WDD LIVE 067: Cwicly Isn’t “Back” + My Google Divorce + Open Q&A

What’s up, my friends?

Welcome back.

It is Tuesday at 11 a.m.

Time for another WDD Live.

I’m going to go ahead and before the stream starts here, let’s go ahead and close that tab so we don’t get any duplicate audio.

And I need to find my chat window.

I also need, oh, look at this.

We have a thumbs down already.

There’s a thumbs down waiting for us on the stream.

That’s fantastic.

That’s fantastic.

So haters in the house, which is always great.

Let me find my window for chat.

Where is, here we go.

Comments and reactions.

Bring them up.

Bring them up.

Rob Cooper in the house.

Dominic is here.

Donatus, Dehunzi.

Toby is here.

OGC Digital, Patricia, Peter Heck, Stephen.

Fantastic.

Ross, Grant.

Throw some likes up on the stream.

As we get going here today, let’s talk about the agenda we are going to talk about quickly.

We are going to talk about my divorce from Google.

And then we will do open Q&A where you get to ask anything.

It can be on business.

It can be on marketing, dev, frames, ACSS, SEO.

Any topic you guys want to talk about, you can bring up.

Questions can be asked at any time, but they do need to be asked with the hashtag Q or hashtag question so that I can actually find them.

If you don’t use the hashtag, I will not find your question and thus will not answer it.

So make sure you use the hashtag to get those in.

Jamie Lee Ross in the house.

David McCann is here.

Happy Tuesday, says David McCann.

Good to see you.

Daniel’s here.

Derek Short.

What about the haters?

We are now at two thumbs down.

Let’s keep the trend going.

Come on, haters.

Give me the engagement.

I love it.

I love it.

Thank you.

Thank you for your support.

Let me say this.

I’ve been traveling, as you probably saw last week on the stream down in Florida.

And I was driving back all day yesterday, so I was a little bit out of it.

I watched the Quickly live stream from my car.

But yeah, it just so happens that happened yesterday, and we just got to get on and talk about it today.

So it’s going to be a little bit off the cuff, but I did put a couple thoughts together on it.

And then I do want to talk about the divorce from Google.

I think that’s a very important thing.

I think there’s been a lot of people maybe thinking about considering a divorce from Google.

I’ll talk about why and how that’s all worked out and what the alternatives are and things like that.

But mainly, if you’ve been considering it, but you haven’t taken the leap yet, this might be the thing that gives you the courage and confidence to take that step.

And I think the more of us that do that, the better off we’re all going to be.

Loic says, hi.

Derek Short says, Kevin has a new hat.

Now, I’ve been wearing this for a few weeks now, at least.

It’s relatively new.

It’s relatively new, but it’s not the first time.

It’s not the first time.

Someone really doesn’t like the idea of an open Q&A.

Yeah, I don’t know why they hate, but they do.

There’s no shortage.

There’s never a shortage, which is going to tie in a little bit to the Quickly discussion.

Okay, numbers are looking good.

Let’s go ahead and get right into it.

So I already told you about the agenda.

Let’s hop right into discussion of Quickly.

Let me give you a little background.

There are probably people new here who have no idea.

What we’re even talking about.

And if we just dive right in and they don’t have any context or background, they’re not going to be at all interested in this discussion.

So I’m just going to quickly try to recap.

Quickly is a page builder for WordPress.

And it’s a visual page builder, much like an Oxygen or a Bricks, except for the fact…

Oh, there we go.

There’s a third thumbs down.

Fantastic.

You guys are on a roll.

Except for the fact that it lives inside of WordPress’s block editor, which does make it fairly unique.

It also happens to have many, many, many advanced features.

So it’s not one of these builders that appeals to ultra beginners, that tries to dumb everything down.

In fact, I would say that it’s probably a lot more advanced even than really than anything else that’s available.

So if you put everything together…

Now, that’s not to say that the user experience is number one or the UI is number one or anything like that.

Certainly, it’s not in those cases.

But as far as the advanced features go, there probably isn’t a builder that rivals it.

So with that said, out of nowhere, an announcement came that they were ending development of Quickly.

Now, as far as market size goes, being the most advanced builder, that can’t be the only thing going for you.

That can’t be the only thing going for you.

So it’s not like it was dominating the market or anything like that.

Certainly, it wasn’t…

We’re not talking about like an Elementor closing up shop or a Divi closing up shop or even a Bricks closing up shop.

The market share that Quickly had achieved was very, very, very small.

We obviously don’t have the numbers, but there are public stats available.

And even if those public stats aren’t completely accurate, they are relative to other public stats that aren’t completely accurate.

And so just from a relative measurement standpoint, we can see that it just wasn’t…

The adoption really wasn’t all there.

Okay?

So do we know why it closed up shop?

No, that’s one of the problems.

Okay?

So out of nowhere, they said that they are going to end development of Quickly.

And essentially, they would continue providing some security updates and maybe bug fixes and things like this for, I don’t know, the period of one year.

I can’t remember all the specifics.

But that was the gist of it.

Right?

But that there would be really no new ongoing development of Quickly, which hung a lot of people out to dry.

If you had been developing sites on Quickly for yourself, you’re now in a situation where, hey, I mean, we’re facing the end of this builder.

I should probably rebuild my sites.

If you built for clients, you’re now in a situation where you have to explain to the client.

I did a whole live stream on this.

In fact, I offered vouchers to my community for what they paid for Quickly because of my role in promoting Quickly as, hey, if you want a builder that lives inside the block editor, that’s probably the one you should use.

And I ended up feeling bad about those recommendations because they did, people took those recommendations and they bought Quickly and then quickly pulled the rug out from under them.

And is that my fault?

No, not directly.

It’s not my fault.

But still, as just a good faith thing, I said, hey, I’m going to give you a voucher for whatever you paid for Quickly.

You can use that on automatic CSS frames, whatever.

Okay.

So I explained in that same live stream, though, that it’s not a small thing to go to a client and say, that builder I sold you on or that builder I used for your project is no longer here.

It’s going to, we need to rebuild your site.

And I mentioned that people should rebuild those sites.

You can’t ask your client to, they didn’t, you chose the tool, right?

You can’t ask your client or expect your client to pay you to rebuild those sites.

So that puts you, your client and you, but mainly you, if you’re going to do the right thing and rebuild it for them in a very, very, very serious and bad position.

And I don’t know to what scale, again, people were using Quickly, but if your agency was all Quickly and you had a lot of different clients, that’s, that’s, I mean, that is a real, real, real problem.

Okay.

This is not something we can look past.

You can’t just look past doing that to people, which, which brings us to part of our discussion today.

But that is the background of what is Quickly and what happened.

Now, what was the explanation for why they pulled the rug out from under people?

What was the official explanation?

Was it a good explanation?

It was a vague explanation.

So the main thing that they said was that they were receiving tons of criticism and they made it sound like this criticism was over the top.

They made it sound like this criticism really bled into the area of personal attacks to some, to some degree, some, to some degree that warranted.

People on the team quitting or them being completely dejected and not being able to continue on with this project.

The attacks that they’re under are just so awful, just so awful that they’ve got to close up shop.

They have to pull the rug out from under everybody and close up shop.

So this is how awful these attacks are.

Do we get an example of one of these attacks?

Do we get any details beyond that whatsoever?

No, none.

Zero details.

Okay.

So then, and that’s actually a big problem.

It’s a big problem for a few people.

Okay.

Me being one of them.

Because I was openly critical of quickly at various points.

When I first used it, I was very critical of the UX and the UI.

I was critical of their Tailwind implementation.

I even got on a live stream with Lewis and had a conversation on that live stream to lay out why I thought Tailwind was not a great idea in a page builder.

And Lewis was visibly agitated.

Many people have said and have confirmed on that live stream.

To me, it was just an exchange of ideas.

No doubt, they put a tremendous amount of work into it.

So if somebody is challenging that notion that it’s a good idea, obviously, you might feel defensive or whatever.

But that’s natural, I think.

That’s natural.

Okay.

Anybody can go watch that live stream and come up with your own conclusion based on that live stream.

Okay.

I actually would probably recommend you do that if you’re at all interested in this topic.

But as far as personal attacks, never, never.

Okay.

Never did I personally attack Lewis.

And again, we’ve looked.

People have said, where are these personal attacks?

Show it.

Where is an example of one?

Now that we find things from like W.P.

Johnny, who was critical of quickly at one time, wrote an article about his criticisms of quickly.

But if you’re building a tool, you’re going to get professional criticism.

I get professional criticism every day of my life.

Not just professional criticism.

I get personal.

I get the legit personal attacks.

I get personal attacks on my safety and my well-being.

The internet is a crazy place.

The internet, there are insane people in the world.

Okay.

Mental illness is a real thing.

And people will absolutely come after you for various reasons.

And so that’s not – if that was happening, what I would say is, I mean, welcome to the internet.

I think it’s happening to all of us.

I don’t know.

And then, of course, if you are someone like me who will get on live streams and just say what they think and get on Twitter and just say what they think, you become a much bigger target for those kinds of people.

Okay?

So this isn’t a situation where it’s like, oh, my God, woe is me.

Like, oh, I got a personal attack.

I got to shut everything down.

I have to abandon my entire customer base because some crazy person overseas or wherever they happen to be is yapping in my inbox.

Okay?

So that starts to bring us in.

So one of my main points, one of my main points here is we need to know the details of these criticisms or attacks or whatever they were.

We need an example because we need to know is he talking about somebody – like if you’re getting death threats and personal threats of harm or your family members are – because keep in mind quickly is his team, I think a lot of them are his family.

Okay?

So if they’re getting attacks like personal attacks that are borderline like threatening safety or anything like that, that’s understandable.

But, of course, I think those should be shown.

Right?

Show those.

And be like, guys, look – I mean, what is this?

What is this?

Help me find these people.

Like whatever.

Like let’s figure out who this is because this is not okay.

I could understand that.

I could understand that.

But this vagueness, this vague tubing, I call it.

And this live stream, if you watch the live stream, the quickly’s back live stream yesterday, it was like the definition of vague tubing.

And this announcement that they originally put out was so tremendously vague.

And when it’s vague like that, people start looking around.

Where are the criticisms?

Where were the attacks?

Show me some examples.

And then they come up with, well, Kevin said this.

And WP Johnny said this.

And this guy said this.

And maybe they’re at fault.

Maybe they shouldn’t be critical.

Maybe they should have been nicer.

Maybe they should have considered people’s feelings worse.

On and on and on.

So I start getting flack.

I’m catching strays because people are speculating over like, well, maybe it was what Kevin said.

Maybe it wasn’t.

But here’s the thing.

If it was what I said, we’ve got a bigger problem on our hands.

Because if you look at any of the criticisms that I’ve made, which are, again, professional criticisms, not personal attacks.

Professional criticism.

Differences of opinion.

Differences of preference.

If that is what caused them to pull the rug.

We have a serious situation on our hands.

Because that is a tremendous, a tremendous lack of business leadership.

That’s a tremendous abandoning of your audit.

You can’t take professional criticism.

That’s a serious, serious problem for this tool.

Okay?

And again, you might think, here Kevin is again, being so critical.

Let me reiterate.

Pulling the rug out from your customer base and leaving them, hanging them out to dry and their customers and putting them in an insanely difficult position, depending on the number of sites that they have on Quick, that is not something that you can just look past.

Okay?

So that deserves criticism.

Absolutely, that deserves criticism.

And then it speaks to the future of the tool.

And can the tool even be used?

So let me look at my notes over here.

Make sure we haven’t really missed anything up to this point.

Okay.

So what this speaks to is the tool is being led by an individual, Lewis.

Okay?

And what we need to know at this point is, is Lewis capable of leading the tool?

