Hello, hello, hello, everybody.
Say hi when you’re here.
We had a little bit of a technical difficulty just there.
I turned the camera on, the camera didn’t come on.
So I was like, well, all right.
And then I see the cord, the little power cord here was just dangling.
Don’t know what happened, but plug it in.
We’re good to go.
Crisis averted.
We’ve got Jason in the house.
Haroon, good to see you.
Calisthenics Ireland, Rob, John, Lynn, Mark Zemanski in the house, Maddie.
Good to see familiar faces.
Good to see numbers already looking absolutely fantastic.
I got to tell you before we get started today, well, first of all, this is probably going to be maybe a little bit shorter WDD Live, maybe around the hour 15 mark, somewhere in there.
It really depends.
I don’t know.
I never know until we really get into things.
You know what I’m saying?
But I got the absolute worst sleep of like the last decade last night.
Just absolutely atrocious.
Don’t want to like, I just want to erase it from memory and move on with my life.
But, you know, I, we got to see if my brain even functions at this point today.
Yeah, it was not good.
It was not good.
So we’re not off to a great start on this Tuesday, but we’re going to get through it.
We’re going to work our way through it.
Here’s the agenda.
We’re going to do a little post-mortem on the Dear WordPress video.
If you, hopefully you, I mean, a lot of people saw it.
A lot of people saw the Dear WordPress video.
We’ll talk about some of the general feedback on it.
You know, maybe, maybe a little bit more about why, why these things are important to talk about, especially as we lead up to Etch.
I think, you know, there’s a very, very small, most people get it, but there’s a very small percentage of people who are confused.
They don’t know, they don’t know why we’re talking about these things, which is okay.
I mean, we can, we can try to clear it up for them.
We’ll talk about the WordPress creators call that I participated in last week and what I discovered during that call.
And that’s going to segue naturally into us talking about the official philosophy of WordPress, which this, it blew my mind.
It also baffled my mind.
It, it’s, we got to talk about it.
We got to, it kind of alludes to the challenges that we are facing.
Like it, it is right there written, not in stone, but pretty close.
And, and we’ll get there.
We’ll talk about it.
And then if we have time, open topics, Q and A, whatever you guys want to do.
Okay.
All right.
Are we, are we good with audio before we get going?
Are we good with video?
Are there any other technical difficulties that I have to address on two hours of sleep?
Or are we good to go?
Let me know.
I do see a couple of questions popping into the chat.
One of them at least does not have the hashtag.
So that’s going to get lost.
You’re, you’re welcome to ask questions.
But use hashtag Q or hashtag question to make sure that your question gets found.
Everybody is saying that the audio video are good.
So we are just going to get to it.
Okay.
So dear WordPress, put out the video.
And the general reception, let me, let me, I’m going to just check the stats on it real quick.
Let me go to, let me go to YouTube right quick.
I know you guys can’t see what I’m doing, but it’s okay.
And there’s actually multiple windows here.
I got to get through.
Okay.
So let’s go ahead and take a look at what our stats are looking like on dear WordPress.
Where are we at?
All right.
This is actually quite interesting.
So we, we broke the 10,000 views mark, which I think is, is good.
You know, it’s, that’s, that doesn’t happen too often, especially in this timeframe.
So that’s good. 10,000, 10,000 views, 266 comments.
And then the, I only get the likes versus dislikes ratio on, on, on YouTube.
And I always find this to be very interesting.
So 96% likes 90, so only 4% dislikes.
That is actually my second lowest approval rating.
If you want to call it an approval rating of some sort, second lowest.
Now I told somebody the other day, I was like, you know, if your second lowest approval rating is 96%, you’re doing fairly well, especially given the, I don’t know, the nature of these live streams.
You could say, uh, there’s a lot of room for people to, uh, disapprove of, of things, but I mean, we’re still sitting at 96% approval rating.
Um, I can’t remember which one, which one was number one.
Uh, oh, there it is.
Okay.
It’s the, do you guys remember?
Remember the, I tried building a layout with the WordPress block editor and it didn’t go well video.
That one has the record for the lowest approval rating, uh, on my channel.
And that one was 95.8%.
So just slightly, slightly worse, slightly less approval.
Um, yeah.
So I don’t know.
I, I still think we’re doing fairly well there.
Uh, but anyway, that dear WordPress video, very, very, very important.
And, um, it’s, it’s, it’s, I don’t know.
Do you guys, do you guys want to talk about why, like why, like people, some it’s frustrating because some people are like, they like dismiss it as, is like marketing or something.
And it’s, we’ve talked about this before.
And, uh, I don’t even know if we should get into it on a, as a tangent or whatnot, but I laid out like very real problems and five things that need to happen inside of WordPress.
And I think the, at least the first three or, and maybe probably four are fairly universally agreed on that, that like need to happen.
And I’ve, I’ve continually said that etch is not a, it’s not the sole focus of this campaign.
Like the etch is part of a larger mission that we have inside of WordPress.
And dear WordPress speaks to that overall mission.
It’s not even like an etch focused video.
That’s not what the design was.
The design is we have a mission.
We are laying the groundwork of the foundation and the context for that mission inside of WordPress.
And etch just fits into that mission.
And, and that’s why you see the dear WordPress video.
And so we have to create that foundation and that context.
And we’re, we’re essentially creating a movement toward a much better WordPress, a much better WordPress.
And etch is a piece of that, but it’s not the entire thing.
And so what I, what I would ask people to do is literally like, stop, stop like looking at it as, oh, what’s the angle or what’s the trick or what’s the, it’s not, it’s look at the actual content.
That’s the content is there for a reason.
Like digest the actual content, decide if you agree with or don’t agree with the actual content, and then just keep tuning in.
Like, that’s it.
That’s it.
It’s not a game.
It’s not, it’s not for show.
It’s not, it’s, it is that the mission is real.
That content is important.
We have to talk about these things because we have to, we have to change some things.
Things have to change legitimately, just like the video says.
So I don’t know.
I guess that’s all I’ll say about that.
Overall though, I was happy with how the video was received.
I was happy with, if you go read the comments, I got a bunch of emails, some of them troubling.
Like some people are like, man, I wish you had, you know, come out with this kind of like content and mission like a year and a half ago.
Cause that’s when I left WordPress.
Like I’m gone.
I’m already out.
Like I’m, I still see the content, but I’m not even a WordPress user anymore.
That’s a little bit troubling, you know, like, and that’s unfortunate.
That’s super unfortunate.
I mean, that’s going to happen.
It’s natural.
That’s going to happen.
But yeah, it’s, it’s people in like tons of agreement and essentially like, yes, yes, let’s, let’s do this.
And they, I think they do recognize that for too long, there’s been a bit of an echo chamber problem in inside of WordPress.
And anybody that’s kind of had some criticism has kind of been like, oh, well, you know, maybe, maybe we should do it.
Maybe we should consider doing it.
Like, and it’s, we need more leadership than that.
We need more, we got to stop beating around the bush and begging and all this other, like, we actually just have to show up in numbers and be like, this, this needs to happen.
And it needs to happen like relatively fast.
Okay.
They’re going, yeah.
So somebody says, where are people going?
Yeah.
It’s, you know, it’s a bunch of different places.
It’s not, it’s not one place.
Like, I can’t be like, well, they’re all going to Webflow or they’re all going over here.
Like they’re all spread out.
They’re just, they’re just choosing different, different platforms to go with.
Um, okay.
So that was the dear WordPress postmortem.
I don’t know that there’s much more to say beyond that other than just, I want to drive the point home that the mission that we’re on is absolutely important.
It is essential and it is bigger than etch.
And so I really want you to pay attention to the content of the mission.
Uh, and etch is just a piece of that.
And etch is going along for the ride, but the mission is very, very, very important.
