WDD LIVE 089: Let’s Talk Etch

Hey everybody what’s up what’s up what’s up welcome back

say hi in the chat

we got nick in the house maddie good to see you dc says uh where’s kg at i am right here my friend

right here ready to rock and roll jens jasper christopps welcome welcome welcome uh as kevin

says only legends like the video before it even starts 100 100 you already know it’s going to be

fire so like you don’t have to you don’t have to wait you don’t have to wait and assess you know

you can pre-like absolutely you can pre-like we got manny in the house yep see see they already know

they already know uh we are going to be talking about etch today we’ve got uh oh man we’ve got a

lot of ogs a lot of og i mean steve baker’s here we got uh we got tommy we got suzanne we got i mean

this is uh says really melanie’s here derrick curtis joe sylvia it’s it’s a who’s who of the the og clan

tyree four minutes late i’m not four minutes late i started two minutes that’s two minutes two minutes

late two minutes late tyree settle down you’ll be all right toby in the house welcome welcome

all right we got good numbers here’s what we’re going to do today we are going to talk

all things etch uh i’ve got a little you know kind of list of of stuff to go over some exciting things

we’ll talk about the march 31st launch that’s coming up the second opportunity to get into etch

i will do a bunch of q a uh i think that one thing i find very interesting obviously etch is doing a lot

of things very differently than you’ve probably seen them done before and i really think there’s a lot of

interesting conversations that are going to happen and need to happen and should happen around that

of why things are done differently what what was wrong with the old way and and why are we approaching

things differently so there’s a lot of philosophical aspects to talk about and you might have your own

questions regarding the philosophy of doing the work that we do right making our workflow more efficient

scalable maintainable all the things that we always talk about uh so if you have questions about those

things those are great discussion topics um so any questions on that stuff would be fantastic of course if you

have questions on things outside of that scope you can ask those questions as well just make sure that

you use hashtag q gotta use hashtag q so i can find your question finally time to see you live oh well this

is your first time uh scott that’s this can’t be your first time scott i uh uh um oh are you talking

about maybe are you talking about maybe in arizona is that what you’re talking about might be it might be

okay i don’t know um let’s do this before we get into the etch talk i got one little update for you

this is for inner circle peeps this is for people who saw this teased on a previous wdd live let me go

ahead and share my screen um this lead magnet uh which is a lead magnet for you to use as an agency or

freelancer it’s called how to hire a web design agency and not get burned um essentially

when people come to your agency website your freelance website your web design business website

whatever um obviously you’re trying to sell them on your services and and all of that good stuff but

really they’re in the mode you have to understand that they are in the mode of choosing an agency

not just select like deciding whether they’re going to go with you or not go with anybody it’s

always you or these other people and let’s face it they’re not technical people most of the time they

don’t really know how to navigate this stuff they don’t know how to navigate the conversations that

they are going to have with these other agencies and freelancers they can be told anything like you

know they’re going to talk to you then they’re going to talk to three other people let’s say and

those three other people can tell them anything i mean they’re going to tell them how great seo is in 2025

they’re going to tell them how awesome they can make their social media posts and channels and

they’re going to tell them all this nonsense and then they’re going to go build a site with divi

and or elementor and it’s going to suck and it’s not going to be scalable it’s not going to be me it’s

going to be all it’s going to have all these problems it’s going to be another sad face scenario

and um we want to save them from that and so what we understand is that they’re in the buying process

now is the best possible time to say hey i know you’re not super technical i know you probably don’t

really know how to navigate this process or navigate these conversations what i would like to do is i would

like to help you i would like to give you a free guide you just read this over it’s a quick read but

this is going to equip you essentially to be impervious to the bullshit that you’re going to

encounter uh throughout this process it and really you’re going to feel confident going through this

process you’re going to know what questions to ask you’re going to know how to answer the questions that

you are asked and it is a very very valuable resource for them so what they’re going to do is they’re going

to give you their name and their email address and potentially their phone number and then you’re

going to give them this asset and they are going to quickly digest it because it’s not super long

it’s a quick read it’s a casual read but it’s also a very valuable read it has been um it’s dripping with

copywriting goodness in a lot of ways and i what i actually did is i took extra time to go through because

i wrote everything out in notion and notion has this little comment feature and you can go and you can

comment on any line that you want to comment on and i flooded the thing with comments about

why we’re saying this and specifically in this way and at this time and so it’s also like it happens to

be for you a little copywriting mini mini workshop kind of thing uh but you are able to take this you

are able to deploy it as your own asset for your own lead uh capturing capabilities what i would recommend

you do is you create a cpt on your website you create an archive post you could create a post

template and then this way and the reason we do this i guess i should explain why i recommend doing

it this way one it allows you to publish a lot of guides like this you might have other ideas for guides

that you want to publish makes it really easy to publish additional guides okay that’s number one

number two we have to talk about consuming free freebies like this you could make this a pdf you

could make it a downloadable pdf nine times out of ten people are going to opt in for that pdf

they’re going to download it they are going to never open it they are not going to do anything with it

nine times out of ten so you’re just losing like if they don’t read the guide it does you no good by the

the way the guide like it pre-sells them on working with you it makes you the obvious choice so among

educating them in general because you presumably do all these things the right way it makes you the

obvious choice among all the people that they’re looking at so they’re pre-sold by the time they get

on the phone with you they already want to work with you okay um that’s kind of the conclusion that

they’re going to be coming to as they read the guide getting them to read it is the critical step of

the process and we know that a lot of lead magnets just they get downloaded they never get read so

the reason that you’re making it a post um in in in an archive and like they can go from post to post

to post and read this thing is because one it’s quick and easy so they’re going to want to read every

chapter immediately they’re like they’re going to want to go right to the next one and so we want to

allow them to do that if we gave them a if we made this an email drip series for that’s another option

if we did that they would have to wait until the next day for the next email for the next chapter

and then we’re hoping that we keep their attention over the course of like a week because there’s like

seven chapters to this thing why why why why why why do we want to take that risk why do we we know

people are busy the emails might not get through they might get lost in the inbox they might any number

of things could happen and like i said the number one most important thing is that they consume

the content so they can go to a site they can just go click click click read all the chapters in about

15 minutes and then boom they’re done they’re pre-sold they know everything they need to know

fantastic now what we are going to do what i would recommend you do is you also drip it by email

this ensures that let’s say they read the first two chapters and then you know they hear from from

upstairs hey dinner’s ready ah shit okay hang on i got they go read dinner or they go eat dinner they

never come back and finish reading they get they get lost the site goes that whatever whatever okay they

get an email tomorrow oh that’s right i was reading that guide okay i need to go back and finish it right

so you’re doing both you give them access to the whole thing they can flip through it easily navigate

through it read the whole thing but if they get distracted tomorrow they’re going to get an email

about one of the chapters and the next day they’re going to get an email with the next chapter and so

you’re doing both you’re dripping with your emails but you’re also just giving them access to the entire

thing all at the same time it’s an easily readable digestible format and you can easily link to it it’s

not a pdf that’s going to get lost where where what what folder did i download that thing to

right you want to remove all barriers to consumption and uh once that happens and it’s a banger of a

guide so i mean this this should help you tremendously this is available in the inner circle uh it’s free

it’s not an add-on or anything like that you can just go in get it um and of course like the copywriting

mini course that is um inside of it is really really really good too i mean people are people are people

are liking this thing people are liking this thing all right so go do that go get it go deploy it make it

work for you um okay yeah if you’re having audio issues i would highly where is it in inner circle

um okay so if you’re in first of all you get to the inner circle by going giri.co/inner circle

so if you’re not a member it’s it’s super cheap it’s easy everybody can get in okay and then you go

to circle inner circle and then you’re going to go down to agency resources and it’s going to be right

there at the very top of the well i guess it depends on how you’ve sorted these but it should be like

newest first and it should put that right and i mean there’s a bunch of agency resources in there and

