has been offering managed WordPress hosting for years, and has built up a good business on top of the world's most popular CMS. Well, time and tide wait for no one, and Marcel Bootsman plus Maciek Palmowski are on the podcast today to explain about how they've got a new offering, which is not specifically about WordPress at all. So what have they got then? Application & database hosting is what they've got. Did you not see the title of the podcast?!?! What does that mean? It means that you can now host pretty much anything on the Kinsta platform; you're no longer restricted to WordPress. If you can imagine it, you can now host it with them. What does this mean for the future of the company and their current WordPress customers? Find out in the podcast.
The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 21st November 2022.
Welcome to another in the Business Bootcamp series where we relearn everything we know about building WP sites and running a web design business from start to finish. Today we're talking about the way that hosting has changed over the years. In much the same way that you look at a website from 1999 and wonder how that was ever allowed to exist, the same is true for the technology stack that is hosting our WordPress websites. Perhaps, back in the day, you ran servers of your own in your office or house. You then likely moved to something like shared hosting and a VPS. Now we've got managed WordPress hosting companies and cloud services which allow to spin up servers in an instant with just the resources we need. Add to that the interest in headless WordPress, and well, we've got a show on our hands and plenty to talk about.
The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 14th November 2022.
I love a good story, and that's what we've got for you today. It's Steve Burge from PublishPress. Steve's had a long history working with open source software, and, as you'll hear, he's not going anywhere. The conversation kicks off with a bit of background about Steve. We talk about his journey with a whole variety of FOSS tools such as Joomla, Drupal, Magento and WordPress. I know this journey well, as perhaps do many of you. There was a time when there really was a no clear 'winner' in the open source CMS market. Many of the platforms were experiencing growth and there was no hint that any one solution would grow to dominate in terms of market share. Given that the landscape had so many popular choices, Steve decided he was going to create a business around serving them all, and so OS Training began. We learn about how Steve tried to grow the business, and ultimately why he moved on to pastures new. We then get into the things that Steve's involved with now, namely PublishPress and MetaSlider, which is a new acquisition. All in all then, this is a lovely conversation with a very thoughtful developer. I hope you enjoy the podcast.
The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 7th November 2022.
Welcome to another in the Business Bootcamp series where we relearn everything we know about building WP sites and running a web design business from start to finish. Today we are talking about 'Monitoring websites for clients'. Relationships with clients after a traditional project rarely end with the site going live. Those who take an agile approach will not have clients continuously responding to user behaviour changes. What should we be monitoring for clients? There's more to this than you might think! And we get into a lot of the tools that we've tried before to make all of this happen. There's a full list in the show notes.
The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 31st October 2022.
On the podcast today we have Eric Karkovack. He's been in the WordPress space for ages and contributes in a whole variety of ways. I've been wanting to get him on the show for ages, but our calendars kept colliding, until today! We talk about two, not related, subjects. The first is WebP images, and the second is canonical plugins. You might not have heard of WebP images, but they're all the rage! They are / were a project which came out of Google, and their intention was to create a new image format which would create images of high quality, but of a smaller file size. They've not yet made it into WordPress Core. Why is that? We also talk about 'Canonical Plugins' which is a proposal (see the links below in the show notes on the website) to increase the footprint of what WordPress can do, without increasing the footprint of what WordPress can do. That makes sense, right?!?! These canonical plugins would offer some pretty essential features, they would be tested thoroughly with WordPress Core versions, would receive frequent updates and therefore would have kudos; they're more or less guaranteed to work out of the box. Eric and I get into this all as well...
The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 24th October 2022.
We all do maintenance for our WordPress website clients, right? But what do you cover and what does a client expect? That's the basis of the podcast today... There are many things that you 'could' cover, but many things that perhaps don't want to. Perhaps you know that you're not a security expert, or that configuring your server is a little out of scope. So how do you decide what's in and what's out? Also, we're in an era of 'no-code'. Clients are constantly being bombarded by messages saying that you can have a website which you can build yourself with no experience. How does this play into the equation of what a client will expect from you? Solutions like Wix and Squarespace make this promise a reality and it's no doubt a conversation that you're going to need to combat at some point. Join us on the podcast today to see what we think about this and what we've done in the past...