It is essential to the, uh, like I said, in the video, the continued domination of, of WordPress.
Like, um, you know, do we, we have, I truly think right now we’re looking at, okay, next 10 years, by the way, in, in the etch video, I’m going to go through the eras of WordPress.
I don’t think a lot of people realize that there are distinct eras of WordPress starting all the way back in 2003, which I’ve been a part of every single era in WordPress.
Like if you came in 2015, you probably don’t understand.
Like you weren’t here for the first era of WordPress.
You might not have been here for the second era of WordPress.
They’re actually quite distinct.
Like the WordPress experience has changed dramatically from era to era.
And each era is almost exactly five to six years.
Okay.
So like, it’s weird how the, the timelines happened this way, but it’s like a very clean partition of eras.
There’s three distinct eras and we’re about to enter era four.
Actually etch is what establishes era four in WordPress.
But this era is going to be marked by, cause some other things need to happen.
It’s not just etch.
Can’t just come in and just completely save the day.
Like there’s some other things that have to happen.
And that’s why the mission guys is important.
Okay.
That’s why the content of the mission, the mission focused content is actually important.
You have to pay attention to it and decide whether you’re part of the mission or not.
Very, very important.
Because we’re looking at the next five, really, I think five to 10 years at this point.
And we have the ability to either make this next five to 10 years amazing and absolutely dominate.
Or the next five to 10 years could just be kind of dark and not fun and not fantastic.
And like, that’s kind of where we’re at right now.
So if things change, like I mentioned in the, in, in the video, I think we’re in for a really awesome ride.
If things don’t change, if we can’t, if we can’t get WordPress leadership to do some of the things that I mentioned in that video, it’s going to be a little bit tougher road.
Uh, so yes.
All right, let’s move on.
Next thing.
Creator call.
This was the first thing I, first creator call I was on.
I don’t, I don’t think they’ve been doing it very long.
Maybe there’s been one other one.
I don’t know.
Mark’s Mark’s in the chat.
He knows more about it than I do.
He’s the one that, um, you know, told me about it, that it was happening, which is crazy in itself to me.
Um, you know, it’s like, you might, you might want to reach out and let your boy know, you know what I’m saying?
Like, you know, automatic.
Um, but anyway, a different creator, you know, let me know.
And which is fantastic.
That’s good.
It’s nice.
Um, and so I got on the call and I didn’t know what to expect.
You know, I basically what we found out, what is revealed.
And, and I’ve been thinking about this for some time now.
I’ve been thinking, you know, uh, and one of the things actually, there’s so many segues.
One of the things in the dear WordPress video that I talked about was WordPress doubling down on the quality of creators, the quality of content, the quality of education, the quality of just general ecosystem videos, content, blog, blog posts, like everything that’s helpful.
Everything that helps market WordPress, helps teach WordPress, helps get new people into WordPress, helps people feel comfortable in WordPress.
We’re losing that game right now.
We are losing that game to the framer community, to the Figma community, to, and I know Figma is not a competing tool with WordPress, but I’m just saying they’re there.
Those communities are kind of setting the standard web flow.
Creators are, are top tier.
They’re also happen to be most of them top tier designers.
Okay.
So we’re losing in that regard.
And I think WordPress realizes this was my theory going into this.
I think WordPress realizes that we’re losing and automatic wants to start to try to do something about that.
You see the moves that they’ve been making as of late, you know, that kind of allude to this, bringing Jamie on board and then organizing these creator calls.
And essentially, I think they know they’re losing, but I’m not sure they know how to not lose.
Right.
Okay.
So that’s a very clear distinction.
They, I, it’s like, let’s say, I know I’m losing, but I’m not really sure how to win.
And so they’re, they’re bringing in people and saying, ah, you know, what ideas do we have?
What can we do to stop losing here?
I think that’s what these creator calls maybe are focused on, but they’re also kind of like, how can maybe, how can the tool get better or what areas of the tool can we focus on in our content?
Or what needs to happen?
Just what needs to happen for us to stop losing essentially, which I think is a really good conversation to start.
And I’m, I do really appreciate their effort in doing this.
And it’s led by Anne McCarthy.
And, um, you know, I haven’t gotten a chance to spend a lot of time with Anne.
I will at a word camp us, but you know, it’s, um, it’s a good thing overall.
If, if, if this is the big if, and I’m aware of all these things.
Okay.
There’s many different possibilities just because there’s creator calls and they’re open to, uh, advice, open to feedback, open to, okay.
Like you could say these things, but it could be, it could be, I don’t know.
I’m not saying that this is the case.
I’m just saying it could be, I don’t know yet.
They have to show me until I see, until I see some movement, until I see something actually happening.
You know, could it be a situation where it’s like, Hey, you know, let’s get some creators together.
And it’s kind of like, this is what I hope it’s not.
I hope it’s not like a WordPress creator therapy session where it’s like, Hey, come and vent, come in.
We’ll just sit here and listen to you vent and we’ll rub your back.
And, you know, we’ll talk in a very soft voice and we’ll just really let you know that we understand where you’re coming from.
And then as soon as the stream is off, you know, behind the scenes, it’s like, none of that shit’s going to happen.
You know, I don’t know.
I don’t know.
Um, I hope that’s not the case.
I like, I hope when they’re saying, Hey, we want to organize these calls.
We want to get ideas.
We want to implement changes.
We want to stop losing.
I hope that’s like legit.
I hope that they are.
I hope things are going to actually happen, you know, and it’s not just talk.
Right.
Okay.
Anyway, we’re on the call.
And, and by the way, this is all the calls, a hundred percent public.
You can go watch the recording.
So I’m not revealing anything like private on the call or anything like that.
Uh, so I, I get on the call and I’m like, you know what?
I’m going to most, mostly what I’m going to do is, uh, is listen.
Um, and so, you know, cause I’m, I’m a big fan.
I’m like, first of all, you guys know, I’m not, I’m mostly an intro introvert.
Um, and naturally my natural personality is just read rooms.
Just read rooms, read rooms, read rooms.
Now, when, once I felt like the room is red, uh, then I can, I, I can start doing things.
Right.
But I got, I just, I start by room reading and then I will, uh, try to identify like, all right, what’s the most maybe impactful thing that, that we can focus on.
And so I decided to experiment a little bit, a little, give a little bit of pushback on, on, okay, let me bring up a frustration of mine and, and my community, by the way, they’re not here, but you know, I feel like I know what their frustrations are also.
So let me bring up some of these topics and see what people have to say about it.
And you can watch the video.
I mean, I brought, I brought up the fact that, uh, I, I don’t think that, um, WordPress really should identify as a blogging platform anymore.
Primarily like people are using it for way more than that.
I brought up the fact that my community that isn’t really all that interested in blogging from the standpoint of like building a actual blog site.
Right.
Um, they do blogging, but that’s part of a bigger website.
Right.
Uh, and so if I was just going to create blog kind of content, like nobody that wouldn’t resonate with anybody in my community, that’s not, they want to know how to build marketing sites and marketing engines for businesses that are of actual consequence.
And, you know, they’re not interested in posting their, their, their latest recipe or anything like that.
Um, so if they’re going to do blogging, it’s typically going to be content marketing, SEO focus, that kind of stuff.
Right.
So I, I just brought up some of these challenges and I also brought up the fact that the block editor doesn’t really serve us at all in its current form.
Like we can’t, none of us really enjoy, uh, trying to page build in the block editor or anything like that.
And when all of the updates are focused on the block editor and all of the content is focused on the block editor and all of the discussions are focused on the block editor, we do start to kind of feel like we’re not being listened to, like we’re not being considered, like we’re not being heard.
