WDD LIVE 042: Fishing Boat Website Critique + Q&A/AMA

1 0:00:00 Yo, what’s up, everybody?

Hello, hello, hello. All right. No emails this morning, did not send out any notifications for this.

So it’s just OGs in the house, most likely. What’s up, C’s? What’s up, Stripe Goat?

10 0:00:19 Derek’s here.

1 0:00:20 Randall’s here.

Amar is here. 3 0:00:23

Melvin. 1 0:00:24

Welcome, welcome, Justin. Ruben, yes, a week, a week of Kevin. Christmas is here early.

Yeah, I didn’t even realize it’s just like day after day after day now, huh? Because I’ve got a inner circle office hours live stream tomorrow. I also thought about doing another co-working with Kevin session, maybe maybe tomorrow.

Maybe Friday. We’ll see But yeah, it’s a it’s been a lot of streaming for sure Hey, what’s up, Joel Joel Rob DD shy see You’re watching this from open match training fantastic fantastic. Oh Man, all right.

So let’s talk about, we got Mark here. Welcome Mark. Let’s do real quick a, just talk about what we’re going to do today as far as agenda goes.

So and for anybody who’s new, what WDD Live is for, what is the purpose. Our agenda for today, segment one is going to be a Stingray, it’s called Stingray Marine, a website that was submitted for critique. So we’re going to go over that one.

Segment two is going to be Q&A AMA. So you’re allowed to ask anything and we’ll try to get as many questions answered as we possibly can. There’s any time after that we’ll just hang out and shoot the shit and have a little fun.

And for those of you who are new here, what is the goal of WDD Live? Well, we’re branching out. It started as an in-depth critique series where we look at real websites and we talk about all of the things that make a website successful.

So we don’t, you know, most, I think, critiques are along the lines of like, how good is the UI design? Right, it’s like, how beautiful is the website? But on WDD Live, we talk about everything that makes a website successful.

So we talk about starting with the most important things typically, which is the general user experience, the copy and messaging. Is the copy and messaging on point? Is the offer on point?

Then we get down into more specifics like UI design, and other UX principles, and accessibility, and the DOM, and maintainability of the website, and on and on and on and on. And so the better a website is, like the better the copy is, the better the UI design is, the better the user experience is, the better the offer is, we don’t have as much to talk about in those areas and then we get to dive even deeper into the depths of the DOM sometimes, which is why it’s called Web Design for DOMmies because we do sometimes take a look at the DOM, like we care about quality websites, we care about maintainable websites, we care about websites that work to achieve their end goal for the business because that’s really, really what matters. Okay, super chat, $2 from Ruben, leave Gutenberg alone.

Hey, man, Ruben last time super chatted me saying, leave Breakdance alone and now it’s leave gutenberg alone uh you you know ruben is not you know i i have a feeling ruben ruben bats for a lot of different teams you know what i’m saying like he uh ruben maybe just wants everybody to get along i don’t know uh if everyone is real lucky they may even secretly be in an unforeseen gary rant on the agenda yeah that could happen too uh if you haven’t done it yet so i am branching out my content into different areas of WordPress. I’ve stayed dedicated to like very niched type content and I’m gonna start branching out in 2024. It’s one of my goals in 2024, is to start speaking more to the wider WordPress ecosystem.

I do think, and it started with the video yesterday. If you haven’t watched the video that I published yesterday, it’s gaining a tremendous amount of traction. Let me go ahead and pull this up real quick, because I think this is a, we’ll just use this as our warm up today, and then we’ll get right into the first critique.

Let me view channel, let’s click videos, let’s go here. Today, my friends. Let’s go, we don’t actually want to play the video.

Okay. Let’s go ahead and screen share this. All right, so if you look here, I tried building a layout with the WordPress block editor and it didn’t go well.

We’ve racked up quite a bit of comments here. And most of them are as you would actually, I actually expected a lot more hostility. I expected a lot more hostility because this has started to make its rounds through the Gutenberg community.

I got a comment on the article I wrote. I would actually encourage you to not go straight to the video. I would go to giri.

co slash blog and then I would click on it right here. I tried building a layout with the WordPress block editor because I did like pair it with a very detailed write-up. And I tried to be as fair as I possibly could.

I did not, guys, the section, the layout that I built is fairly basic. It’s not, I didn’t throw the kitchen sink at Gutenberg or anything like that and say, ha, ha, you can’t do this super advanced layout. I threw like a relatively basic layout at it.

Like it was, I was very generous in not making it all that complicated and it still failed. I just wanted to point out here, for example, a comment from a sponsored WordPress contributor. Very nice, very detailed comment, made a lot of fantastic points.

Missed a couple things. Actually, I haven’t seen that one. I thought that was the one I replied to.

It was this one. So there’s a second one now. Riyad was the first guy that I replied to.

And this is fantastic. Now, I will say, and I think, I don’t know. I don’t want to assume why they’re leaving comments the way that they are, because I’ve talked to some WordPress contributors on Twitter and in Facebook groups and stuff, and these responses right here are insanely productive and positive.

The ones that I’ve gotten elsewhere are very, you know, not so productive. One person was like, what do you want it to bake bread for you to? And I was like, I’m just asking it to be able to build a simple layout.

Why is that a helpful response? That’s not a helpful response. So there’s, it is making its rounds.

It is, I think this is going to do a lot of good. But definitely read, it’s very, very important to understand the premise of the entire thing. The premise, because I think there’s two fundamental problems with with the Gutenberg project.

Number one is you can’t build software for everyone. That’s an impossibility and the minute you say that that’s your goal I already know you’re going to fail. That’s it’s just an impossibility.

And so until they ditch that as the vision then we can’t really move forward in a productive way. Number two is there you know it’s not only is it for everyone, they’re taking it’s a it’s a design by committee approach, which is also a failed strategy. You know, if you were going to say, how do you build a failed software product, I would say, well, try to make it for everyone and design it by committee.

is that’s underpinning the entire Gutenberg project. So, you know, I’m not surprised with the state of the block editor, but I do think that we have, we have to have these conversations, because when they say for everyone, it’s not for me. I’m not, I am not everyone, in their definition of everyone.

And they seem, a lot of them, seem comfortable leaving me out. Which means it’s really not for everyone. They want to keep saying it is, but at the same time they’re very comfortable leaving me out, because it ain’t for me.

And that’s the point I’m trying to get across. That’s the whole premise. And when I say it’s not for me, I mean it’s not for anyone like me, which is a giant chunk of the WordPress ecosystem.

So there’s a lot of philosophical stuff that we could go into. There’s a lot, a lot more. That’s not the purpose of today’s stream.

I think I’m going to have to do a series of videos breaking it down. I also think it’s a, I think the idea of no code, anything, no code anything that’s important to real goals like for a business. I, my job is to represent my clients who are businesses who want to grow and profit and be successful and put value into the world.

I have to approach all of this from their perspective right and the no-code idea of of putting builders in the hands of my actual clients does them a disservice not a service that is not a good thing that’s a bad thing and I can explain in detail why that is. And so the idea of no code is fundamentally just the wrong vision in my estimation. So we have to go even into that area.

I’m gonna have to do a series of videos and posts to really just break all of this down because if we don’t have the right vision we’re obviously not going to end up in the right destination. Okay you you’ve got to know where you’re going in order to get there. And we’re going in the wrong direction.

We’re going south when we should be going north. So it’s just it’s just going to be a matter of like, you know, more communication, more, more, you know, sharing perspectives and getting the point across. But again, I would just watch the video, read the post, share it, you know, help help more people in the Gutenberg ecosystem come across it.

And I think that’s gonna be productive. Let’s go ahead and go into segment number one. This is stingraymarine.

com. au. Before we hop into this, I’m just gonna leave it right here and we will just check on the chat real quick before we dive in.

All right, let’s see here. Okay, yeah, we did that one. Another super chat, $5 from Shiesty.

Bring back the ACSS LTD for your 41st birthday. Hey, if I keep bringing it back, I mean, I can’t be like, it’s not going to come back and then it comes back. I mean, that’s we can’t, we can’t do that.

You know, we cannot do that. I’ve never, never done that. We can’t do it.

It’s just, it’s not, I understand you want it. By the way, save your money. I don’t need your super chats.

I’ll read your comments without super chatting. So it’s all good. All right, let’s see here.

Matthew’s here. Welcome, Matthew. It’s being designed for Wix and Squarespace people.

That’s, so I’ll just give you, I’ve already got a video title planned out. And it’s along those lines It’s called wick slide squares. I’m sorry.

Let’s let’s do that again wicks lie. I’ve got all of them in my head I was like Squarespace and the next one wicks lied WordPress died that is the because here’s the premise for that video or article is Wicks lied when they said anyone can build a website. WordPress bought that lie and then built Gutenberg.

And here we are. So Wix lied, WordPress died, that’s gonna be at least one of the videos in the series. We might even start off with that video.

Because I think that is a fundamental, Wix had a failed vision and WordPress following in their footsteps, or at least trying to in some form or fashion, or even seeing that as important, went right off the cliff with them. So that’s my estimation. All right.

Perhaps bring in Jamie Marsland to have a Gutenberg design build off. I mean, I would love to do that. I would love to do that.

Jamie, unfortunately, I mean, it’s, you know, I’m not going to talk bad about him. Like, it’s, at the end of the day, I ultimately think you can either get on a video and you can prove your point or you can just talk. The unfortunate part is that the first time I challenged Jamie, really, the first real time, he blocked me.

So there is no conversation to be had because I can’t even see anything. That’s just the reality. I wish that wasn’t the case.

So for me, for example, I post the Gutenberg video. I know there’s going to be hostility somewhere. I’m okay with that.

You could come at me with guns blazing, come at me with everything you got. I don’t care. I don’t care.

It’s okay because I believe in what I’m doing and it’s okay to challenge it. It’s okay to come at me. Don’t block me, like what?

Now you just shut down the conversation. Now there’s no pathway to learning from anybody else. So that’s unfortunate.

And by the way, when I say come at me, I mean come at me with like, you know, actual counters, not like personal attacks and all the other stuff that you do you do see quite often You know so there’s that Everybody said yeah, I know there’s a lot of people that bring back the LTD. Okay Are you now looking into buying a fishing boat? No, this is no no no, I don’t actually fish now I don’t actually fish this was just submitted.

It’s a random site that was that was submitted So that’s what we are going to get into today. Another super chat from Ruben, don’t tell me what to do. All right, so, like Ruben, Ruben uses breakdance, right?