Because the tool is heavily dependent on its leader.

And especially when the leader is also the primary developer.

So when we’re talking about, can you trust the tool?

Is the tool stable?

Is the tool going to be here?

Yada, yada, yada.

Well, that, that reflects on like, first thing you have to ask is who’s leading the tool.

And as the person leading the tool is, is, are there leadership issues there?

So we already looked at one.

Like if you can’t take professional criticism, if that was the reason, that’s a, that’s, that would be a knock.

That’s a big red flag, right?

Uh, can’t really trust this tool because what that amounts to is Lewis essentially just took his ball and went home and just said, no, I don’t, I don’t like this.

I just don’t like this.

So I’m taking my ball and I’m going home and, and you guys are all, you’re all, you know, do it, do whatever you need to do, but it’s not my responsibility anymore.

I’m just going to do bug fixes and updates and I’m just going to chill.

Um, that’s not okay.

That’s not okay.

Uh, so that’s, that’s a huge red flag going forwards, right?

Um, the second thing is because he could do, he could do that again.

He could, you could just do that again.

Like, I don’t know, three months from now.

I, oh God, ah, something else happened.

I don’t, I don’t like what’s happening here.

So I’m just taking my ball and going home again.

Do you want to put yourself in that position again?

Do you want to put your clients in that position again?

My general position right now, and the reason this is titled quickly is not back.

It’s not back for the foreseeable future because nobody in their right mind can take that risk.

You just can’t, especially not knowing the details.

You can’t take that risk.

If you take that risk, that would amount to, in my opinion, professional negligence.

That if you take that risk on behalf of your clients, that is like some degree of professional negligence.

That you are just putting them right back in that situation.

And putting yourself right back in that situation.

It’s just not smart.

It’s just not smart.

So how can the tool be back if we can’t even use the tool in any professional sense?

Nobody in their right mind should be using the tool in any professional sense.

Now, if you want to, you know, if you want to just test it out, if you want to play around with it in some sort of like, you know, personal setting, whatever.

I mean, that’s, you do what you want to do.

But you can’t be putting your clients in that situation again for the foreseeable future.

That’s just not, that is a negligent action.

Okay.

Now, there’s a pivot.

He comes back.

So he disappears for a while.

And there’s even more like, you know, if we’re questioning the leadership, if we’re questioning decision making, there’s another series of events.

Like another series of messages that contradict themselves.

That are still unclear.

That are very vague.

That there’s just not what you would expect to see in terms of clear communication and clear expectations.

I mean, there are heavy quickly users that are DMing me all the time going, what?

What?

Like, make it make sense.

Make these messages make sense.

Make this situation make sense.

And I tell, I can’t make it make sense.

I just, I can’t make it make sense.

I’m processing every possible combination.

Why, why this?

Why that?

I can’t make it make sense.

That’s a big problem.

That’s a big problem.

Okay.

So I’m looking at the pivot now.

We have a, we have the live stream quickly’s back and it’s free now.

That’s a big pivot.

That’s a big pivot.

Not only is that a big pivot, it’s a pivot away from your paid customers.

You literally just took everybody’s money, all these LTDs, apps, sumo, all this, you got all their money.

And now you’re like, by the way, this tool everybody paid for is now free.

Okay.

That’s enough.

Isn’t that another knock?

That’s an, and that’s another head scratcher.

It’s another head scratcher.

And that’s another not okay.

In my, in my book, that’s another not okay.

And I don’t know what he’s going to do.

He’s going to make up for that somehow.

He’s got something to offer in the future.

He alludes to this, but I don’t really know what, I mean, because it’s more vagueness.

It’s just vague.

Like, well, we’ll have something for you.

What will you have?

When will you have it?

There’s talk of it being open source, but it can’t be open source.

Now.

It can only be open source at, at some undisclosed point in the future.

More vagueness, more just, you know, lofty ideas and promises.

Like, why can’t it be open source now?

Well, it’s not, it’s not the time now.

We got to, we’ll do that later.

When it’s the time.

Well, when it’s going to, when is it going to be the time?

What is the, what, what, and what does this pivot solve?

So you pivot to free.

I mean, you, you pulled the rug out from a paid product because you were getting criticism or attacks or whatever.

We don’t even know because we don’t have any details.

And now your grand plan is to come back with the tool being free.

And you’re going to, by the way, you’re going to implement in order to make the tool better for people, you’re going to implement some of the stuff that’s from the professional criticism, like changing the UI.

Okay.

Make it make sense.

I can’t make it make sense.

I’m just, I’m, I’m just reporting what’s happening.

I can’t make it make sense for you.

Okay.

Cause it doesn’t make sense to me, but I’m thinking from a business standpoint, a marketing standpoint of this standpoint of that’s what does the pivot solve?

But the main problem was you were getting criticism going free.

Doesn’t solve that problem.

The free customers are the worst customers to have.

Like if you, if you, if your customers were abusing you before, cool, just wait until it’s free.

Okay.

Like that’s the worst kind of customer to have.

Everybody in this industry should know that.

So what is that?

I just don’t understand what it we, you identify a, here’s the main problem.

Here’s our pivot.

Those two things aren’t going, they’re not that the puzzle pieces are not fitting together.

I don’t understand how the pivot solves the initial problem, which brings us right back to if the, whatever criticism and attacks weren’t stopping or they escalate, how is this going to ensure longevity to any degree?

Well, it’ll be open source in the future.

So if I ever take my ball and go home, somebody else can just pick it.

But when it’s not, you didn’t announce that it’s open source.

Now you just announced that people who previously paid for it are screwed and new people who come in, get it for free.

That’s the only announcement that’s been had.

And that there’s going to be some UI changes, which by the way is again, I’ll reiterate the adoption of criticism before like the criticism of like a lot of the criticism was about the UI and the UX.

So that’s being implemented, but the rest of it was too toxic to, so toxic that we had to completely quit the project for three months or however long this was.

I don’t know.

And we come back out of nowhere and it’s, it’s free and it will be open source in the future, but it can’t be open source now.

And how will you make money?

This was asked five, six, seven times in the live stream.

How, how will you make money?

How will you fund this?

I personally don’t think Lewis needs the money.

I don’t think, um, I, if I had to guess, I think it’s a lot of what he does is literally straight out of passion.

I think that’s literally what he does.

And that’s why the criticism is even harder to take because you’re criticizing his passion ideas, right?

You’re not criticizing his business ideas.

You’re criticizing his passion ideas.

Is that speculation?

It’s a hundred percent speculation because that’s all we can do because we don’t have any details.

So all we’re left to do is speculate.

Um, but if that’s the case, it’s still, it’s still a big, big, big problem.

Okay.

So, um, let me turn to the chat real quick and just see what people are saying.

I want to get everybody’s initial reaction.

Um, before we talk about, well, we’ll close this out.

Now I don’t have a ton more to say, um, but we’ll close this out and we’ll get onto topic number two.

Uh, we do have some really, really good viewership too.

I mean, we’re almost over 300.

Go ahead and hit the like if you’re even, even if you’re hitting a thumbs down, which six people have done so far.

Thank you to those people.

All engagement helps.

All engagement is appreciated.

Um, yeah.

Merrill says it’s a leadership issue.

You, you have to be able when you’re, when you’re going to be in the position of, and, and let’s just, let’s make sure everybody’s on the same page with this.

You can be, and this is, by the way, the book was written long ago.

What was this?

A 1980s book called the E-Myth.

I’m just guessing.

Seems like it’s that old.

The E-Myth.

You can be an insanely talented developer, which Lewis is.

He’s an insanely talented developer.

He’s an insanely bright thinker and philosopher in this, in this industry.

Like the way he thinks about what the tool should do and the way that the tool should do it.

And, um, being cutting edge, being on the forefront of what’s coming next.

Okay.

Lewis is among the best at those things.

And this is what’s crazy to me.

If people try to associate me with the demise of quickly is for all the criticism that I put out there, I also put out all the best, uh, compliments of quickly.

I said repeatedly that it was the number one page builder for the block system for it.

If you’re going to be in the block editor or you’re going to be attached to Gutenberg, I wouldn’t go cadence.

I wouldn’t go even generate.

I wouldn’t go any of those.

I would seriously go quickly.

That’s the number one builder for that environment.

I said that endlessly, relentlessly.

Okay.

I praise Lewis personally, relentlessly in terms of his skill as a developer and the things that I just said.

Okay.

So I can’t be the number one, like, you know, compliment guy and also be the reason for its demise.

Like that’s another reason why none of this makes any sense.

But again, it’s all we, all we’re able to do is speculate because there, there are no details.

And I will also reiterate.

I get flack.

Do you know how many messages I’ve gotten?

Kevin, thanks for killing quickly.

Thanks for killing quickly.

Blah, blah.

It’s all.

It’s Kevin’s fault.

It’s Kevin.

I’m seeing the comments everywhere on Facebook and Twitter.

Every.

Oh yeah.

That was Kevin’s fault.

Was it?

Was it?

Cause, cause we need to know.

I think we need to know at this point.

And if it was, that’s an even bigger problem for y’all.

That’s an even bigger problem for y’all.

Cause nothing I said was unacceptable.

Okay.

So like, if that’s the reason it closed up shop, we got a much bigger problem on our hands.

Um, okay.

So, uh, let’s go back to, we were at chat.

I was going through the chat.

Uh, Grant does have a good question here.

Little side tangent.

What ensures Bricks’s longevity?

How do you view their leadership?

Uh, I’m going to, I’m going to star this question.

I think we, I don’t want to go.

Cause if I go off on that tangent and answer that question, that’s going to be a long, I’ll just tell you upfront.

It’s going to be a little bit of a long answer and it’s going to be a nuanced answer.

And it’s a little bit, it’s going to distract from what we’re talking about right now.

But I starred your question, Grant, and I’m going to come back to it.

Um, okay.

Let’s go up.

As Derek says, 288 people watching, but only 87 likes throw up those likes.

It doesn’t cost you anything.

It doesn’t cost you anything.

Um, okay, man, quickly just discontinued the development for the time being.

It still can be used during that period.

Now it comes back in the end.

It’s a good thing.

If you really love quickly, I don’t think so.

I don’t think so.

Uh, it’s not, it’s for the foreseeable future.

Look guys, you have to think of this in a business sense.

It, it, it is not smart.

Just baseline business 101.

It is not smart at this point to use quickly for any client work.

And that’s not going to change anytime soon.

Especially when we don’t have answers.

It’s not going to change anytime soon.

Okay.

So if you’re like, you can fool yourself.

You could tell yourself all these nice little fairy tales.

When you go to sleep at night about, Oh, I loved quickly.

Oh, I’m so glad it’s back.

Oh, I can start using it again.

Right away.

No, you can’t.

No.

You can love quickly.

You can love Lewis.

You can, you can love the idea of maybe one day it’ll be a great redemption story, but you can’t in any professional sense fool yourself into believing that this is a viable commercial tool for, for any, any work like that in that capacity anytime soon.

I don’t know how that can even be argued.

I don’t even, I don’t see how that can be argued at all.

Okay.

Let’s see.

Let’s see.

Thelonious behavior.

Okay.

How do you, how do you have so much time in the day?

Building tools, destroying builders.

Yeah.

I mean, I don’t, I personally, one, don’t think that it had anything to do with me and two, hope and pray that it did not have anything to do with me.

Cause like I said, we have a much bigger issue on our hands.

If it had anything to do with me.

And I, and I think people just, if they, when they do attack me over it, they just aren’t, they don’t think through people always just, they, people have a habit, you know, like the vast, but not everybody obviously, but the vast majority of society has a habit of not thinking past step one.

It’s like, Oh my God, the first thing that pops in their mind, they’re like, well, that makes a semblance of sense.