And so I brought up some of these things on the call and it was a little bit of like, okay, yeah, well, you know, we, we see, you know, we really see where you’re coming from.
And, but then, you know, I, it would just, I don’t know.
You can go watch, see if the response is satisfactory to you.
Right.
Um, and then, but then this is the biggest part of it.
This is the biggest part of it that, that I think Mark actually brought, no, somebody, somebody mentioned one of the, I can’t remember, I can’t remember his name right now.
My I’m on two hours of sleep.
I’m doing my best.
Okay.
Uh, they brought up the WordPress philosophy page.
Maybe it was Anne.
I don’t even remember.
Maybe it was Anne brought up the WordPress philosophy page, which I think I’ve looked at maybe once in the existence of my, my existence in WordPress, but not recently.
And, uh, so I actually pulled it up.
I pulled it up and I started reading it and it became troubling very, very, very quickly.
And I actually want to bring it up and go through it with you guys.
It’s not very long, uh, but it does really, really highlight.
I think it just writes the problems right there.
Like it just publishes the problems that we’re facing.
Uh, so here’s where we’re going to, let’s see, let’s, let’s go.
I’ll, I’ll screen share this.
Let me get to it first.
So we’re going to do WordPress philosophy.
Okay.
Uh, I’ve got it pulled up.
Let me get it zoomed in and let’s go ahead and share screen.
Okay.
Let’s get back to the correct software and Oh, I can just do it on here.
Dude, this two hours of sleep thing is not working out.
All right.
Here we go.
Philosophy.
All right.
Out, uh, has, first of all, in the, in the chat, let me know, have you ever read this page?
Just say yes or no.
Um, like prior to like this week, maybe you, maybe you saw it mentioned, but like prior to this week, was this mentioned or have you seen this?
Have you read it?
Did you even know it existed?
Um, okay.
We got some nose coming in.
Okay.
All right.
Yeah.
A bunch of nose.
There’s a couple of yeses in there.
Justin says, ha ha ha ha ha.
No.
Okay.
I don’t, I don’t know.
Justin.
Uh, all right.
Fantastic.
Oh yeah.
There’s just a lot of nopes, a lot of nopes.
All right.
Um, so let’s just, let’s just go through this together.
Out of the box.
Great software should work with little configuration and setup.
Okay.
I’m sorry.
Uh, we have to pause.
We can’t get past sentence number one.
And I, and I’ve alluded to this many, many, many times.
Actually not alluded.
Like I’ve directly said it.
I mean, WordPress is a platform that requires configuration and setup.
I mean, go watch my blueprint video.
How, how long and detailed is that blueprint video?
Now people are going to say, well, that’s not WordPress.
That’s the, all the tools you added to WordPress.
And I’m like, well, I mean, because I had to, cause you have to, you’re not going to do this stuff with core.
Okay.
So you’re going to have to add tools.
And the minute you start adding tools, you’re in settings panels.
And so you’re doing lots of setup, by the way, just even coming to the conclusion of what your tools should be, what your stack should be.
We know how many decisions are involved in that.
We know how much consideration weighing pros and cons, watching other creators and understanding how other people are doing their work.
This is not great software should work with little configuration and setup.
WordPress is a wild, wild West situation.
Where you are forced to go through hundreds of plugin options, hundreds of theme options, all with different settings, all with different configurations.
Okay.
So how do you reconcile all of that with the first sentence of the philosophy page that says, great software should work with little configuration and setup.
I don’t know.
I don’t know how you reconcile that.
WordPress is designed to get you up and running and fully functional in no longer than five minutes.
For what?
Fully functional for what?
What am I going to do after that five minutes of setup with WordPress?
What?
What?
I don’t even know that I can get a hosting account and then spin up the one click install and then do anything with the 2024 theme.
In fact, I don’t know.
What?
What are we?
I don’t.
Are you?
Are you sure?
Is that?
Is that the goal?
Is that what, is that the reality of the, I don’t know.
That doesn’t seem to jive with, with my experience anyway.
You shouldn’t have to battle to use the standard functionality of WordPress.
Hmm.
Ah, feels like quite a battle.
Uh, honestly, it’s a lot of it.
A lot of it feels like quite the battle.
Uh, this is a rough first time.
It’s a rough start.
This is a, we are every sentence of the first paragraph is a little, is a little rough.
Okay.
We work hard to make sure that every release is in keeping with this philosophy.
We ask for as few technical details as possible during the setup process, as well as providing full explanations of anything that we do ask.
Um, okay.
I, I don’t, WordPress to me doesn’t even ask anything.
It’s, uh, when you get into WordPress, you’re dumped into WP admin.
I mean, we know there’s no onboarding process.
So I don’t even know what they’re considering is what they’re asking you.
You are dumped into a dashboard.
Um, that dashboard is littered with irrelevant objects, um, that I always hide.
That’s like the first thing I always do.
Let’s hide all the irrelevant things on my dashboard.
And then it’s like, where do you want to go from here?
It’s a, like, uh, it’s a create your own journey novel, right?
It’s, do I want to go plugins?
Do I want to go themes?
Do I want to go to pages?
Do I want to somehow figure out how to create custom post types?
Because I can’t even do that natively.
I can’t, I mean, do you guys see what this is like the epitome of the philosophy doesn’t really align with the actual software that it’s supposed to align with.
Let’s keep going.
Design for the majority.
Many end users of WordPress are non-technically minded.
They don’t know what Ajax is, nor do they care about which version of PHP they are using.
The average WordPress user simply wants to be able to write without problems or interruption.
That one got me.
That one, I just, my whole brain paused.
Like, it was like, hmm, right?
Right?
Hmm.
Okay.
I see what’s going on here.
Now, when I immediately, that’s my, my brain zoomed in on that word.
Right.
Right.
Okay.
And I believe it was Mark.
Again, I don’t remember exactly what, what the record is here, but you can go, you can go watch.
I think Mark said, but I was, I was already thinking it.
I’m glad he asked it.
If he didn’t ask it, I was going to ask it.
I think we were all thinking it maybe on the stream secretly.
We were all thinking it.
So Mark said, when, when was the last time this page was edited?
I think that’s a great question.
I think that’s a great question.
Uh, cause we know a lot has changed.
Uh, cause we know a lot has changed and I already talked about the three distinct eras of WordPress that we’ve gone through.
And so if this was written for like arrow one or arrow two and hasn’t been updated for arrow three or any vision going forward, that seems to me like a fundamental failure of the pro of product philosophy, which obviously it goes back to leadership.
Right.
Um, which I’ve, I’ve talked about, like, I, I, I, I believe I’m not trying to throw anybody under the butt.
I’m just telling the facts of the situation.
I think there’s a leadership problem.
Okay.
Um, so the answer was, I believe the timestamp inspecting the page was 2012.
Uh, so if you don’t know, 2012 was the start of the second era of WordPress.
So we had closed out arrow one in, in like 2010 and 2011 was the start of the second era.
Now, by the way, I, this is probably, if I had to guess the same sentence from arrow one, because that aligns with arrow one philosophy in arrow one.
WordPress was a blogging platform, strict blogging platform.
There was not much page building, site building, anything like that to speak of.
It was a hundred percent, a blogging platform that philosophy in arrow one would have made a tremendous amount of sense.
In 2011, we entered era two of WordPress, where we actually left the blogging aspect of WordPress behind, where we started WordPress started to branch out to accommodate all kinds of websites, right?
That is era two.
This was updated in era two, but they didn’t remove the arrow one language and they didn’t recognize apparently that they were entering a second era, a new era of WordPress.
And the philosophy was not updated accordingly.
But here we sit in era at the end.
This is the end of era three, heading into era four.
And the official philosophy page still has arrow one philosophy on it.
That’s a problem, right?
What this means is the third party developers in WordPress are actually leadership.
