WEBVTT NOTE This file was generated by Descript 00:00:05.630 --> 00:00:09.240 Matt: It's the WP Minute Plus, your home for long form discussions with WordPress 00:00:09.260 --> 00:00:13.950 professionals and industry experts covering our favorite topic, WordPress. 00:00:14.309 --> 00:00:17.679 Be sure to follow us, search for WP Minute in your favorite podcast app, 00:00:17.979 --> 00:00:23.490 follow this podcast and our five minute weekly edition, or head to the WPMinute. 00:00:23.520 --> 00:00:25.990 com slash subscribe and join the newsletter. 00:00:26.230 --> 00:00:28.939 I'm told it's like a warm WordPress blanket that gets 00:00:28.940 --> 00:00:30.029 delivered to your doorstep. 00:00:30.330 --> 00:00:30.939 Every week. 00:00:31.220 --> 00:00:32.759 Looking for all things WordPress? 00:00:33.160 --> 00:00:35.050 The WP Minute has you covered. 00:00:38.120 --> 00:00:41.530 This episode of the WP Minute Plus is brought to you by our friends at 00:00:41.570 --> 00:00:47.000 OmniSend, the top rated email and SMS marketing platform for WordPress stores. 00:00:47.389 --> 00:00:50.859 With OmniSend, you'll be launching pre built e commerce automations in no 00:00:50.859 --> 00:00:55.250 time, as well as intuitively segmenting customers based on their shopping 00:00:55.250 --> 00:01:00.315 behavior and Even trying out SMS or push notifications all from the same platform. 00:01:00.754 --> 00:01:04.874 More than 100, 000 e commerce brands use OmniSend to drive sales and build 00:01:04.884 --> 00:01:08.864 better customer relationships, converting their customers with quick to create 00:01:08.985 --> 00:01:11.585 highly relevant emails and texts. 00:01:11.614 --> 00:01:14.184 Are you ready to start building campaigns that really sell 00:01:14.184 --> 00:01:15.184 and convert your customers? 00:01:15.195 --> 00:01:18.075 Find out more at OmniSend. 00:01:18.105 --> 00:01:18.445 com. 00:01:18.445 --> 00:01:19.404 That's OmniSend. 00:01:19.445 --> 00:01:19.854 com. 00:01:19.895 --> 00:01:22.835 O M N I S E N D. 00:01:22.845 --> 00:01:22.875 com. 00:01:22.875 --> 00:01:24.229 OmniSend. 00:01:24.229 --> 00:01:25.584 com. 00:01:25.964 --> 00:01:28.164 And give your brand the boost it deserves. 00:01:39.155 --> 00:01:40.435 Hey, Brett, welcome to the program. 00:01:41.414 --> 00:01:42.335 Hey, Matt, how's it going? 00:01:42.675 --> 00:01:43.435 It's going well. 00:01:43.445 --> 00:01:44.804 Thanks for joining today. 00:01:45.244 --> 00:01:49.105 Bluehost, fantastic sponsor of the WP minute. 00:01:49.384 --> 00:01:51.664 You coincidentally work for Bluehost. 00:01:51.905 --> 00:01:53.674 So we're happy to have you here. 00:01:53.824 --> 00:01:56.994 I just have to get that away for, get that out of the way for the SEC. 00:01:56.994 --> 00:01:58.355 So I don't get in trouble. 00:01:59.875 --> 00:02:01.825 Brent: I mean, honesty kind of matters. 00:02:01.825 --> 00:02:02.545 So I'm on board. 00:02:02.560 --> 00:02:04.289 But 00:02:04.770 --> 00:02:07.810 Matt: what we've been doing with all of our Bluehost conversations 00:02:07.850 --> 00:02:12.465 is Sort of just finding out, hey, who's, who's touching things in for 00:02:12.475 --> 00:02:14.945 WordPress behind the scenes at Bluehost. 00:02:15.385 --> 00:02:19.045 Bluehost always has a fantastic presence at WordCamps, so you 00:02:19.045 --> 00:02:20.255 get to see a lot of face to face. 00:02:20.324 --> 00:02:24.094 If you go to WordCamps, they, Bluehost just became another global 00:02:24.095 --> 00:02:28.825 sponsor, uh, of WordCamps to help, uh, continue that cause as well. 00:02:28.845 --> 00:02:33.645 But hopefully we can find, you know, other folks behind the Bluehost label 00:02:33.855 --> 00:02:35.585 that maybe you don't see out at WordCamps. 00:02:36.020 --> 00:02:38.520 Which actually is probably a good question, Brent, were you 00:02:38.540 --> 00:02:39.550 Brent: at WordCamp US? 00:02:40.010 --> 00:02:41.790 I haven't been in a few years, right? 