So I’m just going to rock with that.

That’s my story.

And I’m sticking to it.

They never think through like step two, three, four, five, six, any other details.

It’s just, I don’t know.

Society has a stark lack of critical thinking.

So I don’t personally think it was my fault.

I don’t think I had much of anything to do with it.

And, but again, if, if, if I did, I just really, really hope I didn’t, because if that’s the reason, um, quickly shouldn’t be allowed back.

Like it, like it, like in anybody’s mind, be like, that’s not legitimate.

What the did you just do to everybody?

Cause of that?

Are you serious?

No.

Uh, that, that just delegitimizes the entire, the only way the tool at that point can, can move forward is with different leadership.

And that’s kind of, you know, what I, what I would say about this is the only way you can really have a semblance of trust is either you get all the facts and you get a really clear explanation and you get a really clear, like, I’m sorry, guys, this, this actually did have a lot of merit.

And, um, you know, we, we spent three months pondering it or whatever.

And this is the reason for the pivot.

And this is how the pivot is going to solve this previously previous problem that we ran into.

You would have to have insane clarity that this, everybody goes from what’s happening, what’s going on, what, this doesn’t make any sense.

Make it make sense from that mode to, Oh God, it makes perfect sense.

Oh, this makes perfect sense.

I can see the clear steps that we’re taking.

The clear logic that was employed here.

And I can see how the future is going to be so much brighter for quickly.

You would have to, that’s a giant leap, by the way, that is a giant leap to get from A to B.

So you either have to make that leap somehow, or there just has to be different leadership because the leadership that’s in place right now, I don’t see how you could trust.

You could trust what’s going to happen next.

And we still can’t even make sense of what already happened, much less what might happen.

Okay.

So, uh, it’s just, I, if you, if you’re considering going back to quickly, there there’s two, I think two camps you would be in.

If you’re going to use quickly in any professional sense, either one, you are, um, entranced by the concept of free, which a lot of people are, they see free.

They’re like a moth.

It’s like the moth to the flame.

Oh my God, it’s free.

I got to go get it there.

And they don’t care.

They don’t care.

Don’t, I don’t want to know about the history.

I don’t want to know about the criticism.

I don’t want to know about the leadership.

Somebody said free.

Give me the tool.

Give me the tool.

Somebody said free.

Okay.

People think like this.

There will be those people.

These people have no self-respect.

They have no respect for their clients.

I don’t know how else to say it.

They’re, they’re putting themselves over everything else.

And not even really in any logical capacity.

Cause if the tool goes away again, it’s them that’s going to be harmed.

But again, they’re moth to a free flame.

Okay.

Somebody says free.

These people go into a trance.

Oh my God.

Give me the tool.

I don’t care.

Give me the tool.

Right.

So that’s one camp.

And then the second camp is the people who, um, I, I, I do think that they are, they have a lot of maybe empathy or whatever.

And they’re just like, oh my God, I just love giving people a million chances.

And, um, you know, it doesn’t really have to make sense.

I just want the best for everybody.

And, um, I really, I really just loved quickly.

I loved using it.

And so I want to see it continue.

And so they’re just going to kind of talk themselves in.

They’re not using their professional brain.

They’re using their emotional brain and they’re just going to talk themselves back into using quickly, like, cause it’s good feels.

Okay.

But like you could, you still question this from a professional sense.

Like, uh, that’s not, we’re not thinking professionally here.

Uh, and that’s okay.

If you, if you’re like, I, yeah, I just, I like feels more than, more than logic.

Uh, do you like, I’m not telling anybody what to do, not telling anybody what to do, but I am raising the alarm that like, that’s not really a professional decision.

Right.

Um, so that’s, that’s kind of where we’re at right now.

Uh, Maxine says, I don’t even think you’ve been particularly critical.

You know, I, I, I look back on the, the one thing that I, um, have a little bit of regret about is I didn’t give, uh, quickly enough of a chance when I did the first live stream.

So when I did the very first, it was the, it was literally called, I think quickly first look.

Okay.

So somebody was like, Hey, there’s this thing called quickly.

Have you seen it?

And then right off the bat, I was like, that’s, I don’t really like the name.

Didn’t even know how to spell the damn thing.

And I was like, that’s kind of a, you know, the name already was a little bit of a red flag.

It was kind of like, if you, if you have any experience in marketing and branding, probably that name would have got crossed off the list for multiple reasons, multiple reasons.

I still don’t think it’s a good name, but I I’m, I’m past that.

I don’t care.

Okay.

Um, but that was my, that was my first impression.

So I was like, ah, I don’t even like the name.

Okay.

Let me go check it.

And then I get in and just, I’ve talked about this before the UX, the UI being wildly different.

It just, it creates a scenario where you’re like, what’s going on here?

Uh, rather than a scenario where if you know the language of web design, you can open the tool and it just kind of feels familiar.

It just feels like, oh, there’s a div.

There’s a section.

There’s a, I can, I can build with these things.

Oh, there’s where I do the CSS styling there.

Okay.

Okay.

This is starting to make sense.

And you get some momentum going and then you’re like, oh, and then you start to uncover the power of it.

Right.

You can’t even get to quickly’s power because the minute you open it, it’s like, I’ve got to learn what all these icons mean.

And I, nothing’s labeled and it’s just, you know, it’s a really, it’s a challenge.

And that was part of my initial feedback.

Okay.

Now, could I have been, um, less critical on that live stream?

Yeah.

Probably here.

Cause here’s the thing from my position and I have to do a better job of this.

Uh, when, when there’s a, a, a, a, a segment of the market, like page builders, for example, and you could do this maybe with like forms plugins or something where there’s like, it seems like there’s a million options in your brain.

Cause your brain is trying to take shortcuts on certain things.

Like it’s, you know, we can’t fully process everything and every detail.

And so when somebody is like, Hey, there’s a new page, but I mean, these people had just told me about Zion and just told me about this.

And then that they got me opening all these page builders.

And they’re like, there’s quickly.

And it’s, you start to, your brain starts to be like, Oh, another one, another one, another one.

And then you get a bad first impression and you’re on a live stream and you’re also trying to entertain people.

Cause you can’t just do this.

Like, you know, we’re at a fucking college course reading a textbook.

Right.

So, you know, there’s a little bit, we’re trying to make jokes.

We’re trying to be entertaining.

We’re trying to do that.

Okay.

So if I had, let’s say this, if I had met Lewis before I reviewed quickly and heard his philosophy and heard how he thinks about things and then quickly would have made way more sense to me when I first opened it.

Okay.

But we didn’t have that advantage.

And I, and I would have been much less critical of it because I would have had like context.

It wouldn’t have been like, Oh my God, just another page builder that somebody threw together as a money grab.

Because I think a lot of these tools and a lot of these markets are money grabs.

There’s tools that are legitimately the developer is a forward thinking developer who’s going to bring significant impact and influence to that segment of tools.

WS form being a prime example there.

Okay.

And not only that, but their customer service, their documentation, they’re, they’re, they’re doing, they’re checking all the boxes.

They’re being a great leader in the space.

That’s what I look for.

Okay.

But that’s not all these tools.

So many of these tools are money grabs.

Let’s be honest.

Like they’re, they’re just absolute money grabs.

And so when you’re doing a first impression of something and you don’t know who’s behind it, you don’t know where it came from or what the philosophy is or any other context, all you have is the first look.

And that’s on the first look.

What I was, is I was critical of the UX and I was critical of the UI and it didn’t really make any sense to me.

I also, by the way, we know I don’t really love the block editor.

And quickly is hampered by the horrible UX of the block editor.

That’s not directly quickly’s fault, but it is their fault for being inside the block editor.

Okay.

So you’ve got to have a way around that.

You’ve got to have a way to educate people, uh, around that issue because it is an issue.

It is.

And I was a lot of what I was critical of in quickly.

And that first look video kind of had to do with the block editor.

Okay.

So after I met Lewis, I came to the conclusion, like, man, I wish I had met you before because I would have given quickly way more of a chance.

I wouldn’t have been in the, oh, it’s another builder mode.

Oh, it’s just like, it’s in the block editor.

That sucks.

Oh, the name’s not that great.

Like I would have just given it more of a chance.

Okay.

So if we’re going to do something better and I’ve kept that in mind in the future, when I do other first look videos, I try to remind myself, Hey, I don’t know this person.

I haven’t met them yet.

I haven’t heard their story.

I haven’t heard what they’re, what they’re on about in this industry.

Like, I don’t know what they have to offer.

Um, so I give them a little bit more like leeway up front these days.

Uh, and so I’ve learned, I’ve learned from that.

I’ve tried to make an improvement in that area, but I think you’re right in the sense that you could still go back and watch the live stream.

I mean, even though it was heavily critical, you know what it also did.

It also got a lot of eyeballs on quickly.

It also got a lot of people using quickly because they’d never heard of it before.

And they actually liked what they saw.

And then when I started complimenting quickly and a lot of, in a lot of instances, many instances, more and more people started going to it because they were like, you know what?

I do kind of want something that works in the block editor.

I want to feel like I’m more native to WordPress, right?

Or closer to core as people say.

And that quickly was the literally the best option for that.

And they used my compliments and my advice to make the decision to go to quickly.

And so, yeah, you can look at it on the one hand as, oh, you should be less critical.

But you also have to see that I’m fair.

Like when when people do great things, I say they do great things.

And when they legitimately are being in the number one, number two, number three, whatever in that category, I tell people that that’s what they’re doing.

So it goes both ways.

And even negative criticism as quickly should have seen is really great for marketing and eyeballs and whatever, because people are not going to take a first look as 100% gospel, right?

They know it’s a first look.

That’s why it’s called a first look.

And I even, I think I said that in the stream.

Guys, this is the first time I’m using it.

So I’m going to give you my reaction.

But this is not a review.

This is not a, I’ve used the tool for three solid months.

Here’s everything that’s wrong with it.

It was literally, this is my reaction the first time using this tool.

And if, you know, somebody who made that tool is, takes their ball and goes home because of that.

Again, we have bigger problems, right?

So I would really like, um, some specifics on what the, on what the attacks were.

Okay.

Let’s see the irony of wanting to be closer to core.

So they don’t get left hanging out to dry.

That’s a whole tangent.

We can go on, Brad.

The entire concept of closer to core is an absolute fairy tale in my estimation, in the ways that most people use it.

Like people are like cadence closer to core.

And I’m like, the fuck?

Like cadence is the same third party layer.

Just like essentially just like bricks is cadence could close up shop tomorrow.

Any proprietary blocks that are from cadence.

What are you going to do with those?

What are you going to do?

How, how, how is this closer to core generate the same way you’re using generates whole proprietary block system and class system and all this.

And you somehow think that that’s closer to core because it just, it opens in the block editor instead of a different interface.

Like this is all has always felt like a fairy tale to me.

Closer to core.

What is, um, if you hire a developer and they hand code every block, everything’s a custom block hand coded.

And then they hand it over to you.

Are you going to feel like you’re closer to core?

Like if you can’t take over those files, what you’re still hung out to dry, just like anybody else is hung out to dry.

And people are like, Oh, well, I’ll just go find a developer to come and take that.

I mean, well, I can do that with bricks.

I can do that with so many things.

Right.

Um, so it’s, it’s, um, there’s a little bit of truth to it, but it’s not what they make it out to be.

They make it out.

Like it’s this significant improvement advantage.

Oh my God.

We’re so close to core.

Not to mention core continues to have breaking changes.

Core continues to break things.

I hear the argument from people like I love Gutenberg because my stuff doesn’t break when I update.

Um, excuse me.

What all I hear about are breaking changes with core.

Um, in fact, there’s a lot of core people that are on Twitter complaining.

I guess they don’t care about backward compatibility anymore.