The third party developers in WordPress are actually determining the vision of where WordPress is going to go, the kinds of users it’s going to attract and cater to.
That has been handled and driven by third party developers.
Okay, well, you could think about that however you would like.
All right.
These are the users that we designed the software for.
See, that’s a problem.
If you’re designing software in 2024, era four, for era one users, that’s a big problem.
There’s a huge disconnect there.
Ultimately, the ones who are going to spend the most time using it for what it was built for.
Okay.
Guys, it gets a little worse.
It gets a little, if you didn’t think it could get worse, it gets a little worse.
Decisions, not options.
This kills me.
This is what I’ve been ranting about for years.
Years.
And it’s right here.
It’s just, the whole problem is right here.
Decisions, not options.
When making decisions, these are the users we consider first.
A great example of this consideration is software options.
Every time you give a user an option, you are asking them to make a decision.
When a user doesn’t care or understand the option, this ultimately leads to frustration.
As developers, we sometimes feel that providing options for everything is a good thing.
You can never have too many choices, right?
Ultimately, these choices end up being technical ones.
Choices that the average end user has no interest in.
It’s our duty as developers to make smart design decisions to avoid putting the weight of technical choices on our end users.
How does that reconcile with the current experience of WordPress?
As I’ve talked about.
One of my biggest complaints about WordPress is the inability to onboard new users.
To take the upcoming generation and get them involved in WordPress.
To take Webflow people and get them involved in WordPress.
To take Framer people and get them involved in WordPress.
You want to win the game.
You can’t make it insanely difficult for all of these different communities to come in and start using your tool and your software.
And the philosophy acknowledges right here.
They can’t have too many choices.
They can’t have the weight of technical choices.
That says it right there.
The weight.
Yes.
The weight of technical choices.
It’s heavy.
It’s heavy.
But what we’re looking at is an ecosystem with no onboarding.
And literally every step of using WordPress has the weight of technical choices behind it.
Going back to what theme am I going to choose?
The marrying of theme architecture and design layout.
It has to end.
That has to end.
This doesn’t make any sense anymore.
When they came out with the 2024 theme.
I immediately.
You know what the first question I asked?
And everybody looked at me like I was a fucking idiot.
And I’m like, am I the idiot?
Am I the moron?
I don’t know.
But I was like, okay.
They came out with 2024.
If you’re not aware, 2024, I believe, is the first official FSE-ready block theme.
Like this is the future of WordPress.
Okay.
This is their era.
It’s still era three, really.
But it’s era three thinking.
But that was like their FSE to them is their era four.
That’s not my era four.
But that’s their era four.
What they would call their era four.
But that’s like the first official like FSE block theme thing.
The future of WordPress.
And so immediately I was like, so is there going to be a 2025?
Because think about this.
Like, and this is crazy.
And we talked about this.
Actually, this came up on the stream.
Like if you switch out themes just to get like, oh, I want my website to look that way.
Like that theme does.
Or I want it to have those block options that that theme does.
Well, you’re shit out of luck, my friend.
You can’t just be willy nilly swapping themes.
What you think this is?
You think it’s a flexible platform?
Like you think this was, it has actual, you know, sensical architecture.
See in Webflow and Wix and Squarespace.
If you want your website to look like that thing over there, you could just switch to it.
Right?
Because it’s all the same underlying architecture.
But theme land and WordPress, the architecture and the design are married together.
And so you’re not just a new user is not just choosing how they want their website to look.
They are automatically forced to make decisions about the technical architecture underneath it.
And they don’t know how to do that.
They don’t know how to make those decisions.
So right away and just choosing a theme, you’ve already put the weight of technical choices on the end user as the philosophy says you don’t want to do.
But then look at 2024.
It’s like, why would there be a need for 2025?
If you have theme.json and you have the block editor and you have patterns and you have all this stuff that should technically just live between any, like, we don’t need more themes.
We don’t need more architecture opinions.
What we need is a universal architecture.
And then people build on top of that universal architecture.
That’s what happens in Webflow.
That’s what happens in Squarespace and in Wix.
But WordPress doesn’t behave like that.
And that alone, that decision puts the technical weight on the user automatically from moment one inside of WordPress.
Right?
So now you’ve chosen your theme or whatever.
Maybe you don’t even want a theme.
Because there’s other camps, by the way.
And this is what somebody has to weigh and understand.
Because if you take a new user and they’re like, what path should I go down?
Oh, you can go classic themes.
You can go block themes.
You can go FSE block themes.
You can go no block themes.
No themes.
Just go over here.
There’s things called page builders.
You can use one of those.
Right?
So that may be an option as well.
That’s something that they have to consider.
And then it’s not just, oh, there’s one official page builder.
There’s like, I don’t know, dozens.
Right?
And do they all work?
No.
No.
They all work very differently.
Right?
So that, if you want to talk about the weight of decision making, it doesn’t get any heavier.
It does not get any heavier than that.
Okay.
So, choices, weight, technical stuff.
This is completely antithetical to the actual philosophy page that we’re looking at right here.
It’s something I’ve been ranting about for years and years and years.
It’s, it’s, it, I don’t know how you have a philosophy page like this, but then the end result is what we’re actually experiencing in the tool.
Okay.
Clean, lean, and mean.
The core of WordPress will always provide a solid array of basic features.
It is designed to be lean and fast and will always stay that way.
We are constantly asked, when will X feature be built?
Or why isn’t X plugin integrated into the core?
The rule of thumb is that the core should provide features.
The 80% or more of end users will actually appreciate and use.
If the next version of WordPress comes with a feature that the majority of users immediately want to turn off or think they’ll never use, then we’ve blown it.
If we stick to the 80% principle, then this should never happen.
Let’s highlight.
There we go.
Read that again to yourself.
Read that again to yourself.
I’ll read it to you.
How about this?
I’ll read it to you again.
It’s so important.
It’s so, this is, um, man, this just strikes right at the core.
The rule of thumb is that a core, the, the, the core should provide features that 80% or more of end users will actually appreciate and use.
If the next version of WordPress comes with a feature that the majority of users immediately want to turn off or think they’ll never use, then we’ve blown it.
This would be a pertinent time to remind you that the block editor, the core native editor of WordPress is not used by more than 50%, not even 80%.
It’s not more than 50% of users.
Are you, they opt out of it in record numbers.
They’re opting out of it.
Um, so we talk about things like custom fields and custom post types.
And they’re like, nah, nah, nah.
You can’t have that.
No, you can’t have those.
Uh, why can’t we have them?
Well, you know, uh, because bloggers don’t need those things.
I like, ah, gosh, here we go.
Here we go with the arrow one, the arrow one thinking again, right?
Uh, what about all the people that aren’t blogging?
I, uh, we kind of need those things.
They’re very important.
We use them on every single website.
Uh, in fact, I think there’s a lot more of us than there are of like pure bloggers these days because we’re in a different era of WordPress.
And it’d be nice if we had, no, now you can’t have those things.
Well, but what we will give you, what, what we will give you is a native editor that you didn’t ask for and that, you know, most people want to opt out of, uh, and that’s perfectly fine.
That right there, we feel aligns with our core philosophy.
Uh, I don’t, it doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it?
So yeah, we can’t, we can’t have things that seem to make sense, but you know, we’re force fed things that are not making a whole lot of sense.
Uh, now I do, I do, I want to make this clear.
I do think the block editor, um, has a very important role in WordPress.
It’s just not the role that they’re peddling in WordPress.
Okay.
Uh, but we’ll get there.
We’ll get there.
All right.
We’re able to do this because we have a very capable theme and plugin system.
Okay.
We have a very capable theme and plugin system, which is a direct violation of this paragraph right here, by the way.
Um, which I, I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with the theme and plugin system or anything like that.