The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 17th October 2022.
It's no secret that the world is adopting the model of subscription pricing. If you're my age, then you remember a time when almost nothing was based upon subscriptions. The technology simply made it impractical; there were no credit cards, the internet did not exist, and you just didn't see examples around you. Fast forward (a few decades!), and now they're everywhere. The banking / payments systems have all been built to make this trivial to set up and deploy to the entire world over the internet. WooCommerce has a plugin called WooCommerce Subscriptions which will allow you to get started, but it's limited in what it can do. Enter Subscription Force, a new WordPress plugin which will put your subscriptions on a different level. You can do so much with this, truly. Today we interview Marius Vetrici and Andrei Haret, who are behind Subscription Force to hear what it's all about and how it works.
The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 10th October 2022.
With all these no code options, do you find your clients are becoming experts and no longer needing you? We try (and fail) to talk about this today and end up going on about JAMStack instead! It's a serious point though. Page Builders and Gutenberg have opened up the website creation process to a whole new audience, and it brings into question what we do as WordPress web developers / builders that make us worthwhile. What can you say to the client to make you seem like value for money in a time when 'affordability' is more important than ever, and when many of the tasks that used to be 'out of scope' for non-technical users, is not possible in an easy-to-use interface? Go listen...
The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 3rd October 2022.
So voice enabled home are now a thing. It's pretty likely that if you don't have a voice enabled device now, you will at some point in the near future. You speak, and they respond. It's pretty cool. But you might have noticed that there are limits to what they can do, and there are ways you learn to speak to these devices to get the best out of them. It's a bit like how you use Google. You don't type in ordinary language; you use Google specific language. What if it were possible to have the capabilities that voice enabled devices bring to the internet to a WordPress website? That would be cool, right? It would be, but the downside is that it's really rather hard to make all of this work, and that's where Convoworks steps in. They've got a GUI to make the job of doing all of this as easy as possible. Tihomir Dmitrović is on the podcast today to explain how it works, when you might use it and how it can benefit your website. Check it out.
The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 26th September 2022.
What happens when your client suddenly has new staff members that you need to interact with? It might be a really smooth transition with nothing to worry about, but it might not. Old relationships may need to be rebuilt, and common understandings and goals about the website might need to be reworked. It's even possible that your communications were not written down and you suddenly need to think about the entire project once more with new staff. What if you just don't get along? What can you do then to ensure that you don't lose the client? What can you do to keep things working for you both? We have some ideas for you on the podcast today. Go listen...
The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 19th September 2022.
So if you've kept up with the latest developments in WordPress then you'll have heard the words / phrases 'Gutenberg', 'FSE', 'Block Themes', 'Blocks' and a lot more. You'll also likely have heard of our guest on the podcast today, Rich Tabor. He's been in the WordPress space for many years working in the theme space, but now he's shifted over to all the 'new things', and is making waves. He's got some monumental projects on the go (see the links on the WP Builds post for this episode), and is on the podcast today to talk about where WordPress is at right now and what he's hoping for in the future. It's a lovely interview with a very thoughtful guest, and if you're trying out the 'new WordPress things', or are just looking for a reason why you should, then this episode is for you!
The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 12th September 2022.
Welcome to another in the Business Bootcamp series where we relearn everything we know about building WordPress sites, and running a web design business from start to finish. We are on Season 4 which is a short season looking at training clients. Today we are talking about website documentation and support. When we hand over a website, are we obliged to support it into the future, or can we just hand it over and be done with it? If we are going to support it, is there some standard of documentation we need to provide? Paper based, videos, in-person. I suspect that we've all got different ways of handling this, so check out the podcast to see what we do. BONUS, it's a short episode and you'll be done with it in no time!
If you've used WordPress for any length of time and use plugins, it's highly likely that you've seen notifications in the backend which you did not expect. Perhaps they were ads, or upsells for things which are already installed. WordPress notifications serve a purpose. They are there for a very good reason, to notify you of things that you ought to be aware of. You just published a post. Something needs updating. That kind of thing. But not all the notifications that we see are the kind that you might call 'essential' or 'useful'. This goes back to the fact that the WordPress notifications system was not really designed to be used in the variety of ways that ingenious developers have been able to use them. It's a bit like cookies. They we created to maintain state on a website, and then developers figured out a whole raft of other uses for them, some of them somewhat undesirable. The system was created and then it was warped and reused in alternative ways. So it is with WordPress notifications. Brian Coords is on the podcast today to talk through his thoughts on the WordPress notifications systems and how it might be improved so stop its true purpose being misused.