Like it’s criticism after criticism.

These people are in the, in an echo chamber thinking that, that the Gutenberg updates don’t break things or that they’re always backwards compatible or that your data is safer or something like that.

Um, it’s just a lot of it is fairy tale.

A lot of it is echo chamber, um, emotion talk, right?

It’s not really rooted in, in much of anything.

Okay.

Um, so let’s go, let’s, let’s go.

Good.

WP, WP Tutsis here.

What’s up, Paul?

Uh, quickly has a really tough road ahead to gain back any goodwill based on how they handled the discontinuation.

I agree.

I agree.

Um, okay.

So some people are saying we’re, we’re, we’ve beaten the quickly, uh, thing to death now.

And let’s go ahead and move on.

We will do that.

I just do like to go through the chat a little bit because here’s the thing.

Like when I sign off, I know all of you are watching the chat constantly.

I can’t watch the chat and talk at the same time.

Um, so I kind of like to go back through it because once the stream is over it, I don’t, it might as well not exist.

It might as well not be there.

I don’t have the time to go back and rewatch the stream and just read the comments.

Um, so I do like to go through it a little bit.

I don’t think I could trust my business in a product after something like this.

I wouldn’t ever, I wouldn’t even use it for hobby projects.

Um, yeah, I think, I think anybody thinking logically from a business sense, Ooh, this is a great one right here.

Great comment, uh, from digital algorithms.

Nothing is free.

Uh, that was, that’s one last thing I’ll say is when they, when he was asked about the monetization strategy, I don’t know how to describe it.

It, I wouldn’t put it in the deceptive camp, but it was just very secretive.

Like he just did not want to give an answer as to how the thing is going to.

And to me, it’s like, I mean, what, what are they cooking up now that we can’t know about, you know?

And what’s the next surprise, uh, that’s going to come out of here.

So it’s another, another thing.

Um, the problem with the, it wasn’t Kevin Geary theory is that Lewis could quickly, why can’t I elevate that comment?

Could quickly dismiss that and say it wasn’t Kevin, but hasn’t elected to do so.

Yeah, I, I, that’s another kind of problem I have because I surely he’s seen the, oh, it’s probably what Kevin said.

It’s probably what Kevin’s, it would be nice to be like, no, it wasn’t what Kevin said.

Like it was some egregious shit behind the scenes.

It was like that, that absolutely could have happened.

Um, okay, let’s move on.

Let’s go to, uh, Google.

All right.

Um, let me pull up cause I, I had a tweet on X that will help me work through this.

Cause there’s a lot of little details here.

Let me go ahead and share my screen.

Uh, so if you don’t follow me on X, I would highly recommend it at the Kevin Geary.

Um, come on over.

It’s a, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s great.

We’re having a lot of great conversations there.

There’s a lot of fantastic insights there.

Um, and especially if you, if you train the algorithm on, on what you like, it’s, it’s a really, really good thing.

So I said, Google has lost the plot.

Now I’ve talked a little bit about this on, uh, past live streams.

Google has lost the plot.

It’s a situation that has been deteriorating for many, many, many years, but I finally decided to pull the plug this year.

These companies don’t course correct.

Cause not enough people are willing to walk away from them.

And when they get so big, it does legitimately become difficult to walk away.

Uh, but having principles means doing what is right.

Even when it’s difficult, I and my family all had personal Gmail accounts.

I had four Google workspace accounts.

Okay.

One for each domain.

I was deep into using Google drive and Google sheets.

Google calendar was a staple.

I use Google Chrome.

I searched on Google search.

Um, I use Google search console.

I had multiple Google ads accounts.

Google maps was convenient.

So, so many of my logins, which has been the biggest problem is their direct, uh, Google logins.

Too bad.

I’ve officially filed for divorce from Google.

I moved all personal email and calendar to Hey, I moved all domain email and my work calendar to Hey, everything from Google drive is in Dropbox.

That’s for now.

I’m using crafts, uh, craft docs right here.

You can see craft for my docs type stuff.

I browse the web with arc.

I have a brave search as my default search engine.

Fuck Google search console, Google ads, Google search.

Apple maps gets me to where I need to go.

Just fine.

The only thing I can’t bring myself to divorce from is YouTube mainly because it feels like directly divorcing from the people whose content I love and the audience who know and love me.

If it was just a platform like Gmail, you know, people can email me at a many, many, many places.

I can go to any email provider, but YouTube is a community where you have built relationships and connections with other people, other content creators, viewers, et cetera.

And so that is one thing that I’m finding to be a challenge that it wouldn’t just be like, oh, I’m divorcing from YouTube.

It would be like, oh, I’m divorcing from so many followers and so many other creators that are here.

That’s a tough one.

That’s a tough one.

This is made even while I explain that here.

But YouTube is one of the most egregious platforms.

If we’re talking about the bad things that Google does as a company.

Anyway, the freedom that I’ve achieved thus far feels good.

It’s a big step in the right direction.

And it’s definitely something I’d encourage you to do if you’ve been considering it.

So with that, I announced that a lot of our support emails change, like for automatic CSS, ACS.

We’ve consolidated everything under Digital Gravy.

So ACSS at DigitalGravy.co, frames at DigitalGravy.co, et cetera.

So we made that announcement so everybody knows to change that in their email systems.

And, you know, I think some emails, like if you’ve emailed Geary.co, maybe it hasn’t gotten seen recently.

I’m still in the process of actually closing out those accounts.

But everything that I actually look at now is Kevin at DigitalGravy.co.

So there’s a little bit.

It’s not like it’s not painful to make these kinds of switches.

Okay.

It’s going to be you have to accept some level of pain to make the switch.

But ultimately, it’s worth it.

Because what happens a lot of times is people are like, oh, no, it’s too painful to switch.

So I’m going to stay with a company that’s essentially like, you know, shitting on everybody socially and technically and in all these other ways.

And so their principles just, I mean, if their principles align with you, I guess, do you, right?

But their behavior in terms of search manipulation, in terms of channel manipulation, in terms of Google My Business manipulation, in terms of various algorithm changes for the reasoning behind them, the allowance of scammers, the allowance of AI, the theft of actual content and rankings.

I could just go on and on and on and on and on.

The behavior is egregious, probably amounts to criminal to some degree.

The just manipulation of influence and social commentary, the, again, I could go on and on.

It’s just not acceptable.

And so I essentially got to the point where I was like, I’m not participating in this anymore.

And yes, it is painful to leave, but the divorce has happened.

It’s being finalized.

Now we’re in the final stages of divorce from Google.

And if you’ve been thinking in any capacity of like, you know, I kind of don’t like the situation either.

I also don’t tend to like the size, right?

I think it’s time to give other people serious options here.

And it’s only going to continue getting worse and worse and worse if we allow it to and if we continue participating in it.

So I’ve just kind of said, no, I’m out.

I’m divorcing Google and I will accept the little bit of pain, the temporary pain that comes with that to get back on track.

But like I said, for the most, it’s been like a breath of fresh air.

I really, really like Hey as an email platform.

I like the calendar system.

They’ve brought a lot of really great refreshing ideas to their calendar system.

Now it’s not perfect.

There’s been a problem with, you know, they give you an ICS feed, but it’s read only.

So I’m harping at them, right?

Like, hey, we need a writable ICS feed.

Like this is, it can’t just be read only.

So there’s some quirks here and there.

There’s some, there’s some growing pains.

But I think it’s going to, it’s, it’s to me, those pains are better to deal with than living under the thumb of some giant, nameless, faceless organization that has completely and utterly lost the plot, lost respect for its users, lost respect for any semblance of decency.

So in the, like, it’s just, it’s way off the deep end to the point where I just, I can’t, I can’t participate anymore.

Okay.

Okay.

I want to do an open Q and a, I want to do an open Q and a, I don’t want this to be a two hour live stream.

We’ll do maybe 30, 40 minutes here of open Q and a, and then we will get on with the rest of the day.

I have so much work to do.

I’ve been, I was traveling all last week.

I was in the car for nine hours yesterday.

I’ve got a lot of stuff to catch up on.

Okay.

I’m going to go over to questions.

If your question does not have a hashtag, hashtag Q or hashtag question, I can almost guarantee that it will not get answered.

Looking forward to WDD.

Love the last sessions.

But what does WDD even mean?

Okay.

Web design for dummies.

There’s a book series in the U S called for dummies.

And it’s a lot of things for dummies, like changing your oil for dummies, driving a car for dummies, whatever.

Um, and you might see web design for dummies.

Uh, so it’s a whole series.

It’s a whole brand of books.

It’s, it’s worldwide.

I’m sure.

Um, and so I did a play on it where I was like web design for dummies because the dom D O M right.

Document object model, uh, people who care about the underlying construction of the website, the architecture, the code, the maintainability, the scalability.

So this is web design for dummies, for people who care about doing things, you know, the best possible way.

It was a play on the word.

And since the day one, people were confused by it since day one, they didn’t get the cute little twist.

And it’s just been a constant, like, okay, let’s explain it every single day of our lives.

And at the time when I did it, it was just for fun.

I had no idea that the live streams were going to take off.

I had no idea that we’d have 300 concurrent live stream viewers a year later.

Like when we first started WDD live, I had like 30, 40 people concurrently viewing.

That was like our, our peak.

Okay.

And then it slowly grew to 60 and then it was 80 and then it’s a hundred.

I mean, now routinely we have 200.

Sometimes we have 300 when it’s a special day.

I think 900 is our, is our, um, is our current record.

I had no idea.

I had no idea.

So I’m at the point now where it’s going to be rebranded to just something like Geary co live or something like that.

Um, because I also want to make it more of a variety show.

Uh, we got Paul here in, in the chat, like bringing people like Paul onto the stream, have a guest every now and then, you know, talk about divorcing Google, talk about this thing over here.

We can make it more of a variety show.

And then I always wanted to end with open Q and a, I always want there to be the possibility of just pulling up a builder and demonstrating something when somebody has a question.

Hey, how do I do this?

Well, let me just show you real quick.

That’s what we do on WDD live.

Like we can, which will now be in the near future, rebranded, um, to something more simple that we don’t have to explain every single time we’re on a live stream.

So that’s the answer to that question.

Just watch your dynamic part one, part two.

How annoying is it for you that the template icon has moved to the left?

Uh, I mean, it’s yeah.

Why, why, why did it move?

I don’t know.

I don’t know why it moved.

Uh, but those things like are so inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.

Immediately.

I just informed my brain cause my brain goes the fuck.

And then I immediately have to stop my brain and I go brain.

Um, it’s like the little Dickie, right?

You gotta watch the little Dickie, the brain.

That’s a great, it’s a great song.

Um, so yeah, talk to my brain.

I’m like, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey.

That’s inconsequential.

Okay.

Move the fuck on.

Like it’s this, it was on the right.

Now it’s on the left.

Get over it.

Right.

We got bigger things to worry about.

And that’s the conversation I have with my brain.

And, and then guess what?

I don’t really care that much anymore.

Uh, there’s a lot of people who will just complain endlessly about that stuff.

I just, I don’t really care.

Like the faster you can just tell your brain, get the fuck over it.

Like the icon moved.

Okay.

Um, it’s still, it’s still the builder.

It still works.

All right.

Then, then like the better off you’re going to be.

And, uh, people may not want to hear that.

Cause I just got another thumbs down.

That’s the 12th one.

Thank you for the support.

By the way, like I said, I will take all the engagement you have to give.

Um, some people won’t like that because they like to complain.

They, and they like to nitpick and they like to folk hyper-focus on little tiny details.

And, um, that’s just not, I think you’ll find over time as a person, as a human being that eats at you more than it eats at anybody else.

The quicker you can move on from that kind of stuff, the, the happier your life is going to be.