then there’s a bunch of agency trainings and sales trainings but a lot of great stuff in there okay but that’s

where you find that particular guide okay let’s go to let’s move on to etch but yeah like i was saying

if audio issues just refresh youtube it’s usually you it’s usually not me uh so or it’s youtube and you

can just a quick refresh will help everybody all right let me pull up my agenda okay so what has happened

since the first launch you remember back september early september i did a series of live streams to

pre-sell and pre-launch etch and at that time we had some proofs of concept we didn’t have much code

written at all there was nothing to show people i explained that we can’t show you anything because we

we believe in building tools with the people who are going to be using the tools and so if we make a

bunch of architectural decisions if we make a just a whole slew of decisions before people have a chance to

participate in the process things have to go backwards not forwards because if people are like ah we don’t like that

you know we just saw this with um oxy six for example right like two years of work dark and it’s like in the dark at night just all this work and then

out comes the thing out of out of the shadows and people are like oh like okay now like you realize the amount of i mean they’re not going to do it because it’s like you know they don’t really i don’t think they care what you think all that much

um but if they were going to fundamentally change a lot of that stuff i mean it’s it is such a long road

and now so much technical debt that they have to wade through to be able to do that stuff and why not just

let people participate in the process like that’s what we’ve always done we did it with automatic css we did

it with frames we did it with uh everything that we’ve done that’s how we’ve done it at the inner circle even

the inner circle even there was there was not a single training inside of the inner circle when i

launched the inner circle i just was like all right we’re just going to start we’re going to do this

together it’s just how we’ve always done things and it’s a really really good way to do them um of course

a lot of people are critical of that i don’t know why i mean we see so many products like there’s so many

products i think people forget how many products are in the graveyard of wordpress like wordpress has a

great graveyard of like attempted efforts that went absolutely nowhere and so many of them went nowhere

for two reasons one they built something that people didn’t really want or need or like they built it in

a way that just wasn’t practical and so when they finally delivered the thing people were like ah it kind

of sucks and so of course it’s not going to be successful it’s not going to take off and number two they ran

out of money and by the way that those two things definitely can’t go together it can’t suck and you’re you

don’t have money to make it better now right you have you’re out of money to fix it after everybody

decided it sucked well of course that’s a dead product um and so what we do because i think it’s

i think it’s the only like smart way to do it is let’s take care of the money thing up front and let’s

take care of the uh it sucks thing because it can’t if everybody’s helping you build it and you’re building

based on all of that constant feedback and and affirmation and criticism and yada yada yada

it can’t suck like so you just like let’s just get the two the two things that kill almost every product

let’s just make those a non-issue from like day one and of course you get i mean people on the internet whine about

everything uh and anything uh and and did uh but you can clearly see like you know we continue to

demonstrate that it’s a successful uh process right okay so we did that we did the pre-launch we got

started almost immediately on uh on actually getting things going with the code base and the architecture

and yada yada yada and if you don’t know we are on essentially what is a weekly release schedule and this is because

we do not release finished iterations of things we release progress iterations and so regardless of what the progress is it

might be a small semblance of progress on a larger thing that gets released and people get to see it and touch it and feel it and the

the weird ones smell it and it’s just that’s the that’s what we do and people love it people like if

you i think if you ask people in the etch community they love the fact that every single week there’s

something to look forward to every single week there’s and it might be a small thing it might be a big thing

it might be a piece of a bigger puzzle okay but they every single week they get to play with something

and it’s and it’s really fun and it’s really exciting um and i usually do a release video for it

and um what we can do here we’ll go to the change log it’s like if you have not reviewed

the change log um i would i would do so like you can go all the way back i don’t even know we may need

to add pagination to this thing i don’t even know if we’re this is properly uh paginated but you can see

like and you can go to the full change log for any of these things and just kind of see what’s been going on

when have when have these things been happening you can see pretty much every single week there’s a

release and a release and a release and what it’s culminated to we are now almost six months into

development now let’s talk about the timelines uh i know another objection that i constantly heard

was this thing’s not gonna be ready for at least two years this thing’s not gonna be ready for three years

this actually in the pitch i said our goal is one year for brochure websites and three years for enterprise

now some i don’t i i thought that was i thought when you say one year

one being the key one year for brochure websites and three years for enterprise sites

i thought that was fairly clear somehow some way all of the detractors all of the all of the people who

who like to think negatively and talk negatively about everything in life uh only heard three they

only heard the number three so they’ve been i mean i read i’m reading comments also they’re just telling

everybody they can get their hands on like it’s gonna be three years before anything’s done

what like okay i guess i just don’t have any listening skills um but in fact uh i i was confident

and we’re on we’re ahead of schedule we’re on track um i was confident that in in less than a year like

if you were if you’re fairly risk uh if you’re not if you’re not like super tight with your risk aversion

okay um you know you can be building sites much sooner like for example i will be building my goal is

this etch website right here will be built with etch starting if not this month

probably next month probably for sure like starting next month um now i wouldn’t recommend that for

everybody obviously but it is possible it is possible to do it that’s the point and since it’s possible i

will therefore do it um but we are ahead of schedule and i knew we were going to be ahead of schedule i was

i was confident that we were going to be ahead of schedule for for one reason one reason only um

when i look at you look at like okay because people will say all the time kevin it took bricks two years

to get the da da da kevin look look they’ve been developing oxygen sticks for two years and they

already started with breakdance’s architecture they did i hear all this like two years two years two

years stuff over and over and over again zion took two years everybody takes two years okay

well you have to know something about prioritization of features in all of these other page builders and

it always goes back to the same fundamental difference in premise okay and i i would um i don’t think i need

to write an article specifically about the premise i allude to it a little bit in this article right here is

etch a wordpress page builder okay um a little bit i believe in this one who is etch four right here

i need to do a specific article on the premise because this is the entire

shebang right here this this is the difference maker in every capacity the premise of every page builder in

existence that i know of except for perhaps the original oxygen but still a little bit still a lot

still a lot in the original oxygen i i don’t i really fundamentally truthfully do not think that

there’s been a page builder that followed our premise 100 in some form or fashion to a large degree

i’m trying to make sure i don’t talk in absolute absolutes here pretty much every page builder in

existence had the premise of this beginners are the only users of page builders this was their it’s

like a two-part premise beginners are the only users of page builders therefore we must design a page builder

to be as easy as possible to use for a beginner okay so those are the two parts of the fundamental premise

that every other tool was built around and designed around and thus if that is your premise you have to

ask lots of questions about how to do that and you’re going to get very specific answers now if you start

with a completely different premise you get to ask different questions and you get to have dramatically

different answers etch is the first tool that asks the core that first believes okay maybe in the past

beginners were the only people who use page builders or even intermediate intermediate people whatever

but that’s because they were all designed for those people and when a professional or somebody who

really understands development looked at those tools they immediately said no not for me uh and thus they

they didn’t use them and this perpetuated the cycle and then page builders got a reputation of bad code

output limiting features no scalability no maintainability this is where the reputation came from the

reputation came from the design which came from the original premise

etch is the first tool that says no i think if the tool was designed and built properly

not only would professionals want to use it it would dramatically expedite their productivity it would

unify their entire workflow they would actually love it if it was designed for them they would actually love it

and thus etch set out to say how can we do that what would it look like if we built something for

for actual professionals that they would love it and that would actually innovate their workflow the same

levels of innovation that we brought to acss for example and so that’s just a fundamentally different

premise with a fundamentally different question okay and so um it’s you end up with a fundamentally different

product and um so that’s what that’s what we’ve been doing essentially um and what we need to do now

okay and that so how does that speak to timeline i think that’s what i was getting at timeline how did

i know that everything was going to happen faster than it’s happened anywhere else well there are

fundamental things that you need to be able to do a page builder needs to be able to do xyz in order for

people to use it to build a website when you are building something for beginners you actually don’t focus on

those fundamentals you focus on other things for example there are 350 plus css styling inputs and if

our priority was if we said people will not be able to use this tool until all of those inputs exist