Welcome to another in the Business Bootcamp series where we relearn everything we know about building WordPress sites, and running a web design business from start to finish. We are taking contrasting approaches to getting our new businesses running and our first client’s site built. Today we're talking about what you, or don't do when handing over the site in terms of training. Do you prepare reams and reams of documents which carefully outline the ways to achieve all-the-things, and hand it to them in a big binder? Do you make videos for the client so that they can see what they need to do? Perhaps you react after the fact and wait until the client comes to you with specific queries, which you answer one at a time? Or maybe, just maybe, you don't do much at all and hope that the client figures it all out for themselves and leaves you alone to get on with the next website? Whatever it is, we'd love for you to listen to the podcast and then leave us a comment about how your process differs or aligns with ours.
The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 15th August 2022.
On the podcast today we have WPCodeBox plugin developer Ovidiu Maghetiu, and he's here to explain how it works and what it can do, and it can do... a lot! WPCodeBox is turning out to be one of those plugins that you know that you're going to use for years to come. What I really like about this plugin is that it's a conduit for your imagination. Many plugins offer you a pathway for achieving a particular task. You use it to achieve one or two things. WPCodeBox is designed to be an empty container which you fill up with your (or other peoples) ideas. It's all about snippets at its heart. You can add snippets for PHP, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, SaaS to your website and in many cases reduce the plugin footprint as a result. Check out the podcast to find out more...
The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 8th August 2022.
So the moment has arrived. You've busted a jut and got the website finished. It's 100% ready to roll. Now what? Well, you've got to launch it and let the world see the great work that you've done! So what's involved in that? What do you typically need to do to make that happen? This is the subject that we explore on the podcast today and it's one where David and Nathan have different approaches. David is going agile and is likely to ship it as soon as the first page is ready, whereas Nathan is waiting until the entire site is completed. What steps do you need to follow on our launch checklist, and what things can go wrong?
The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 25th July 2022.
Welcome to another in the Business Bootcamp series where we relearn everything we know about building WordPress sites and running a web design business from start to finish. And today we are discussing 'Legal stuff'. So this is about what we know (which is coming from our perspective, not that of a lawyer) about what responsibilities we have as the builders of WordPress websites for clients. Some of the decisions made when building a site potentially have legal consequences. GDPR, accessibility and those connected to rights and copyright. Lots of advice can be found in the WordPress Community, but like elsewhere, much could be profit motivated. So, having a sensible conversation about expectations and responsibilities seems the obvious thing to do?
The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 18th July 2022.
So on the podcast today we have Amber Hinds and she's here to use her expertise to explain how and why WordPress websites need to be accessible. It's a really important topic at the moment. There seems to be a groundswell of understanding that the web really does need to be made available to all, and that means thinking about all the people who might be visiting your site. So that's people who are using screen readers, people consuming videos who are hard of hearing, and so much more. We talk about what accessibility is and what comes under its purview. Is it something that you need to do under law or is it something that you can leave until later? There's a lot more to this than meets to eye, and it's well worth a listen if you're new to all this, or if you've already started your accessibility journey.
The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 11th July 2022.
There's a WordPress plugin solution for almost every possible scenario. Booking - done. Commerce - done. Learning management - done. Done, done and done. In fact in many cases, there's many different plugins available with slightly differing features! We're spoilt for choice frankly. By are there times when it's better for you or your client to think outside of WordPress plugins and consider a SaaS solution? That's the topic of the conversation to and we dig into situations where we're preferred non-WordPress options because it's just a better fit for the specific project / client. We chat about what we're using and when we think it's best to just confess that WordPress is not always what we want to use and that there are many superb solutions out there. We hope that you enjoy the podcast.
The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 4th July 2022.