00:02:41.790 --> 00:02:45.740 Pre COVID, I had been to a few, particularly US ones. 00:02:46.090 --> 00:02:52.010 But since then, I've moved more into the darker system architecture kind of space. 00:02:52.060 --> 00:02:56.700 And the WordPress more front end teams have been the face at the WordCamps. 00:02:58.180 --> 00:03:00.990 Matt: You've been at Bluehost, well, you've been at 00:03:00.990 --> 00:03:02.670 Newfold for quite some time. 00:03:02.680 --> 00:03:04.269 15 years, 8 months. 00:03:04.660 --> 00:03:07.810 Just as, almost as long as Mike, who I interviewed, Mike 00:03:07.810 --> 00:03:08.690 Hanson, who I interviewed. 00:03:08.975 --> 00:03:13.005 In the last Bluehost session, and you've been there for a while, one 00:03:13.005 --> 00:03:16.175 of your things is I, one of your, I'm looking at your LinkedIn, one 00:03:16.175 --> 00:03:18.225 of your subtitles is IT innovator. 00:03:19.595 --> 00:03:20.335 Brent: Oh, yeah. 00:03:20.375 --> 00:03:24.334 I mean, so, so it's a, it's an interesting approach, right? 00:03:24.385 --> 00:03:28.685 There's, there's been some common views that, that I've tried to challenge. 00:03:28.980 --> 00:03:33.220 As we approach sort of the hosting technology on underlying Bluehost. 00:03:33.610 --> 00:03:37.459 And one of them is that it's, it's largely been held that a front 00:03:37.460 --> 00:03:41.680 end team and a back end team will intrinsically be in conflict. 00:03:41.950 --> 00:03:45.259 Because the front end person, you know, the, particularly a support 00:03:45.260 --> 00:03:49.500 agent is working with one individual customer and that customer is 00:03:49.560 --> 00:03:51.459 everything during that phone call. 00:03:51.670 --> 00:03:58.045 Whereas the back end team is working on a problem that affects 1, 000 or 10, 000 or 00:03:58.045 --> 00:04:02.314 a million different WordPress installs, and thus, you know, potentially, you 00:04:02.315 --> 00:04:03.985 know, hundreds of thousands of customers. 00:04:04.385 --> 00:04:09.165 And so there's a, there's, there's always been this belief that I've seen 00:04:09.244 --> 00:04:13.195 permeate not just at Bluehost, but various other organizations that, you 00:04:13.195 --> 00:04:15.805 know, they will always be in conflict, and it's a healthy conflict, and 00:04:15.805 --> 00:04:18.704 it's natural for them to be sort of pushing and pulling against each other. 00:04:18.825 --> 00:04:22.965 And I've tried to be approaching, you know, In in the technology 00:04:22.965 --> 00:04:26.684 space, particularly over the back end teams approaching it more as well. 00:04:26.684 --> 00:04:28.695 Hold on those front end teams. 00:04:28.695 --> 00:04:32.924 Those individuals right are telling us what they need. 00:04:32.944 --> 00:04:37.954 They might not be the 300, 000 customers that you happen to be working on, but 00:04:37.955 --> 00:04:43.135 they are the ones who need us today, and that can very much inform our road map 00:04:43.325 --> 00:04:45.585 for how we approach the 300, 000 later. 00:04:45.585 --> 00:04:50.094 And if we're listening to the individual, then suddenly we have 00:04:50.094 --> 00:04:55.135 the opportunity to shift Our entire approach to be able to, to better 00:04:55.135 --> 00:04:57.534 focus on helping individual needs. 00:04:57.995 --> 00:05:00.695 So I, I, I think that that's, you know, one example that sort of applies. 00:05:01.444 --> 00:05:01.864 You pulled 00:05:01.864 --> 00:05:04.205 Matt: something out of my memory years ago. 00:05:04.265 --> 00:05:09.244 I was, I too was an IT director at an ISP and internet service provider. 00:05:09.249 --> 00:05:14.465 Back in the day when we did T one lines, ISDN lines dial up. 00:05:14.824 --> 00:05:19.340 And I remember managing at the time anyway, a windows. 00:05:20.385 --> 00:05:25.395 NT server with IIS web server on it for the websites we used to host. 00:05:25.585 --> 00:05:27.695 This is eons ago, right? 00:05:27.825 --> 00:05:29.395 And I remember the support 00:05:29.395 --> 00:05:29.425 Brent: team. 00:05:29.465 --> 00:05:30.715 Those servers still exist. 