and all of those inputs are engineered which by the way many of them have to be handled on a case-by-case basis i

would i would go read this article right here the pros and cons of css styling inputs very very

informative article here and it just scratches the surface you could literally spend an entire year

just on this feature alone just on css styling inputs that’s it you could if you’re going to engineer them

to death like so many builders do you could spend a year of time and resources just on this part right

here and many do so if you’re asking yourself why did it why did it take bricks two years why did it take

oxygen six two years when they already had breakdance’s architecture to start from because of this stuff

this is a time-consuming aspect of of a page builder okay uh think about all of the blocks the pre-done

blocks and breakdance and bricks that do not need to exist oh i’ve gone down the list there’s 30 blocks

that had to be constructed and architected and engineered and tested they just simply don’t need

to exist they only exist because the page builder was like wow i mean i mean a beginner can’t build a

card we we got to build a card thing so that they can just have a car they’re not gonna have a card if we

don’t have a card thing you know and so now they’re spending what a month architecting a card thing

you don’t need to do that so when i looked at all of the existing tools and i was like well i mean

they’re all built around the wrong premise to start from and thus they go into these rabbit holes that

just don’t you don’t need to go down these things okay if you’re building a professional tool

we know people know how to build a card okay so we don’t have to build a card component we know that

if people really really need to get their work done they could write css boom done and then we also

know yeah we they do need css inputs we’ll talk about this in a minute and we’ll talk about how we’re

we’re doing css inputs dramatically different than anybody else has ever done them before and

and the and the pros that come out of that like literally this list of con the cons there’s 10 of

them 10 really big cons we eliminated every single one of them every single one of these there is no

cost to using css inputs in edge and there’s a cost to using css inputs in every other interface

but again that’s and so instead of architecting oh how do we make the cutest margin layout box thing

how do how do we make it as easy as possible for beginners to put a margin value i don’t care i don’t

care i care about what professionals care about which is solving all these big problems with css

inputs so that’s what we started with that’s what we saw first we’ll make them cute later they don’t

need to be cute right now okay that we need to get our work done right now that’s what we need to do

and so this is why and we prioritizing components prioritizing looping prioritizing conditions

prioritizing all the stuff that really matters because understanding that the builder already lets you

it already writes basic html for you it already it already allows you to author your css

in a much better way by the way um it already allows you to do anything you want to do with selectors

okay like that’s the majority of the work and then we do heavy lifting of looping and conditions and

components and yada yada yada right um that’s why we’re way ahead that’s why we’re way ahead because

we’re not distracted by how do we make it so easy for somebody who doesn’t know what they’re doing

because that’s not it’s not who the tool is designed for and and if you are a beginner that doesn’t know

what you’re doing it doesn’t mean etch is not for you for sure like you have to read this article who

is etch for if you are planning on doing a lot of work in this industry you’re being you want to be a

freelancer you want to be an agency um we are going to you are going to learn we are going to teach you

we are we are going to be a leader as we have always been in education and empowerment actual

empowerment of real skills and then and then you’re going to love etch you’re going to love etch what

we’re not going to do is design a tool that allows you to cut every corner imaginable and allows you to

continue not knowing what you’re doing and yada like that’s what we’re not doing that’s what we’re not doing

um so these big differences in philosophy are why we are so among i mean it’s not the only reason okay

you you do have to have a absolute baller of a team right um like yeah i’m i’m i’m we’re gonna get maybe

etch property one day it’s gonna it’s gonna have to be a barn it’s gonna have to be a barn because

there’s too many goats on the team you know what i’m saying like it’s it’s got to be that kind of thing

so all right so that was that was that was uh that was that was that was dad joke territory maybe um

okay let’s move on let’s move on uh we did a change log review let’s do a current features review

uh this this will go into more detail on like what we’ve been prioritizing okay um all right

so i just created this little quick page um obviously we’re gonna be doing uh actually nick

nick nick is here uh nick ours is gonna be working on the design of our new website um

this by the way is all the even the old colors and old uh old everything right um but i just wanted a

page that kind of starts to put this kind of stuff together to show what is currently working and

currently available not this is not a roadmap this is not a let’s hope okay let’s let’s hope and pray

these things exist one day that these things currently exist and if you i think when people

come to the march 31st event and they see etch as it’s coming together uh and then they juxtapose what

they’re seeing with a six-month timeline it’s gonna be a little bit of a head scratcher like

like yeah like people are already asking me every single like every release we do the comments are

literally like why did it take everybody else so long to do what just got done in like three sprints in

like two weeks in like three weeks like that’s kind of the pace we’re on um and one of these things

like the gutenberg engine i’m just calling it the gutenberg engine like there’s there’s more aspects to

it the main feature here is the automatic block authoring there’s things that people didn’t even

think that we were going to be able to do that it’s already doing they weren’t even sure that that was

even possible to begin with but it’s already it’s already happening and it’s been happening for a

while uh the auto block authoring is one of those things now the these things have to get more robust

okay for sure they have to get more robust um but at the at the fundamental level it’s already happening

so like you build something in etch right now uh the blocks are authored by the way with core native

blocks not third-party blocks these are not etch blocks being used this is literally like

you could deactivate etch and all these blocks are still going to exist okay um we have to add more

features related to like how the styling is going to stay or how the javascript is going to remain

around if you did disable etch or something like that you wouldn’t really want to disable etch there’s

no point in disabling etch but we are trying to liberate data so etch obviously liberates your data

out of etch unlike every other page builder where it’s locked in uh etch liberates your data into the

block editor into native custom fields into all of that stuff um so there’s a big data liberation side

to that but then there’s a client editing aspect to it if you’re if your clients want to edit things you

know freely uh in a simple form and fashion they can just use the block editor to do that they don’t

ever have to open etch or go into etch and we don’t have to build a client editing interface of any kind

uh that is the simplified interface for client editing and it’ll just continue to get better and better and

more robust um the modular interface and i do want to speak to letting the community that we’re working with

actually have a say and actually determine the prioritization of some of these things for me a

modular interface was an icing on the cake kind of thing like yeah yeah we’ll get there at some point

it’ll be great it’ll yeah i agree it’ll be fantastic but actually what the uh like if it were up to me

point is if it were up to me this would not be done right now this would not be a feature currently

this would have been way further down the list um but they said no we need that to happen like now like

sooner rather than later and we said okay all right we’ll prioritize the modular interface and now etch

has a completely modular interface and i’m actually glad that they said that because actually in terms

of ui and development there’s been a lot of decisions that we have had to make uh that we would

have needed to make later when there was way more technical debt because a modular interface is not easy

like sometimes when you move sidebar to a bottom bar for example it has to change a little bit and it’s

behavior and it has to be architected in such a way to perhaps allow for that and so doing that earlier

rather than later was actually a very smart move but we only did that because the community said that

was very important to them um so these are examples of how this kind of uh working relationship really

matters and really helps things uh we’ve got keyboard shortcuts for things already going a dynamic data

did you know right now in etch if i want to create a team section i want to i want to display my team

like like this page right here like if you go to uh digital digital gravy right here this is a simple

example okay you go here okay i go here’s here’s our team right here this is a little simple little grid

now this is a custom post type these are posts in a custom post type uh this is dynamic data it’s pulled in

like the title and a custom field for their uh well this is their name and this is their title and this

is the featured image okay and this card really ought to be a component it should be a team card and it

should be a component so that it’s fully controllable with its html and its conditions and anything else that

needs to live inside of it you can’t build this in bricks the way i just described you can do the loop

but you can’t do the component part um the components of bricks are too limited they don’t have component

variations they don’t have nested components they don’t you they’re not safe to use currently in in

bricks now bricks teased components a year and a half ago and then a year and a half later we were given

component functionality that essentially mirrored what we what was previewed a year and a half before

in etch currently you can build a card component called a team card you can map props to all of these different

components you can map components you can use our conditional logic engine to create component

variations which we are doing that very differently than has ever been done before uh it’s actually