I would love to see a, because I’m always talking about maintainability, right? And the thing I asked for with the Gutenberg video is like, if there is a way to build maintainable sites with native blocks in Gutenberg, just show me. I’m not saying it’s not possible.

I’m just saying I don’t see a path for it without custom blocks, which is, there’s been some interesting conversations around that. People telling me, well, the user shouldn’t be able to, or shouldn’t have to use CSS in Gutenberg. That’s the thing we’re trying to get people away from.

And I’m like, but you want them to learn React to build custom blocks? Like, no CSS, that’s bad, but React, that’s the future, that’s the way to go, that’s what we need them doing. No, that doesn’t, you can’t say they shouldn’t have to use CSS, they just need to learn React to build custom blocks.

You can’t say that without laughing at yourself. Like, do you hear what you’re, like the words that are coming out of your mouth? That makes no sense, that makes no sense whatsoever.

So that was another premise of the video is you can’t use custom blocks Because don’t tell me I can’t write CSS if you’re gonna tell people to write react like come on now it’s just we’ve got a Shouldn’t be this hard. It should have be this hard. Okay Yeah, no LTD bad for business.

All right, y’all all fight over the LTD while we while we do this this critique All right sting right we do the no the no scroll test is the very first thing that we do which means we don’t scroll around What what can we? Discern from just being right here, so I’m gonna go headline first redefining the rib Explore the sea raider rugged sleek unparalleled seakeeping Australia’s toughest rib I Don’t know if rib is a nautical term or like an Australian term. Again, I’m not a big ocean person.

So I understand the audience for this type of boat may know exactly what a rib is. I’m more of a lay person in this regard. So I don’t, what I would say as an SEO person is I don’t see any obvious like SEO value here.

There is no real identifiable keyword that they could be ranking for. Nobody’s gonna, for example, nobody’s going to search for rugged, sleek, unparalleled seakeeping. I can almost guarantee that, okay?

I know enough about SEO. I can almost guarantee that. They’re not gonna search for Australia’s toughest rib.

Now, would they search for rib? I don’t even know what a rib is. Let’s, why don’t we find that out first?

What is a rib? Okay, yeah, well, I figured I was gonna get that. What is a rib in boating?

There we go, a rigid inflatable boat. My God, just say that. Just say rigid, inflatable.

That’s what people may search for, rigid, inflatable boat. We would want to look at the details on that. But anyway, I think this headline can be improved from an SEO perspective and can probably be improved dramatically just from a general, you know, copywriting perspective.

perspective as far as the logo goes Why don’t why don’t we just group group think this right? What do you guys think about the the logo? I’m gonna go with I I’m just really not a fan of the yellow and red Like the border the blade almost seems like my CSS 5 pixel border check like I’m trying to is the is the logo Can I style it?

Okay. I got it I’m not mmm. It’s just it feels a little,

11 0:18:52 feels a little much.

1 0:18:53 It also feels a little cliparty.

I see this is a stingray, like an actual stingray, but I’m not sure what this thing is that the stingray is on. Like it’s almost like the stingray is racing down a track or something. I almost think it would be way better with just.

. . And you know, I’m not a branding guy, okay?

But I do know enough about branding that most brand designers, if you say my brand is named Stingray, they will find a way to incorporate a Stingray, at least that will be some of the options. But it won’t be literally taking a Stingray and putting it next to the name. That’s like, they don’t go immediately for the lowest hanging fruit the fruit that’s literally like touching the ground.

It’s so low They don’t normally do that so You know I think a little bit more. I would like to see a little bit more You know creativity in the in the branding here, but other than that It’s throwing me off with the shapes the shapes that we’ve got like some You know just we just threw a bunch of white space in a corner here that doesn’t really need to exist. There’s just kind of, I think, a lot of room for improvement there.

I would personally I mean, obviously, they look they build boats. I mean, this is not cheap. Building boats is not cheap.

So they obviously have some funding, some money. I would I would probably start thinking about proposing a rebrand. Now, I want to see what the logo looks like on the boat.

Let’s go to, where’s Sea Raider Ribs? I just want to answer one question here. Well, that’s a nice video.

We’ll get to that in just a second. All right, these are very nice photos, too. These are well done.

You can spot good photography, right? Like, you know, it’s a decent photo. Whoa, whoa, whoa, where have we gone?

Where were we? All right, Sea Raider ribs. All right, let’s go back.

I don’t know how we got lost for a second there. Let’s, okay, so you see the difference, right? Not a good photo.

Good photo, right? You can very clearly see the difference. 10

0:21:04 Good photo, right? 1

0:21:05 Showing the details. Yeah, so little mix here.

I’m still not seeing the logo though. Where is I want to see the logo on a boat? Surely they’ve branded their boats, right?

Yeah, there’s some tabs there. We’ll get to it. We’ll get out there it is Okay, so on the boat and it doesn’t look well on the boat.

It’s missing the stingray and on the boat It’s not yellow. It really is the like the yellow makes it way worse. Like this is, I mean, you would probably expect to see a logo like that on a boat, right?

But the yellow on the actual website, that’s really not the play. I don’t think. Let’s see what everybody says.

Uh, what’s more like a logo for a fight club. If danger is not part of the brand, uh, the stingray is on the rib. Oh, okay.

All right. Sure. We’ll go with that.

We’ll go with that. Question, do you answer questions about logos? Sure, I mean, I’m not a branding expert, as I mentioned, but you can ask, and I’ll just let you know if I’m not the person to ask.

3 0:22:15 Let’s see.

1 0:22:16 Okay, there’s still people talking about that.

All right, accessibility, red color is not legible. Audience may be more specific, but anyone coming to this page that would love to be a ribbed person, but with no prior knowledge of what that means, I’d leave. Yeah, okay, good, some good points there.

Colors aren’t great at the very least. I would monochrome white it. Logos very intense, screams danger.

Could be good for the crowd. No, I don’t think, I think, you know, people that have these kinds of boats, from what I know about people with boats, they’re not interested in danger. Boats are really expensive.

They don’t want to be in danger. They want adventure. Adventure is one thing they definitely want.

They don’t want danger though. They’re trying to get the adventure without the danger. So I would say no, we wanna avoid danger.

And again, here’s, look, red text. Red text on a dark background, no less. Um, but that red just kind of screams like, no, like don’t go here.

Stay out. There’s another one right here. Red button.

I would absolutely get away from these red buttons. 100% run, run from these red buttons. Let’s find a different way to, so we need a, we need to definitely need some branding help, right?

Get a, get a really talented brand designer to come in. Let’s get this thing cleaned up here, this logo, let’s get the color scheme mapped out better. A lot can be improved just from that perspective.

Yeah, see logo reminds me of a biohazard. Logo is outdated, needs a modern revamp, not a fan of the logo. Let’s keep going down.

No CTAs, just info. All right, we’ll take a look at that in just a second. I think the hero section lets the rest of the site down.

Let me go back to the home page here. We need to get back to where we were. Okay, can you load, can you the logo image in new window so I can see it better?

Oh, is it too small? I don’t know that this is gonna help. There you go.

Does that help? It’s not an SVG. So yeah, it’s, that’s it’s, it’s the old the old PNG.

Blue and white are the colors of C products for sure. For sure. I do I do tend to feel like, you know, if an industry all uses the same colors all the time.

Like, one of the best marketing books ever written, not because it’s, like, contains massively actionable information, but just because it does hit on like a core premise of marketing, was Purple Cow by Seth Godin. I mean, you don’t, like, if your first marketing strategy is let’s look like everybody else. You’re starting off at a deficit.

You want to find ways to stand out from your competitors. So I tend to, you know, like medical industry is always like, we got to use this color and this color. They won’t know we’re in the medical industry.

I’m like, no, they will know, but you don’t want to look like everybody else in the medical industry. So, yeah, that’s the challenge is how can we be creative without going with red and yellow, right? Because that’s not going to work.

All right, bottom right of the page. Let’s get rid of this. We don’t need that anymore.

We can zoom out here. All right, red means stop. Correct.

Yep. Looks like a great logo for canned tuna. All right.

Let’s keep going. Let’s keep going. So, let’s scroll down.

Innovative excellence meets masterful craftsmanship. We’ll come back to this in just a second. Stingray Marine Australia redefines the essence of rigid inflatable boats, merging advanced design and technology with unparalleled marine artisanship.

Laid up in South Africa since 1990, outfitted in Australia since 2010. Experience a new era of ribs that promise not just superior performance and safety, but also an unmatched boating pleasure. Join us in navigating the future where innovation meets the waves.

92% certainty that’s chat GPT. It very much reads that way. I prefer much more plain language, much more just like, talk to me like I’m five.

And really, we’ve talked about this before many times, but I think it is important to hear the same things over and over and over again. That’s how you drive concepts home. And then people, when they go to work on an actual website, that alarm goes off in their head, it is not effective to use very nebulous descriptions of things.

Like merging advanced design and technology with unparalleled marine artisanship. That is a, that’s a lot of big words that say absolutely nothing. We don’t know what the advanced design and technology is and how it’s different from what’s on another rib that I might be looking at.

We don’t know what unparalleled marine artisanship is, or how that’s different from another rib that I might be looking at. And so this doesn’t give me any information to actually make a decision. It doesn’t help move me forwards towards the goal of buying a boat.

All it does is it makes the person who wrote it like they feel good like man you see those words I use, like man I I really wrote this up but for the end user it doesn’t really provide any value. Now if you talk about being you know here in South Africa since 1990 that does speak to the specifics of hey we’ve been around the block. We have a trusted brand, I would think.

Like you haven’t gone out of business yet. We’ve been here for a while now. So we do have experience.

We do have expertise in this industry. We have survived since then. So that part’s not bad.

Like people need to know that. But this is on innovative excellence. I thought that was the topic.

The topic was innovative excellence. This is probably not the place really that we need to be talking about the history. Talk about the innovative excellence.

Talk about what you’re innovating on. Why is your boat different from every other boat? Why, what do I really need to key in on here?

What should I be paying attention to? They haven’t given me anything to latch on to yet. Okay, let’s move on to the next.

So globally renowned with military precision. Our boats navigate waters across the globe, earning accolades from both recreational and professional circles with decades-long presence in Europe, da, da, da, da, recognized for their exceptional seakeeping abilities, an advance designed by international law enforcement, ocean rescue militaries, and commercial skippers alike. Fantastic.