I, that’s not the argument that I’m making.
I’m making the argument that the philosophy doesn’t jive with the reality of WordPress.
And that’s what I’ve said needs to be redefined.
We need to, we need to be more self-aware.
I think that if WordPress lacks anything, it is self-awareness, self-awareness of the technical nature of the platform, self-awareness of the amount of decisions users actually have to make, uh, and the options they have to weigh self-awareness of the learning curve that is involved in using WordPress versus other platforms.
These are things that we’re not appear to not currently be aware of.
Okay.
Uh, thank you for the thumbs down, by the way.
That’s fantastic.
Thank you for all the support.
I, I like the ups.
I like the downs.
I like it all.
Okay.
Um, different people have different needs and having, uh, the sheer number of quality WordPress plugins, sheer number of quality WordPress plugins and themes allows users to customize their installations to their taste. not without tremendous amount of setup, not without tremendous amount of technical choices, not without, not without discarding everything else you just said prior to this is the problem is the problem.
That’s see, that’s a self-awareness issue right there.
Right.
Um, okay.
They are correct that different people have different needs.
It’s a hundred percent correct.
Uh, that should allow users to find the remaining 20% and make all WordPress features, those that they appreciate and use.
If you’re, if, if they’re under the assumption, and this is maybe true in era one, I don’t know, but in 2024, if they think that our plugins and our stack is to make up for 20% of cores, missing features, 20% my stack is like 90% of WordPress, dude.
It’s like a battle of the thumbs ups and thumbs downs right now.
Oh my God.
Okay.
It’s like every time a thumbs down happens, like people murder the thumbs up button.
I like it.
All right.
Um, what percentage would you say your stack is like the functionality of WordPress comes from, uh, plugins, right?
Let me know in the comments, like, do you think it’s 20% of the functionality or do you feel like what, what percentage do you feel like it, it might be?
Um, okay.
Striving for simplicity.
We’re never done with simplicity.
We want to make WordPress easier to use with every single release.
We’ve got a good track record of this.
If you don’t believe us, then just take a look back at some older versions of WordPress.
In the past releases, we’ve taken major steps to improve ease of use and ultimately make things simpler to understand simpler again, simpler for who, right?
Simpler for who, um, I, there’s not, it’s not, I wouldn’t say it’s super simple.
I wouldn’t say the block.
I wouldn’t say FSC, the block editor, three different UIs.
And this is like a, this is our march towards simplicity.
I don’t know.
Uh, one great example of this is core software updates.
Updating used to be painful manual tasks.
It was too tricky for a lot of our UIs.
See, this is like, man, this, can we just get rid of this now?
This was era one.
This is era one content.
Why is era one content existing on the official philosophy page in era four?
Uh, we decided to focus on this and simplify it down to a single click.
Anyone word presence is like, okay, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
We love to challenge ourselves.
Okay, great, great, great, great, great.
Deadlines are not arbitrary.
Deadlines are not arbitrary.
They’re a promise we make to ourselves and our users that help us rein in endless possibilities of things that can be part of every release.
Aspire to release three major versions a year.
Okay, this is fine.
Whatever.
Good deadlines almost always make you trim something from a release.
Great.
Um, the route to delaying a release.
All right.
The more frequent and regular release are, the less important it is for a particular feature to be in this release.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
All right.
I don’t really have a problem with much of what’s there.
The vocal minority.
There’s a good rule of thumb within internet culture called the 1% rule.
It states that the number of people who create content on the internet represents approximately 1% or less of the people actually viewing that content.
So while we consider it really important to listen and respond to those who post feedback, that’s me.
They’re talking about me.
And voice their opinions on forums.
Forums.
Forums.
Hmm.
Hmm.
Been a while since I’ve been on a forum, my guy.
You know what I’m saying?
Uh, they only represent a tiny fraction of our end users.
When making decisions on how to move forward with, uh, future versions of WordPress, we look to engage more of those users who are not so vocal online.
We do this by meeting and talking to users at WordCamps across the globe.
This gives us a better balance of understanding and ultimately allows us to make better decisions.
Okay.
Uh, you know, I, I don’t know.
WordPress is licensed or GPL.
Okay.
The freedom to run the program, blah, blah, blah.
This is good for people to read.
I, I suppose.
Um, all right.
Give me your soundbite thought in the comments.
Just, we’ve gone through this.
We’ve talked about it a little bit.
I want soundbite comments.
I’m going to elevate some of them onto the screen so that everybody can see them.
But soundbite comments, uh, go put them just your, your initial reaction to seeing some of this and hearing some of this for the first time mapped to your WordPress, your personal WordPress experience.
I guess I would say.
Um, Lizzie says as a newbie, the plugin stack has been a huge overwhelm.
Just one rabbit hole after another without explicit guidance.
Uh, you PB one-on-one day for, et cetera.
Yeah.
Uh, exactly.
Exactly.
We feel your pain.
We absolutely feel your pain.
And if we want to think about this in terms of specifics, there’s just lots of little things that don’t make sense.
Like for example, in the block editor, right?
Remember we’re got a core, keep it clean, less technical decisions and things like that.
Um, I might need a, uh, let’s what kind of block might I need?
I’m, well, first of all, they’ve changed the names of all the blocks.
So if you have any experience in web design, you have to relearn everything because they changed the names of everything.
Uh, but let’s say I need a block, like a slider, like a simple slider block, right?
I mean, sliders are just, they are deployed across the web, like universally.
And that could be a carousel situation.
It could be a, an, a actual slider situation, right?
There is no native carousel block.
So if I need a carousel as a user core, can’t give it to me.
So what I immediately have to do is now start weighing my options of either individual plugins that all that plugin does is add a carousel or a whole block system plugin that gives me maybe a carousel and accordion and a modal and a this and a that.
But, but then I have to start weighing things like, all right, is it accessible?
Is it well-coded?
Is it going to conflict with my other stuff?
Is it going to like, right?
So we took something that is a basic building block of the internet and core was like, no, we’re not going to give that to you.
You’re going to have to now take on the technical weight of making considerations within the ecosystem for how you want to handle that.
Okay.
That’s antithetical to the philosophy right there, but what they will do guys, what they will do, let’s, let’s go in here and look at this just so everybody’s on the same page with, with how this works.
Okay.
Let’s, let’s go in here and just take a peek, just take a little peek, a little look-see as they might say.
Let’s go in posts and we should, let’s be in pages.
I don’t think it matters.
Let’s edit this page right here.
Yeah.
Let’s take a little look.
Here we go.
Let’s add.
What do they give you?
What do they give you?
Okay.
Well, you can have a, a verse block for writing poetry.
Man.
What do we think collectively is the percentage use case on this block right here?
Like I can’t get the fundamental blocks that I need to actually build the site I’m trying to build.
But here’s a verse block.
I mean, maybe it’s like, it’s like they’re like, Hey, you should probably take a break from serious work and maybe just try your hand at some poetry, right?
Put that in there.
That’s a, I mean, great.
Is that what, do we think this aligns with the philosophy that 80% of people should be using the thing that we’re giving you or we’re failing?
Didn’t they just say that a minute ago, 80% of users should use it or we’re not doing our job or something like that.
Well, I’m pretty sure 80% of users would use a slider.
I’m not so certain that 80% of users would use a verse block.
So these are the things that just don’t make sense to my brain.
And it’s, you know, if the philosophy was the philosophy and it made sense and the software aligned with the philosophy, well, there’s nothing to argue with.
It’s like, I mean, you just got to accept it guys.
That’s their philosophy.
That’s how they’re building the product.
They told you that’s what they believed in and they’re doing it.
So maybe you should go somewhere else if you don’t like it.