Uh, okay.

Kevin, what is your shirt’s brand?

Um, great question, Derek.

Let me, let me think about it.

Um, okay.

So this will prove to you.

I’ve said on streams before, uh, I don’t give a fuck about clothes, cars, jewelry.

I, I don’t, I don’t care.

I don’t care.

This is, it’s like the icon moving from the right to the left.

I don’t really care.

I don’t really care.

This brand is, um, you go on Amazon and you type in, I think it’s called into the AM or something.

And, um, I just, I don’t know.

It’s like cheap.

It seems like decent quality.

They don’t, they don’t fray apart on me.

Right.

They look, they look decent.

I don’t know.

I just want into the AM.

Okay.

Give me some, give me some shirts.

That’s it.

I don’t, I don’t really care all that much.

Um, now I do, I do like high quality shorts.

Okay.

Uh, so I go a little bit higher quality on those.

I like, I like the built brand B Y L T.

Uh, I like their, their shorts are fantastic.

I actually have a lot of clothes from built.

Um, so, you know, in some capacities, like especially when I have to go to a conference, something like that, maybe, maybe a little bit higher quality for that.

But for the most part, I mean, you see me on the screen.

This is why I rock.

I don’t really care.

Uh, let’s see.

Rear Google divorce.

Is SEO dead?

Hey, SEO is, um, I was actually one of the big critics of people who used to say SEO is dead.

Everybody that’s like, this thing’s dead.

That thing’s dead. 95% of the time, they just want attention. 4% of the time.

Um, it’s, it’s, you know, they have a good argument, but it’s not actually dead. 1% of the time, the thing’s actually dead.

Um, SEO is in that 4% right now.

I could, I could, I could level tons of criticisms against Google, the way that SEO is trending, uh, the AI overtaking of, of actual human developed content.

Um, Google, like I mentioned, literally just stealing content, showing people’s content as the answer, but not giving them the link to the person’s work.

Uh, so they don’t actually get the traffic.

Uh, I mean, on and on and on and on and on and on, right?

There’s another thumbs down.

Appreciate it.

Um, so I could level those criticisms, but at the end of the day, we’d still be in the 4% camp because is SEO dead?

No, absolutely not.

But it is not trending in a good direction.

It is trending towards death.

Um, and, and we see this in, um, the competition for essentially what we’re trending to is if you’re not in the top three or top two, even really the top one in many cases, then you’re, you don’t exist.

Okay.

Because we’re getting to just think of voice search as an example.

When I go, um, when I go to my phone, it’s actually one of my biggest pet peeves.

But if I, if I ask my phone for any random thing, it’s very difficult for my phone to be like, here’s the top 10 results for that.

And then they read them off to you or something.

And you’re trying to process like, Oh, hold on.

Pause, pause, pause.

Oh, what was the last thing you said?

Like it can’t really do that.

So what it has to do is it has to choose for you.

And it has to say, we think this is the one that makes the most sense to give you.

And they just give you that one, which, which is, that’s their top result.

And if you’re not the top result, they ain’t given you.

Okay.

And so there is no list of results that people are looking at really in a lot of cases.

Now you could be like, ah, Siri, I don’t like that one.

Give me the next one.

But Siri’s, Siri’s dumb.

I mean, Siri’s not smart.

Siri’s not good.

Siri’s, Siri is one of those things that is like, I, it’s almost like the Gutenberg project.

I can’t believe how little progress they’ve made on Siri up to this point.

It’s almost, that’s mind boggling to me.

I feel like that’s the same Siri I was talking to in 2012.

Does she even exist in 2012?

If she did, I don’t see much progress since then.

I, I don’t know what they’ve been doing with Siri, but it ain’t much.

Um, and so I can’t have conversations with Siri.

I can’t be like, Siri, I want a different result.

I mean, she, now she’s all confused.

Uh, giving me links that I have to go.

Now they’re sending me to Google search essentially.

Um, so it’s, you know, SEO is not in a good place.

Let’s say that, uh, the, the front page of the thing is almost all ads.

Now the ads look like organic search.

People don’t even know what they’re clicking on half the time.

Uh, it’s just, it’s really not in a good state.

So yeah, I, and I personally don’t worry about SEO.

I, I have, I was huge on SEO.

I was one of the biggest SEO guys.

I, I had sites that were doing six figures in traffic a month, a month in different industries.

I would, I loved SEO.

Okay.

I am now on the, like, I don’t even want to bother with SEO all that much.

I don’t really think about it all that much.

I don’t put much effort into it at all.

I much prefer other channels, not to mention so much of SEO in terms of like, let’s say national SEO is content marketing and content marketing is not in a great place.

In terms of written content, very few people prefer to read content.

Now they would rather listen.

They would rather watch.

You can listen while you’re driving.

Can’t read while you’re driving.

Some people watch while they’re driving, which is still safer than reading while you’re driving.

I would argue.

Um, but like reading is lowest on the totem pole, I think.

And so, um, it’s, it’s also very time consuming to create written content the right way, uh, and to the algorithm that Google actually wants.

So you’ve seen the trend toward audio content toward video content.

That doesn’t bode well for written content marketing the way that it used to, which also doesn’t bode well for SEO.

Unless you’re considering YouTube to be your SEO strategy, which is, that is an SEO strategy.

It’s not a traditional SEO strategy.

Right?

So, um, that’s, that’s my answer on that.

SEO is not in a great place.

Okay.

Um, will ACSS support quickly in the future?

It will not support quickly as of right now, because it’s a situation, like I said, where we can’t participate in putting people in that position.

Okay.

So we just have to withdraw our participation from that scenario until there’s either clear answers, clear direction, or a change in leadership, or like something has to dramatically change.

Then we can consider bringing the support back.

But like, if we just kept supporting it in its current state, we, we would be giving people a helping hand back into that same situation.

I said that that’s almost professional negligence to use that tool in any professional sense.

It would also be that in, in our capacity of giving people access to ACSS within that environment.

So I just think it’s best for right now.

If we sit on the sidelines, um, let’s see, have you sorted out the issue of sometimes not being able to display the ACSS window in Chrome by using control O or command O in bricks?

Um, it’s, it’s never really been an issue.

There are, I’m, I’m actually writing up a whole FAQ on exactly how to address some of these things.

Um, they happen on a small percentage of installs, for example, with the not opening the dashboard, 90% of the time it is somebody is employing some sort of JavaScript deferral, um, or delay or something else that’s breaking the dashboard.

It’s a JavaScript dashboard.

So if you’re not excluding the script, then you’re going to break it when you do all these deferrals.

And a lot of cases, people don’t even know that JavaScript is being optimized in that fashion because it’s done at the server level and they didn’t even really configure it.

It just came like that by default.

Lightspeed users are notorious for this.

They have no idea what’s going on in that Lightspeed dashboard.

There’s a thousand toggles.

They’re just going with some defaults.

They have no idea what’s happening.

And it’s, it ends up breaking the dashboard on the front end, but you get that excluded from the optimizations.

Now the dashboard works again.

That’s like 90% of the cases.

The other 10% of cases is there are a limited number of scenarios where if let’s say you’re using, um, ACSS on a giant screen, like I have right here, and then you pull up the site on your laptop.

We’ve put steps in place where the dashboard recognizes that it’s off the screen and moves onto the screen.

But there seems to be some weird, like they’re rare instances where the dashboard doesn’t get the memo.

And so it just lives off the screen.

Now, is this a problem?

Well, if you don’t know what’s happening, it’s a, it’s a problem.

If you know what’s happening, you open, you right click, you go to add here.

I’ll just, I’ll just show you how to do it.

So, uh, let’s go here.

So here’s the site right here, right?

Uh, let’s get to the, oh, we’re on the, we’re on the front end.

Okay.

Let’s go back.

All right.

So there’s obviously the dashboard is there.

It’s not having the problem here, but if it was having the problem, you would go to inspect application, right click clear local storage because the local storage is storing the position of the dashboard because the dashboard remembers where it was last time.

That’s, that’s what makes it convenient.

Like when you open it, it’s where you left it.

Right.

Um, so in the case that it gets lost and it remembers its lost position, because now you’re on a dramatically different size screen or something, or you’ve done something weird with the browser window or whatever.

Um, all you have to do is right click clear.

And then when you hit refresh, the dashboard appears.

So if you know what’s happening, it’s not really an issue because it’s solvable like, like that.

In fact, it’s actually solvable, uh, with the keyboard shortcuts.

So if you go to options, a lot of times, if it’s lost, um, you can use this pin dashboard keyboard shortcut and it’ll pin itself to the current position of the screen, which obviously brings it into view.

So there’s two ways where like in an instant, you can just solve the problem, but it does require that you understand what’s happening.

So that’s why we’ve put that information out in the support, uh, community.

It’s why I’m drafting up an official FAQ that people can read and they can just go straight to their, Oh, okay.

My dashboard’s probably lost.

Let me just get it back real quick.

Um, and again, we are working on putting, we would like that to never happen.

So we’re continuing with our efforts on, you know, finding that what is causing that those tiny percent of cases where this happens, we can shore that up and hopefully ensure that it never ever is able to happen in the future.

And then it’s perfect.

And then that situation is done and gone.

Um, but like I said, there is a enormous amount.

This is not like a page builder.

It’s not like building.

It’s actually tougher than building a page builder because in a page builder, you have full command and control of the environment that people are working in.

Automatic CSS is living in many different page builders.

It’s living in many different environments.

It’s, and so we have all the stuff a page builder would have with the complication of getting it to work in every page builder.

Like, so, you know, there are going to be little quirks and challenges that we have to work through.

Uh, we think we can get it to be a hundred percent perfect, like completely stable, no issues.

You can’t break it.

Um, but it’s not going to be like magic.

It’s not, we, we don’t have a magic wand that we can wave.

We have to get more people using it.

More people identify new rare instances of issues.

And then we fix those.

And then the more you do that, uh, the, the more stable it gets.

I wish there was a magic wand.

Absolutely.

I wish I wouldn’t have to stare at VS code all day, every day.

Um, but alas, there’s no magic wand.

So, uh, it’s just, it’s a process.

Now, uh, you see me use it on every live stream.

You see me use it on every video in every build.

These are very rare cases where these things are happening.

And even when they happen, if you, when you know that what’s going on, it’s fixable in like a split second.

It’s, there’s never a deal breaker.

It’s never a, oh my God, I can’t work on my site.

Oh my God, my project’s broken.

None of that is happening.

It’s just little quirks here and there, which is like, that’s, that’s annoying.

Okay.

But I can quickly fix it and move on with my life.

Great.

Um, that’s, that’s really what we’re shoring up right now.

Okay.

Why not give him the time to prep the code before he open sources the project?

What, didn’t we do that?

I mean, he’s been gone for a while.

Um, and he was clearly working on the, he was making a bunch of changes to the UI and UX.

I mean, I, I just, again, I mean, we can make excuses.

We can make excuses, but what we really need is answers.

We need less excuses.

I, we need more clarity and more answers.

Noob question.

Is Gutenberg the same as the block editor, but a different name?

Not technically, not technically.

The block editor is what you open, uh, in WordPress.

Thank you for the thumbs down.

That’s 15 now.

Uh, could be a record by the way, could be a record.

Um, but you’re getting ratioed to death for those of you who are thumbs downing and anything on this stream, you are getting ratioed to death.

Um, so Gutenberg.

Gutenberg is a, uh, I guess that’s the name for their experimental project.

It’s a plugin.

You can add the Gutenberg plugin.

You get the cutting edge releases, uh, that they’re bringing to the block editor, right?

Um, but I guess technically the block editor is not called Gutenberg.

Gutenberg.

FSC is not called Gutenberg.

These are all part of the Gutenberg project.