So if you are selling, if this website is designed to sell boats to the average person. That’s cool. We can take a concept like this, where let’s say that you’re, let’s say you’re selling to a US audience, and your boats are exclusively used by US Navy SEALs, for example.

I would almost lead with that kind of headline. It’s like, get the same boat that Navy SEALs use. Something along those lines.

Something that immediately captures people’s interest, right? And it’s like, whoa, hold on, Navy SEALs use this boat? Like, let me see what’s going on here.

Something that has some sort of entertainment, some sort of call out to something else that’s super important. It’s just, you know, redefining the rib. Explore the Sea Raider.

So, but we come down here and we find out, wow, there’s like military using this and look at this boat flying out of the water with military personnel line. Now it’s a little bit more exciting isn’t it? Now I kind of want to pay a lot more attention because this something’s different is happening now on this site.

We could have given that feeling at the very beginning when they arrived because one thing we have to remember is you know not everybody’s gonna scroll not like if somebody arrives and they don’t know that they’re in the right place or they don’t like what they see from the start, they’re not going to get down here and then see this part. All right let’s keep going. Bespoke vessels.

Embrace the freedom to tailor every aspect of your boat with Stingray Marine. Okay so we’re talking about like customizing the boat. This is an important thing to hit on.

Discover and and order. Alright yeah the the buttons here I think I think we can definitely improve all of this. The colors the colors are the colors do not work here.

Alright looks like there’s a frame site I recognize the the footer. Alright let’s Go down, explore the boats. Alright.

I’ve talked before about how it’s important to have video on a site. I think this is a, you know, it’s a decent video. This is more like what you would expect out of like a background video, which I’m not a big fan of background videos.

I think that they should invest the money to replace this video with an actual commercial. So someone talking while the stuff plays in the background and you’re covering all of the like, why our boats are badass, how you can customize them. They’re used by Navy SEALs as an example.

It’s just, just take us through the whole narrative that’s just gonna crush the competition, right? And a really well done video. This really doesn’t provide any value for the user because it’s like, all right, I see a boat going around, but there’s nobody talking, right?

There’s no audio here. No, there’s no audio. No audio, no words, no nothing to go with this.

So it’s not, you know very important to see photos of what I want to buy Okay 6 0:32:55

That one doesn’t get the job done right right here this does not get the job done 1 0:32:58

This is like okay. That’s like a that looks like a used boat on a on an old on an old trailer Okay, these are good for you know proving the point. The military and police and such use your boats.

So that’s you know it’s a decent photo gallery. I think what I would like to see if because we look at all models right here. I think every model should have its own dedicated page and then you would have oh look at this little look at this outline right here.

I’ve noticed that this has crept in on a bunch of sites, Bricks websites recently. I need to just take a pit stop here because I gotta show how to fix this. A lot of people ask about it too.

Let’s do this one right here. All right, just a quick tangent fix a little side quest here because it’s obviously ugly, right? You don’t want to click this and have a bordered outline.

That doesn’t that doesn’t look great. So let’s go to Let’s just edit this page with bricks Here theme styles typography scroll scroll scroll scroll scroll focus outline none safe None. 3

0:34:24 Save. 1

0:34:25 You’re using automatic CSS, it’s gonna take care of focus styles for you. So you just wanna get rid of that bricks, dotted line default thing.

That’s where you do it right there. Okay. Go ahead and get rid of that.

So, yeah, I would have a dedicated page for every single boat, and then have a gallery, especially if the boats are legitimately different, have a gallery for each boat. Well, there’s a lot of models. Okay, maybe in this, maybe if you don’t want to go every model has a page.

I mean, I think ultimately every model should probably have a page if they’re legitimately, you know, different. But at the minimum, you would have a large version page, an intermediate version page, and a compact version page, for sure, for sure. I don’t, and if you think about UX in this regard, like, you’re basically putting tabs and tabs and tabs.

Like, you want to avoid, first of all, you want to avoid hiding content in general. Like, hiding content with tabs is not fantastic. If you go inception with it, like tabs and tabs and tabs, or accordions and tabs, tabs and accordions, and sliders and tabs and accordions.

Oh man, oh my gosh, like, don’t, I desperately avoid that. Avoid that at all costs. The client wants that, try your best to talk them out of it.

But this is tabs and tabs and tabs, and I go in here and it’s just, it’s too much tabbing, too much tabbing, too heavy on the tabs. Gotta overdose on tabs. There’s more tabs here.

This is why, like, if you have to hide this much content, because what people will say is, well, there’s so much content, we can’t put it all on one page. And I’m like, you’re right. You’re 100% right.

That’s why we have multiple pages. So, you have to break this out into multiple pages. All right, so we come down, and then look, all of your images are actually tied to the boat the person cares about.

Like, if I’m interested in the intermediate series, I want to see photos of the intermediate series. I don’t want a gallery of just random boats. Because now I don’t even really know what’s what, what am I looking at, what, you know, I don’t know, I can’t discern the details.

So this really has to be segmented. Which, by the way, if you’re an agency or a freelancer, you should love to hear this. The dollar sign should just be, cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching, racking up in your head because that it costs more money to create more pages but at the same time we’re not just getting them to spend more money they actually need it.

This is needed for proper user experience. This helps the user, this helps conversions, this helps SEO, this helps a lot of things. So the best thing a business can do is find ways to increase deliverables that actually matter.

Scam businesses sell deliverables that aren’t needed. You don’t want to do that but anytime we can sell more deliverables because they’re actually needed we should do that. In this case everybody is getting ripped off because we’re not selling the extra deliverables that are needed, which means the client’s not getting what they need and we’re not getting any extra money that we should be getting.

And then the user is out because the user sees a bunch of inception tabs because we tried to fit everything in the same area but realized it was too much content and then found a workaround for that which is well we’ll hide stuff behind interactivity. See how like everybody fails because somebody didn’t want to spend more money and this is what you have to explain to the client. This is if the client says no we don’t the budget for more pages I would say you don’t have the budget to not have more pages.

You’re losing lots of money by making this decision. So we need to we need to spend the little bit of money to make the right decision and then you’ll make a lot of money based on that decision down the road. Because what’s going to happen here is like you make it too hard for the user to figure out what boat they need and what the differences are between the boats.

And even when we’re looking at photos, which boat am I even looking at? I, it’s just too much confusion. Most people are just going to give up.

They’re going to leave. They’re not going to sit here and study. They’re going to give up and they’re going to leave.

And so you’re out that money and if they go to your competitor who has a better website with better UX and who answers the questions better and has better copy and makes them feel better about buying a boat they’re going to buy the boat with the competitor. So we need to spend a little extra money to do this the right way so that that horror story doesn’t continue to happen with your visitors. And then think about I even bring in, you know, when I have this conversation with clients, I talk about the ad campaigns.

Like, because if we’re gonna spend money to bring people to this page, you’re basically gonna spend money to bring people here to frustrate them. And then they’re gonna leave. So not only are you just like, it’s not like people are just happening across your website, getting frustrated and leaving, and you’re missing out on opportunity.

You’re actually lighting money on fire to pay to bring people here so they can be frustrated and leave. That’s even worse. So losing direct money and opportunity costs at the same time, that’s as bad as it can get.

We have to avoid that at all costs. You got to talk them in to spending the extra money to make the extra pages. And you got to get good at doing that.

You got to get good at convincing them. Like, tell them exactly what’s going to happen. Show your expertise.

Okay, let’s keep going. Now we have a table that’s hidden. It’s partially hidden.

So this is not as bad as just having a tab. This is better. This is a better implementation here.

I don’t actually mind this implementation. That’s fairly obvious to the user. What’s going on here?

I like the fact that it has a downloadable PDF. That’s really good. This is probably Table Alpha if I had to guess.

Look at that. Frames Table Alpha. So helpful.

So helpful. Okay, let’s keep going down. Order yours today.

Right, so here’s the CTA. Ready to set sail. Stingray Seariders shipped Australia-wide.

Contact Stingray. I think we can start to close this review out. I think we’ve hit on all the main points.

I want to talk about call to action and offer as our last thing to discuss. I think we can go, you know, about page. We’re going to see the typical about page stuff that we typically see.

Yeah, so, okay. So the last most important thing that we need to talk about on this site, it’s not a huge site by any means. I don’t know how much SEO potential there actually is.

I would have to do a bunch of SEO research and all of that in order to really get into detail on that side of things. So I’m gonna talk about the most obvious stuff. Combined with what we already talked about, we need to talk about call to action and offer.

I know what the business is going to say. All right, well, number one, people aren’t gonna buy the boat online. That’s a given, right?

This is not a thing they add to a cart and check out, okay? This is not a WooCommerce situation. Nobody’s buying these boats, sight unseen, you know, online, right?

If I had to guess, well, here, we don’t even have to guess. There’s distributors that they would buy the boat from. So they would probably go see this on a lot and talk to a salesperson, at minimum talk to a salesperson on the phone, but almost certainly they’re going to go see one of the actual models in person.

And so we need to think about that. We need to think about the fact that, you know, could they, does Stingray even want to field phone calls themselves? Or do they want to just push everybody to distributors?

Because if they want to push everybody to distributors, we’ve got a different situation going on. And then we have to ask, well, here’s an order button. Why don’t we click that?

Every Stingray boat begins with your vision. Our bespoke sales process ensures the boat tailored to your exact needs. Start by contacting us or filling in the form.

Stingray expert will guide you. 9 0:42:49

Okay. 1 0:42:50

So we see here that, uh, they do want people to contact them and they do want people to order through them. And so that changes the game a little bit. That changes the gap.

I, my first thought, because it was like contact a distributor was maybe they want to push everybody to distributors. That’s, that’s kind of a common thing. Um, okay.

So what I will say then is we got to get more creative with our call to action and our offer, right? Embark on a voyage of discovery with Stingray Marine, whether you’re seeking in-depth information about our models or personalized advice from our experienced team, we’re here to guide you. Dive into the details of our exquisite boat range or connect.

This is where I would try, my first thought, just off the cuff, is this is where I would try to actually segment people. Where are you at in this process? I would present them down here with like three different options.

Not in buttons, but in cards. I’d probably get rid of the background image here. So this is a super clean section and I’d put three distinct cards.

And my first card would probably be like the bucket of I need to talk to somebody to get more information on this. A second card would be find distributors like me there’s a good chance the person just wants to find a local distributor go there and do all the stuff there. And then the third option would be like customize my rib like customize my boat.