never really been done before in in a in an environment like this um it is insanely flexible

um the way that conditions work um and literally every part of the component can be conditioned so there’s

there’s zero limitations um and so you can have components with variations and conditions and then

you can put them in a loop and by the way our loop works different than any other loop you put them in

a loop you can loop through them and um and by the way the previewing of data is instant there’s no delay

there’s no there’s no nothing it’s it’s an instant you will see all of this on march 31st but you can

already do all of this inside of edge it is already working um and and these are things that don’t

work in any other environment currently uh which is you know when you see that you’re gonna it’s

again it’s a bit like a little bit of a head scratcher like what like there is it’s not gonna

make sense it’s not gonna make sense but i made sense of it i made sense of it i told you all of

these other tools are focused on a lot of things that don’t really matter to you they’re focused heavily

on things that matter to people who don’t know what they’re doing and that sucks for you as a you

because you’re like i know what i’m doing why don’t you give me features i care about they’re

like well we would do that but the money we’re chasing is found in the pockets of people who

don’t know what they’re doing and that’s who we prioritize that’s what all of these tools are

not telling you but are really saying like when you say i want i want to be able to loop data from an

external api etch says so do we that’s that’s like one of our top priorities right where another tool

goes i mean no no beginner knows how to do that they don’t even know what you’re talking about

they would never have a need for that yeah we’ll do that someday okay this is what you’re going to run

into like you have to ultimately at some point make a choice whether you are going to have a relationship

with a tool that prioritizes your needs or prioritizes the needs of somebody that’s not like you

and um you know so you know you can stick with the tools that you’re currently with but you’re just

going to continue to get left behind and faster and faster and faster okay and and you’re going to

again you’re going to see this visualized on on march 31st now i will tell you what i have planned for march

31st for the for the the re the second launch second round whatever you want to call it uh because i was

heavily criticized in the first one for like oh it’s just a sales pitch the promises vaporware okay like

i mean people that followed acss and they knew they knew what was coming they knew what was going to

happen they knew that everything being said was actually going to happen they knew that it was very

likely to happen on the timeline that we said it was going to happen in they were and that’s why they

bought that’s why 1522 people said yes in 72 hours okay uh and that was 22 more actually i wanted to do

it a thousand first and then everybody was like no do 15 okay and then we then it became 15 22 because you

know there’s always some edge cases people you make promises to um but that it was like 72 hours but

still criticize oh it’s just a sales pitch just bullshit nothing to look at yada yada okay so

you know what march 31st is going to be mart which by the way we don’t even need to do a march 31st thing

i’m doing it because um one i love it when people uh talk endless amounts of shit and then you just stick

the thing right in their face right back at you here you go look at it now what right that’s part of it

um a second part of it is i think you know there are people legitimately legitimately there are lots

of people who are like by principle like kevin i believe you i trust you i i fully believe you’re

going to do this but in principle i don’t really want to buy something until i’ve seen it and so they

were just like i am going to continue sitting on the fence and that’s legitimate i like yeah i we ask

people to take a risk that’s what we asked and if you’re like i want to take the risk but i also it’s

a risk and i don’t really want to take the risk right now i’ll take the risk later even if it’s a

little bit more costly fine that’s totally legitimate totally legitimate i want to now give

those people a chance to see something because we didn’t give them that chance the first time around

and say yes if they want to say yes which means that march 31st will not be a pitch of any kind

march 31st will literally be i get on hi thanks for coming let me fire this thing up let’s take a look

at what it does i’m going to build something in it and you’re going to watch it and then you’re going to

ask me a bunch of questions and i’m going to answer those questions and you’re going to have 72 hours

to get your butt in the door before it shuts down again and if you want in you get in if you don’t

want in you don’t want in and that’s fine and we’re all going to move on and then i’ll see you again

in another six months i’ll see you again in september there is no pitch needed at this point

all you have to do is watch the thing being used and you are going to come to the conclusion that we

already know you’re going to come to okay and so there’s no pitch needed there was a pitch needed

last september because nothing existed and we needed to protect the money and we needed to protect

the user participation because we needed to get those two things that cause everything to fail we

need to get those two things out of the way make sure that they don’t exist and then we can have a

successful project and we know it’s going to be a successful project so let’s get those things out of

the way you do that with a pitch and now we don’t need a pitch now the things exist and now you just show

them and now everybody comes to the correct conclusion okay so that’s what march 31st is going to be all

about so if you are wanting substance in the first one when there was no possibility of substance other

than philosophy and our plans and our and our history and all of that all it’s going to be a substance now

that’s it all it’s going to be a substance so um march 31st is going to be very fun and i and i love

showing it off it’s it’s fun to use um it’s snappy as hell it’s it’s like it’s it’s if you’re if you’re

like you know kind of annoyed by builder lag and builder things like that like the for example just

when you watch a loop get built and you see things render in i’m when i say instantly on the canvas i

mean instantly it is it is there is no faster rendering um it is very very very nice uh to use

um okay so let’s see okay what are we buttoning up uh i also want to talk about breakpoints i got in

there a little bit myself you know what i’m saying i gotta i got it in a little bit and i because we

didn’t have any we didn’t have any breakpoint preview icons which i was like maybe i can maybe i can handle

that a little bit um i gotta i gotta i think i got a c plus from the team on uh on my sveltege okay

um but nevertheless they work um and they’re architected in such a way i think they need a

little bit of refactoring but they’re architected in such a way that all the things that we want to

do with breakpoints which i want to talk about i’m in fact i’m going to bring up a excalibur in

a second i think i wasn’t planning on doing this but i think it’s a good discussion point to talk

about how we’re doing some things differently because we are going to do we are going to handle

responsive controls differently in etch why to solve major problems that exist in every other tool

with these things uh so i think that’s a good discussion point we’ll save that for just a minute

what are we buttoning up before march 31st so what are we doing right now well this sprint right now

uh we’re working heavily on us on css inputs uh the infrastructure for that how we’re navigating css

inputs which is going to be different than you’ve seen before in other builders

um we are let’s see uh var calc wrapping is coming recipe expansion is coming these things

are very important to general productivity

maybe auto bim you know i i told them hey if auto bim can’t make it in by march 31st i understand

but whenever they hear that you know they kind of take it as a challenge like now we’re going to try to

fit it in you know i know they do i know they do um so maybe but that’s a maybe that’s not that’s not a

promise um some auto block authoring cleanup stuff a lot of general ui stuff we kind of radically changed

the ui um in terms of like colors and um some ux stuff uh just like last week um we got to clean up some

more of that stuff we have a feature freeze though that’s very important we have a feature freeze

monday we have an entire week where there are no new things allowed it is just clean up everything

that’s there um and just get it ready for as ready as it can be for march 31st which obviously is the

halfway mark on the way to fully launching it like september was the goal um and you know like i said we’re

ahead of schedule i think you’re going to see that i think it’s i think it’s going to be fantastic but

i am going to start building things with etch for sure next month um if not toward the end of this

month um okay timeline for building sites because i know people are going to ask that i get asked that

all the time okay so it’s it’s a risk aversion question if it’s a small site and you’re like dude

i you know something breaks i’m willing to fix it i’m willing to rebuild it if something gets refactored

and something stops working i’m willing to go in there and just patch it up whatever if it’s that kind of

project like i i mean i would love for you to start building stuff with it like next month you

know the end of next month what’s missing right now is is our templating architecture but it’s

literally the first thing we’re going to start working on right after the march 31st launch um so

and i and i told him we could have worked on it sooner i was like look i mean we’re doing stuff

like auto block authoring we’re doing stuff like css input sync where we didn’t even finish our features

review right you can go there and read it yourself i don’t have to read it to you okay

um i’m not i’m not the uh it’s not a picture book i know it’s not it’s not kindergarten okay you can go

you can go read it right um there’s a lot of stuff that we are doing that easily prove like we’re doing

things that no other tool is doing so when i you know i told people i told the team i was like i think