This episode is like no other we've ever put out, because it's not really about WordPress, more about a lifestyle that working with WordPress might allow you to have. Alex is on the podcast today to talk about the decisions that he's made to be a digital nomad. Now, when I think about the phrase digital nomad, it conjures up images of people who are constantly on the move. Moving from place to place, never settling anywhere. This is not quite how Alex has things set up. Alex, his wife, his two kids, his two cats and his dog all life in a camper. In the UK we call them camper vans, and I've heard them called RVs as well I think. Anyway, think of a small house on wheels. When Alex and I started talking about what we might talk about on the podcast, this topic was suggested and I jumped on it. So there's not really any plugins or themes mentioned, it's just about the way that Alex and his family live, and I love this kind of thing.
The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 27th July 2022.
Welcome to another in the Business Bootcamp series where we relearn everything we know about building WP sites and running a web design business from start to finish. We are on the third episode of Season 3 where we are looking at The Technical Build. And today we are discussing 'Performance testing during the build'. Here we are primarily thinking about front and back end technical performance, but we will also touch on things related to the design technical issues too. So what things do we do to test performance and what tools have we come across to help with this vital job. Find out by listening to the podcast.
The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 20th June 2022.
So I'm going to keep this brief, as this podcast was a little bit of a scoop, which we don't often get! Last week it was announced that Elementor (the page builder) had bought Strattic (the headless hosting company). I thought that this was an interesting purchase and I wanted to know more. Very quickly I was able to get hold of the co-founder of Strattic, Miriam Schwab, and Amitai Gat, the product organisation lead at Elementor. This episode is all about this recent news. How did it come about? What's in it for both parties? What happens next? It would be good to point out that the day after this episode was recorded, the news of Elementor laying off some employees broke, but as this had not yet happened, this is not covered. Go check out the podcast...
The web designer’s tech stack. We last talked about the website building platform we might use for this project. Here we are widening this and look at the basic essential hardware and software we might need to start our business. So it's all the 'stuff' that you have around you, both physical objects like a computer and a phone, as well as the software that you might be using. When you get into it, it's pretty amazing just how much stuff there is that you 'need'. Way more than I thought. It's also interesting what you don't need; either because it's not essential, or because it got replaced over time with something else. It's a fun episode, and if any of the things that we discuss resonate with you, please leave a comment on the site...
The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 6th June 2022.
DEAL ALERT - there's a deal mentioned in the podcast - do NOT miss out on this one, as it's truly fabulous, not only in what you get, but in the way that you get it! It's running until 23rd June 2022. So this plugin (If-So) is such a powerhouse, I don't even know where to start. It's a WordPress plugin designed to allow you to create content on your site which will display based upon a whole heap of conditions. Wait... what does that even mean? I'm glad that you asked. Let's say that it's Christmas, and you want to show something additional during the run up to the holidays, you can do that with a date condition. What about an offer only available to Android users? That's a device condition. A part of the site only visible to people who came from a specific website? That's a referral condition. You set a condition and then you specify what ought to happen. Simple in principle, enormously powerful in reality. Josef Carmeli is on the podcast today to talk about what the plugin can do, how it can transform your website and how it's perhaps the coolest thing that you've not yet tried.
The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 30th May 2022.
So, we've made it to series three of the WordPress Business Bootcamp and this is perhaps a little more where the rubber meets the road. Now we're going to be thinking about the tools that we use to build a website and keep it going for the client. We're split the 'tools' topic up into two episodes. This weeks it's all about WordPress and next week it's all the other things that you need which are not related to WordPress. What WordPress tools do we need then, and does the way that we build our sites need to have anything to do with our clients, or is it just for our (the website builder) convenience. Listen to this episode to see what we've ended up with as our basic stack, and if you think that we've missed anything, be sure to let us know in the comments.
The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 31st May 2022.
So you've tried Gutenberg, and you might like to or you might not! But one thing that you cannot really argue about is that it's got some room for improvement. During the last few release cycles there's been more and more talk about block patterns and how they're going to make WordPress website building more straightforward. Block patterns are a collection of blocks that have been built and saved away for future use. So think about a typical use case, you have a hero section of your website that you might use over and over again. You build it one time, adding in a variety of blocks, and once you're happy, you save it and then later you can add it into any other part of your website with the click of a button. But here's the problem. The block editor is still a little but, how shall we say it... fun to use. It's got some quirks and you might not find it as easy as you'd wish to get pixel perfect patterns. Step in Extendify. They have a suite of pre-made block patterns which you can use. It's really all about making life simple. They're all built on top of WordPress Core blocks so there's no lock in and you can use them to learn how to build your own block patterns.