And so that kind of gives you but based on what the person selects we now know what path they’re most interested in going down. And so if they want to just ask questions and such, they need more information, then our call to action basically becomes like, let’s schedule a call. Might even let them schedule a call on the website.

Just digital calendar, let them schedule straight through. Don’t even worry about sending us an email. Just hop on our schedule right here.

Fastest way to get you to a person that can help you. So that’s like option number one. If they say, hey, I already know I want to buy a boat like that.

That’s very, very possible. Probably a large percentage of people already know they want to stingray. You’ve been around since 1990.

You got a trusted brand. There’s people who are just like, you know, it’s like people who want to buy a Ford Mustang. They’re like, dude, I already know I want a Mustang.

Just where’s the local Mustang dealership. I need to go there and I need to buy my Mustang. That’s what they want to do.

They want to find a local distributor. So they choose that option. What do you do?

You have a little interactive map. They type in your address. We’ll show you distributors in your area.

There you go. So there’s the experience for that person. And then three is, well, I want to buy a boat, but I don’t want to go to a dealership because I want to customize my boat.

I want to make a custom order for this boat. That’s a third bucket. That’s a completely different person.

So now we have the customize my rib option. They click on that and if you want to go low budget, you just have them contact you to build a custom order. If you want to go high budget, they will get a little interactive little customizer situation going, walk them through, you know, something like what a, what, what Tesla does.

I know I’m fairly certain that stingray Marine doesn’t have Tesla money. Okay. But you know, this is the typical Car dealership like we have a way to customize your vehicle And you can go through.

I don’t even yeah here you go custom order See how quickly I was able to get to like Let’s let’s do it. Let’s let’s rock and roll. I want to I want to start building a boat.

You could create that kind of experience And there’s ways to do that at various budget levels. It doesn’t have to be the interactive Tesla level. There are ways to do that gracefully without a gazillion dollars.

But that’s kind of where I would go. Like we want to figure out what bucket the person is in right now, so that we can talk to them in the most appropriate way. And that’s, I think, a lot better than just like, view our models or contact the distributor.

This, the contact distributor doesn’t really serve everybody. It probably serves a small percentage of the people who are looking at this website. So I think the CTA situation, the offer situation needs to get a little bit more dialed in.

That’s the advice that I would give, at least think about going in that direction. All right, let’s go to chat. Kevin you should also be reviewing sites at the wireframe stage.

I would love to. Nobody’s ever submitted a wireframe. So and by the way I think this is a good.

That Sylvia made a really really really good point. I mean if you are doing the wireframing thing like you should be. Okay whether you’re wireframing in bricks with like something like frames or your wireframing in Figma, I would say wireframe in Figma, with something like frames for Figma or your own wireframing, or hell, if you’re just drawing something on the back of a napkin and you want to submit it and say, hey, this is the stage we’re in with this project.

Before we go into UI and all of this other stuff, we’d like to get feedback at this stage. Because think, when they get feedback after the site is done it’s kind of expensive to go and backwards and do all this stuff again if you get the feedback earlier in the product in the project it’s much easier to implement this kind of stuff and it can take you in the the new direction in a much cheaper fashion which is by the way why we do projects and phases like that that’s that’s really what’s supposed to happen. There’s supposed to be that wireframing phase, the UX is supposed to be figured out, the copywriting is supposed to be figured out, before we do all the hard work of making it pretty and developing it.

So you know that I think people should do that. We should we should probably encourage people to submit stuff earlier in the project. Submit the wireframes, submit proposed copy, show me you’re even thinking about the copy.

Guys, how many people do you feel, we should do a poll, I don’t know if people would be honest, but how many people do you feel copy is the last thing they think about, if they think about it at all? Like they’re primarily focused on are we building a pretty website? Are we building a well-coded website?

I feel like a lot of people put a lot of focus on that and then copy is just an afterthought. And we know really this is the case because what do most agencies do I think? They get the copy from the client, which is the worst place to get copy.

That’s the worst place to get copy. So that lets me know that the copy is an afterthought. The copy should be developed by somebody who’s good at copywriting and good at marketing and that should be done earlier in the project phase.

It should not be an afterthought. It’s one of the most important things. Yeah, very few people think about copy.

Yeah, so I mean, ideally what we’d be doing on WDD a lot of times is, and this would be super fantastic if we could actually get it to happen in this order, but imagine somebody submits a wireframe and sample copy, and we do a WDD on that, and then they actually take that back to the boardroom and such, and the development room, and they go off and implement all that stuff and whatever, and then they come back with the finished website, and we get to WDD it again, and we get to see that evolution from like, here was the initial concept that we saw, and here’s the recommendations we made and then look at what they’ve ultimately delivered and I think you would find that they’re going to be delivering way better websites having had that WDD session in the wireframing phase and in the copy iteration phase. What if your client is a copywriter? Gotcha!

Yeah if your client is a copywriter, then they can write the copy all day. Sure. Or if they have a copywriter on their team, that’s good.

Let them write the copy. I’m just talking about majority of clients, you know, they’re used, Bev in accounting thinks that she can write copy. Every day of the week, you’re in a room, and you’re like, you know, we have a copywriter that we can use, and it’s gonna be, you know, X, Y, Z.

We really recommend it because copy is the most important. Fucking Bev’s hands like up in the air immediately. She’s like, no, we can save money on that.

No, I can do the copy, don’t worry. Yeah, immediately hang yourself at that point because that’s gonna be the worst copy that’s ever been submitted. All right, why is the content of the site text called copy?

Really good question, really good question. 3 0:51:32

I did not go to college 1 0:51:33

and I did not go to like any copy theory class. This is the kind of shit you would learn in like a copywriting theory class in college, which is why I don’t go to college because it’s like, I don’t need to know. I don’t actually care.

Um, there’s people that, you know, probably know the answer to that who also can’t write copy. So, um, yeah, somebody, somebody put the answer in the chat. That would be, that would be fantastic.

Uh, let’s see, Kevin what’s your opinion on header being full width while the site is content width? My OCD always makes me feel troubled when I see that. It’s not as bad when the footer is full width as well.

So see how the footer matches it at least. But if we don’t see the footer, to me I tend to avoid it. I do go with this when there’s a lot more options in the nav, because it gives you more space before you have to break it to a mobile menu.

But yeah, I do, I like things in alignment too. I like it when it’s content with alignment. If we can make that happen, then that’s typically the way that I go.

All right let’s see, damn it Bev stop working on the logo and write us some copy. Yeah you don’t want Bev talking about any of that or handling any of that. Can you make a video session on how to deal with Bev’s?

Maybe, maybe. It’s tough because I call her Bev, but really, all versions of Bev throw different things at you. There isn’t really one formula for dealing with Bev.

It’s really a situational thing. It’s like fighting. It’s like boxing.

It’s like jujitsu. It’s like MMA. You train skills and principles, but every fighter you go up against is going to throw something different at you, right?

So you’ve got Bob and Weave a little bit differently depending on who you’re sparring with. There’s a lot of different kind of versions of Bev out there. So it’s really about honing like core, core principles of how you’re approaching this stuff.

We can probably make a video on that, but I don’t, it’s, the more you guys make me think about Bev, the more I don’t want to create any more videos ever so I prefer to avoid that situation elevate your copy experience with meticulously crafted GP copy I don’t know what that means I don’t know what GP copy is Oh chat Jeep is that chat GPT let’s see let’s see if headers restricted to content with and you should probably never use full width anything on the site. See, I don’t know, I feel like it makes more sense if you have a content width header and you can have full width stuff. That doesn’t, to me that doesn’t feel off balance.

It feels a little bit off balance when I’ve got to go from the far left side of the top of the page into the middle. And then same thing with the far right because my eyes are having to go like in and down and then out and up or you’re going way across and then coming back to the middle it just I don’t know but see everything on this page is full width but kind of see the gap here is actually not equal to the gap here. This is a content width section.

This is the edge of the content width, but over here we broke out of the content width. That’s really throwing things off more than anything. I don’t even think most people are gonna notice that.

And then this one’s centered. Yeah, it’s, and I feel like they went for the Tesla kind of look. Where you go, yeah, this is the, that’s kind of the thing that they went for.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 3 0:55:45

Comment on site, I think the font selection can be better. 1 0:55:48

Oh, 100%, yeah, this, yeah, that font does not, there’s no inspiration in this font. It has a little bit of resemblance. It’s a serif font.

I guess you would consider that to be a serif font. It does not motivate or or make me feel like this is extra beautiful. I’m also obviously, you know, the shadow, the shadow situation.

This is probably, you know, we could do a, like a list of like the most common mistakes, right? The 1997 drop shadow thing, that’s like top of the list, right? Don’t we see that on so many sites?

It’s like the number one thing is I want to put a text on an image and then the next thing that happens is Damn, I can’t read the text how are we going to solve that and almost everybody defaults to drop shadow it put a drop shadow on it and It’s just you know brings you back to to like 1997. It’s never really a good a good strategy Never really a good strategy There’s ways to do it like the drop shadow the the shadow has to be super soft, right? Almost to the point where it has an effect on readability, but you don’t identify it as a drop shadow That’s just my opinion I guess I don’t know what you guys think about about shadows What do you think about interactivity API project from WordPress?

I have to look into that more. Have not looked at it enough. Back to Tesla, how to make these sticky sections in Bricks.

What is, there’s a JS library for it. There’s scroll snapping, there’s a bunch of different ways. We can probably do a video on that.

Low opacity overlay of the image would be better, for sure, but then clients complain. Like that’s immediately Bev is going to be like, that picture’s too dark. Can you, can you make it brighter?

And it’d be like, Bev, we’ve had this discussion before. If we make it brighter, we can’t read the text. It’s just this broken record, man.

It’s a broken record. So I’ve always said the principle is if people need to see the image, don’t put things on top of it. Let’s just start there.

Find a layout where you can show them the photo or the video without trying to cover it up. Because the other thing people will do is they’ll position the text in a weird area because it’s like they don’t want the text to be on and you’ll see that. Bev will give you a literally a group photo.

This is a true story okay I’m not gonna tell but it’s happened to everybody. Bev will give you a group photo. There’s 30 people in the group photo.

And she’ll be like, this is gonna be the hero background image. And then you’re like, that’s not gonna fucking work, but okay, we’ll show you, Bev, what it looks like. And then she’s like, I want the heading on top of the image.