00:05:30.734 --> 00:05:31.435 I don't have it. 00:05:31.435 --> 00:05:31.685 Oh yeah. 00:05:31.685 --> 00:05:32.174 They exist. 00:05:33.314 --> 00:05:36.885 Matt: I remember the support team just asking me, you know, this 00:05:36.894 --> 00:05:38.614 problematic customer keeps calling up. 00:05:38.775 --> 00:05:39.835 He's got this catalog. 00:05:39.885 --> 00:05:41.965 I remember this vividly because there was an author. 00:05:42.415 --> 00:05:46.915 At the time who had his books, I mean, this is way ahead of his time. 00:05:47.045 --> 00:05:50.865 I'm talking like back in early 2000s, had his books cataloged on his 00:05:50.865 --> 00:05:52.605 website and he would always call up. 00:05:52.605 --> 00:05:53.445 Hey, my website's down. 00:05:53.445 --> 00:05:54.564 My website's running slow. 00:05:54.565 --> 00:05:57.025 And I remember the support team being like, can you just allocate more 00:05:57.025 --> 00:06:00.514 memory to him to just his thing on IIS? 00:06:00.515 --> 00:06:03.585 I'm like, I can't do that because we have all these other hosts, all 00:06:03.585 --> 00:06:05.125 these other customers on this server. 00:06:05.355 --> 00:06:05.525 Sure. 00:06:05.525 --> 00:06:06.205 And that was. 00:06:06.495 --> 00:06:10.955 laughable back then we're talking maybe a hundred, a hundred customers on this 00:06:10.965 --> 00:06:17.405 one server back then today's landscape is just vastly different and with WordPress 00:06:17.405 --> 00:06:24.144 into the mix, man, you have so many needs on the customer and sort of that 00:06:24.145 --> 00:06:27.594 front end, like you said, in the back end that you have to manage, is there 00:06:27.594 --> 00:06:30.735 something about WordPress that makes Yeah. 00:06:31.710 --> 00:06:35.750 Your life, let's say interesting on the back end, like because WordPress does 00:06:35.760 --> 00:06:38.340 this, you have to do that on the back end. 00:06:38.350 --> 00:06:39.889 Is there any story like that that you 00:06:39.889 --> 00:06:40.169 Brent: have? 00:06:40.549 --> 00:06:44.070 Well, so bearing in mind, right, like WordPress is, is probably 00:06:44.070 --> 00:06:48.360 the most all things to all people application out there, right? 00:06:48.390 --> 00:06:50.670 It can be everything. 00:06:50.709 --> 00:06:53.590 And I think that that's, that's sort of the interesting challenge. 00:06:53.890 --> 00:06:56.370 You know, if you look at a lot of our competitors who use something 00:06:56.370 --> 00:06:59.450 proprietary, they get to hyper focus. 00:06:59.935 --> 00:07:05.455 On exactly the thing that their software does, and if they choose to add a 00:07:05.455 --> 00:07:09.704 feature, then, you know, they have months potentially to be able to work 00:07:09.705 --> 00:07:12.235 on that feature in contrast, right? 00:07:12.495 --> 00:07:14.304 We don't control the customer's website. 00:07:14.314 --> 00:07:16.105 The customer controls their own website. 00:07:16.105 --> 00:07:16.974 They're using WordPress. 00:07:16.984 --> 00:07:19.055 They get to be able to do anything that they want. 00:07:19.335 --> 00:07:21.015 There's a variety of plugins that they can use. 00:07:21.015 --> 00:07:24.495 There's a variety of themes that they can use, and that creates this sort of 00:07:24.695 --> 00:07:29.585 more complex landscape for what we look at versus what you might find with. 00:07:29.664 --> 00:07:34.784 I can't say the word traditional, but what you might find with more of a DevOps style 00:07:34.784 --> 00:07:39.744 team, which is, you know, hyper focused on being able to optimize specific use cases. 00:07:40.364 --> 00:07:43.494 So I think that's the first thing, but the second thing I think I would add 00:07:43.494 --> 00:07:47.645 is, A particular challenge for us and really the WordPress community and you 00:07:47.645 --> 00:07:52.094 know, even our conversations with the WordPress core development team is the 00:07:52.164 --> 00:07:57.164 plugin authors come and go and they have a tendency to, not all of them, right? 