This week's WordPress news for the week commencing Monday 16th May 2022.
Another episode of the WordPress Business Bootcamp where we try to go right back to the start and unpick the process of building sites for clients. Today we're on to the tricky subject of 'Design Aesthetics'! Aesthetics affect a brand's credibility and perception. The look and feel is probably the thing that first hit us first and is most important to our clients. But the problem is that aesthetics are subjective, there is no agreed way to deliver such things and we have to find some way to avoid design by committee (the client seeking outside parties) or the loudest voice winning without reference to the overall goals. So how we might do this is the subject of the podcast today. Remember that there's a dozen other episodes in this series prior to this, but we'd love to get your thoughts on this one... tell us where you get your inspiration and how you handle this with your clients.
This week's WordPress news for the week commencing Monday 9th May 2022.
So there's loads of WordPress tools out there that will help you create your WordPress websites. Chances are that you've tried out a few and have some favourite which you use most of the time. New tools are coming out all of the time and this episode is about one of those new tools... Builderius. I can already here you starting to sigh. You're thinking that there's no need for another tool, there's already too many and they all do pretty much the same thing. Well Volodymyr Denchyk is here to try to explain why Builderius is different. And, well, he's got a point. This is not a Page Builder like you might have used before. It's more... what's the word... technical. It needs more from you, the website builder, and it return it promises that it'll give you almost unlimited possibilities back. It's it point, click, drag and save? No. Does that mean that it's not worth looking at? Also, no. I think that it's got a place, especially if you want to make everything exactly as you want it. So, a technical episode, but well worth a listen. I just love it when new things like this come along.
This week's WordPress news for the week commencing Monday 2nd May 2022.
So today we're talking about UI and UX, user interface and user experience, and it's a really huge topic. We start off by what these crucial concepts are and how they differ and then we get into the weeds of how they can be broken down into more manageable components, so that both our clients and ourselves can understand them better. What makes for 'good' UI and UX? How can we test for all of this? Does the client need to be sold all this, or is it just a part of our job? How do we convince them that any of this is even relevant for their, as of now, unvisited website? As always we try to keep it simple and break it down into more manageable parts. Check out the episode and please leave comments to let us know how we're doing...
This week's WordPress news for the week commencing 25th April 2022.
So online courses are all the rage. We know that. Especially since Covid struck, people have been looking for ways to create extra revenue from the knowledge that they have, and well, courses are a good way to do that. Wishlist Member has been around for years, in fact I think that it's right up there with a few others as one of the oldest membership site solutions for WordPress. We talk about the history of the plugin; how it got started, why they decided to take a punt on a small but growing CMS, and how it's been going for the last decade. We then get into the courses add-on which allows you to create courses and link them to memberships. Check out the podcast...
This week's WordPress news for the week commencing 18th April 2022.
Welcome to another in the Business Bootcamp series where we relearn everything we know about building WordPress sites and running a web design business from start to finish. We are on Season 2 where we are looking at The Design Process. Today we are discussing "Creating a brand". With so much to take in, we needed to split the subject up into seven, easy to understand, sections. So take a listen to the podcast and hit up the comments if you think that we missed anything.
This week's WordPress news for the week commencing Monday 11th April 2022.
When I drive my car, I'm highly aware of the impact that my driving is having. I can hear the engine rumble, I can smell the gases that are coming from the exhaust. I know for a fact that this is not good for the environment. I'm burning energy and it's causing pollution. When I'm browsing the internet, this is the environmental impact that I'm feeling... nothing. Literally zero. I almost never connect the fact that my browsing and the websites that I create have an environmental impact. My computers are shiny, my phone screen has rounded edges and looks really nice. How could they possibly do any damage to the environment, and even if they did, my part is so small that it does not matter... right? Perhaps not. The statistics tell another story, and it's not something that we can be complacent about. Today I'm chatting with Marco Berrocal from Green Geeks, which is a WordPress website host which has a focus upon hosting with the impact on the environment at the forefront of their offering. We talk about what we can do to reduce our internet carbon footprint and how we can build websites which cause less pollution.