i think they know we can do templates like we don’t we don’t have to like there’s other important things

that we can stick in before march 31st so that’s what we did but you do need templating to build a real

website right so that’s going to be the first thing that we do after the march 31st launch

and once templating engine is in there uh it’s done deal like i’m going to start building sites with it

for sure um and it’s just is going to be it’s a question for every single user of how much risk

you want to take i would say start with small projects right and then work your way up to medium

size and and on from there but um and i’ll let the team weigh in the dev team weigh in on that on the

safety of that and all of you know they i’m sure they have extra opinions around that stuff okay uh

i’m gonna open up to q a first we’re gonna talk about breakpoints why don’t i and i don’t let me pull

it up on this screen uh because i don’t know i don’t know what’s going to come up in excalage raw

when i open it wait was that a okay uh who cares who cares i think there’s not much okay here’s etch

breakpoints i don’t do much in excalage raw but i needed to do i needed to do this um so just talking

about our breakpoint manager a little bit now this is not even i again this is a wireframe that

like don’t don’t look at this as details of like yeah it’s definitely going to be like that it’s

it’s never it’s it’s never going to be like that once it goes through uh five different other people’s

opinions and uh yada yada yada but the important things are here the important things are here so

one being first of all i thought it would be pretty cool okay uh because we got to talk we got

start talking about container queries and when you do container queries you can do named container

queries and they’re always like custom values and i don’t know other no other tool has tackled

container queries yet and to me they should live with the breakpoint manager like if you’re managing

breakpoints you can flip over and just manage your container queries as well which i think would be a

really really cool thing um but also managing breakpoints that are not necessarily previewable like

you have a button you could have a bunch of custom breakpoints that apply to

various components or various uh sections or elements or whatever that you don’t necessarily

need in like the preview bar uh but they need to exist in the code um so let’s talk about some of the

interesting bits here right um so note number one

previewing breakpoints should not clear the css editor if you know about every other tool every other tool

people thought yeah we should totally clear the css editor if they if they’ve done css at desktop

and they select tablet we should definitely show them a clean css input for writing code at that breakpoint

and etch actually says no no that should not be the case a hundred percent that should not happen

right does anybody know why that should not happen we could do a little pop quiz here does anybody know

like what why we should definitely not clear the css

has anybody run into the problem where you style this thing a desktop you style it at maybe you have

six breakpoints maybe you have five breakpoints maybe you’ve gone you’ve gone ham with the breakpoints

um so you you write styles of these different breakpoints and then you can only see like now

you’ve got the behavior of a thing like a section and you can see it behaving a certain way you have no

idea where those changes are coming from you got to hunt down from breakpoint to breakpoint and then

sometimes when you are writing code for a breakpoint you have to see what’s happening at other breakpoints

to know what needs to happen at this breakpoint but if you clear the css box you can’t see what’s

happening at it and in order to see what’s happening another breakpoint you got to go to that breakpoint

and now you can’t see the breakpoint you were just on and you got scattered styles you got no context for

why this thing’s happening here what was happening before it’s it’s it’s off it’s it’s absolutely it’s

an atrocity let’s just let’s it should be a crime it should it’s it is felonious behavior it should have

never happened um and people should go to jail for it so we’re just not going to do that in edge we so

what it says the css editor retains the same code the user is expected to write their own media queries or

use a sas mixin or perhaps a builder specific function of some kind for example i’m previewing

a breakpoint i still see my same css i’m ready to write styles for that breakpoint i could just go

at breakpoint and it expands a media query for the exact breakpoint that i’m currently looking at right

now even if even if it’s not a stored breakpoint what if i use the if i just narrow my windows to some

random number and i’m like ah i really like i would really like to assign some styles there

and i just type at breakpoint it’s like boom here’s your media query for that thing that you’re currently

previewing go ahead and write some css there by the way you can see all your other css because we didn’t

clear the box because that should never happen right and now you have no scattered styles you still have full

responsive control you never have to write a media query ever again

seems pretty good seems pretty good so that’s why we should not clear the css editor previewing breakpoints

should clear the css inputs except for showing the currently applied values and new values placed in

the inputs at the currently previewed breakpoint should be added to the css inside a media query

for that breakpoint so that all of your css stays unified because we are the only tool that actually

bi-directionally relates your inputs to your css so when you fill out css input it actually authors the css

so when you go to the css box you can see everything that’s in the input and if you change it in css it

changes it in the input and it always stays instantly synced and it never gets out of sync

and then the problem of scattered styles just no longer exists at all even when you’re using inputs

you have no scattered styles they’re always in one place and it’s properly written into media queries

this is just how i think things should work in this regard the canvas should have a handle that allows

the user to preview any device with not just oh here’s this breakpoint that breakpoint that you pre-programmed

right there needs to be a function to generate a custom media query we already talked about that

um and then adding css to the inputs would also trigger the auto creation of a media query at the

current canvas size so there’s a lot of a lot of things that we are doing differently and this is

just one example of like you know we could have just said hey every other builder’s got css preview

things and there’s a certain behavior that users are used to when they interact with this and we don’t

like should we really spend time re-engineering this should we really spend time uh making this better or

should we just copy what they have check the box and move on to the next thing because we’re just

trying to get a page builder out to market as fast as we possibly can i mean we could have said that we

could have said that we haven’t said that about any single part of it and one reason is because i look

at the thing and i go well in every other tool are there major problems with doing it this way

yes it turns out there is so no we can’t just do that we can’t just copy the obvious laundry list of

problems that have been exposed by doing it this old way now if we come across a methodology where we

ask the question well i mean are there big problems with doing it this way and it turns out no that’s

actually it seems like it’s really good to do it that way then we’ll do it that way the thing is

unfortunately we keep finding major problems with the way things have always been done

and so we have to uh we have to do a lot of rethinking and and re-engineering and it’s creating

a much better experience for people um okay let’s go into

let’s go into q a i don’t really have anything else on my on my list that i wanted to cover

and where are we at on time oh that’s an hour okay so we got 30 minutes like dedicated to q a

because we do have a hard 90 minute cutoff for wdd live these days trying to be disciplined to that

i’ve been doing a very good job i think we’re only over on one of them um so yes let’s see here let’s go

to q a i’m gonna do hashtag q search

all right um is frames integrated in etch i’m ready to pull the trigger for bricks plus frames but

wondering if i should hold off for etch yeah let’s explain this it’s a very very popular question

the dynamic elements see i have to be very careful with my language because i i i am a big proponent

of getting away from the confusing terms that all of these builders have used uh these things have been

called components in the past they’re not components okay an accordion is not a component

unless you make it a component then it’s a component but an accordion by itself not a component

um let me close this up dynamic elements are what they’re called a carousel a modal an accordion a

trigger a yada yada yada yada these are dynamic elements they’re not just basic elements obviously

there’s some javascript involved there’s some there’s some other stuff going on so we’re calling them

dynamic elements those things that are part of frames are being re-engineered in etch and will be available

for all etch users it is you it is fundamental when you’re building a website that you need an accordion

that you need a modal that you need a carousel that you need a this and a that those are not going we

could make those add-ons we get oh there could be etch pro that’s how you get it you can have the etch

free version that allows you to do very basic stuff but the minute you want to add a carousel well

you need to get your wallet out sir no why don’t we just buy the pro tool because you’re a pro or you

want to be a pro you’re aspiring to be a pro just buy the pro tool and then you just everything is

you just have access to everything there’s no upsells there’s no like oh well got to get my got to get my

wallet back out with with the exception of probably enterprise because there’s some very very heavy

architectural things that are going to take a lot of time and a lot of money and they’re not really going to

apply to a vast majority of of you know regular users probably the enterprise level really really

really cares about some of that stuff and maybe there’s going to be an enterprise level for that

uh but you know no decisions have been made on that kind of stuff yet but like the idea that we would

like upsell you on a modal or like a or like a pack of dynamic elements that actually allow you to build