00:07:57.194 --> 00:07:59.974 Most popular plugins are updated regularly, but a lot of them are behind. 00:08:00.555 --> 00:08:05.625 And so, you know, as we're trying to get customers on to modern secure versions of 00:08:05.985 --> 00:08:10.754 PHP and trying to get out of, you know, extended end of life type of support, 00:08:11.174 --> 00:08:14.695 it can be a struggle to make sure that we don't break a customer's website. 00:08:15.125 --> 00:08:19.065 Who happened to be using a plugin that is either outdated or hasn't had an 00:08:19.094 --> 00:08:23.494 update that supports later versions of this space I think that's the area 00:08:23.494 --> 00:08:26.805 we're trying to to figure out how to solve and it's it's not just us, right? 00:08:26.805 --> 00:08:30.784 It's the whole community Is trying to take you know What is 20 years 00:08:30.784 --> 00:08:35.925 of blue host wordpress focus and try and figure out how to help customers? 00:08:36.260 --> 00:08:41.430 Who built their website in, in a way that leveraged it's no longer updated or 00:08:41.540 --> 00:08:43.600 hasn't, you know, received modern support. 00:08:44.220 --> 00:08:47.040 That kind of space is a huge challenge and it's one that 00:08:47.040 --> 00:08:50.150 we're, you know, in conversations with the WordPress core team. 00:08:50.370 --> 00:08:54.470 We discuss it with, you know, Matt Mullenweg and then internally, right, 00:08:54.670 --> 00:08:58.280 I have a meeting at least twice a week trying to figure out how 00:08:58.280 --> 00:09:01.690 we can help another subset of, of customers who are in this situation. 00:09:03.050 --> 00:09:07.010 Matt: The WordPress space is, is an interesting space because. 00:09:07.649 --> 00:09:09.519 I mean, I see this on my YouTube comments. 00:09:09.540 --> 00:09:15.350 I'll do a video, let's say, I'll do a tutorial on the latest WordPress 2024 00:09:15.350 --> 00:09:21.039 theme, I'll show somebody how to use the new 2024 theme in WordPress, and 00:09:21.040 --> 00:09:25.659 then I'll just get comments that, you know, WordPress is terrible because 00:09:25.670 --> 00:09:29.545 they tried to do something On their WordPress site and it didn't work. 00:09:29.795 --> 00:09:34.145 And then I'll ask like, Hey, well, where in 20, when, where in the 2024 00:09:34.145 --> 00:09:36.405 theme are, were you seeing this problem? 00:09:36.535 --> 00:09:39.305 And then they'll comment like, Oh, I'm not even using 2024. 00:09:39.885 --> 00:09:40.454 It's like, it's 00:09:40.454 --> 00:09:41.324 Brent: totally other things. 00:09:41.324 --> 00:09:43.044 Like, yeah, it's not related to the video. 00:09:43.044 --> 00:09:43.364 Right. 00:09:43.395 --> 00:09:45.874 And it's, yeah, it's not, but it is a problem, right? 00:09:45.894 --> 00:09:47.885 It's their experience, 00:09:48.284 --> 00:09:48.574 Matt: right? 00:09:48.614 --> 00:09:49.834 It's their experience. 00:09:49.844 --> 00:09:50.164 Right. 00:09:50.394 --> 00:09:52.154 And you bring up again, a good point. 00:09:52.164 --> 00:09:54.214 Like you have to, it's not just. 00:09:54.555 --> 00:09:55.725 Hey, WordPress 6. 00:09:55.785 --> 00:09:57.074 4 and with 6. 00:09:57.105 --> 00:10:01.135 5, you have to, you know, stay on your toes and learn and 00:10:01.135 --> 00:10:02.385 optimize infrastructure for. 00:10:02.704 --> 00:10:06.745 But suddenly, it's like some random plug in that a few hundred sites are 00:10:06.745 --> 00:10:09.074 running and that person no longer exists. 00:10:09.074 --> 00:10:10.584 They don't update the plug in anymore. 00:10:10.584 --> 00:10:11.344 Now you have to 00:10:11.344 --> 00:10:11.655 solve 00:10:11.655 --> 00:10:11.974 Brent: for that. 00:10:12.390 --> 00:10:15.690 Yeah, and there might be a security up, uh, security issue that comes out, right? 00:10:15.920 --> 00:10:18.940 You'll see, you know, various news stories or a word fence, 00:10:18.990 --> 00:10:20.740 you know, publication, right? 