Um, they’re just the released version of Gutenberg features that are publicly available and part of core, I guess, is how they would explain it.

But the fact that you even have to ask that question, uh, alludes to there’s been a leadership problem and a communication problem from WordPress itself.

There’s so much confusion around FSC and the block editor and, and, and Gutenberg and all this stuff.

Um, that’s not a good sign, right?

That’s not a good sign.

What’s the advantage of using WYSIWYG field versus block editor for a biography?

What’s the value of removing all WP fields and only using ACF fields?

Uh, I think what you’re referring to is probably what you saw on the last video, uh, where I did this with the reviews.

So we made a reviews custom post type and we turned off the block editor and we put this custom field in for the rating.

And we put this WYSIWYG field in for the body of the review.

And then we did a call out and then we did a relationship to services, right?

And so the question is, could this text right here have just been put into the block editor?

And if you don’t know how to turn the block editor off on a custom post type, ACF post types, reviews go down right here.

It’s this little checkbox.

Okay.

You can just turn off the editor that turns off the block editor.

And then what I did is I went to field groups and I went to reviews and I added a review body, which is a WYSIWYG editor field, which is, I’m just trying to give people context for the people who are like, I don’t know what any of this stuff means.

Um, which is this field right here.

Okay.

So you can see that field.

What is the advantage?

Well, if you use the block editor, uh, the advantage of using the block editor is that you don’t have to create and assign another custom field.

You could just put your content in straight away and then you can render that content all the same on the actual reviews page.

If we go to visit site and we go to services and we go to, and if you’re not up to speed on this, we aren’t doing any design work on the site whatsoever.

It’s literally just, um, basic layouts and we’re focusing on functionality.

That’s what this is all about.

Functionality.

Okay.

Um, so recall doesn’t have any, I think in-home training does cause we, we didn’t assign it to everything, but if we go to in-home training, there’s your reviews right there.

Dynamic star rating system.

This text being pulled in could be pulled from the block editor just as easily as you pulled it from the WYSIWYG field.

Now, what is the advantage of the WYSIWYG field?

Well, I think one advantage of the WYSIWYG field is that it’s simpler.

Okay.

So who is going to be putting in the reviews?

Um, the block editor gives you an open-ended editing environment.

I mean, you could put divs in there.

You could put not divs.

I’m sorry.

Groups.

You could put groups in there.

You could put buttons in there.

And so the question with something like a review is, is, are those things needed?

No.

There’s, there’s nothing needed other than content, right?

Just text.

Now the WYSIWYG gives you the ability to easily do stuff like, well, I want to bold that word or I want to italicize that word or something like that over something like a text area, which does not have those controls.

So we’re, we have really three options here.

Do we go with text area?

Do we go with WYSIWYG?

Do we go with the block editor?

And there, you have to just know the situation.

Okay.

So there’s going to be a time where we talk about maybe, um, doing a template for behaviors, right?

Or services.

And we decide that based on our template, there’s going to be a giant chunk of content that could even have layout aspects to it that we want to use the block editor to do.

That would be a case where you say, well, of course we’re not using a WYSIWYG field there.

We’re going to leverage the block editor to do that content.

So that’s where you would use a block editor.

In this instance, it’s very clear that the block editor is, would be way overkill for this situation.

So let’s remove it.

Let’s put something simpler in its place.

Uh, I think you can even limit the text that’s inside the WYSIWYG field.

So if you need reviews to be limited to a certain length, um, and it’s just, it’s way easier, way cleaner.

And then I wouldn’t use a text area field because that would limit us on text formatting.

So that’s the reason.

But it’s not to say you always turn off the block editor or you always use a WYSIWYG field or you never use a text area field.

You just have to know the situation, know the pros and cons.

It’s kind of like everything else that we do.

It’s a, you have to be comfortable living in a gray area.

There is very few just black and white areas.

You got to live in gray.

You got to be comfortable living in gray.

You got to be comfortable understanding nuance and processing nuance, uh, or you’re not going to make it very far.

How come you have enough power to kill all these builders, but you can’t get Gutenberg in line?

Oh, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s getting in line.

I’ll tell you that.

We’re not far off.

I don’t think from significant improvements to the Gutenberg situation.

I don’t know.

I don’t know.

We’ll see.

Uh, how much did you invest in making ACSS work with quickly?

Um, Hmm.

Uh, 10 grand.

I don’t know.

I don’t know.

I don’t know.

Uh, I did, I didn’t bother adding it up, but it was thousands of dollars, thousands of dollars.

Um, so yeah, it’s not like, um, that people need to remember that.

Right.

When they, when they talk about killing quickly, I, I wanted nothing more than for quickly to be awesome and survive and all of that.

And I meet, we made our tool to integrate with it.

Like people like it’s very selective of the facts.

Like they, they, they like to focus on specific things.

Very selective.

Right.

It’s the same thing with people just, you know, I don’t think people really use this criticism much anymore, but they did in the beginning.

Who?

Kevin just wants your money.

Kevin just wants your money.

I used to hear this all the, he’s all about the money.

He’s all about the money.

Really?

I’m all, I’m all about.

See that it’s so, they’re so selective with the facts.

I’m so about the money that I didn’t go make a bunch of content in the element or camp where there’s a gazillion, a Brazilian amount of users.

Right.

Uh, I don’t even know the incalculable numbers compared to the area I’m actually doing work in cares so much about the money that I chose the most niche tools.

Right.

The most niche tools that, by the way, don’t have affiliate programs.

This so much cares so much about the money that I promoted oxygen for free.

I promoted bricks for free.

They’re so selective with the facts and it’s just mind boggling, uh, how they never get past step one.

Like the critical thinking machine.

It’s like the, there’s two neurons and they’re doing a whole lot of work, but they just can’t make up the gap.

For the lack of neurons surrounding them.

Um, it’s just amazing.

Okay.

So, uh, let’s see.

Speaking of first looks, don’t know if you followed build Darius development last week, but things seem pretty promising.

Also has APIs, graph QL that are missing in bricks.

Uh, I was literally told by the build Darius team, don’t use it until our new UI is out and it’s, and it’s good to go.

So it’s on my list, but I, you know, I don’t, I, that’s all I can say.

It’s on my list to look at.

Okay.

Um, Okay.

Some questions about Google.

Uh, have you ditched GSC when it comes to listing sites on Google?

How have you ditched GSC when it comes to listing sites on Google?

Uh, I don’t, I think contrary to popular belief, like to get a website, um, listed on Google, uh, you don’t have to submit it in Google search console.

Like it’s, it, the sites are naturally found by Google’s crawling ability.

Uh, the minute you get backlinks or of any kind, like you, can you get it listed faster?

Probably.

Um, but it’s, it’s going to get listed.

Like you don’t, the, the amount of sites that actually go get registered through Google search console is minuscule in comparison to the amount of sites in Google search.

Uh, I think people tend to forget that sometimes you don’t need to use Google search console.

Um, let’s see.

How do you justify continue using X?

Many of the valid points brought up about Google.

Uh, legit question.

How do you justify continuing to use X given many of the valid points brought up about Google?

Uh, I stopped using X.

I stopped using X for a long time.

Uh, I, the, to me, the egregious part of, well, it wasn’t X.

It was, it was Twitter.

The egregious part was the, um, just abs, like it was literally, um, it was, it was, it was the ministry of truth.

Like, like, literally, if you look at it, like literally ban everybody, like left and right.

Um, it was not the, if you, like, if you care about like, you know, freedom to talk, like freedom to have ideas, to think for yourself, like Twitter is not the place for that.

Uh, clearly not the place for that.

So, uh, the only one, the only reason I went back to it was when it changed positions and they, their philosophy changed.

Right.

So it’s like, oh my God, it’s like, I can talk on here without getting people breathing down my neck, trying to ban my account left and right.

You know, so it’s like, it became a usable platform when it, when it became X.

I know a lot of people don’t like to hear that, but I mean, I, is that even disputable?

Like, is it, is it even disputable?

I don’t, I don’t even think it’s disputable.

Um, same thing with Facebook’s very similar.

Like I’m, you know, if it weren’t, I’ve left Facebook for the most, like, you know, I post whatever I post on Twitter.

I like put on Facebook just to like copy paste.

Um, but Facebook is limited to me using groups.

I don’t use it for anything else.

Like if I weren’t, wasn’t in professional groups that I need to be in, I would not be on Facebook.

So, cause another thing I just, the, the, I, I do not like them clamping down on people’s ability to think and speak and everything else.

Uh, I, and I don’t like the manipulation of the feed.

I don’t like, I don’t, I just, I don’t like the manipulation.

I don’t like the, uh, aversion to ideas and thinking and talking.

Um, it’s that simple.

It’s that simple.

Uh, let’s see.

What happened to dark background for the comment overlay?

I need to fix the dark background on here.

Uh, thank you for the CPT videos.

How could I use CPTs for pages?

Posts to posts look largely the same.

I’m trying to think, hold on.

What are you asking?

How could I use CPTs for pages?

Posts, the posts look largely the same.

I think I need clarification on that question.

I’m not exactly sure what you’re getting at.

So if you can clarify that, it would be fantastic.

Um, for Hey email in your family, do you have the Hey families or included in the business plan?

No, no, no.

I have Hey for families, all of our personal stuff.

And then I have Hey for domains for all of our, uh, business stuff.

Which we just consolidated to digital gravy.

So it’s not, I don’t, I didn’t put giri.co.

I didn’t put, I didn’t put all the domains there.

Everything’s being consolidated to digital gravy.

Can ACSS style Gutenberg blog content when used in a bricks template with the post content element?

Tom, Tom, absolutely.

Tom, Tom.

It’s the only tool that does this Tom, Tom.

It’s if you want to do that, Tom ACSS is the best solution for you.

We’re literally the only tool that gives you not just control over it, but real time visual control over it.

All of your heading spacing, paragraph spacing, block quote spacing.

Um, it’s mainly in terms of controlling all the spacing of those elements, which bricks does not give you any control over.

Uh, you would have, you literally have to write custom CSS if you’re not using automatic CSS.

So you have to understand how to do all the targeting.

You probably have to understand what, uh, owl spacing is or, uh, adjacent sibling spacing.

There’s actually a lot of, you know, it’s, it’s not the easiest concept to get that stuff right.

Uh, automatic CSS does it for you out of the box and it’s phenomenal because so many people struggle with that.

So many people struggle with that.

Um, but yeah, it gives you tremendous control.

Uh, list, list spacing, list indentation.

Indent, indentation, like child lists, indentation and list spacing, not just list spacing, but list item spacing.

So we have list spacing, separate list item spacing, indent spacing.

That’s for top level lists, nested lists, um, on and on and on.

We have something called flow spacing.

So if you put things in there that aren’t identifiable, like a random div or something like that, we space that out for you, which by the way, you have full control over the spacing amounts.

So yeah, it’s, um, the most control you could possibly have over rich content spacing is found in automatic CSS.

We got about six minutes and then we got to shut this down.

Uh, let’s do some rapid fire.

Can you share some of the favorite things you like about user maven?

Uh, UI, UX, um, automatic tracking of everything that you don’t have to, the best part of user maven, which is much, much like heap.

If you’ve ever heard of heap, um, is that it, it tracks everything for you in the sense that you don’t have to think about what you want to track ahead of time.

Like if you say, I want to know how many clicks are on this button on this landing page, right?

Well, in many analytics software, you have to think of that ahead of time and know you want to track that and then set it up to be tracked.

Which if you, let’s say set up analytics and then your client is like, uh, we really want to know what the conversion rate on that button right there is.

And you’re like, okay, well I can set that up for you, but we’re going to need to collect a bunch of data.