Okay, Bev, all right, Bev. Let’s just, you guys know where this is going, right? So then we show her.

And she’s like, we the text did not cover anybody’s face. I’m like, Bev! Their faces are everywhere, Bev.

There’s no getting around it, okay? And so, now we’re like, she’s, and then you know what she’s going to do. She’s going to screenshot it, and she’s going to try to move it herself in the screenshot, and then send it back to you.

And it’s like, down here stuck to the bottom of the section so it’s not touching anybody’s face, but it also is just god awful UI. And you’re like, Bev, that’s not gonna work. That’s throwing the balance of the design off.

And then she’s like, okay, well what else can you do? Well, Bev, we can darken the photo, and that’s gonna make the text more readable, but it’s still gonna cover up people’s faces. And it’s just all these trade-offs.

And so what I’ve learned to say is, Bev, this is obviously a very important photo. We just need to find a way to display it where we’re not trying to put things on top of it. Because you don’t want it darkened, you don’t want things on people’s faces, but 80% of the photo is people’s faces.

We’re creating an impossible situation here, Bev. So yeah, this is a broken record, man. This is terrible, this is terrible.

All right, I think we’re done with this. Okay, let’s get out of here. Let’s go to Q&A.

So open Q&A, AMA, make sure you say question in all caps or a Q or something like that. Or you can pick a topic to just discuss. You can say, hey, I want to discuss X, I want you to discuss X, Y, Z.

And then of course people in the chat can participate as well. Damn it Kevin, stop talking about my website. It’s very, very, very, very common.

I am going to create a, 3 1:00:59

I think it would be super helpful 1 1:01:01

if we had a master article of just like, don’t do these things. Like if you’re new to web design and development, don’t do any of these things. Because I think about myself in like, photography or jujitsu, you know.

You, let’s say you’re brand new into photography. I would immediately go to somebody who knows a lot about photography and be like, because you have ideas in your head and of like how you’re gonna approach a photo. For example, when you’re editing, okay?

You’ll see a beginner use a, why is the name escaping me right now? The dark edge around the photo, right? They’ll try to make it white.

And they’re trying to be different. They’re trying to be different, right? I get it.

You’re trying to be different. You see everybody used to use, really nobody uses it. It’s actually this right here, this right here.

I don’t know why this is escaping my brain right now. Somebody will put it in the chat. And then, yes, vignette, thank you.

God damn, vignette. So they’ll see, this is the common vignette you see, which is actually some lenses creating natural vignette. And what a vignette does is it kind of helps bring the viewers focus to a part of the image usually like the center or the subject if it’s a fake vignette, whatever.

So Beginners will see this but they’ll be like nah, I gotta I gotta be different I’m gonna I’m gonna find a way to be creative and so they’ll make it a white one, which is fucking awful It’s just absolutely awful and it would be on almost every photographer’s list of like never do this Okay, we understand you’re gonna have this idea at some point. We’ll save you the time now and just say never do this. I think a whole list of that for web design, right?

In Jiu-Jitsu, like just here, before you get started, read this list because we know you’re going to have different ideas of what works and what doesn’t. Just read this list. Here’s the things you should never do.

Okay, let’s just start there and then learn, right? And then you can save yourself a bunch of time and you don’t have to go into the rabbit holes of things that everybody knows is just bad. I think that would be super helpful.

This was the vignette, this is a vignette right there. It’s actually on the photo there. Okay, for those who could not see.

Question, ARIA labels, should they be, should they, God, I hate how this covers up my question. Should they be on everything or just certain things and does it help with SEO or just accessibility? Well, no, you don’t have to put them on everything for sure, right?

Like, for example, a button that has good descriptive text of like what that button is about to do. Well, that clearly doesn’t need an ARIA label because assistive technology will just read the text on the button and the user will know exactly what needs to happen. If you have an icon that has no text, now we need an ARIA label because we’ve got to describe what that thing is about to do for the user.

So I think people really need to, you know, there’s probably videos that are dedicated to ARIA labels and when you need them and when you don’t need them. But there’s just documentation that you can, anybody can go and read the documentation. And I know that’s not a good answer, like it’s because it’s not fun.

Nobody enjoys that. But, you know, there is a degree of like actual studying that has to take place in any industry where you’re trying to be a professional. You know, it’s like, at some point, there’s gonna be a textbook, and you have to open the textbook and read what the textbook says.

I know we try to avoid that at all costs sometimes, but that’s just kind of the best. It’s better than getting secondhand advice and you can go right to the documentation and read it. I don’t know, it’s not a great answer, but it’s probably the best answer.

Because there’s a lot of like if then that situations with accessibility Yes, you never vignette to whites unless you want to look like a 1910 photo 100% 100% 101 do’s and don’ts of web development. Yes. Yeah, I think it would be super helpful.

So I it’s on my list Okay, let’s see here. Logo section alpha, what is the current suggested method to make the logos clickable? Use the hover and transition options in Brics or write custom CSS.

Logo section alpha, logo section alpha. All right, let’s go. My screen sharing, okay.

Let’s take a look. I don’t even know what these frames look like off the top of my head. 3

1:06:08 Logo section alpha. Make the logos clickable.

1 1:06:13 So the approach that I would take, it’s kind of hard to do this with logo.

First of all, where is it taking the user? 3 1:06:22

Would be my first question. Do you have a page, are you taking them to the users, 1

1:06:25 that brand’s website? Or do you have like a page on your own site for whatever that brand is for?

Whatever you’re, like the first question is like, what are you displaying the logos for? Is it social proof? Are these tools you use?

Are there, like, there’s probably different contexts that could be. I think my go-to would be, there’s already a logo wrapper, if you notice, right? But unfortunately in Bricks, like, that’s the LI.

So we can’t actually use that. So now, let me switch mics. I got to get that other microphone out of my face when I, when I actually do stuff on the computer.

3 1:07:10 Okay.

1 1:07:10 So I would say you wrap this in a block, which, yeah, that’s, that’s okay to be a block, most

3 1:07:19 likely.

1 1:07:19 I’d have to check if that’s a grid.

It’s probably a grid. 8 1:07:22

I don’t know. 1 1:07:22

Let’s see. CSS. Where is it?

Layout, auto. Now it’s flex. Okay.

It should, it should still be fine so in the logo area you would put text right and then you would say like visit let’s say you were linking this logo so let’s say it was a Google logo right visit visit google. com or visit Google something like that and let’s actually make that text say that. Visit Google.

And then you just say hidden accessible, right? And then you view this on the front end, and let’s go to the front end. It looks, and by the way, you need that, the reason I made that block is to make it a link.

This would be your link right here. Like this. 3

1:08:20 So we save. 1

1:08:21 Now that’s a clickable logo, right? And it still displays exactly the same as you had it before, but the difference is.

2 1:08:32 VoiceOver on Chrome, Blueprint, Google Chrome, Kevin, window, link, skip, link, visit Google, list seven items, you are VoiceOver off.

1 1:08:40 See how not only did it say visit Google, right?

Which you can’t even see here, you can’t even see that. Instead of just announcing, what it would do by default, if you had alt text on the image, is it would announce most likely the alt text on the image. But I put that hidden accessible text in there, so now it actually tells the user where they’re about to go.

Notice it also told them that they’re in a list of seven items. They know how many brands are going to be in this list that they are going to scroll through. So the fact that it’s a UL Li list structure is helping the user in that regard and then the fact that when they actually Choose one of the logos.

They’re being told exactly what it’s going to do when they when they click it So that’s probably the approach that I would take you could do the same thing Without wrapping let me go backwards But this is another aria label situation. We can just test it there we go I think I’m back to where we were okay so now you would still have to wrap it because yeah you would still have to wrap it and that would still become your link so we can go external URL here and then what we’d want to do is on the link itself, I believe we’re gonna come down here, attributes, add, ARIA label, visit Google, and then we’re gonna save, and we’re gonna go to the front end, and we’ll just test the two. 2

1:10:14 VoiceOver on Chrome, entering Blueprint web content. Link, visit Google, list seven items, VoiceOver off.

1 1:10:20 So you see we got the exact same outcome.

Two different methods got us to the exact same destination. Now people would say why one versus the other? I like ARIA label, I don’t like hidden text.

Well there’s gotchas, there’s always gotchas in this industry and that’s the unfortunate reality of the world that we live in. What was, oh the one I came across the other day, because I don’t want to forget it, I don’t want to forget it. I will forget it.

If I keep talking about this ARIA label situation, I’ll forget it. It was color contrast. Color contrast checkers.

So everybody uses color contrast checkers. Like we use all these color contrast checker tools. Then I came across this detailed article, detailed article, that went into like color theory and all this other stuff.

And it was basically making the point that like contrast checkers actually fail in many situations. They give you an inaccurate representation of what somebody can see or not see based on the contrast, and the value that they give you that suggests it’s a failing value is actually a passing value and vice versa. And so we can’t even rely on contrast checkers in all situations.

It’s like every corner of what we do has these various gotchas. For example, HSL is an amazing color system, but there’s detailed articles about how, well, humans don’t actually see in HSL and da, da, da, da, da, da, and there’s all these gotchas. There’s all these gotchas.

It’s like, but what’s the alternative? They’re like, well, there’s this new format coming in the future that’s going to solve all these problems. I’m like, but is it here yet?

They’re like, no, it’s not here yet, but it’s coming. And I’m like, well, okay, well, let me know when it’s here. And then we’ll have this discussion, right?

There’s so much shit that’s already here that I gotta know, like, let’s not cloud everything with what’s coming in the future until we arrive closer to that point. And then we can all talk about how HSL is not good anymore. But there’s people that literally wanted me to change automatic CSS away from HSL to this new thing.

And I went to canius. com and it’s like 9% support. And I’m like what?

What? Like, okay, when it gets closer, then we’ll talk about it. But 9% support, I can’t, we can’t do the change.

This conversation doesn’t matter right now. So anyway, here’s the gotcha with ARIA labels, right? You get into a situation where the website has to be translated.

All right now some assistive technologies have trouble translating the ARIA labels, whereas if it’s hidden accessibility text, it’s easily translatable. So there are little minute pros and cons still within a various thing. Where surface level you would say, we arrived at the same destination.

The assistive technology read it both ways. Okay, but then somebody’s got to be like, but, but the minute you translate that website, the ARIA label thing might be a problem. So it could be safest to go with hidden accessibility text.