00:10:20.740 --> 00:10:24.349 There's, there's a lot of, of this space where there's, what is it? 00:10:24.350 --> 00:10:29.120 20, 000 plus plugins that, you know, make this, this, you know, very complicated. 00:10:29.120 --> 00:10:29.719 And we have. 00:10:30.015 --> 00:10:34.265 You know, probably at least a hundred of every one of those 20, 000, 00:10:34.864 --> 00:10:35.255 Matt: right? 00:10:35.655 --> 00:10:40.085 Do you have a particular, I don't know, I don't know what I would label it, but 00:10:40.085 --> 00:10:49.194 like a system or a channel or a team that just like just works with big plugins 00:10:49.195 --> 00:10:50.835 and make sure everything's optimized. 00:10:50.865 --> 00:10:54.725 You have like a hotline for like, I know you all new fold owns yo. 00:10:54.725 --> 00:10:57.895 So you have, you know, it's one of the largest plugins in the, in the space. 00:10:58.135 --> 00:10:58.405 Sure. 00:10:58.415 --> 00:11:00.675 But is there like a WooCommerce team? 00:11:01.120 --> 00:11:04.170 Gravity Forms team, like all these big plugins, you have a means 00:11:04.170 --> 00:11:07.650 to communicate with them or a system on how you approach that. 00:11:08.200 --> 00:11:08.450 Yeah, 00:11:08.450 --> 00:11:11.790 Brent: so the, so you probably linked to the interview you did with Mike Hansen, 00:11:11.790 --> 00:11:17.280 but the, the, the teams that he oversees, you know, include WordPress outreach. 00:11:17.800 --> 00:11:22.140 And he'll commonly, right, his team members will commonly reach out to plug 00:11:22.140 --> 00:11:26.630 in developers who, you know, have recently had a, uh, a security exploit and we'll 00:11:26.630 --> 00:11:30.470 talk to them about which versions should be upgraded and which versions should not. 00:11:30.580 --> 00:11:33.809 He'll, you know, communicate with proprietary plug in developers where the 00:11:34.140 --> 00:11:36.430 update might not be on, on WordPress. 00:11:36.430 --> 00:11:38.890 org, but we still want to get the security update out. 00:11:39.320 --> 00:11:43.730 And then, of course, right, like, we have communications into, to the bigger ones. 00:11:43.944 --> 00:11:45.245 you know, sort of by default, right? 00:11:45.265 --> 00:11:50.764 Jetpack, Yoast, obviously, but also, you know, WooCommerce and some of this other 00:11:50.764 --> 00:11:54.634 space will have these conversations, you know, directly with them, you 00:11:54.635 --> 00:11:56.255 know, sort of on an ongoing basis. 00:11:56.275 --> 00:11:59.880 And we might have You know, shared Slack channels or, or other forms that 00:11:59.880 --> 00:12:01.420 allow for real time communication. 00:12:01.570 --> 00:12:03.660 And then, you know, other than that, you know, there's 00:12:03.660 --> 00:12:05.900 a degree of as needed, right? 00:12:06.100 --> 00:12:09.899 We, we have our teams communicate through the WordPress message 00:12:09.899 --> 00:12:11.280 boards or social media teams. 00:12:11.500 --> 00:12:14.889 They can connect people up with, with, you know, plugin developers up if needed. 00:12:15.110 --> 00:12:18.100 We have people communicating through the WordPress, excuse 00:12:18.100 --> 00:12:19.630 me, through the Reddit space. 00:12:19.680 --> 00:12:21.740 And, you know, trying to, to be. 00:12:22.120 --> 00:12:24.410 You know, open to an approach, right? 00:12:24.410 --> 00:12:28.800 If somebody needs to communicate with us to resolve something with their 00:12:28.800 --> 00:12:30.650 plugin, we want to be available for that. 00:12:31.360 --> 00:12:36.809 Matt: Take me down, but I'm going to pull on my again, back in my days at the 00:12:36.810 --> 00:12:39.290 ISP, I remember going to our co location. 00:12:39.290 --> 00:12:42.780 We had this co location that we, we just literally rented like a small 00:12:42.780 --> 00:12:47.610 corner of AT& T's co location where we'd bring servers in and stuff, 00:12:47.620 --> 00:12:49.500 kind of laughable again these days. 00:12:50.250 --> 00:12:51.870 Brent: But I did something similar, right? 