the pages that you wanted to build that’s that’s kind of crazy to me uh so we’re not going to do that

those are all going to be available by default the pattern library of of uh frames is going to all be

rebuilt in etch and you will still need a frames license for that so if you want to unlock the

pattern library for all the starter patterns that are in frames that’s what your uh frames license would

be used for um and by the way the price of frames just for the pattern library it’s it’s that’s what most

people buy it for uh it is like it’s the amount of money you can make just on one wireframe you you do

one wireframe for your client you already made back your money not not even the website not even the

entire website and the whole project just a wireframe just one wireframe page pretty much if you’re pricing

your wireframes correctly uh done deal so uh yeah it’s the cost to value ratio is stupid uh you should you

should buy frames you’re going to plug in your license and etch and you’re going to get access to

the whole pattern library okay if i’m using etch on a tablet can i shake it to start over that is a

one of the enterprise level features joe um but yeah that would that would be nice that’s obviously

a if you’re if you’re not if you’re from europe okay if you’re from uh if you’re not from the u.s

you might not be familiar with the etch a sketch toy from the 90s or the 80s or this i don’t even

know what era it’s from i just remember i had a few um and that was kind of the it was a little bit of

the inspiration for the name etch uh which came from etch a sketch and uh that’s what he’s referring to

if you’re completely lost on that reference uh you would you would draw things on the tablet it’s a

little tablet you would draw things with these uh it’s got wheels and the wheels control the etch

the sketch you’re making right and then when you were done with it you just shake it and it all goes

away right and that was very fun it’s a very fun tool okay can you show me how to disable the frames

import check that happens in bricks super annoying um that’s a bricks feature i don’t yeah it’s a feature

that they never should have i mean i guess it’s it’s it just it’s a kind of a half-ass iteration of a

kind of an important feature perhaps but it just became a tremendous annoyance for every user

uh but i i don’t know exactly how to turn it off i haven’t looked since then

is i’ve been living in etch these days that’s the thing is it’s you know

can i liberate my data from gutenberg instead i hate it well the good thing is you don’t have

to use gutenberg ever the automatic block authoring will never get in your way it won’t matter to you

you can ignore it if you want to ignore it um yeah it’s uh yeah just ignore it

uh have you checked the right place tool that is being shared nowadays they also use the new era

statement yeah yeah we got a few people using the new era statement now what i’m saying now i will say

right place the right from what i’ve seen um is is does appear to be a next era tool for sure there’s

my problem is that there’s some era three tools that just felt like they could maybe start calling

themselves the next era tool uh or an era four tool and uh yeah that’s just that’s that’s marketing

stuff um but they yeah and maybe in some ways they can back it up but not in every not in all the ways

not in all the ways there’s a specific kind of thing that’s needed to be an era era four tool

will etch support acss in a closer relationship than other builders uh yes yes it will yeah uh

etch will essentially be the flagship uh builder for acss um of course we’ll still integrate with

bricks and all these other tools we’re not you know it’s not like oh now we have etch we’re only

going to do etch stuff um we as a as a principal now that what’s been unfortunate about this is no other

tools can do their fucking job right that’s that’s been the problem so it’s like we integrate with

bricks we integrate with quickly quickly died thanks great fantastic uh we integrate with um

what’s another one uh fucking uh what’s the blocks one uh generate generate blocks well i mean the

problem is one it’s like i i don’t know how many people use i here’s my honest assessment of generate

blocks i don’t know what percentage of generate blocks users and i would guess it’s very low

use generate blocks as a page builder i know that tons of people add generate blocks just have access

to blocks that gutenberg doesn’t have because gutenberg’s a trash can right and so they’re like

well i mean i need more than this right so they add generate blocks but are they really like page building

with it from scratch to the point where a framework like automatic css that’s designed for a page

building workflow makes sense to them and i i don’t think the answer is like it’s not it’s not a high

percentage is my guess so that was kind of like a all right we did it but and then there’s still

limitations like it’s just because the block editor adds limitations and it’s just not dude anybody i watch

i i watch other youtubers i i watch people building in the block editor and i’m just like

why are you doing this to yourself what are you like what what what level of self-hatred is in there

i’m joking it’s a joke but seriously no who enjoys that it’s just constantly putting up with

nonsense to get your work done um and why why like when there’s so many better tools available what are

you doing what are you and i and you know they did this whole well it’s close to core it’s close to

core it’s close to core do you not know who matt mullenweg is what like i i really like when matt

started his whole tirade uh i mean like just and now what is the conclusion of all of this remember

remember when i said remember when i let’s just how about we just get the tape get the tape out let’s

just look at the tape review the tape okay let’s do a film review session film review i do this for

my softball team we can do a film review session many many many months ago i’m terrible with time so i

don’t know how many months ago it was it was probably at least a year probably maybe two years i don’t even

know at this point i said being close to core with a third party tool like generate blocks like uh

name any of them name any of them if it’s a third party layer you’re not any closer to core than i am

okay with bricks or oxygen or etch right well etch is the close etch is the closest possible thing to

core that you can possibly get because it authors everything you do to core blocks so it is literally

the closest to core that you can get other than just using core outright it’s even closer to core than

creating custom acf blocks for core that everybody likes to do it’s even closer to core than that but

i said i said you’re not any closer to core than any of us like first of all you’re relying on a third

party tool and if that third party tool doesn’t exist all of your blocks go poof

how is that close to core i don’t want i never understood that argument but then i also said

i’m not so sure there’s a tremendous value to being close to core core gutenberg could die tomorrow it

could get struck by lightning and what if they decide because i was looking at adoption rates i was looking

at a seven-year timeline they’ve been working on this thing for seven years and at some point the

investors go you know i don’t think that gutenberg project’s really going to take off the way we initially

thought and in fact it causes a lot of problems we’re either going to stop touching it or we’re

going to remove it and make it optional that that to me was a possibility and then something happened

that none of us foresaw happening matt got in a big fight with wp engine and he is losing that fight

and due to losing that fight i think uh he is essentially pulling funding for what for core

so all of the things people thought were going to happen to gutenberg now no longer have funding

so now what now where are all the it’s close to core people where are they at now right review the tape

i said it didn’t matter all that much to be close to core because any number of these things could happen

and that’s just as much risk as using something like bricks i would actually stand to read my conclusion

now is if you have a third party provider that you trust like us or if you trust generate whatever

i mean they rely on the block editor they rely on core oh god that is that’s scary um when i say core

i mean the block editor okay gutenberg right the core editor i guess i should say not the core cms or

anything like that that’s like i mean that’s a dinosaur that shit’s just just build on top of that

you’re you’re fine right um but gutenberg was an experiment it was always an experiment and to me

experiments like that are very risky and i said you guys are taking a big risk okay this close to core

stuff still seems very risky to me i don’t know exactly why i’m just telling you i think there’s a

lot of risk there still and now we see well the funding got pulled for it so now like what what i said

might happen i didn’t know the exact details but what i said might happen actually happened okay

and now what is the kind of conclusion i mean if you have something like etch that essentially either

makes gutenberg irrelevant or leverages it to the best of its capabilities its current capabilities and

doesn’t matter if it goes forward at any further okay it doesn’t matter it’s fairly irrelevant either

way um and then and then it solves the problem of well kevin i mean i hate the media library in

wordpress hey me too hey kevin i hate that wordpress doesn’t have custom fields natively me too and custom

post types me too and bi-directional relationships me too all the architecture is there but the ui is not

there so the tool the third party tool that you’re using does all of these things that you’ve always been

wanting and it’s with a trusted provider who’s well funded and has a good track record

this is that feel way safer to you by the way who’s motivated by your dollars where every time there’s a

problem with core you know what the answer is well it’s open source i mean this is just what you got

to deal with and i mean if if you hate it so much why don’t you get in there and fix it why don’t you

contribute why don’t you you give us free labor and free time that’s the the response you will get

every time where i can’t say that if someone’s like kevin etch is broken is doing this right i gotta go