See, there’s always a gotcha. There’s always a it seems there’s always a gotcha. And that’s what’s frustrating about working in in in our industry.

Not only are there so many gotchas, it’s very, very fast paced, things are moving at light speed at all times. Which is why this idea of like no code and business owners building their own websites and it’s just I told Mateo it’s like it’s not exactly brain surgery and we don’t actually have people’s you know life or death in our hands but imagine packaging up all that you have to know to be a brain surgeon and be like, well, we’re just shipping this to everybody. Everybody should be able to be a brain surgeon.

That’s kind of almost like what you’re doing. It’s a highly, highly technical field that people seem to think can just be dumbed down for the average Joe to be able to whip something up, still, at the end of the day, nobody’s going to come there. Anybody that does come there is probably not going to buy because the copy sucks, and on and on and on and on and on, and it’s not accessible, and they can’t check all these boxes because it’s too technical.

There’s too much stuff to know and do. And so they’re going to fail at the end of the day. That’s what they’re going to do.

They’re going to waste their time. They should hire an expert, just like you’re going to fail if Bev thinks she’s a fucking brain surgeon. Okay, you’re flatlining, my friend.

You’re going to flatline when Bev works on your brain. That’s just how it’s going to be. And so, yeah, kind of look at it in that light.

It’s too technical to try to hand over to average, and that’s the Wix lie. Wix lied, WordPress died. I talked about that in the very beginning, that’s going to be one of my next videos or articles.

That’s the Wix lie. The Wix lie is that anybody can build a website. And like I said, if it’s my mom and she’s like, we got to have a website for my bunko club.

And I’m like, mom, just make a Wix account and go have at it have at it but if my mom tells me that she’s about to invest a hundred thousand dollars of her life savings into a business that she really needs to make work get the fuck away from Wix okay we need to invest some of that money in somebody who knows how to market this business properly build a proper website for it with really good copy and really good branding and we need to give you the best chance at success because I don’t want to see you flush that money down the drain mom. So no mom, you’re not going to Wix to build your website. See if there’s actual stakes at play, then handing the keys over to somebody who doesn’t know what they’re doing is not a good solution.

That’s not a good plan. Never been a good plan, never will be a good plan. An expert needs to be involved in that situation so that you have the highest chance of success.

In a situation where we know the failure rate is very high, the failure rate of entrepreneurship is very high. And there are legitimately people investing life savings into businesses and then trying to do everything themselves and falling flat on their face. And that’s sad, that’s sad.

That is a real victim of the narrative that anybody can do it That is it though. There are real victims of that narrative every single day of our life What is the difference between custom development? For example react no JS custom coding etc.

Verse using WordPress. I’m not sure Other than the obvious differences. I’m not exactly sure what you’re asking.

Oh You mean like when somebody says I custom developed a website in The context of WordPress and page builders when someone says I custom developed a website What it typically means is they started with a blank slate like bricks when you when you load up bricks let me go to a Page right? Oh, here’s the home page. Let’s just let’s just do this one Something wrong with my mouse.

All right, let’s do that that and then this That’s our starting point right it’s not a I bought a theme on theme forest and I’m swapping content around It’s not even I built it this I Bought a design set Or I bought pre-designed layouts. That’s not even really like custom development custom development is we started with a white page. We wireframed something out for you.

Then we, then a UI designer came in and actually like made something that doesn’t already exist. Okay, they put their own talents into the design of the website. And then we built it from scratch.

We didn’t use a bunch of pre-made elements, right, like an element or we didn’t just drag a pricing table in and then change the colors and the content. That’s not custom. That’s not custom, right?

Custom is I literally used divs. I use sections and divs to build your website. That’s typically what people mean when they when they say like a custom website.

It’s not templated. It’s not a site that looks like everybody else’s site like because we used a template kind of situation. That’s the gist of it.

And there’s a lot of gray area in there, okay. You know, it’s not, don’t take that as black and white necessarily. There’s a lot of gray area in there.

Because somebody’s going to say, well, the minute, the minute you pull in a tabs component, it’s not a custom website anymore. I’m like, all right, all right, Bill, calm down. 3

1:19:15 All right, let’s see. 1

1:19:15 When using a logo slider, do you prefer the slider to match the width of the container or to span the entire width of the screen? It can work both ways.

3 1:19:23 It’s fine both ways.

I’ve seen both. 1 1:19:25

I think if it’s gonna, if it’s gonna span the width of the screen, I would almost be, it would be like, well, I mean, as long as it’s got the necessary padding and such. If it doesn’t have any padding on it, like inline padding, then I would expect it to be like a ticker almost that like goes, scrolls off the screen. There’s got to be a reason for it not having any padding.

But if it’s got padding, it can be full width, it can be content width, it can be stacked like in a little, you know, centered kind of layout. There’s a lot of ways to do it that are acceptable. Good podcast on WP product talk using the same pointers with my clients to use process videos.

Glad you liked it. Glad you liked it. How do you turn the accessibility voiceover on and off so quickly?

Yeah, there’s a keyboard shortcut command F5, command F5. How did you set up the two query loops for your tools page on giri. co?

I’m having trouble with the second loop displaying giri. co tools. This is a here we can just look at it.

So top level, the actual container, the content with container is the first loop and it is querying the tool categories. And this is why I say this is so important, so fundamentally important to have a functional query loop. People ask what’s the difference between oxygen and bricks?

Well a functional query loop is like one of the major differences. You can’t build this page with oxygen, but not easily anyway, not without custom code, because their query loop can’t do this. But I can query the terms.

See, you can query posts, I can query terms, I can query users. By the way, no less than half a dozen WordPress core developers told me that it’s not important to be able to query terms. But I have a page right here.

Not a fancy page by any means, it’s just a typical thing. I want to query items, but I want to categorize them in sections. Well, if I can’t query the actual terms, and then the items inside the term, I can’t do that.

They’re like, that’s not important. We only need to query posts. I was like, don’t you like users?

I was like, guys, let’s go to the base level of this for a second. WordPress is a blogging platform. That’s what it started as.

Do you find it odd that in 2023, decades after the start of WordPress, 2023, that a blogging platform can’t query the authors of the blog. You can query posts based on an author, but you can’t actually query the authors. You can’t make a grid of the authors of the blog in 2023 with the Gutenberg query loop.

That’s not possible. Doesn’t that bother anybody? Telling me that it’s not important to be able to query users?

What are we even talking about here? So you go into bricks and see bricks Is is a land where things make sense Which is why we like it. It makes sense that I should be able to query posts or terms or users Right or relationships as you see here So I just say hey I want to query terms and it’s like which which terms would you like to, or which taxonomy would you like to query from?

Look, I can query from any of these custom taxonomies, but I chose the tool categories. Okay, so that gets me analytics, business operations, design and dev, domains and hosting, email and marketing. And then inside of that, we have to open this up.

And then here’s a tool card right here, okay? And so this is also a loop we check the loop and it says what is the post type tools and then what is the query okay the tool category but not just don’t just query all of them get the id of my parents category that i’m in right now as a loop and only display those posts. This is light work in Brics.

This is light work, right? Work you can’t even do in Oxygen is light work in Brics. That’s a major difference.

Major, major, major difference. And I’ll tell you another thing. I can make, I can create both of those loops in the page building workflow without going to any other page or screen or magic area in BricsCAD.

Why? Because of the ingeniousness that any container can be a loop. Anything that’s a box can be a loop.

Okay? So that’s fantastic because you know what I did when I was testing out Elementor? Elementor makes you leave this page and go to a magic area and in the magic area is where you create your loop item.

It becomes like a separate template that lives elsewhere. And then once you’re done building it, which you can’t even see the data when you’re building it because it’s just a dummy template in a magic area that has no context for where it lives, then you have to bring it and actually put it into the workflow you were already working on. So you’re constantly bouncing back and forth between this magic loop area and the actual page that you’re building, absolute nightmare.

And you can’t query taxonomies or users or anything else, of course. So like, this is, you have to show people the night and day difference, right? They can’t just say, you can’t just hear that Bricks is way better.

You do have to show them. And so this is the examples of this, the real world examples that they just don’t know. They don’t, they don’t know.

They’ve never really used Bricks. They’re not like a power user they’re not they just don’t understand they just don’t know but they still want to have an opinion which that’s the frustrating part okay let’s see is the frames modal fade in out only client wants it to slide out instead I couldn’t find anything in the the docks I’m sure you can animate its entrance, it would just require you to have an animation running on it. But before I say for sure, I need to test that.

I’m not going to test it right now, but I will test that. Put that question in the community, Justin. Make a thread and tag me in it and that way I won’t forget.

Okay, let’s see. Some good comments here. Good comments.

Good comments. In header Bravo frame, can you show how to make the main menu sticky on scroll but the top menu the phone number and address not sticky? Yes, but let me come back to that.

Because there’s the thing is the bricks, like we can do it with custom CSS. The question is like, do you want me to use the bricks interface? Or do you want me to write the CSS to do it?

A lot of people want to use the bricks interface. a bunch of problems with the Bricks interface doing this. And I actually don’t even know if the double, because there’s like a small header above that one, and then there’s the main part of the header.

I don’t even know if you can do it with the Bricks interface. That’s another one, make a thread on that and tag me. That way I can actually, I’ll loom my example to you of probably what would need to happen but I think that’s it’s one we can probably get bogged down on in this if it doesn’t if I go to my first theory and it doesn’t work out we’re gonna get bogged down on it and it’s we’re not gonna get into any other questions can you talk about headless WordPress people keep promoting it as something superior I heard Matt talking about it actually and his kind of thing was like, there’s a select, like a small percentage of cases where it makes sense, but most of the time, you probably shouldn’t go that route.

I think that was, I don’t want to misquote him, but if I remember correctly, I think that’s what he said. And that would be my general consensus as well. What’s the point of terms if not to be queried?

Because they serve a purpose of like you’re categorizing posts, because what most people want to do is they want to query posts of a term. So, which is that’s any, almost any query loop in WordPress can do that, right? Where you’re like, I want to query posts in a grid, but I only want to show posts that are in this category.

That’s like a very standard day one ask. And most query loops can do that. What most query loops can’t do, which is odd, I agree, it’s odd, can’t query the actual categories.

Which the first time I ran into this problem, so you would think that they would agree because there’s a massive, massive part of the WordPress ecosystem dedicated to e-commerce. And guess what you need to do on almost every e-commerce site? You need to query the categories that your products are in so that you can have cards for every category that someone can click on and say, I want to browse that category.