This week's WordPress news for the week commencing Monday 4th April 2022.
On the podcast today we continue our WordPress Business Bootcamp series. Now we're trying to figure out "How do we get our website copy?". It's a thorny issue and I'm pretty certain that this problem has held up one or other of your website builds in the past. Who should create the content that goes on the site? Should it be you, a professional copywriter, an SEO expert or perhaps we leave that to the client and just place Lorem placeholders in until they're ready? The problem though is that the text is really crucial for the success of a website, and therefore it's crucial to get it right. Not only will Google like it, but the way that your site looks, the structure of it all hangs on how the words fit in the overall design that you've decided upon. So listen to the podcast as we discuss this topic and leave some feedback...
This week's WordPress news for the week commencing Monday 28th March 2022
On the podcast today we have JR Farr and Gilbert Pellegrom from a new platform called Lemon Squeezy. Lemon Squeezy is a SaaS based platform with a WordPress integration. Which enables you to sell digital products online? So things like PDFs, eBooks, software licensing... anything you can think of really. If it's possible to package it up and sell it directly on your website, Lemon Squeezy is here to help with that. It makes running a digital products business easier by taking away some of the boring tasks. Check out the podcast...
This week's WordPress news for the week commencing Monday 21st March 2022.
Welcome to another in the Business Bootcamp series where we relearn everything we know about building WordPress sites and running a web design business from start to finish. We're on series 2, episode 2. "How do we structure our clients' websites?" We're trying to figure out which parts of a website does our client really need from the outset. There's hundreds of things that we can do, but as the budget is tight, what are the things that we're going to suggest that the client implement to get the most from this fledgling site? Do they need something specific in the header? What about lead magnets or landing pages? Which pages are essential at the start and how are we going to measure the success of what we're building over time? There's a lot in here, and it may be that you've in a habit of doing things in a certain way, and this conversation might make you stop and have a rethink about the structure of your clients' websites. Go listen...
This week's WordPress news for the week commencing Monday 14th March 2022
So your WordPress website is up and running. You're growing. The website is getting noticed. Wonderful. You add in some products as well, and it keeps growing. Even more wonderful. Then you hit a wall. The language barrier. Your site has reached the natural boundaries of who can access the content on your site because it's only in your native language. This is fine, if that's the only audience you ever want to reach. But why would you do that? One of the best parts of an online business is that it's not constrained by geography. Anyone, anywhere in the world can see your site. But can they read it? Today on the podcast we talk about the WPML plugin for WordPress and how it can make your site international; translated for all the world to consume. Go listen to the podcast...
This week's WordPress news for the week commencing Monday 7th March 2022
Welcome to another in the Business Bootcamp series where we relearn everything we know about building WordPress sites and running a web design business from start to finish. We're on Season 2, Episode 1, and it's all about what the whole web design / build process might look like. As is so often the case we're wearing many, many hats in the work that we do, and that's really what this episodes emphasises. How to we set the expectations, get the designs, understand the mood, decide upon sources of traffic, think about SEO, agree on colours and fonts. See, I told you you'd need many hats! We cover what we've done in the past and what we think might work for us going forward in our WordPress website businesses. Have a listen to the podcast...
This week's WordPress news for the week commencing Monday 28th February 2022
WP Builds is all about the WordPress community, but we're not alone in that. There are many places that you can hang out to find out what's going on, news updates, product launches and stories about members of the community. HeroPress is one such place, and it's been putting out great content about members of the community for years. Today on the podcast we have Cate and Topher DeRosia, the founders and curators of HeroPress as they talk about their plans to expand so that you can find all the WordPress content your heart desires in as few places as possible. It's a lovely episode with a couple of really excellent members of our community. Go have a listen...
This week's WordPress news for the week commencing Monday 21st February 2022
To stay in business, you need to keep working. That usually means more clients. But where does this never ending conveyor belt of clients come from? What can you do to avoid gaps in your work roster? There's no magic bullet, and likely there's disappointment along the way. But you'll get into a pattern of gaining work at some point, but it's good to discuss some of the things that we've tried before. Find out what they might be in the Podcast today...