fix it otherwise people are gonna stop buying it because that’s how money works in a market right

um that’s way safer to me way safer to me than being on the core bandwagon where it’s like please

please please will you give us something and well i’ll put in a request and maybe in three years we’ll find

some volunteer to come along and do it for you and then you know that’s if matt even approves it at that

point in time i mean they they tell us lofty story oh anybody can contribute anybody can be a contributor

to wordpress no no that’s not how it works stop it that’s that’s politics that’s marketing it’s not how

it works it’s not how it’s ever worked okay it’s just no just stop believing that nonsense um you you

are a beggar if you’re sitting here if you’re close to core like you rely on core you are you have to beg

you have to beg plead borrow and probably most likely donate your time uh and then most likely

that’s probably going to go nowhere to get anything that you want why don’t you just pay a third-party

developer with a good reputation to build the things that you want and who’s also by the way using the

tool should we go back to the fact that i don’t think anybody on automatic actually uses the tool that

they build like doesn’t seem like they do uh like there’s just so many disconnections it is safer guys

it is safer and way better to just pay a developer that you trust to build the things you’ve always wanted

and that they also happen to want because you’re all in the same boat together like to me that’s that’s

like the best of all worlds right i gotta go over to chat real quick all right um yeah oh yeah and

by the way i’ll just highlight this comment uh by justin let’s remember okay remember all the

problems i talked about with other page builders because they target beginners and and oh we got

to make this for people who don’t know what they’re doing that is literally wordpress like a thousand x’d

that philosophy oh we’re for everybody what your grandmother’s got to be able to use this tool like

my grandmother’s gonna spin up a wordpress instance on wp engine like what

what what what hey so their their gutenberg philosophy as well it’s got to be dumbed down because you know

your grandmother’s got it my grandmother can’t even get in to the admin she’s not even gonna make it to

gutenberg to to click that button like the disconnect in just general understanding of how software is used

by you i just can’t fathom it it’s it doesn’t the synapses are not there in my brain to make these

connections okay either I’m dumb or somebody else’s um and I’m starting to feel like it’s not

me you know what I’m saying like that is crazy it’s crazy the disconnects that are not being

recognized um okay uh let’s see let’s see let’s see let’s see I gotta go back to questions

it feels like there’s just a lot of questions um all right

is Gutenberg is Etch Gutenberg oriented orientated no it is not a Gutenberg builder it is not it is a

completely separate environment that allows you to do your work um very fast very efficiently with

scalability and maintainability and accessibility and everything accounted for and it just happens

to author everything that you do to blocks without any effort on your part whatsoever and just it just

happens like magic and gets you get a lot of benefits from that but you don’t have to use

Gutenberg you you don’t ever have to touch Gutenberg or really look at Gutenberg uh it’s just a bonus

um okay sometimes the integration of metabox is somewhat wonky in bricks how’s the relationship

with Etch uh so integrating with custom fields is on the roadmap it’s obviously of great importance we

will start out by supporting ACF custom fields and metabox custom fields um and then we will build our

own UI for custom post types and custom fields and you will be able to create them in Etch it is very

important to understand and this is another thing with the timeline people are like well they’re going

to engineer custom post types and custom fields and that’s crazy that’s going to take a year in itself

it’s not what you have to understand is ACF is just a UI metabox is just a UI for what natively already

exists you can already register custom post types all they do is do that for you they register a custom

post type for you they register custom fields for you and then what they’ve added is a bunch of

conditional logic for how those fields are shown and displayed and handled and yada yada yada and

we’re going to do the exact same thing just like just like they did um and there’s a lot of stuff they

wasted time on that we don’t have to waste time on just like every other thing that we’ve looked at

and uh so that’s going to come but first we will do ACF and metabox that way uh there’s you’re not

limited if you are an ACF user you can just install ACF you can do all the things you normally do you

can pull that data dynamically into Etch all as well in the world but at some point you will come to the

conclusion oh Etch lets me create the custom post types in my workflow not in a magic area

literally in the editor environment it allows me to create the custom fields in the editor environment

why don’t I just do that because in ACF I have to go to a magic area called the ACF dashboard where I

have to do these things which is not the same place where I’m doing the rest of my work and nobody likes

like once you’ve seen a unified workflow it just it first of all it’s like this should have been

obvious from the beginning um I don’t know I don’t know it’s just it’s the obvious things are obvious

right um but yeah it’s just going to be way better to do it in line um just like we have in line component

editing you know most most uh most most component editing does not happen in line it happens in line

in Etch and it’s fantastic it’s fantastic you eliminate every every magic area you eliminate

it’s just one step towards like man hyper efficiency hyper efficiency

uh what theme will you do the demo on the Etch one or some other theme Etch doesn’t really have a theme

it probably will have an official theme um like uh it’s just got to be a block editor enabled theme

but literally all I do right now is I I add the create block theme plugin and I generate a blank

theme that’s like has no bells and whistles whatsoever I would not recommend you use like 2025

guys we have to talk about this I mean the decisions on the CSS side of things made by the Gutenberg team

made by the 2024 2025 theme team

it’s it it’s chaos that their CSS decisions are just completely nonsensical and we’re dealing with

that right now we’re dealing with all right how do we get around this how do we override this what

look at these specificity issues look at what are these names for things why is this class repeated

8,000 what is going on the architecture god when I say it’s a trash can I mean it is it is a trash can

full of trash with and it’s on fire like it is it is bad bad like bad bad um and and it’s something we

got to deal with but like don’t install 2020 I mean 2025 should not be touched just don’t don’t don’t even

touch it don’t even touch it you need a blank shit and you need a legit environment to build your work in

and that’s it you don’t need any of these any of these uh if automatic built it I’d stay away from

it okay uh let’s see

when you say there’s absolutely no delay when loading external content in loop can you vouch that

every user will have this result in his own uh conditions um I didn’t say with external data

I’m talking about getting data from the database currently um I mean I don’t know we don’t know what the

of the instantness is we’ve added a lot of loops like you create a loop and a component and you

duplicate it like 50 times and it’s still instant feel like it’s you know gonna gonna kind of stay

that way for most conditions I don’t know you would have talked to the development team about

like how much does your actual computer processor play into that um things like that but all I know

everybody that’s using it so far when I demo it when I demo it on zip wp not even on local you know

it’s actually on a server uh it’s it’s it’s instant

can you build a few frames on march 31st um we we are going to build yeah we’re going to build

a few things we’re going to build a few things we’re going to build a hero section we’re probably

going to build a team section uh the team card will be a component we’ll put that component in a loop

we’ll do the prop mapping we will pull the data dynamically into the component we will build some

conditional logic into the component with like you can add some switches for like okay um is there

going to be a uh what would it be like on a team card is like show the avatar or not show the avatar

uh show the social media icons or not show the social media icons right we’ll do some basic

conditional logic like that um our conditional logic engine is insanely complex like I I think it

would what what we have to avoid against because there are going to be beginners and intermediates

watching and if I do crazy conditional logic shit they’re just they might get the idea that that’s

like required to do or like that like you know they there’s people that are not going to understand

some of the stuff that we’re doing and so we do want to kind of keep the demo to just the basics

just show it’s not even really the basics though like creating a component with conditional logic

and it’s inline edited and that’s not basic um but that’s the basics of a real dynamic like scalable

maintainable workflow those are the requirements for building a dynamic website in my opinion

you have to be able to loop things you have to be able to pull dynamic data uh dynamic data from

the database that’s a lot of days uh dynamic data from the database and you have to componentize

the looped element if you can’t do those things you can’t really say in 2025 that you’re a modern

like capable builder by the way with css classes and uh all of that so that’s what we’re going to demo

i have one query will this be a back-end or front-end builder um it’s a front-end builder i think that’s

what you’re asking um or that’s the answer according to how you’re asking that question

i guess one of the things that leads straight off of when can it be used is probably also by the way

if you’re not on the thing yet i see a lot of people asking about that just literally hwp.com on the