Well guess what? Some of the people on the Gutenberg core team that I talked to seem to think that that’s not important. But I legitimately think they’re just not open to like any criticism.

The thing I hear most often is literally, look at all these people working for free, you shouldn’t be critical of them in any form or fashion, they’re breaking their backs over here working for free, if you think something doesn’t work well, come break your back for free. That’s basically like, why? We don’t, quit with the sob story, okay?

Just tell, just, can’t you agree that like, yeah, we should be able to, the easiest response would be like, you’re right, we should be able to query terms. We should put that on the roadmap. Don’t give me the sob stories and the excuses and all that, just agree that it’s important.

Because it is. That’s not hard. It doesn’t mean you did anything wrong just like we got to get this thing to where it needs to go and we’re not gonna get there with sob stories about how people work for free on WordPress court like I don’t understand it I don’t understand it all right I can’t find the WP product talk episode please help it should be there it’s probably if you’re on there it was a live stream so the unfortunate part of live streams on YouTube is that they’re kept away in a secret live stream tab So they’re not in the main feed.

So what you’re probably gonna want to do is click on live streams and then look for it in there Do you recommend oxygen for a beginner web designer? No, I Recommend bricks for a beginner web designer, but what I tell beginners is is. Bricks is only the platform you should choose if you’re legitimately interested in learning web design.

If you’re not interested in learning web design, like if you’re interested in and I would say like what is your ultimate goal? If your ultimate goal is to build websites for money, build websites for other people, build websites for purposes that matter, bricks and learn, okay? If your goal is no, I need, like, I’m my mom and I need a bunco website by Sunday, go to Wix.

Go to Wix. That’s the platform you go to when the stakes aren’t high and you need it to be as quick and easy as possible. You go to Wix, you pick a template, and you customize the template, and you hit publish, and you move on with your life.

And you never think about web design another day in your life. But if you want to think about web design a lot because you want to do it for other people and you want to maybe build a business out of it and you want to do quality work, then yes, pick a good tool, pick a quality tool, and then learn, and then learn. And I would tell you the same thing in every other industry.

And it’s akin to like, going back to the martial arts example, it’s a very popular trend. This is what WordPress is trying to do. I think this is actually, I just thought of this, I think it’s actually a very good analogy.

WordPress is a can, what they’re doing, their vision of democratizing WordPress and for everyone, what they’re basically doing is they’re holding Sunday free self-defense classes to women. Women’s self-defense classes. That’s actually a very popular thing in the martial arts world is free women’s self-defense classes.

It’s like, hey, do you want to come, by the way, everybody, well, first of all, nobody should go to those. But if that was actually a concept that worked, everybody should go to them. There’s plenty of men that can’t defend themselves either, by the way, but they have this concept of women’s self-defense classes.

But the idea is that you can go on a random Sunday to an hour-long seminar, or even if it’s two hours, even, fuck, it could be a hundred hours, okay? The point is, it doesn’t work. It doesn’t do anything for you or for anybody that goes there.

It’s nothing. You might as well have just read a book, okay? 7

1:33:32 Like, a novel. 1

1:33:33 I’m not even talking about a self-defense book, just a novel. Just anything.

Just entertain yourself for an hour, because it’s going to do absolutely nothing for you. The idea that you can go to a one hour seminar and that’s gonna improve your chances of defending yourself against a bigger, stronger attacker who wants to do you harm, is the biggest fucking fallacy on the face of the earth. We just know that this is not the case.

And so, but it hasn’t stopped the epidemic of women’s self-defense seminars. There’s still an epidemic. It’s like, I don’t know why we can’t acknowledge that this just does not work.

Unless the goal is to, like, if you told me, Kevin, here’s the goal. We want them to gain a little confidence enough to be like, oh, I actually like, first of all, enjoy this kind of training. I enjoy the confidence that I feel like I’m getting.

And so they’re going to become part of a larger process of actually learning to defend themselves. Because what real self-defense actually requires is hundreds, probably thousands, thousands, it requires thousands of hours actually sparring with other human beings that are trying to beat you. That’s what it actually requires.

The idea of going to a Sunday seminar is absolutely laughable. And but that’s and so I look at democratizing publishing of like, anybody can build a website for their business and be successful. I laugh at that the same way I laugh at a Sunday self defense seminar.

Like it’s just this is what? That’s a nice fairy tale. That’s, that’s, I mean, it’s a good bedtime story.

But beyond that, that has no value as a vision. So yeah, that’s my new analogy. I have two clients who were in headless who want to go back to normal sites now because they can’t edit anything.

I think it’s just a thing that was used to upsell clients. Yeah, that’s what custom blocks are going to do. I mean, the answer being custom blocks, the minute that developer leaves and somebody wants to do something themselves, that you haven’t democratized anything.

Now it’s even harder. The chances that they could open bricks and actually do something are way higher than opening fucking react. Like staring at react code, trying to figure out what they want to do.

Yeah, it’s just not a, none of these arguments make any sense that I’m hearing. And that’s really the most frustrating part. It’s like, dude, if you hit me with a sensical argument that I’m like man that makes a lot of sense.

That’s one thing but don’t hit me with the Sunday self-defense seminar argument. Like no Kevin all they got to do all they got to do look they’re gonna go to the seminar and then they’re gonna be able to defend themselves and that’s our vision and it’s like okay that that’s a terrible vision. I can do user registration using gravity forms but I’m not sure if I should use Gravity Forms or should use some member plug-in.

What advantages disadvantages using Gravity versus a plug-in? I haven’t used Gravity Forms in like years. I would immediately just tell you like WS Form.

WS Form is the answer for everything related to forms. I just I’ve tested Gravity, I’ve tested all these form systems against each other, I’ve used them on real projects before, I used to use Gravity Forms years and years and years ago. So I can’t, obviously can’t speak to its current state of things.

But what I do know is that WSForm, user login and registration, click, click, publish, done. Don’t even have to think about it. It’s a template in WSForm.

Like, and if you wanna build on it in any way you want, you can absolutely do that. You can sync, I’ve done this, you can sync the form data with the user dashboard in WP Admin. You can add custom fields to the user dashboard, sync them with WSForm.

They can update those custom fields from a front-end form. And it’s not even that you can do it. It’s not hard.

Like that’s light work in WS form, because it does the mapping for you, it will identify the user profile and bring in the custom fields automatically. And then it’ll map the logic back and forth. It’ll it’ll set up everything for you like it’s kind of Yeah, if I remember correctly, when I did it felt like pretty, pretty light work.

Whereas like another form system may be able to do it, but it’s super convoluted. And you got to do this and that and it’s manual and it’s hard to keep up with and WS forms like click click click click click click publish Done move on Uh, so it’s it’s not just the ws form can do these things. It’s how easy and fast it can do them Hey kevin and all hello riyaz welcome

3 1:38:17 How are you handling video hosting on site?

1 1:38:21 One of my clients wants to have a how-to video series for his B2B and he doesn’t want to use YouTube.

Any suggestions? He would not put videos on your main server. Go Vimeo, go, because you can lock down Vimeo.

You can go private with it. Go, there’s a number of video hosting platforms. 100% you want to go with a video hosting platform and you want to embed those hosted videos on the site All right jumping off to a conference call thanks for coming Rob appreciate it.

All right last call for questions. I Want to make sure I didn’t miss any I’m gonna scroll up here. This is the last call we’re gonna hop off And then I probably will not be doing one next week.

Obviously, it’s very close to to Christmas we’ll do one the week after that. I think I got all these I don’t think I missed anybody. I’ve been yet ever see people in June.

I think I got them all. Is it possible to create an advanced search bar that has Ajax using Bricks only without a plugin? I’ve never tried to do it.

I’ll just be honest with you, I’ve always used WP Grid Builder. They have a search facet that uses Ajax and it’s phenomenal. And so once I find a solution for something and it’s already part of my existing stack for other reasons, it’s like, let me just rock that.

I’ve used that WP Grid Builder search facet a lot of places. But I will tell you that the like automatic CSS docs, this is native bricks. This search box right here is native bricks.

And then I just like highly customized this results situation. results Situation I made it almost look like it’s a drop-down of the search box And then I showed which category these items are from or like it’s not a category It’s a type like a doc verse an article verse a video verse or whatever And I I feel like that turned out pretty well I was able to do that with with the native search but it’s tied into search WP on the back end for helping with accuracy in the searches and things like that. All right final questions here we go.

Taliesin Ireland said I have a question two seconds let me type it out. You said you won’t use local WP in the future and you’re thinking of going with insta WP why don’t you go with a WordPress multi-site environment? Oh, I do not like WordPress multi-site I am NOT a fan of multi-site.

I Use multi-site as a last last last final couldn’t figure out any other solution resort to stuff I avoid multi-site at all costs How do you politely say no to clients who just a little bit and a little bit as you progress, who just a little bit and a little bit as you progress through the project. How do you, oh he rewrote it down here. Who just, oh they want a little more scope.

It’s scope creep is what you’re asking about, scope creep right. They want a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more. So 100% great question, popular question, it’s already answered in the inner circle, there’s a video on it, but the number one thing you need to do is implement an official change order document.

So I think I even gave a template for a change order document in the inner circle. So basically they have this request, right? And so you pull up your change order document, you say, hey, no problem whatsoever.

You pull up it, because what most people do, let’s just go over the problem. Most people do is go, oh yeah, we can do that. And then in the back of their mind, they’re crying and they’re sweating.

And it’s like, God, all my ROI, all my profits going in the tank. Because they don’t know how to say no. They’re just, they’re like, they want to appease the client.

They’re like, ah, okay, all right, I’ll do it. You don’t have to do that anymore. You don’t have to do that anymore.

You say, oh, absolutely, man, that’d be a fantastic thing to add to the site let me whip up a change order I’ll send it over to you and then you can approve it and we’ll get that done and so you go into your change order and then you put the task how long it’s gonna take how it’s gonna affect the timeline and the price that it’s gonna add to the total and then you send that off for e-signature and it arrives in their inbox and you know what happens they go all right let’s make sure this thing is really important and a lot of times if it is really important, guess what? You get to build it and they pay extra for you to build it. Fantastic.

Everybody’s happy. But a lot of times they go, you know what? We thought about it and we can hold off on that.

And you go, cool. All right. I’m good with that too.