This week's WordPress news for the week commencing Monday 14th 2022
So today we're talking about security, but not what you might expect. This episode is not about the features which are in a WordPress security plugin. This is about the very nature of hacking and the issues that face us all online. What do people do hacking at all? It's a pretty reasonable question! It's now simply assumed that the internet can be a dangerous place; your details could be stolen, your website could be hacked. But why? What's in it for the hackers? Robert Abela is on the podcast today to discuss this and many other topics, and it's a really interesting chat? What security posture should you adopt based upon what you do. It's somewhere between 'do nothing' and 'live in a bunker'! What software is out there which might be worth looking into for all your security needs, and what resources does Robert recommend if you discover that you're curious to learn more? Check out the podcast...
This week's WordPress news for the week commencing Monday 7th February 2022
Welcome to another in our Business Bootcamp series. It’s the series where we relearn everything we know about building WordPress sites, and running a web design business from start to finish. Presently, we are on Season 1 (where we look at what needs to happen) before the build. Have we set the right expectation? Nathan and David are taking different routes to get our invented businesses going and our client’s website up. In this episode we tackle how you might get your client expectations set up, and what those expectations might be. This includes things like what points typically cause friction in a web project, how can we effectively gather content, what channels of communication are we going to use, how will we handle revisions, and the worst of them all... clients just ghosting us. It's an interesting chat and we cover a lot of ground. Go check out the podcast.
This week's WordPress news for the week commencing Monday 31st January 2022
So this is one of those episodes where you might learn something completely new. Buddy Works (often just called Buddy) is a great tool for saving you some real time, and who does not want more time? Think Zapier, but for all-the-things related to web development. So there's a ton of different things that you do over and over again. No matter what business you're in, there's always going to be repetition. Most of us specialise in something so that we can offer that skill to the market. We have done the same thing many times so that we can become an expert at something. What you quickly realise when you've done something a few times is that you now know how to do. You might describe your skill level like this... "I could do that in my sleep". But you can't do that in your sleep, can you... because, erm... you're asleep! But someone, or something, else could. So, introducing Maciek Palmowski and Luke Pasisz. They're here to explain what Buddy Works can do and how you get started. Buddy Works is a tool which allows you to create complex pipelines. You've got a job that you feel is not really the best use of your time? Buddy Works will take that job from you and do it repeatedly. It will not get bored and complain, and you will be happier! I will not lie to you. It's not like Jarvis in the Avengers. You don't get to just 'think', "mmm... I'm fed up with this task. Will you please take it off my hands and do it?". You're going to have to learn how Buddy Works works (I like that sentence)! And that's the purpose of the podcast today. So give the episode a listen and see if Buddy Works will help you automate tasks and save time.
This week's WordPress news for the week commencing 24th January 2021
Welcome to another in our Business Bootcamp series. It’s the series where we relearn everything we know about building WordPress sites, and running a web design business from start to finish. Today we're thinking about the legal side of things... agreements / contracts and payments. How would you handle this as someone new to the industry. Do you even need a contract? Perhaps you're starting out and making a website for a friend, in which case the situation might be different, but do you owe it to yourself to protect you and your business from things which might go wrong... late payment / no payment, absent client who never returns your calls, a client who is simply unreasonable in their expectations of your time. It's really only after you've been doing this for a while that you might start to realise that some form of legal protection is a good idea, but where do you go to get that? You could try a lawyer, but that might be expensive. You could make something up, but that might not really protect you. You could download something from the internet, but that might not cover all the things that you need covering. So many things! Fins out what we've done in the past, the mistakes that we've made and where you might find some useful resources. Go check out the podcast...
This week's WordPress news for the week commencing Monday 10th January 2022
The back story goes like this. I (Nathan) co-host the Page Builder Summit with my friend Anchen le Roux. We invite a range of speakers to come onto that podcast and create presentations which, it is hoped, the attendees will enjoy. We do not pay the speakers for their contributions. We make this very clear and communicate it in advance. There's an exchange here, but it's not the usual one of 'you create something and I will pay you for it'. It's more of a 'here is an audience you might like to present to if you're willing'. Joe thinks that this model needs a re-think; payment ought to happen. So we talk about how event organisers should think about giving value back to their presenters. We are certainly on different sides of the debate here, but the conversation is polite and we each hear one another out. It was not really an endeavour to change one another's minds... more, an attempt to air our thoughts and make clear why we think the way we do. If you're thinking of being a speaker at an event, or you're thinking of organising an event this could be a really interesting conversation. It might well shine a spotlight on issues that you never even considered and make both sides have more empathy, especially when the event deadlines are tight and expectations are put under stress.