home page and just fill the form out and that’s it just just do that and you’re good to go you will

know all the things you need to know if you fill that form out when can it be used is probably also

when are tutorials available being a brand new tool okay okay yes yes this is a great question

so i am going to start using it at the latest sometime in april and what that means is all of

my tutorials on youtube will be done with edge anything that i do on youtube will be done with

edge uh then we will start pumping out now things are still rapidly iterating but as we get closer to

september we will start doing official videos so there’ll be a crap load of unofficial videos on

my channel and then there will start to be a set of official videos as we get closer to uh the the

full like v1 launch right but this is a question that i think if you’ve been around acss and bricks

literally what we are known for like our brand among just like good products is education like that’s a box

that we have fully checked at all times right i don’t i don’t think anybody can argue with that

um the plethora of content available using our tools is second to none so um i wouldn’t worry too much about

that part they are by the way also the first launch was a big invite for affiliates for people who create

content um and want to get paid for creating that content they will begin like you will start to see

all over youtube um most likely people like uh nick arse people like brendan o’connell people like his name

start to name people that do that currently do bricks tutorials um they foy right you will start seeing them do stuff

with etch as well and um that’s gonna be that’s just gonna make even more content widely available for you

you are not gonna have any problems or questions with like how do i even use this tool how do i even get started

there’s just gonna be a flood of content on on how to do everything

i will also be redoing page building 101 there will be a brand new page building 101

fully modernized fully updated i think it’s been it’s been like almost two years now that’s crazy

since like i started that series so that’ll get redone in etch um that that will be coming as well

uh okay let’s see

do you guys aim etch suitable for large it will be like that’s it’s enterprise it’s it’s it will go

a small little brochure website all the way up to enterprise level projects will be covered uh by etch

when is the next opportunity march 31st

uh let’s see

will current etch users be able to update their tier during their march sale

you can really update uh you can upgrade at any time you just got to send us an email and we can take care of it for you

what will be the price for the next sale i i honestly have not even looked at it yet

um it’s something i’ll probably i’ll probably figure that out mid next week uh at some point

do you foresee ever incorporating ai into etch to write code

um yes yes um so i think it’s very important to talk about

era four is also happens to coincide with the era of ai

i feel i actually haven’t even talked to the team well i i think i mentioned this to the team

but i feel that you can’t be an era for

probably you just can’t okay so the one of the premises of era four products is that they give you

access to the code all the code like it’s not like oh you can write your css but you can’t ever touch the

html or like you know we we give etch the big premise as you get access to the code you can freely write

html all the html if you didn’t want to use the drag and drop shit and all the cute icons and you

were just like i want i would rather just write html you could do that you could totally do that you could

copy html from anywhere and paste it into etch and it’ll all render and it’ll author those as black it’s you

know it’s it’s stupid how like how great it is um so yeah i mean think about this for ai

you prompt the ai it gives you back some bullshit this happens all the time this is this is how you

interact with ai you prompt ai it gives you back some bullshit i’m just being honest then you’re

like that’s bullshit let me re-prompt it and then it gives you back some slightly better bullshit and

then you re-prompt it and it gives you back some slightly and you just keep re-prompting until you

and then you finally are like well that’s not perfect but it’s workable like i’ll just go with

that okay this is like how people use ai unless you have access to the code when you have access to the

code you prompt it it gives you some bullshit you go all right that’s kind of bullshit i’m gonna fix

it up real quick and you fix it up real quick and then you hit publish you move on to your life

if you don’t have access to the code you have to play a prompting game and literally you might prompt

10 20 30 extra times to get to something workable whereas if you just had access to the code you could

just clean up what you were fed you could just use it as like and by the way standards and best practices

that like the enterprise level for example who was it it was um what’s what’s what’s her name uh

fucking barn to plugins uh i’m doing my brain does not it does not it has a name database that has like a

lock and key on it like half the time when i’m trying to think of someone’s name can’t get in

there i can’t get into that part of the brain okay um anyway she was saying i’m starting to allow our

development team to use ai however i don’t want them to make the let ai do all their job for them

i want them to audit it audit the code fix it make it scalable make it maintainable make it to our

standards yada yada yada they have to refactor it they have to make it ours they have to comment it

yeah okay all that stuff so standards well you can only have standards if you have access to the code

so in the world of ai you have all of these tools who say no can’t have access to the code why well

we’re designed for beginners that would scare them away can’t can’t do that right it goes back to the

fundamental premise that i talked about earlier it ain’t for you and it’s not for era four so stop

using them etch gives you access to the code which means you can prompt ai and anything that needs to

be cleaned up and refactored and standardized to your standards can be done by you right you can’t do that

any other tool any other tool instantly becomes less valuable in the world of ai

so we are cornering that side of things also just by default by the way it wasn’t even the plan it’s

just by default because you follow the right premise to begin with when you follow the right premise

turns out lots of good things happen when you follow the wrong premise turns out lots of limitations

happen and that’s just how that’s just how it works

i have the need to create an empty menu item with items inside but never like those number menu what’s

the best approach accessibility i’m gonna get an empty menu item with items inside but never

uh i’m not exactly positive what you’re asking um so maybe you can ask a different way and then it

will make sense in my brain and then i can try to answer it for you by the way are we oh shit we’ve

got two minutes we’re up against the hard break ah okay we got to be disciplined though disciplined

all right uh how would ws form be integrated into etch or would etch have its own form engine we could

uh there’s not plans to create its own form engine because these other tools like ws form

just they first of all forms are tremendously expensive this is one of the things if you look

at bricks and you say what did bricks waste time on 1000 they wasted time on their form system

1000 it’s so dramatically limited i don’t ever use it i don’t ever touch it you

should be using a forms a properly developed forms tool that does all the things you needed to do

that and you should standardize that across all your projects i i don’t think page builders have any

business reinventing form systems and if they do literally you could spend a year on that go ask mark

how insanely complex forms are if you’re going to do them right now you ask okay would you rather

have cpts and custom fields and a media management that actually makes sense where you could tag media

natively and you could loop through media would you rather have all that or would you have

rather have us like do our take of what a form system should look like um you can only have one

you can’t have both so i think people are not going to choose the form system they’re just going to live

with ws form because it’s already great so that box is checked that box is checked you know it’s not

checked cpts and custom fields and bi-directional relationships and media management and all this other

stuff that we need to be able to do those boxes are not checked

uh

that question was already answered syed

okay i think we’re good could we split pay for etch by parts now a hundred dollars a month yeah you

can you can it’s definitely going to be like a uh six pay plan yada yada yada it’s all that stuff

all right i’m back in the chat just for two the last two minutes just to say bye to everybody see what

people are saying um okay let’s see this is awesome everyone but it does show us that any of us that

don’t know css and html though and uh we got our homework cut out for ourselves that’s actually that’s so

that’s the thing you don’t have to you can use if you can use bricks you can use edge we just don’t

have all the tremendous limitations everything is way faster way better way everything okay because

it’s all re-engineered from the ground up with the correct premise um we have to remember well i’ll

talk about that in a separate video because we don’t have time there’s a whole rabbit hole of like

like people look at bricks now and they go wow that’s like really powerful that’s really good how did it

become the best builder guys it didn’t start out that way it didn’t and it didn’t start out with

that premise uh there’s a very specific timeline of how that happened and very specific people involved

with how that happened uh and it was all by accident it was all by accident we can that’s a

whole conversation we should probably have um but if you can use bricks you can use etch okay you don’t

have to write all your css by hand we have the inputs like go read the article we solved the problem

we’re just not doing it like other people do it um okay yeah i know my two minutes is over

okay i will see you guys next week march 31st it’s going to be very exciting um it’s going to be a

great milestone if you have more questions about edge they will be answered there 100 percent uh but

other than that i guess actually is there a wdd live right before that or is it right after

might be right before so i might see you one more time before that uh but either way i will see you

and i love you guys and i thank you for the support and um yeah