The change order is the, you don’t even have to say no. They’ll say yes or no. And if they say yes, it costs them more money and if they say no everybody’s happy so yeah it’s that is exactly what you need to implement is the change order.

See I like those kinds of questions where it’s like that’s actually a common problem in the work that we do and there is a like just a very clean solution that’s now gonna help a ton of people it’s gonna solve a big problem for a ton of people. Okay could you please just do one more Animista animation effect? What do you want me to do, Donzie?

We didn’t even, we didn’t do one today. Let’s see, recommendation for image types through our website, SVG, WebP, when and where? That’s really good.

Logos, always SVG. Like branding, stuff like that. Anything that’s a scalable vector graphic, like don’t convert it to a raster image, don’t convert it to PNG, JPEG, and then use it in that form or fashion, use it as an SVG.

If it has to, if it does not require transparency, I would say JPEG all day or WebP. In some cases, WebPs are bigger than JPEG, like you kind of need to take a look at that. And then I have to check browser support for WebP lately.

I know that it’s always been the case where basically you have to check browser support, serve the WebP if WebP is supported, and serve JPEG if it’s not. If it’s an image that requires transparency, WebP all day long. WebP transparency is almost always more performant than PNGs from what I’ve seen.

So that’s kind of the general rule. Hopefully that helps. And there are some new image formats on the horizon that could obviously change this answer in the future.

So we want to we want to be paying attention to those. With gravity registration you can make extra fields and you’re not tied to what the member plugin has. And like Kevin said, you can map your fields to user records on WP.

Yeah, so yeah, I would be surprised if Gravity didn’t let you do that. It really comes down to a question of how easy is it to do? And I just, I haven’t found an easier workflow than WSForm.

6 1:45:57 You told us we will get a Christmas present

1 1:45:59 you’re working on for us, if I remember correctly.

Was it meant to be something with WSForms? Yes, I’ve got to clean up a few final things with that. And it’s going to be like an alpha version.

And then I want to get people’s feedback on it. And we’ll iterate on that. Of course, you’ll be able to iterate it on yourself if you want to, I kind of want people to take it and make it theirs.

And I’m just going to give them a starting point for it and the idea and the concept, which I actually got from one of my mastermind members who’s successfully implemented this. But I was going to, it is a lot of infrastructure and kind of like sorting a lot of stuff out. And I was going to do that early work for everybody and then just kind of hand it to you and be like, here’s the starting point, make it yours.

That’s kind of the situation. But it’s a it’s a thing that will, again, dramatically improve agency workflow in one specific way and can impress clients. I think a lot of clients will be impressed by it and it’ll get you to close more deals, which I think is always a good thing, right?

So there’s a little bit more teaser on it. But yeah, I’ll package that up. It’s probably going to come right after Christmas, but I don’t want to give it on Christmas Day because I don’t want to ruin people’s Christmas.

I know a lot of you. A lot of you will be like, sorry kids, and then you’ll be at the fucking computer playing with the thing that I just gave you, right? I don’t want that to happen.

So I’m probably gonna give it to you like a little bit after Christmas, when you’re getting back into like a work mode. So then you can think about implementing this for 2024 and it doesn’t actually interfere with your holidays. 4

1:47:34 Okay, let’s go down. Jamie Paul and Emron seem to have teamed up against you by promoting Core Framework.

1 1:47:42 I don’t know.

I don’t read into stuff too much, nor do I care all that much. It is what it is. We’re going to do what we’re doing and we’re, you know, the philosophy I’ve followed is like you create a product that’s, just create a product that’s so good people can’t ignore you.

And that’s the end of the story. And so that’s our mission. That’s what we’re doing.

I mean 3. 0, when 3. 0 comes out, nobody will be able to ignore, like you can’t pretend that this thing is not number one.

You know, we already did that with the first version, because nobody had a UI dashboard when we released the first version, you couldn’t deny that that was the best experience because there nobody else was doing it. And it made things so easy. And now when 3.

0 comes out, it’s just once again, because it’s everybody plays catch up, everybody plays it. Oh God, they did that. Now we got to catch up.

And that’s why I’ve always said is like, I’m not I’m not ever gonna be the one playing catch-up. Everybody else is gonna play catch-up. I’m already on the next thing.

And so, you can play catch-up your entire life if you want to, but I think people realize, the value is in the actual innovator. It’s like Quikly, right? Quikly came out, they were the first ones to be like, no, we’re gonna innovate the component thing.

And now, you’re gonna see a bunch of other people playing catch-up. I don’t ever wanna catch myself playing catch-up like I want to be the person that’s doing the next thing that everybody’s gonna be Catching up to because that’s that’s what actually moves us all along. That’s what page builders did to WordPress People were like no, let’s build custom themes and then somebody was like nah dog Let’s build a page builder and then that was that changed the game that and created an entire Ecosystem and actually did make WordPress available to a lot more people.

We need innovation. Innovation is like, that’s everything. Everything in business is innovation.

So there are brands that are like perpetually playing catch up. They never have innovated anything, it’s just catching up. That’s all, they’re professional catcher-uppers.

And then there’s the brands that actually innovate. We want to be the brand that actually innovates. 4

1:50:02 Let’s see, see, see, see, see, okay. 1

1:50:05 I really get where you’re coming from with your web content. It all makes sense and super easy to digest.

Thanks for making things so clear. I’m just doing my best, I’m just doing my best. Clients should own their own domain, right.

Have my first client buy their domain on SiteGround 3 1:50:18

which is also where I host 1 1:50:19

and they don’t allow different users for hosting. Yeah, 100%, 100%, yeah. And tell clients that right off the bat, because I’ve had clients ask me, they’ll be like, I need you to purchase XYZ domain for us, and I’m like, nope, no.

I was like, no, you need to own your assets. You need to own your assets. And when you tell them that, they’re like, damn, this person does have my best interest, you know, at heart.

So you gain trust that way, but it is just the ultimate, like, you’re telling them the truth. That’s the truth. They should own their domain.

They should own their assets. 3 1:50:57

Have you tried any caching plugin? Any suggestions? Yes.

4 1:51:00 I do a lot of server caching.

1 1:51:02 I use CloudFlare, and then I use PerfMatters.

That’s kind of the stack. And really, when I do the CloudFlare thing, I don’t even do server cache. I just I set up the Cloudflare.

I can show the setup for that. It’s a what do they call it? They call it they have some stupid stupid fancy name for it.

I’ll go I’ll go look at it right here. Or maybe my internet doesn’t want to work. Okay, let’s go to settings.

Let’s go to Cloudflare. APO. I think that’s what it is, right?

APO. Cloudflare APO. All these damn acronyms, dude.

There’s just acronyms everywhere. Yeah. Automatic Platform Optimization.

So, you’ve got to pay for this a little bit extra, but it’s been very good in my experience. And then Perfmatters obviously is before that. So you go Perfmatters is step one, Cloudflare, APL on top of that.

All right, let’s see here. Wait, some people stopped working over the holidays. 5

1:52:14 Let’s see. 3

1:52:15 Fast press. 1

1:52:16 Do you use a security plugin or anything else in that realm? Kelsey says, love me some APO.

We do, there’s a bunch of security configuration inside of GridPane. We do some other stuff on the website. I’ve always been wary of like, I’m not a security expert.

And I’m all I’ve also so because I’m not a security expert, I’ve also kind of just felt like I don’t know that I want to just tell everybody exactly what I do because then doesn’t that doesn’t that kind of doesn’t that got to open some doors I don’t know like make it easy on people who do want to do bad things I don’t know so I know I know I’ve been I’ve been talking a lot with Calvin from grid pain he’s like I think they’re resident security expert and I’ve been talking about having Calvin come on, probably into the inner circle more than anything, and do a security series. I also, there is another user in the inner circle who’s really, really, really good at this stuff. And I’ve been talking with him a little bit back and forth.

I’m not gonna reveal any names or anything like that, but I’ve been talking with him back and forth. And he may be doing a series on security inside the inner circle. I know it’s a popular topic, it’s an important topic.

I’m leaning towards, you know, if there’s an expert in the inner circle, obviously I want to make them preferred, right? They’re already in the community, they’re a part of the community, they’re dedicated to the community. So, I’m basically, both people have started to give me content and, you know, I’ve got to look at it and kind of make a decision at some point I’m leaning towards our inner circle member and I think that would be very good stuff to cover and then then you’ll get your answers So I guess that’s the best I can do for right now Who do you recommend for hosting?

I use GridPane. I use. .

. So in GridPane, you can choose where you want to get your servers from. There’s a few different options for you.

But GridPane kind of manages everything and then I’m on Vultr or Volter or however you want to pronounce that word. All right, we did a last call for questions and we got quite a few. Could I do a detailed post on Lotties and optimizing them within Inner Circle?

Yeah, I mean, you’re always up for, there’s a whole section in the Inner Circle. Let me see if I can remember what we called it. I think it’s tips and insights.

There’s a whole, yeah, it says, we’re all in a space for asking questions and stimulating discussion. This space for members who want to provide value by directly sharing their expertise, tips and insights. So just go into tips and insights, and you can literally, I mean, you could write paragraphs and paragraphs and post videos, and you can literally provide whatever value you want to provide here.

Whole section dedicated to that. Alright looks like that’s the last question I don’t even know what time, yeah we’re about out of time anyway we’re at the two hour mark. Alright have a happy, have a Merry Christmas, have a Happy New Year.

I know I’ll see you before the New Year, I will see you again. I will be in the inner circle except for like, you know, Christmas Day and right around there. I just won’t be holding a WDD live next week.

We’ll start again the week after that. 2024 is going to be banging. So I am just super excited for what we’ve got in store for 2024.

I am doing, oh, very, very important, very, very important. If you are in the inner circle, if you are in the inner circle, before we get out of here, events, monthly office hours, tomorrow, tomorrow’s Thursday, right? Yes, tomorrow at noon Eastern, we are doing an office hours, end of year business Q and A.

There’s a lot of end of year business stuff that people should be thinking about and focusing on. So closing out 2023, heading into 2024, if you’re a freelancer, if you’re an agency owner, I would highly recommend you come to this office hours end of year business Q&A It’s gonna be fantastic for you. So that’s it.

That’s my that’s my final announcement for today. Love you guys. Thanks for your support Thanks for watching.

Thanks for being here. Thanks for your comments your likes Thanks for watching. Thanks for being here.

Thanks for your comments your likes Everything. I’ll see you very soon. Peace