00:12:51.870 --> 00:12:54.989 When we were a startup, yeah, like that's an I. 00:12:55.040 --> 00:12:55.189 T. 00:12:55.189 --> 00:12:55.579 closet. 00:12:55.579 --> 00:12:56.780 Well, it's a data center now. 00:12:57.410 --> 00:12:57.689 Yeah. 00:12:59.170 --> 00:13:02.119 Matt: And you know, I remember launching the very first C 00:13:02.119 --> 00:13:03.959 panel server at our company. 00:13:03.979 --> 00:13:07.149 Probably one of the first C panel servers when they first came onto the scene. 00:13:07.745 --> 00:13:12.275 And when we scaled, again, back then it was just, okay, this server's at 00:13:12.275 --> 00:13:14.185 capacity, bring in another server. 00:13:14.565 --> 00:13:17.464 What is the, what does the technology look like? 00:13:17.574 --> 00:13:19.404 You know, stuff that you could talk about publicly. 00:13:19.614 --> 00:13:24.364 What does the technology look like these days to, to scale WordPress? 00:13:24.375 --> 00:13:29.714 Do you spend time, like, thinking about buying more hardware and servers? 00:13:29.714 --> 00:13:33.775 Or is it more like, hey, let's, let's optimize WordPress here at Bluehost 00:13:34.114 --> 00:13:35.635 that runs on our infrastructure. 00:13:35.635 --> 00:13:37.545 Like, do you take it on the software side first? 00:13:37.955 --> 00:13:40.095 And then start to think about the infrastructure. 00:13:40.095 --> 00:13:43.155 What does that look like when you talk about speed optimization 00:13:43.155 --> 00:13:43.755 Brent: and scale? 00:13:44.204 --> 00:13:47.244 Well, so we keep a, a cross functional performance. 00:13:47.599 --> 00:13:51.949 Team that meets regularly at least weekly going and then a range from 00:13:52.000 --> 00:13:55.640 you know members of the wordpress core development team who actually work on 00:13:55.960 --> 00:14:00.929 You know the writing the the php code that gets deployed in say wordpress 6. 00:14:00.929 --> 00:14:05.829 5 It'll include you know members of our of our team that focus on hardware And 00:14:05.829 --> 00:14:09.360 we're working on you know a new hardware skew that takes advantage of you know 00:14:09.360 --> 00:14:13.490 newer technology that will hopefully start showing up On our, on our signup 00:14:13.500 --> 00:14:17.780 pages and the like over the next couple of months, but we also, you know, have 00:14:17.840 --> 00:14:22.689 team members who are completely focused on, you know, what would be, you know, 00:14:22.690 --> 00:14:26.360 what you could describe sort of, I guess, is as the lamp stack doesn't really 00:14:26.440 --> 00:14:30.590 apply as well as it did back in the day, but, you know, looking at, you know, the 00:14:30.590 --> 00:14:35.440 Linux sequel, PHP, Apache kind of layers. 00:14:35.995 --> 00:14:39.685 And, you know, going through and optimizing that space, so 00:14:39.685 --> 00:14:42.855 we'll see, you know, we'll see, you know, hardware changes that 00:14:42.855 --> 00:14:44.165 are, you know, more of a yearly. 00:14:44.610 --> 00:14:48.470 A yearly update and then we do extensive testing with with with 00:14:48.470 --> 00:14:52.189 vendor hardware for Dell and super micro and a number of others. 00:14:52.189 --> 00:14:55.520 They'll send us loaners and then we'll do speed testing with our own 00:14:55.520 --> 00:14:59.890 software stack on top of that to be able to try and optimize and in various 00:14:59.890 --> 00:15:04.800 configurations will do, you know, a continuous sort of review of the 00:15:05.090 --> 00:15:10.260 Apache and PHP config files and try and understand, you know, across Thanks 00:15:10.660 --> 00:15:15.650 Millions of WordPress installs, tens of thousands of BPS and dedicated boxes. 00:15:15.900 --> 00:15:20.960 Thousands of, of more of a traditional shared space will be, we will go 00:15:20.960 --> 00:15:24.850 through and, and look at data in aggregate individual to a server 00:15:25.100 --> 00:15:28.840 cases where, you know, a server or test site isn't performing as, 00:15:28.870 --> 00:15:30.940 as well as the other thousands. 