Well, in user maven, you can just go say, I want to know how many, what the click rate is on that button on that landing page.

And it can go back in time and collect that data for you, right?

Cause it’s monitoring everything at all times.

So that is the number one, uh, feature of user maven, but the UI is fantastic.

The general UX is fantastic.

The tracking, setting up funnels, just the ease of it.

It’s so, it’s so easy.

It’s so nice, but at the same time, it’s very powerful.

You can white label it.

Uh, believe it respects GDPR.

Uh, it’s got a lot going for it.

It’s got a lot going for it.

So, um, let’s see.

We don’t need to use minus one pixel and setting up custom breakpoints and bricks plus ACSS.

Do we, what breakpoints do you usually use?

Any custom ones?

Uh, you don’t need the one pixel offset.

That was a holdover from the oxygen days.

Cause oxygen does that incorrectly.

Um, what else did you ask?

What breakpoints do I usually use?

There’s nothing really wrong with the default bricks breakpoints.

Sometimes I add the XX, uh, the XXL breakpoint and the XS breakpoint, uh, depending on, depending on the project.

But not always, not always.

Okay.

Uh, let’s see.

Are we going to see any mega menu designs and frames?

I have the feeling you do not like them.

Mega menus are generally not great.

Um, they are, they overcomplicate the navigation.

Sometimes they can be done really well.

I do like, um, minimal mega menus.

So for example, like, um, see, even that, I think this is too, this is too complex.

Um, it would actually be better if it didn’t have the sidebar over here, but in this is an example of a better one, right?

This is, this is simpler.

Okay.

Uh, even something like this still, it’s a little bit, it’s a little bit much.

Um, it’s very easy to overdo it.

Now that’s not the reason we haven’t done them.

And we recently made a decision to do more of them.

Initially, we were going to wait until we develop our own menu system because I’m kind of, I personally, I personally boycott the bricks menu element.

I just don’t, I just don’t like it.

Um, it’s really all over the place.

It is, um, a rabbit hole.

It’s an absolute rabbit hole of an element.

Um, and you just find yourself clicking all over thousands of times, getting lost in the various panels.

It’s like, Oh my God, get me out of here.

I don’t want to live.

I don’t want to live in this world.

Um, so we were like, you know what?

We’ll build our own menu element.

Not even for bricks.

We’ll build it for any, any, any builder.

It’ll work in any builder.

Um, but it’s, that’s, that’s further down the road.

It’s going to, it’s going to take too much time.

So we’re like, all right, we’ll give people some mega menus.

We’ll, we’ll bite the bullet.

We’ll use the, the terrible bricks menu element and we’ll build some mega menus.

That’s kind of where we’re at right now.

So expect to see some in the near future, but we’re kind of doing it.

If I’m being honest, we’re kind of doing it against our will.

Like we, we don’t really, we don’t want to be doing that.

Uh, we would rather be doing it in a better system, but, uh, it is what it is.

I’m just trying to be transparent and answer your question.

Uh, is automatic CSS also available for breakdance?

What are the benefits?

Yes, absolutely.

It is, uh, available for breakdance.

You get all the benefits of ACSS.

Um, you just do, you have the downside of not really having the front and center class first workflow that you have in something like bricks.

Um, would I personally use breakdance?

No.

Uh, but you know, I, we felt like there’s, you know, we look at builders as like, does it meet minimum requirements?

Okay.

You can actually go, you can actually go here, uh, blog.

So we outlined the minimum requirements.

So if you go to minimum page builder requirements for ACSS integration, so just read this article.

It’s very informative.

Um, you know, there’s people that ask like element or divvy guys, it’s not even physically possible.

You know, um, what’s the other beaver, not even physically possible, not even physically possible.

So I, we look at certain things and it was breakdance was on the edge.

It was like, ah, okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It’s possible.

It’s not the best workflow, but we’ll do it.

We’ll do it.

And, um, it works very well.

It works very seamlessly in, in breakdance, but, um, it’s still not a builder I would personally use.

Okay.

What tools do you use for legal docs on website and cookie banner?

I use termageddon.

I use termageddon.

Um, I’m an affiliate for them, but you don’t even need to use my affiliate link.

Just go to term, just Google termageddon.

Uh, written by lawyers.

So that’s, that’s a plus.

Uh, it’s very, very, very detailed.

Does not have the best UX.

Uh, I was, I was kind of critical of their UX.

I pinged them.

I actually met them at a, uh, conference.

I think I met them at R3.

Um, I pinged them and said, Hey guys, I mean, can we bring this UX UI situation out of like, uh, 2008?

It would be fantastic.

And you know, they didn’t take their ball and go home.

Um, they did not close up shop.

They said, yeah, we, we, we’re with you.

We, uh, that’s top of our list right now.

Okay.

So, um, yeah, just fun fact.

Uh, but yeah, I would use them.

They’re there.

It’s fantastic.

It’s great.

It’s easy.

You can resell to clients.

So if clients don’t have their, their lawyer situation figured out, it’s like, dog, you need policies like, um, you know, upsell them termageddon.

Uh, let’s see.

Okay.

Tom, how can I design blog content from Gutenberg and bricks with the post content element?

We’re going to, we’re going to do that in the next, uh, video in this series, Tom.

So if you are subscribed to the channel, you are in the right place.

You are not going to miss it.

Um, I’m trying to wrap my head around how you structure the permalinks.

Okay.

Mano says wrapping his head around how you structure your permalinks with the blog slash post name logic.

Can you please explain?

Um, yeah, I’ve done this wrong on enough websites that I, you know, I’m tired of, like I’ve just made my decision.

Like if the website is going to have a blog or may have a blog, I use the blog extension.

Um, and so if we go into here settings permalinks, okay, we’ll leave Jack’s review here.

So I have the custom structure set to blog post name, right?

And this is so posts right here because posts are not treated like a CPT.

They’re just posts.

They’re not a custom post type.

And so with a custom post type, you can determine what the URL slug, what this part of the slug is going to be right.

What this part of the URL is going to be.

But with the normal posts, you can’t.

This is where you determine that.

Okay.

So the downside of this is that every custom post type you register tries to inherit this.

Why is this happening?

This happens because WordPress is a 2005 content management system and they abandoned the content management system for a straight decade while they worked on their little Gutenberg project.

And so they haven’t fixed things like this.

You like in 2024, you should be able to say, I want my posts to have the blog slug without anything else having the blog slug.

And you can’t do that in WordPress.

If you want the blog slug, everything except pages has the blog slug.

They strip blog from pages.

Pages by default will not have that blog slug.

So we go to about, um, there you go.

See, I didn’t do anything special to turn that off.

It just doesn’t do it by default.

This is like controlling your post slug.

Now the downside is you go try to create reviews or services.

It tried to make it blog services.

Nobody wants that.

Why would we want that?

Nobody wants that.

Um, WordPress is not installed in a blog directory, right?

So we want to turn that off.

So you have to manually turn that off.

Um, now, why do I want my post to be in slash blog?

Well, here’s one good reason.

Analytics is one good analytics, uh, is one good reason.

Um, website architect, general website architecture.

If you look at a spider map of a, of a domain, you’ll see like good organization or bad organization.

SEO people used to say all the time, a flat URL structure is the best structure.

Just no, no, no, no, nothing.

Like, so all services pages were just top level URLs.

All, um, uh, testimonials.

If you, if you were linking to testimonials, team members, okay.

All team member flat URLs.

So you’re just looking at the URL and there’s no, by looking at the URL, no semblance of architecture.

You can’t tell what lives under what, and that’s really awful from a UX standpoint.

It’s also really awful for crawlers trying to understand how content is related to other content.

I realized there was a point in time where you could probably game the system when the algorithm was weighted too heavily toward things like URL length and stuff like that, or URL.

Uh, people used to talk about link depth in this regard.

That’s not really a link depth issue.

Um, there’s just a, obviously SEO.

There’s a lot of bad information, uh, information floating around out there.

Um, to me, and I think if you asked people at Google and you looked at how crawlers crawl websites, it’s easier to make sense.

And from a user standpoint of how a website works and where I’m at when things have proper architecture.

So it’s helpful for me when I go to a URL to know I’m in a blog post just by looking at the URL.

And it’s helpful to the crawler to understand there’s a directory of blog posts and these things are all posts.

Okay.

And this is how you make sense of them.

And there’s these things over here that are obviously services.

And there’s things over here that are obviously team members.

But then just from a website management standpoint, when you want to answer analytics questions, how much traffic are we just getting from our blog articles?

Well, if all of your articles are under slash blog, do you know how easy it is to isolate the analytics?

Now, what if they’re not under slash blog?

They just all have random URLs.

Go get those analytics.

Okay.

I’ll wait.

We’ll all wait while you go collect those analytics.

Right.

There’s some workaround ways to do it, but like I should have a directory of all my blog posts.

Just like I have a directory of my team members.

It’s like I have a, and I’m saying directory in loose terms.

Right.

But in terms of the URL structure, compartmentalizing these things makes the domain architecture better and it makes the user experience better.

And it may, this is why we provide breadcrumbs.

The question people always have is on the website, where the hell am I at?

Right.

Well, the URL structure can be one of the ways you inform them of that if it’s a good URL structure.

So yeah, there’s just, there’s a lot of reasons why, why it’s important.

Let’s do one more question.

Uh, well actually this goes with that question.

Then we’ll answer one more real question.

How do you remove the blog base log from the default categories and authors?

Oh, that’s actually a good, okay.

We’ll explore that as part of the, as part of the thing.

I thought you were going to ask me from the CPTs.

Um, okay.

Even for ACS and classes that are currently a bad idea, it would no longer be a bad idea on bricks.

Components are released.

Don’t you think so?

Let’s see.

I’m trying to find, make sure we’re, we’re given a good question as the last question.

Uh, let’s see.

Lack of ability of GA says, let me just want to log.

Okay.

Hmm.

You forgot Grant’s question about bricks leadership that you had starred.

I think you’re right.

Let me go to favorites.

Okay.

Good, good, good.

We’ll end on this because I promised it and I try my best not to break.

This thing’s like going lower and lower and lower as I speak.

Um, okay.

Try not to break my promises.

What ensures bricks is longevity.

Let’s bring this up here.

How do you view their leadership?

Hmm.

Well, I, nothing.

I don’t think anything ensures bricks is longevity.

Um, nothing ensures the block editors longevity, by the way.

Uh, nothing ensures element or longevity.

Nothing ensures anything’s longevity.

We can, we can monitor how things are going.

We can pivot when we need to pivot.

We can make our own decisions.

Uh, hopefully making professional decisions and not emotional decisions.

So the first half of your question I think is unanswerable.

There’s, there’s no way to ensure anything in this industry.

Uh, you just have to go with the flow.

You have to be ready to pivot.

You don’t put all your eggs in one single basket.

Um, you know, we’re already doing that to a large degree with WordPress.

I have this conversation with web flow people all the time.

My gosh, you have everything in the web flow basket.

Everything, everything, including your hosting, including your entire businesses existence.

Because if they get a bug up their ass tomorrow that they don’t like you, they don’t like something you said, they don’t like something you did.

They could just delete your entire business gone in a flash.

Uh, that can’t happen on WordPress.

So we’re already diversifying in WordPress, right?

That’s why I’ve said like brick shouldn’t have a form builder inside.

I would much rather use WS form.

I like to diversify for one reason.

I like the experts in form systems to build the form systems.

You can’t be an expert in the builder and all the things the builder has to do.

And you’re miraculously the best person to build a form system.

Like the chances of that slim to none.

Okay.

So it’s better to me.

And I’ve, I’ve told people use WS form, quit trying to use the bricks form system.

It’s too limited.

It’s never going to be what it needs to be.

Okay.

And it shouldn’t, they shouldn’t even spend time on that.