What’s crazy making is here’s a philosophy that we have and everything that we do with the software is just going to kind of be antithetical to that and not really align with it and not really live up to it.
But it’s also happens to be the wrong philosophy.
And it was the right philosophy in the first era of WordPress.
It’s now the completely wrong philosophy because it hasn’t kept up with the times.
We should probably consider updating that, right?
You know, there’s interesting, there’s new concepts like a, like a cover block.
There’s helper things like media and text.
File, buttons.
This is odd.
This is very odd.
I’ve always, I’ve always felt it’s very odd that you’re adding buttons instead of just a button.
And I guess it’s because they’re like, well, users don’t know how to put things in a group, which is why is it even called a group?
I don’t know.
It’s not called a group in any other aspect of web design.
Okay.
I mean, you can keep going rows and stacks.
I got rows and stacks, but a group is a row in a stack.
You want a group to be a row?
You want a group to be a stack?
Well, they can be those things, but we got separate things too that are called the same thing.
And like, let me insert a row right here.
It’s got this little layout, but I can change it to a stack.
I can change it to a group, but if I change it to a group, it’ll actually have an inner wrapper.
If I change it to a stack, it actually doesn’t have the inner wrapper, but nobody really knows that because they never inspect what the block editor is actually doing.
Now you can turn it into a grid.
Can you turn it into a real grid?
No, you can only turn it into this semi variable type grid thing.
That’s extremely limited.
And, and, you know, users, beginners probably still don’t even understand what, what the hell’s going on there.
It’s, this is spacer block, spacer block, right?
This is the kind of stuff that you end up with when it’s like you’re designing for pure beginners who literally don’t, but you’re going to encourage them to do things wrong.
You give them a spacer block.
I mean, we’ve been over a lot of this stuff before.
We’ve got RSS, RSI.
This is arrow one, RSS, arrow one WordPress right here.
Throwback.
Calendar.
I mean, what?
80% of users going to use this.
What are you using this for?
I don’t even understand what you’re using this for.
Never would I ever.
Let’s play that game.
Never would I ever.
We can play that game all throughout this, this system here.
So you see, you just keep going and going and going and going and going.
I wouldn’t say I, I, I, well, I can just tell you outright if we’re using the 80% rule.
Like I wouldn’t touch half this shit, uh, ever.
Like it would be a 0% use, 0% use.
Um, and I would love to know, you know, what the percentage is for like a fucking tag cloud.
Like, can you get any more arrow one than a tag cloud module?
Could we not have gotten rid of that?
Maybe like, I, I, I don’t know.
Um, philosophy is stuck in arrow one.
We are in era.
We’re entering era four.
Uh, let me go.
I want to elevate some people’s thoughts onto the screen.
So it’s not just mine.
Uh, so these are people saying what their stack is worth to them in terms of functionality. 75%, 85 plus percent, right?
The idea that plugins 90%, the idea that plugins and themes are, are just giving you the extra 20% that you need.
The core doesn’t give you 85, 75, 90% plus.
Okay.
Um, okay.
Uh, let’s see.
I want to, I want to get some opinions here.
Mm.
Mm.
Mm.
Mm.
Foundation, uh, bootstrap.
Okay.
I don’t know what that is.
All right.
So, uh, Jamie’s got a fly.
Piper, the cat Ross is ready for pick up it.
Okay.
Uh, best of luck.
My stack is 95% of the functionality.
WordPress provides only 5%.
Core gives me a base for managing users and content.
The stack adds all the functionality I need.
I don’t even use the default posts on over half of the sites I build.
Most plugins shouldn’t even be necessary built, but built into core.
I don’t know.
I, I mean, there’s, we’d have to really assess that.
There’s, there’s a lot.
There’s, there’s, trust me, there’s a lot that should not be in core.
Um, but there’s some things like, you know, custom post types, custom fields.
I mean, let’s stop arguing about this now.
Let’s, that’s, that’s a given.
Reminds me of the PC versus Mac philosophy.
The PC was king because users were willing to tinker the hardware software, but the Mac focused on the user.
The dev took control in the background.
Mac is now king.
Um, exactly.
WP core at this point is just a database interface.
The vocal minority section feels like it was written in 2003 and never updated again.
I think you’re absolutely right.
Uh, where can I see the WP era is defined that he is talking about?
Uh, Jens go to, uh, etch wp.com.
Get on the waiting list.
We’re going to do a live stream next week, a series of live streams.
Actually in that presentation, I am going to take us through how we got to here, how we got to the point that we’re at now and why WordPress is actually desperate, desperate for an era for, for a new arrow.
And we are, if you’re following the five to six year trend of all the previous eras, we are literally at the end of era three.
And, um, the question is what is era four going to look like?
And, but I will go through the details of era one, era two, era three, because it’s important for us to understand how all of this has evolved and what every tool along the way has done for us.
What gaps has it filled?
Why were they great?
Why were they so important in shifting how users use WordPress?
And then what are their tremendous limitations?
Because that shows us where WordPress needs to go next.
Um, so that will all be in that presentation.
Uh, by the way, 24% of WP websites use Elementor.
So I guess it also shows popular, uh, key builder versus Gutenberg for many users.
Uh, that’d be interesting.
I want to, I want to take a look at, at those stats.
I’ve seen a lot of CMS related stats, a lot of page builder related stats, but then they’re not calculated correctly.
They always show the block editor as being a gigantic portion.
And that’s because the block editor is by default on every website, unless you opt out.
So it’s like that stat doesn’t really like who’s using the block editor as a page builder.
That’s the percentage of people I want to know about.
Um, I know that people are using it for writing blog posts cause that’s actually what it’s fairly good at.
Um, but you know, I, I don’t think that’s a fair stat that they throw that in.
They throw the block editor into the page builder camp and just claim it’s like 70% of installs or something.
Uh, that, that feels off.
Okay.
Um, all right.
Let’s see.
A lot of people saying the same stuff.
Uh, it’s the best thing I’ve read in my entire life by a large margin.
Um, if it weren’t for the blogging part of WordPress, I’d be gone.
Uh, so the plain tech, uh, clarify, are you building pure blog websites or are you saying that, you know, the blogging side of WordPress is fantastic.
So the sites that need blogs, it’s just a perfect fit to have that.
Uh, let’s see.
Uh, let’s see.
Uh, let’s see.
Maybe there’s another philosophy somewhere.
Toby, I’m, I’m afraid that that’s the, uh, that’s the official one.
Uh, that’s the official one.
And, and by the way, this is not just, oh, they forgot to update it.
Cause when I’m on the calls with them, they’re talk, they’re using arrow one and arrow two thinking and logic, um, in their responses and their outlook.
Right.
So there, they are, there’s a lot of WordPress people who are absolutely stuck in arrow one and barely, barely working their way into arrow two.
And that’s a, that’s a big problem.
Um, okay.
Overall WordPress is a mess.
Uh, and you are right full on.
It takes forever to build a clean website with good UI UX.
Moreover, internally, WP is a mess needing to be cleaned up for speed, uh, poetry, leave poetry alone.
Um, oh yeah, you’re right.
Toby code is code is poetry.
I forgot about that.
Maybe that’s the, is that the secret code block?
Is that where we’re supposed to put our code?
Um, okay.
Come on, Kevin.
It’s the perfect feature to write a love letter to the WP developers.
Uh, okay.
Yeah.
I mean, I didn’t want to just come in and, um, like rag on the block editor.
We kind of got there a little bit, but mostly this was about the philosophy it, and it speaks to the problems and the frustrations that we’re all facing.
And this is why I’m continually bringing up these problems and frustrations.
And it’s important for people to know, like, if you go into the etch live stream next week, not knowing that WordPress philosophy is the way that it is.
You might have misconceptions about what could happen with core.
