Wp Builds

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 6th March 2023.

So, there's no denying that WordPress Page Builders have taken the community by storm over the last decade. Whether you use them or not, they're popular, and dare I say it, used on more WordPress sites than site not using a Page Builder? But, as the title of this episode says, are they the scourge of the internet? We chat about this topic from a whole variety of different angles. Do they typically add bloat to the HTML that we output? Do they offer clients a poor, and inconsistent, experience? Are they difficult to scale up for larger projects? Do they keep up with the technologies that modern browsers are introducing? Do they devalue our profession? There's a lot there, right? And there's a lot more in the podcast to get your teeth into. Check it out.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 27th February 2023.

Some of us love working with CSS. It's fun, pretty easy to learn, and gets the job done. Others… not so much. It's boring, hard to master, and you end up doing things incorrectly all the time! Over the years, there's been many attempts to make CSS easier to write and work with… literally dozens. Today on the show we have Kevin Geary, the founder of Automatic CSS (ACSS), which is a utility framework for WordPress page builders. Its aim is to make modern CSS available for all to use, and to implement this inside of the tools that you're already using - Page Builders, and to grow the number of page builders which they support. Currently, they cover Oxygen and Bricks, but hope to grow to cover Gutenberg, Zion Builder and Cwicly. The idea is that they do a lot of the heavy lifting for you, so that much of the regular work that you might have to create right at the start of a project is taken care of. We get into what the project can do and how it can save you time. What can it control and how 'heavy' it is, or isn

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 20th February 2023.

We asked ChatGPT the question "could artificial intelligence (A.I.) kill the web design industry?". This is what we got back... "It is unlikely that artificial intelligence (A.I.) will completely kill the web design industry. While A.I. and automation tools may be able to handle certain aspects of web design, it is unlikely that they will be able to fully replace the creativity and problem-solving skills of human web designers. Web design involves more than just technical skills; it also requires an understanding of user experience, branding, and visual design principles. These are areas where A.I. may not be able to fully replace human designers." Did you read all of the words like 'unlikely', fully replace' in that sentence? We're doomed! Seriously though, there are going to be some pretty radical shifts in how we build websites in the years to come and some of that shifting will be to do with A.I. and the abilities it brings to bear. Find out what we think in the podcast this week.

The WordPress news from the last week which began Monday 6th February 2023.

So this is all about AI, so buckle up as it's all the hotness! It's not the usual AI hotness though, because this podcast is not about ChatGPT and how it'll likely break the world. No, this is about how you can use AI to create works of art for your WordPress website, or for any reason, in fact. I interviewed Josh Dailey and Aaron Edwards, who have a service called Imajinn. It's an AI for creating images and there's a WordPress plugin which allows you to do all the magic in the WordPress admin, which is nice. We spend some time at the start getting to know Josh and Aaron and their background in the WordPress space, which, as you'll hear, is really rather extensive. We then move onto the fascinating subject of how AI art is actually created. I've got to say that I'm pretty blown away with how it all works. It's basically guessing pixel-by-pixel what should come next. It all starts with a prompt, and then the AI tries to work out what the next layer of pixels should be, and it keeps spreading out like this unti

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 30th January 2023.

Welcome to the very first episode in our sparkling new series that we are calling "Thinking the Unthinkable", or TUTT for short, which I quite like! Here we challenge ourselves to answer (or at least rationalise) provocative statements or critical opinions of WordPress and our glorious website building profession. We are gently easing ourselves in with today’s topic, which is… "Website builders should be certified" (like - what proper professionals are)! By "certified" we mean officially recognised as possessing certain qualifications or meeting certain standards. Not legally declared insane and committed to a psychiatric institution. What might this look like? What should be included? Do we even need anything like this? Is there anything in WordPress trying to tackle this? Listen to the podcast and tell us what you think.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 23rd January 2022.

On the podcast today we have Zach Swinehart in the second of an, unexpectedly, two-part episode. We talked for so long that I decided it was best as two episodes instead of a really long single episode. You really need to listen to episode 310 of the podcast before this one, so go do that now if you have not already! We start off today where we left off last time, with my addiction to email and whether I could conquer that, then moving on to talk about Zach's framework for Deep Work which is step by step guide to helping you to get your concentration back in a world that's constantly trying to steal your attention. Zach was kind enough to write his own show notes for this episode and so rather than reinvent the wheel, you'll find them by heading to the podcast page.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 16th January 2023.

Welcome to the last episode (sigh) in our Business Bootcamp series. Over the last year, we have been attempting to question everything we know about building WordPress sites and running a web design businesses. We looked at the entire process, from meeting our first client to helping them to support their site. We’ve tried to contrast approaches by looking at the traditional project (waterfall) where we are hired to build the finished (website) "product", and an agile approach, where we will try to use online SEO and UX data gathered, to iteratively improve the site as an ongoing collaboration with the client. Here we have set ourselves a few questions in an attempt to sum up what we have learned over this series and, more generally, our time in the website building industry. It's been a fun ride!

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 9th January 2022.

On the podcast today we have Zach Swinehart in the first of an (unexpectedly) two-part episode. We talked for so long that I decided it was best as two episodes instead of a really long single episode. "Productivity hacks" feel a bit like snake oil to me at this point. We've all heard a million of them and they never seem to work. Today's episode should affect your productivity. It's not a "weird productivity tip that your doctor does not want you to know about". Instead, it's a fundamental approach that we can take to our work as designers and developers to prioritise high-quality focus on the right stuff. Zach is going to go deep on the concept of "strategic deep work" and how you can leverage it to really get meaningful results in your freelancing business. Whether you're a soloist freelancer or you're trying to scale your agency, you'll get something out of this episode.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 2nd January 2023.

Welcome to the penultimate episode in our Business Bootcamp series. Usually, this is where I write... "where we relearn everything we know about building WordPress sites and running a web design business from start to finish". But if you are joining us now, you probably need to go back a year to season one! We are on Season 5, which is the last in this Bootcamp series and is about what happens after the website build. This is episode 5. Today we are talking about Future Proofing (our tech based business and maybe our clients’ sites). We're supposed to be talking about Traditional (Waterfall) v Agile, but as you'll hear we get slightly derailed and go off piste for quite a bit of the podcast, which is fun! We cover: Reduce or embrace dependencies? Should we offer long term support? What kind of efforts do we put into making sure that we're keeping our knowledge and skills up to date? Check it out...

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 12th December 2022.

So we have Katie Keith on the podcast today to talk about what they're doing over at Barn2 plugins. First off, we tackle the history of the company, and importantly, why they have such a peculiar name! We then get into their journey into the WooCommerce space and how that's enabled them to grow into the small, but mighty team that they are today. We then list out some of their more popular plugins and Katie explains what each one does and when you might need to deploy it. Lastly, we get into acquisitions. The WordPress space has been literally full of them over the last couple of years and WooCommerce plugins have been fairly popular 'buys' for some of the bigger players. Katie talks about this and how they wish to stay the course and keep the business going nuder their own steam.