00:15:31.464 --> 00:15:35.345 And cases where it is performing well, well, well above the 00:15:35.375 --> 00:15:39.905 performance expectations of the other thousands and then we evolve, 00:15:39.954 --> 00:15:41.124 you know, each of those cases. 00:15:41.124 --> 00:15:45.244 But I think the key really comes back to it being cross functional, right? 00:15:45.244 --> 00:15:47.474 We're not doing this in isolation. 00:15:47.474 --> 00:15:48.515 It's not just. 00:15:48.995 --> 00:15:53.694 You know, the, the guys working on the Bluehost plug in by themselves. 00:15:53.694 --> 00:15:56.214 And it's not just the guys working on hardware by themselves. 00:15:56.214 --> 00:16:00.185 It's not just the system administration groups working on optimizing, you 00:16:00.185 --> 00:16:02.244 know, a LAMP style stack by themselves. 00:16:02.564 --> 00:16:06.544 We're all doing this together and using the same testing metrics so 00:16:06.544 --> 00:16:10.985 that we can, you know, see what impact each of us is having on the stack. 00:16:12.744 --> 00:16:15.855 Matt: I worked at This is just gonna be my life story for you. 00:16:15.855 --> 00:16:18.675 This whole podcast is funny. 00:16:19.125 --> 00:16:22.615 I worked at Pagely, WordPress hosting company for three and a half years. 00:16:22.615 --> 00:16:26.704 I was an account executive, executive for them, and I was selling, we were 00:16:26.705 --> 00:16:31.124 primarily selling managed WordPress hosting hosted on AWS, right? 00:16:31.594 --> 00:16:37.215 And, you know, the question here is, I'm sure this is like a shared pain 00:16:37.215 --> 00:16:41.695 point is the first word that comes to my mind, but a shared mission 00:16:41.695 --> 00:16:43.135 probably across all your teams. 00:16:43.540 --> 00:16:45.670 Customer starts out at the basic level. 00:16:46.050 --> 00:16:47.329 I'm looking at bluehost. 00:16:47.329 --> 00:16:48.290 com right now. 00:16:48.310 --> 00:16:48.910 Well, bluehost. 00:16:48.910 --> 00:16:49.910 com slash wonder suite. 00:16:50.530 --> 00:16:55.189 Uh, if you sign up for 12 months, it's two nine, 2 in 95 cents a month. 00:16:55.250 --> 00:16:58.369 Like most people are finding that money in the bottom of their couch 00:16:58.369 --> 00:17:00.110 cushions or underneath their car seat. 00:17:00.790 --> 00:17:06.589 And then that customer loads WooCommerce, Elementor every plugin, right? 00:17:06.610 --> 00:17:07.319 They're building their site. 00:17:07.870 --> 00:17:09.060 They're, they're going at it. 00:17:09.260 --> 00:17:11.209 They're putting up thousands of, of. 00:17:11.280 --> 00:17:13.809 Brent: Yeah, 00:17:13.810 --> 00:17:15.180 Matt: they're putting all their stuff in there. 00:17:15.400 --> 00:17:19.720 And then they go, hey Bluehost, it ain't running the way I want it to run. 00:17:20.150 --> 00:17:22.180 You know, and then you have to educate. 00:17:22.390 --> 00:17:25.210 And then scale the person up and do it, you know, gently and 00:17:25.420 --> 00:17:26.450 supportive and all this stuff. 00:17:26.589 --> 00:17:30.910 And I saw the same thing at the enterprise level, which Pagely generally sold into. 00:17:31.530 --> 00:17:35.170 They'd sign up for 500 bucks and then suddenly try to have, 00:17:35.180 --> 00:17:37.420 uh, you know, 10, 000 SKU store. 00:17:37.710 --> 00:17:39.990 And say, hey, this isn't running right. 00:17:40.440 --> 00:17:43.070 And say, well, here's the resources that you're using. 00:17:43.320 --> 00:17:44.950 This is the way WordPress is built. 00:17:45.150 --> 00:17:46.210 You need to talk to your developer. 00:17:46.210 --> 00:17:47.810 We need to optimize these things. 00:17:48.730 --> 00:17:53.349 Is that a sha like, It's a big, broad question, but How is that a shared 00:17:53.349 --> 00:17:55.239 mission, if at all, Inside Bluehost? 