I, that’s one thing I want to be very, we need to be very clear about this.
A lot of the challenges that we see with core, they are not interested in fixing.
They are not going to fix them.
Most likely.
Um, there, we have to, we have to fix them ourselves.
Um, it’s up to us, right?
So if you know that, then things start to make a lot more sense, right?
If you know a lot of things, if you know about the eras of WordPress, things start to make a lot more sense.
If you know about the divided camps, if you know about the lack of onboarding, if you know about the technical considerations and the problem with getting new users involved, if you understand why developers like people who like to code and other professionals in WordPress are so far apart from each other and can’t seem to want to get together.
If you understand why that’s happening, then you start to understand what actually needs to happen.
That’s why all this content leading up to etch is so fundamentally important for people to understand because you can’t, you can’t understand why the solution exists when you don’t really understand the problems.
Like you kind of, all right, I think I maybe kind of have a little bit of a grasp.
No, no, you haven’t even started to scratch the surface of what we’re, what we’re struggling with here.
Um, and once you do, once you really have a true understanding of that, then things start to become very, very crystal clear.
All right, let’s do Q and A.
We’re going to move on to the Q and A portion.
Uh, how are we doing on time?
We’re at the hour mark.
This is fantastic because I wanted to be here for about an hour, 20 minutes, an hour, 30 minutes today.
Uh, we have really good viewership.
Let’s, let’s answer some questions for people.
It’s, it’s got to have a hashtag though, hashtag Q or hashtag question, or it’s absolutely going to get lost.
Um, but I’m going to go straight into it.
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Are Lottie animations fine to use create for websites or are we entering chumpville?
Uh, it really depends on the Lottie animation.
I, I avoid them at all costs.
I don’t like chintzy bullshit.
There are some ways that you can do it right or do it cute or whatever you want to call it.
Um, maybe you could find like that it increases engagement in some aspects of the page.
Uh, yeah.
I, have I seen any data on it?
No, I tend to write it off in my mind is like, I don’t really care all that much about Lottie animations.
Um, so maybe I’m not the right person to ask cause I don’t use them heavily.
Maybe somebody that does has some secret data.
What, what I’m concerned about is building websites that, that accomplish their objective.
Okay.
Typically for businesses, the objective is conversions of some kind, sales of some kind, leads of some kinds, right?
You got to put an offer in front of people.
You try to get them to take the offer.
That’s like the bottom line objective other than, excuse me, other than objectives like traffic objectives.
Like you might have, so obviously a blog could have the objective of just bringing in eyeballs, right?
Let’s just get traffic to this website using blogging.
Okay.
But then there are other pages of the website that obviously you need them to go somewhere else once they arrive.
Okay.
Let’s get them to what’s called a money page, get them to a money page where they’re going to convert either to a lead or to a sale or something.
That’s why we exist.
Like we’re not, this isn’t a, well, actually, even in fact, my mom’s bunco club, she doesn’t actually have a bunco club.
The amount of people that think my mom has an actual bunco club is probably, well, probably in the 80th percentile, right?
She doesn’t actually have a bunco, but if she did have a bunco club, as I often allude to her call to action would be joining the bunco club, right?
And so the question becomes, does a lot of animation of some kind help accomplish that objective is it a distraction?
Is it a waste of time?
Is it?
And for me, I’ve just always written it off as it’s a waste of time.
Why would I want to bother with that?
Why would I want to, I mean that more technical considerations, more accessibility considerations, more, why?
Why?
What?
It’s like the animation thing in general.
Why?
Why are we animating things?
Why has everything got to move around?
What does that, what has that done?
What has that done for conversions?
Can you show me on this report where you made more money because you put those animations in?
If you can show me that, I love them.
I will love them.
But most people can’t show that, can they?
Most people do.
Oh, it looks cool, Kevin.
It looks great.
It looks.
Most of the time it doesn’t actually.
Should we just, let’s just start there.
Most of the time it looks like absolute shit.
Most of the time it’s distracting.
Most of the time users want it turned off.
Most of the time it’s in the way.
A lot of times it decreases conversions.
A lot of times it blocks people from getting to the main objective of the website.
So that’s what I’m focused on.
I’m focused on workflows that are maintainable, scalable, accessible, and that convert.
That’s the world I live in.
It’s a world I think most people should probably want to live in, right?
Now, there’s going to be the artsy, fartsy people.
I get it, okay?
The people that want to win a design award.
They want to win, they want to be on Webby or whatever, right?
And so they want to come up with the next coolest shit ever invented on the internet in terms of website design.
I get it.
I get it.
And if that’s your prerogative and that’s your wheelhouse and that’s what floats your boat, I mean, have at it.
Have at it.
But if a client hires you and they need sales and that thing that you just did with all your scroll jacking nonsense, if that doesn’t get them sales, at the end of the day, you fail, right?
It doesn’t matter how many awards you win.
At the end of the day, you fail.
I’m not that kind of person.
I’m the developer that’s like, what’s scalable, maintainable, accessible, and converts like fucking crazy.
Let’s do that.
And then we just rinse and repeat.
Okay.
That creator call made me very sad.
That is not a question.
But I do concur.
It was tough.
It was tough.
But it’s going to get better.
I actually have faith.
I have faith.
I have faith in Anne.
I have faith in our creator pool.
Okay.
Let’s make that clear.
I have faith that we can turn this ship around.
I have faith that we can win once again.
We can stop getting our butt kicked in creator land.
Okay.
All right.
Can you please clarify about your etch live streams time, the 1,000 max mark, the inner circle special, et cetera?
Well, the live streams are next week.
Everybody on the waiting list will get a link to the live streams.
I’ll tell you what the days and times are.
And it’s first come, first serve.
The software holds 1,000 people at a time.
I’m doing multiple streams at different times to accommodate different time zones.
If it’s full and you can’t get in, there’s going to be another one.
I will continue to do them until everybody’s gotten their fair shot.
I mean, you want to prioritize getting in as early as possible, obviously.
We are on 1,000 license limit.
That’s not that it shuts down after 1,000 licenses.
The first 1,000 get the best deal.
And then the next 1,000 get a different deal.
And then it just keeps kind of going from there.
So things change.
But that’s how we’ve always done it.
It’s how we did it with automatic CSS.
It’s how we did it with frames.
It’s how I did it with the inner circle.
Except for the inner circle, I never actually changed the price.
I said it was going to go up.
But then I was like, you know what?
I think people should just kind of, almost anybody should be able to access this, get the resources, get the education.
Because it’s, especially on the agency freelancer side, people come in literally with agencies and freelancer, freelance businesses that are struggling.
And their average website price might be $1,500, $2,000, something like that.
You give them six months in the inner circle.
They’re putting together proposals, statements of work that are light years beyond what they had before, if they had anything.
They’ve got processes in place.
They’ve got processes in place.
Their confidence in doing sales calls has gone up astronomically.
They’re selling discovery packages.
They know how to do the discovery as part of that process.
And now their average project price is up toward $10,000, $15,000, somewhere in there.
That’s life-changing content, right?
And, you know, I just said, fuck it.
Let’s keep it at 20, 25 bucks, you know?
That’s it.
Let’s let whoever wants in.
I don’t want it to be free because I don’t want, I don’t want, you know, the riffraff.
You don’t want the riffraff in there, right?
So it can’t be free.
But let’s just make it super, super, super accessible.
So I never did that.
But ACSS, people know the cost went up tremendously.
People that, early adopters to ACSS got, they should have had a fucking mask on when they bought my shit the first time around.
Same thing with frames, you know?
So when I say, and then you’re also going to see, I can’t, it’s so difficult.
It’s so difficult to not just start giving a bunch of details.
You’ll get it.
You’ll understand when you see it.