This week's WordPress news for the week commencing Monday 10th January 2022
Welcome to another in the WordPress Business Bootcamp series. It’s the series where we relearn everything we know about building WordPress sites and running a web design business from start to finish. Presently, we are on Season 01 (of the series which is looking at the things that need to happen) 'Before the Build'. This is episode 03... "Getting a brief and scoping the project". So this is really all about making the first contact, making an impression and letting the client know how you work and what they can expect. There's so many possible routes that you can take here. Are you going to meet face-to-face or work on Zoom? What are the ways that you're going to communicate the expected budget? How will you explain your processes to see if you're a good fit for one another? How do you qualify them as a 'good' client? Do you introduce care plans at this point? There's so much more to this, but you're going to have to listen to the show to find out more...
This week's WordPress news for the week commencing 3rd January 2022
Compress your images for a quick way to get a faster website with the EWWW plugin. See how it works on the podcast today with founder Shane Bishop. Go listen...
This week's WordPress news for the week commencing Monday 13th December 2021
Welcome to another in the WP Business Bootcamp series. It’s the series where we relearn EVERYTHING we know about building WordPress sites and running a web design business from start to finish. The Premise of this series is that we have our first potential website client. All we know is that she is a lawyer in a large city. She asked a mutual friend who thought of us. We have few skills and no business or processes in place. She has no previous website. No branding or copy. As we go through the series, Nathan and David will be taking different routes to get our business going and our client’s website up and running. Presently, we are on Season 1 of the series which is looking at the things that need to happen before the build. Today we're trying to figure out how we might think about charging for the services that we offer, and as always, there's more to this than meets the eye... fixed v value pricing, being competitive, discounting, bundling services together and much more. Check out the podcast and leave us a comment with your thoughts...
This week's WordPress news for the week commencing Monday 6th December 2021
You use WooCommerce, because you need an eCommerce platform and you like WordPress. It's kind of the default isn't it? WordPress + eCommerce = WooCommerce. Well, on the show today we have Kelly Muro, who want you to rewrite that equation so that it reads like this: WordPress + eCommerce = North Commerce! But, I'm guessing that you've not heard of North Commerce. Well, neither had I until a few weeks ago when it came across my radar, and so I thought that I'd put it on your radar too. You can thank me later! So North Commerce is intended to be a full replacement for WooCommerce, with all the basic bells and whistles covered, but that kind of platform does not get built overnight, and so, as of right now, North Commerce is still in alpha / beta testing, so it might be a great time to hop on board and get your voice heard. You never know, you might even be able to influence the way that the platform is built out? So if you're looking for WooCommerce alternatives, this is a interesting chat, about a (possibly) disruptive product, and certainly worth a listen...
This week's WordPress news for the week commencing Monday 29th November 2021
In this brand new, and huge series of podcast episodes we try to re-learn everything that we know about running a WordPress website business. We start from the idea that we've got our first potential client, but we have no prior experience. So where do we start? What do we do? Where do we go to find inspiration? What methodologies could assist us towards becoming profitable? Join us on this journey as we start the "WordPress Business Bootcamp"! Check out the podcast...
This week's WordPress news for the week commencing 22nd November 2021
One the more challenging things to do when creating a website is to write effective copy. In the era of Page Builders, getting the site to look good and work well is easier than ever... but getting effective and compelling copy on your site is as hard as it's ever been. In fact, with the competition out there, all trying to get the same SEO juice as you are, it might be harder than it's ever been. Unless you're a pro at this you might struggle, and your clients might be even worse. Step up Todd E. Jones and his Website Copy Framework. We talked on the podcast about why Todd built the product and what it contains. It's essentially a collection of templates for all the different components you need to put on your website. It makes it easier for you to understand how to get started and what effective copywriting is. So if you need help with your copywriting, check out the podcast and see if the Website Copy Framework might get you writing better copy.
