Wp Builds

WP Builds Newsletter #33 - Gutenberg release date, WordCamp Europe and Google pay Apple a lot of dollars

If you’re a regular listener to the podcast then you’ll know that I was once a heavy user of Drupal. The reason for this is simple, Drupal is really rather awesome. I know that this is a WordPress podcast, but there’s just no denying it; Drupal does heaps and heaps of stuff really well, and dare I say it… sometimes better than WordPress does! Okay, now you can put those pitchforks away, ‘cos I’m not trying to convert you over to Drupal, because, after all, I left and don’t use it anymore. Drupal has a module (aka plugin) called Views, and I’m not exaggerating to say that it’s very very very cool indeed. When I came to WordPress, I could not understand why there was nothing like Views. Something that you could point, and click at and get data out. Until I discovered Query Wrangler by Jonathan Daggerhart...

WP Builds Newsletter #32 - Gutenberg 4.0, PHP 7.3 and 50m Facebook accounts hacked

In this episode, we return to the ‘good old days’ in which David and myself just used to drone on and on! We decided that we had not done nearly enough droning recently, and so… I give you episode 95! We go over our thoughts about how we cope when a client asks us to do something that is completely new to us. I’m guessing that we’ve all been in that meeting, or been on that call when you realise that the client is asking for something that you don’t know that you can pull out of that WordPress hat that you’ve been wearing. Perhaps it’s something that you know can be done, but you know that you’re not able to do it. Or maybe it’s something that you simply cannot understand and don’t even know where to start.

WP Builds Newsletter #31 - Gutenberg Cloud, WPForms buys forms plugin and robots on asteriods

I've often pondered the idea of setting up some kind of SaaS product, something that I could build and then turn it over to the public and they would be able to purchase it from me on a monthly basis. I think that when people do this with WordPress it's called WaaS. Is that right? Well, one of the things that I've always wanted to do was to set up a system where clients could sign up to a monthly / annual website plan, pick a theme that they liked, pay and it would all be automated - done for them (and me) as if by magic. Arindo Duque has built such a thing and, honestly, it's a little gem that you ought to explore if this idea has ever tempted you too.

WP Builds Newsletter #30 - WordPress 4.9.9, Gutenberg updates and the world's oldest cheese

I’m not that keen on writing. It’s one of the things that we all have to do, but it’s not my greatest strength as you can tell if you are reading this. What I dislike more than just writing though is writing proposals for prospective clients. I don’t like it because I’m not very good at getting my points across all that succinctly and I find it hard to get into the ‘style’ that I need to adopt to make it have a fighting chance of being read and accepted. Well, don’t you love living in the age of the internet where there is an online service for just about everything that you could possibly need in life? Adam Hempenstall discovered that there were people like me all over the planet; people who needed to hand writing their proposals.

WP Builds Newsletter #29 - New vunerabilites, Drupal Elementor and significant Chrome updates

We have a 'special guest' called Paul Lacey from Dickie Birds to discuss the always relevant subject of pricing, and more specifically do better paying clients mean 'better' clients? We all know that the answer is, annoyingly, sometimes, it all depends and maybe! Ha! There's no guarantee that, just because someone has deep pockets, they are going to fun to work with. Sometimes the fact that a client is paying more for your WordPress products and services means that you have more 'bandwidth' to absorb the many problems that arise during your website build, but equally, clients that have very tight budgets can be very demanding of your time and have expectations far above what their wallet will realistically allow!

WP Builds Newsletter #28 - Long live the Classic Editor, Gutenberg updates and AI taking our jobs

Right, so we know that WordPress is pretty cool don't we? Glad that we got that straight. It does heaps of things really, really well, but honestly, it's got limitations! That's why we have plugins! A few years ago I needed to build a site for an estate agent (realtor for you folk over in North America I think). This site needed the ability to show a list of properties on the market, but the client wanted the users of the site to be able to filter the list of properties so that only the ones that matched their criteria were shown to them. So... houses under £300k, with a garage.... Well, trying to pull that off in WordPress is jolly hard, but thankfully Matt Gibbs got there before you! He's created a plugin called Facet WP which is the answer to all your filtering prayers (you do have filtering prayers don't you)!

WP Builds Newsletter #27 - ClassicPress fork, multisite media library and cPanel acquired

This week we have Eric Debelak on the podcast talking about... what else... Gutenberg! Eric is a bit of a fan of Gutenberg. So much so in fact that he's spent quite a bit of time working on a project specifically for Gutenberg. It's called WPBlocks.Party! Seeing as how the WordPress community is full of clever people, those same clever people (like Eric) decided that it would be very nice to have more than just the standard set of blocks that Gutenberg comes with. We need more than just text and images and videos in a modern platform don't we?

WP Builds Newsletter #26 - Yoast and Gutenberg updates, WP growth fund and space news

I'm not very good in the real world! Get me away from my little office and my screens and I'm all 'out-at-sea'! I have to suddenly communicate with people and interact; I cannot click a button and get an expected response from other people. People, unlike code, are just so darn unpredictable. They do what they want and have hidden thoughts and expectations. If you've been building websites for clients for any length of time, you'll know that your clients can be your best friend and your worse nightmare. They want things they didn't communicate to you. So it goes! Erin Flynn is here to help you sort this mess out.

WP Builds Newsletter #25 - Gutenberg updates, ACF blocks update and Drupal gets Gutenberg

I really like it when you talk to someone that has done a variety of things in the internet / WordPress space. Daniel Olson is a man that fits that description, as you're about to find out! He's got a whole heap of fin stuff going on which we talk about in depth, but the 'long story short' is that he's an AWS (Amazon Web Services) expert. If you did not know, AWS is the ridiculously large suite of tools that Amazon has built to make anything possible on the internet. Daniel leverages all that AWS goodness to build products that you might want to use for your WordPress business. For a start he has not one, but two hosting products that you might want to check out, Aminoto and Shifter...

WP Builds Newsletter #24 - Gutenberg news bonanza, good things from Envato and a free image repo!

If you listen to this podcast with any regularity then you'll know that I'm (Nathan) a sucker for a new app. Mostly I hear about a new app, signup for a trial and play with it for a few days. Sometimes, although rarely, I continue to use the app and pay for it. Such is the case with Plutio. It's a SaaS app that I've been using for a few months now because I just like it so much. I also like the founder, Leo Bassam, the guest on this week's podcast. I like the app because it replaces quite a few apps that I was using in the past, and I like Leo because he's just so positive about Plutio. The app does tasks, invoices, proposals, timesheets, client management and more. Go check it out...