That it, you know, being part of the first thousand, being in this initial group, the early adopter group, the investor group.
Like this is the, by the way, you’re on the, you’re, you’re at the ground floor of like, you know, I, I see, I think you’ll see too.
I think you’ll see too.
Like when you acknowledge, fuck, this is, this is where WordPress needs to go for era four.
And you’re like, I’m fucking in, I’m all in on that.
You’ll, you’ll recognize that you’re on the ground floor of like something that is truly very special.
And that will be phenomenal for all of us.
So yeah, you’re here.
You’re here now.
I mean, that’s, that’s your, your half the battle is already won.
Okay.
I read that philosophy without the context.
I would never have guessed it was WordPress.
Yeah.
That’s a good point, Chris.
That is a good point.
Okay.
You are right.
They are wrongly stuck in era one today.
If I want to write, I will open a sub stack.
They forgot that what gave WP 50% of the market was web designers, not bloggers.
I, I, I believe I agree with you, Hector.
I think I’ve said this exact same thing.
Yes.
I agree about having WP core updated with functionalities currently provided by plugins, but I wonder what’s going to happen to the whole plugin marketplace.
Uh, I mean, that’s not, that’s not our business.
I mean, you want to make an omelet, you got to crack some eggs.
Like etch is going to crack a lot of eggs.
Okay.
A lot of eggs are going to get cracked.
People are going to be the, the sweat is going to immediately start.
Yeah.
I like to use the airplane.
Uh, you remember the guy in the cockpit trying to fly the airplane and sweat is just buckets of water essentially by the end of the clip is pouring off of him.
That’s going to be a lot of people.
That’s going to be a lot of people, uh, next week.
It’s just, the sweat is going to start.
It’s going to, it’s going to, it’s going to come quick and, uh, it’s not going to stop.
They’re going to scramble.
And this is why I haven’t been able to give details up to this point.
I’m not, um, just withholding the, let’s just make them wait.
Let’s just, uh, tease them a little bit.
Like that’s not what is happening.
I literally, the minute I give the details, uh, by the way, there’s, there’s organizations and products with a lot more money than I have.
Um, and they’re, they’re going to, the scramble is going to begin.
And so there’s no reason to give them a headstart.
Um, what we are going to, I mean, they’re, they’re not going to win anyway.
So, and I don’t think many, most of them can’t pivot from where they’re currently at anyway.
Uh, and you know, a lot of the, a lot of the detail, detail, detail, details are still not going to be, you know, there’s, there’s a, there’s a big chasm between like, oh, I get the concept of era four and like actually making something happen.
It’s a big gap between that.
So, but still, but still it’s like, what do you know?
You read the art of war with Sun Tzu.
Like, I don’t think he was like, you know, what you should do is just give them a huge headstart.
That’s what you should do.
You know, it’s just dumb.
That would just be dumb.
So that’s why that’s the reason, a primary reason.
Cause we, we’re still doing a lot.
There’s a lot to do behind the scenes.
There’s a lot to get ready for.
There’s a lot.
You can’t just go, oh, fingers snap.
There’s a presentation.
Fingers snap.
There’s a bunch of detail.
Fingers snap.
There’s a checkout flow.
Fingers snap.
There it’s, that’s doesn’t happen.
It takes time.
You got to put all this stuff together.
So while we’re putting it together, we can’t just, you know, reveal all the details and give everybody else, you know, their scramble start.
So yeah, but let’s go back to the, what we were talking about.
A lot of eggs, a lot of eggs are going to get, but we’re going to have a fantastic fucking omelet.
I mean, that’s, that’s the result.
We’re going to have a fantastic omelet and a lot of eggs are going to get cracked, but we’re, we’re going to have a fantastic omelet.
Okay.
I just wanted to say that I sent a proposal to a very large company the other day.
I use ACSS and bricks and they were impressed with the speed of my sites without using any performance plugins.
Good.
Fantastic.
Erica.
I’m very happy for you.
Um, okay.
Uh, will there be a split payment option for etch?
Uh, yeah, yeah.
There will be a split payment option.
Uh, okay.
The first thousand getting the best price.
Doesn’t that mean someone outside the time zone of the first call can’t get it?
Assuming max capacity, a hundred percent buy rate.
Yeah.
Well, don’t assume a hundred percent buy rate.
That’s not realistic.
Um, so yeah, it’s, um, well, first of all, the first live stream is at a time where the majority of the world, say for some outlying areas should probably either be awake or can be awake.
Right.
Um, so I think even in, in, what, what is the first time of the, I gotta look it up.
I gotta look it up.
I can’t remember.
I, I, I came up with one that I use world time buddy and I was looking at, all right, there’ll be like 6am.
That’s doable.
There’ll be like 11pm.
That’s doable.
Yeah.
That kind of thing.
Um, and it’s like, you know, it’s, if you can’t stay up till 11, I mean, what are you doing?
Right.
Um, it’s one night.
It’s one night.
You can’t get up at 6am one time.
All right.
Uh, that kind of thing.
Right.
But I think, you know, it’s going to go to live streams probably, uh, three, it could be three live streams before we get to the thousand light.
I don’t know.
Nobody knows what’s going to happen.
Nobody knows what’s going to happen.
I do have like a lot of people on the waiting list.
So you do want to factor that.
You do want to factor that in.
You should also factor in that.
I’ve dramatically under, um, predicted, under predicted every launch that we’ve ever done.
I tend to be very conservative in that regard.
Like, you know, my team’s like, Whoa, what would you expect?
I’m like, well, you know, I think three 50 would be a good goal right here.
Three 50 be a good goal.
And then we ended up doing like seven 50 or something like that.
And so it’s like, ah, well, fuck.
All right.
Well, I, it was conservative guests.
I guess it’s better to be under right than over, but I’ve notoriously been under.
So I don’t know.
Don’t listen to me.
Don’t listen to anything I have to say about predictions of what will happen.
Just show up.
Just, just try to show up.
That’s it.
Uh, whatever else happens, happens.
All right.
I’ve realized the community defending this mass is almost, uh, almost just as bad as the creators of WP.
I cannot fathom how people get mad about us wanting a better UX.
Um, well, I wrote an email the other day and, uh, the subject line was pretty direct and it says they’re not building it for you.
And let’s end on this.
Let’s end on this.
Cause we’re bumping up against time.
I still have a lot of work to do.
Uh, the secret that you have to understand about the block editor, about WordPress, about almost every page builder that’s been designed and built for WordPress.
Almost every block theme.
Um, every block theme, you know, we go into cadences, we go into astras, we go into, I’ll just point like people in my community.
If you consider yourself to be a professional or an aspiring professional or a hobbyist that cares about like the work you do and actually learning and understanding the language of web design.
So again, think about all those categories that I just mentioned of products and then let’s put it together with this one line.
This one line, you have to understand, bake this into your brain.
Okay.
Because this is where the frustration ends.
You could just stop being frustrated now.
This is what helps me.
I’m frustrated on your behalf.
Cause you actually, you know, there’s, we need a pathway forward, which you’re about to get.
But, um, the line is this.
And if you just keep repeating this to yourself, the frustration will go away and it will all make sense.
And you could be fully accepting of everything that’s happening now.
They did not design it and build it for you.
And the minute you accept that all is now well in the world.
So now the next question is, well, who is, who is going to design it and build it for me?
Well, it’s the end of the stream.
Okay.
All right, guys.
I’ll see you very, very, very soon.
Uh, I do love you.
I love your support.
I love your questions, your comments, your likes, all of that, your emails.
Um, next week’s a big week.
Get ready for it.
Uh, it’s exciting.
We’re ready to rock and roll.
Okay.
Peace.
I love you guys.
I’m out.
Cheers.
I’m going to go to the next one.
Thank you.