They should recognize that’s not our wheelhouse.

Let’s let other, there are gazillion form systems out there, including WS form, which is fantastic.

Let’s let people use those.

That should have been the decision there.

Let’s put those resources into some other aspect of the builder.

Okay.

Um, so we’re already naturally like diversified way more than many other people are just by using WordPress and the tools that we happen to be using.

Okay.

Um, so that’s one aspect of it.

Now, the second half of your question, how do you view their leadership?

Uh, I wouldn’t say there’s a tremendous amount of it.

Um, this is, this has been one thing that I’ve been critical.

And again, I’m just, this is not an attack on it.

It’s just being, this is being honest.

This is being honest.

Okay.

Um, what would you see from leadership typically?

Well, you would see a lot of communication.

You would see a lot of, um, education.

You would see a lot of advocation.

Is that even a word?

Advocacy.

Advocacy for thoughts and ideas.

And, um, you would, you would see a, um, a commitment to the industry to, um, you know, furthering as many, as many, uh, people as possible and ideas as possible and, and, and thought leadership and trying to steer the direction that things are going in, especially if they’re not going in a great direction.

I mean, this is all, this all falls into the leadership bucket.

Right.

Um, and so, you know, Thomas has chosen to kind of be in the, in the shadows, right?

What else would you see in terms of leadership?

You, you would see, um, discussions with creators.

You, I, I, I extended an invite to Thomas to come on the stream multiple times.

Has Thomas been on the stream?

No.

Is that of my doing?

No.

Um, has Thomas been on many channels?

No.

I think he’s been on one that I’ve ever seen.

Okay.

Uh, leadership has a transparency component to it.

Leadership has a vision component to it.

What is the vision of bricks?

I don’t even know.

You guys ask me things about bricks.

I don’t know what to tell you.

I don’t have, they, uh, there’s not much interest in, in, um, in talking to me all that much.

They’re not, they don’t ask me things.

They don’t tell me things.

Uh, they don’t outline nobody.

I don’t think anybody really knows the vision of bricks.

We, I see the things when you see the things.

Now they’ve been very responsive to feedback that we’ve given.

I mean, bricks, bricks is, if we’re going to break it down, why is bricks as popular as it is?

Um, let’s go, if you check the timeline, let’s go check the timeline because bricks was non-existent.

Nobody knew about bricks.

Uh, not very long ago.

Right?

So we were very heavy in the oxygen community.

Oxygen was humming along.

Um, they had a big third party ecosystem.

They had a fantastic tool.

Albeit it, it needed to be rebuilt in a, in a more modern framework.

Um, and, and, and they could have absolutely rebuilt it.

Man.

Okay.

So they, the, so fly team made a decision to not rebuild oxygen, to build a different builder called breakdance.

If you’re not up to speed on exactly how all this played out, I need a drink too.

I’ve been, I’ve been talking too long.

This is the sign that you need to call it a day.

But I do think this is important.

So they made their decision.

They come out of nowhere at a left field.

Here’s a whole, here’s a whole brand new builder.

Um, that none of you asked for that.

None of you said you wanted.

Um, and you got to buy it because it’s different.

It’s not what you already paid for.

You get, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta pay for this new thing.

And then, well, you know, it was exactly sounded like that.

Oh, we got to, you know, their whole explanation of, we’re going to be around to, uh, continue developing oxygen and don’t worry.

You know, and what did I say?

Oh my God, did I take so much flack, so much heat.

Cause I came out essentially that week.

And I just told people guys, like, and again, this goes to critical thinking, being able to think beyond step one.

And I, and I said, guys, I mean, it’s just accept it now.

Oxygen, as you know, it is dead.

And there will be a day in the not too distant future where it literally is dead.

And shouldn’t be used in any, in any professional sense.

I got so much.

Oh my God, Kevin, you don’t know what you’re talking about.

Kevin, you just want to, you just want to see these tools die.

Kevin, you did, did, did, did, did.

I just got so much.

Well, where is it now?

What, what state are we in now?

Okay.

It’s just the ability to think a few steps ahead.

I mean, you just, you know, the puzzle, if the puzzle fits together, it’s not my fault for telling you what’s on it.

What, what, what, what picture did it make?

Okay.

Um, it’s not my fault.

So I was just reading the, I mean, I thought everybody could see it, but I, I mean, I guess not a lot of people did, but a lot of people didn’t.

A lot of people did.

I got a lot of, I got a lot of heat.

I got a lot of criticism for just saying what the obvious picture on the puzzle was as the pieces were fitting together.

Um, and so we’re in a situation where it’s, it’s the third party ecosystem is non-existent.

Hardly anybody that we know of uses it.

Um, very small percentage of ACSS users still, still use it.

Now, how does this relate to bricks?

Well, if you are bricks and you are essentially like, you know, there’s not a lot of oxygen like builders.

Oxygen was the web flow of WordPress.

If we want to, if we want to use that term.

Okay.

Bricks was the next closest thing to that, that had any like, you know, semblance of user base really.

And so when you are a tool like bricks and your competitor, your biggest competitor literally walks onto your front lawn and shoots itself in the face and falls to its knee, like on your front lawn, that’s kind of a, I guess a good day for you.

We could say.

Okay.

So a lot of people just immediately were like, fuck oxygen just shot itself in the head.

Where do we go now?

And people were like, Hey, there’s this thing called bricks.

It’s very similar.

Let’s go check that thing out.

Right.

Including me, including me.

So that’s, that’s when a lot of us went to bricks.

So bricks, that was benefit.

Number one benefit.

Number one is just, I mean, your compute, your, your competitor commits suicide on your front lawn.

That’s like, that’s a big, it’s a big plus in, in the like gaining traction and momentum.

Right.

And then let me, let me get out of this question too.

I like, I like to see the, let’s let the comment feed roll as we, as we go through this.

So the second thing was, and naturally there was third party ecosystem and creators that came that, or that came with that.

Okay.

And so we start creating content around, hey, I mean, if you need something to switch to, this is the thing to switch to.

Right.

And again, with no affiliate, no affiliate, anything, no, no, no, no credit.

No, nothing, no, nothing.

No, nothing.

And I had to sit there as the ACSS developer at the time and completely refactor the whole thing to work with bricks.

Okay.

So it was a lot of work for me before I could even really, you know, get fully on board with it.

But then we start creating content and content and content.

Nobody else is creating content on bricks.

No, but nobody else.

There’s no content on, hey, how do you, how do you even use this thing?

You know, what does the workflow look like?

No, no, nothing.

Creators did that.

Creators create.

And that’s necessary, by the way, for, for a tool to take off.

It can’t take off without education.

In this, in this space, a tool like that, this was part of quickly’s problem.

A tool like that can’t take off without education.

You’ve got to have, you either have to commit to doing the education or you have to enlist an army of creators.

Okay.

And because oxygen committed suicide on the front lawn of bricks, they naturally acquired a bunch of creators.

And then those creators go out and they do their thing and they create.

And then the, the, the, the buzz, the momentum, the just name recognition, all of that stuff naturally builds.

And, and, and to me, it’s a little bit like you would think if that happened to your tool, like there would be some sort of like appreciation to, for the creators, it would be some semblance of like, Hey, let me tell you what’s coming next.

Like the ACF, the top ACSS people, like I’m in direct contact with them and I’m telling them, Hey, here’s what’s coming next.

Hey, what’s not working for you?

Hey, Hey, Hey, I want their feedback.

I want their like ideas.

I want their, like, I’m talking constantly to, um, to our top users, to anybody who does content creation for us constantly.

Nobody asked me, nobody asked me a thing from, from bricks.

So again, we, we talk about leaders.

If we were going to be critical, these would be the things I’m critical of.

It’s not comfortable for me.

I’ll just tell you right now.

It’s not comfortable for me to advocate for a tool.

I don’t have many options.

Okay.

To advocate as strongly as I do for a tool when literally I’m in the dark, that it’s not really a comfortable position to be in.

I don’t know what other option I have, but at the current time, it’s not really a comfortable position to be in.

So, um, it’s awkward.

It’s awkward.

It’s awkward.

I think in most of the, most other situations, you would have insight into these things.

You would have more transparency into these.

You would have more participation.

You would have more communication.

I don’t know why those things don’t exist.

Okay.

Uh, but if I’m answering the question, honestly, that would be what I’m, what I’m critical of.

Um, and so, yeah, that’s it.

Okay.

Uh, I got to get out of here, but let’s, um, final thoughts.

Any final thoughts on, on today’s stream?

We covered a lot.

We talked about a lot.

Can’t make everybody happy.

We’ve already, um, you know, accepted this in life.

All, all I can do is just, here’s what’s rattling around in my brain.

Um, and because people are asking.

Hmm.

Okay.

Some good comments rolling in.

Can’t read them all.

A hundred percent agree on the forms thing professionally, but they will get slated by users for not considering forms.

All the other builders competing with them do buying another plugin for that weekend.

I think you, this is where you got to educate like users.

Plus you also have to show them the opportunities.

Guys, if they hadn’t built a form system, maybe we would have had components by now.

There’s only so many resources to go around this fucking back to top button that everybody wants.

Like, even if it took them 10 minutes, I want that 10 minutes spent on components, not on some useless shit.

So this is part of leadership, by the way, is telling people, no, we can’t afford to focus on that thing.

Or that thing is not that important in relation to all the other stuff we have to do to fulfill our mission.

You have to say that.

So I’m waiting for a page builder developer to say, no, forms is not our wheelhouse.

There’s a gazillion great forms plugins.

You don’t need us to build you a forms integration into this thing.

Use one of the many completely competent and capable, capable form systems.

That would be honesty from a developer.

Now, a developer could be, they could do exactly what you said and say, no, we got to build our own because we don’t want other page builders.

They have one and we don’t have one.

I don’t give a fuck if they have one.

I’ll literally tell people straight up.

Yeah, they have a form system, but they don’t have A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, all this shit that we have.

They don’t have that because they’re fucking focused on bullshit, right?

Nobody needs to be focused on that.

Elementor doesn’t need a form system.

Divi doesn’t need a form system.

And because they spent all the time on that, you don’t have all these other things that we have.

I just tell people that to their face because they have to know.

The problem is when page builder developers or really any plugin developer is playing defense.

They’re always chasing.

Oh, oh, they have that.

So we got to have it.

Oh my God, they have it.

So we got to have it.

You’re all, you’re playing defense, dog.

You’re not playing offense.

You’re not taking shots.

Okay.

You’re just playing catch up.

You’re chasing from behind.

Stop doing that.

Stop, start being a thought leader.

Start actually going in a direction that other people haven’t thought of yet.

That’s what you need to be doing.

Not copying the base level stuff that everybody else has already tried to do.

None of which, by the way, I wouldn’t go into Elementor and use their form system.

I wouldn’t use the form system in a page builder, which is another thing to be critical of Webflow.

I mean, you’re stuck with their fucking form system too.

That’s another thing.

When I know that’s not their wheelhouse.

So, man, you got to be willing to take a little bit of a stand as a product developer.

And that’s not the vision.

That’s not the vision.

That’s not going to get us to where we want to go.

That’s not what needs to be happening right now.

And, of course, some users are not going to like that.

Of course, some users are not going to like that.

But the vast majority are going to appreciate it.

And then they get the fruits of that thinking, which is, wow, we have a forward thinking tool that is doing things that nobody else is doing.

Okay?

All right.

I got to get out of here.

I love you guys.

I do appreciate the support.

For all the haters, the 14 thumbs downs, I do.

I love you guys as well.

And I thank you for being here.

So I’ll be back next week, Tuesday, 11 a.m., same time, same place.

And we’ll talk about some more controversial shit.

All right.

Peace.

Thank you.