00:17:55.249 --> 00:17:58.740 Like, how do you say, We have to nurture these people from the beginning And then 00:17:58.750 --> 00:18:00.690 scale them up to a dedicated server. 00:18:00.710 --> 00:18:02.460 Or a VPS or a cloud solution. 00:18:02.650 --> 00:18:04.665 And not just Keep them on basic. 00:18:05.514 --> 00:18:08.715 Brent: So, this is a common conversation for us too, right? 00:18:08.754 --> 00:18:11.355 We'll, we'll talk to the, um, support teams. 00:18:11.355 --> 00:18:13.264 We'll talk to our customer engagement teams, right? 00:18:13.264 --> 00:18:17.004 We're, we're always sort of talking about, you know, how do we, how 00:18:17.004 --> 00:18:18.404 do we help educate a customer? 00:18:18.405 --> 00:18:23.764 Because, you know, we're, we're seeing a lot of, uh, and we in fact want to 00:18:23.764 --> 00:18:28.075 help a lot of entry level, very little technology background individuals who are 00:18:28.075 --> 00:18:30.004 trying to, to live their dream, right? 00:18:30.004 --> 00:18:34.195 They're trying to create a, A business or a store or even just, you know, 00:18:34.255 --> 00:18:36.495 a hobby that is important to them. 00:18:37.045 --> 00:18:40.855 So, so trying to reduce, you know, the difficulty of, of onboarding is, 00:18:41.185 --> 00:18:43.015 is sort of been an ongoing mission. 00:18:43.435 --> 00:18:48.625 And so, you know, there's, there's a degree of like, of customer support. 00:18:48.625 --> 00:18:50.245 We'll have some of these conversations. 00:18:50.565 --> 00:18:55.485 We will go in and we actually, as our primary test site, we use a WooCommerce 00:18:55.485 --> 00:19:00.405 store that we actually do use the T-shirts and we'll have a thousand, 00:19:00.525 --> 00:19:02.120 you know, t-shirts in our test sites. 00:19:02.999 --> 00:19:08.800 multiplied by colors multiplied by the t shirt sizes and the way that, you 00:19:08.800 --> 00:19:13.680 know, WooCommerce in particular works when you make a change to one of those 00:19:13.690 --> 00:19:16.060 SKUs, it has to rebuild the entire. 00:19:16.395 --> 00:19:19.504 You know, combination and that, and that can be intensive. 00:19:20.065 --> 00:19:23.294 So what we've, we've been, we've been heavily focused on 00:19:23.574 --> 00:19:25.304 how do we optimize that space? 00:19:25.844 --> 00:19:29.294 So, because we don't necessarily want somebody to have to, you know, go 00:19:29.294 --> 00:19:34.284 looking for a VPS steady, you know, high end solution just to be able to launch 00:19:34.284 --> 00:19:35.834 their, their own personal business. 00:19:36.325 --> 00:19:38.875 One of our CEOs, his wife sold hair bows. 00:19:39.490 --> 00:19:40.590 Fantastic hair bones. 00:19:40.590 --> 00:19:42.090 They, they were, they were gorgeous. 00:19:42.110 --> 00:19:44.370 They just were bows that went into baby's hair. 00:19:44.659 --> 00:19:45.760 Very simple, right? 00:19:45.780 --> 00:19:47.510 But, but people loved them. 00:19:47.850 --> 00:19:51.930 And, you know, she wasn't gonna, she wasn't necessarily going to, you 00:19:51.930 --> 00:19:57.409 know, be the sole breadwinner, winner, necessarily, but she really enjoyed it. 00:19:57.419 --> 00:19:58.620 Her customers loved it. 00:19:58.629 --> 00:20:01.919 And, you know, it, she did a good amount of, of, of business. 00:20:02.635 --> 00:20:05.965 But she wasn't, you know, spending her time learning WordPress. 00:20:05.965 --> 00:20:07.775 She was spending her time making hair bars. 00:20:08.445 --> 00:20:12.364 So we, we spend, you know, we take that sort of to heart even though 00:20:12.364 --> 00:20:15.145 that, that CEO has moved on years ago. 00:20:15.944 --> 00:20:19.784 We're trying to find a way to, we're continually trying to find a way to 00:20:19.854 --> 00:20:25.814 optimize for WooCommerce complex SKUs that happen to be, you know, large build outs. 00:20:25.814 --> 00:20:31.124 It, it shouldn't be strictly necessary to go hire a separate developer or to 00:20:31.124 --> 00:20:33.205 cut your, your merchandise list in half. 00:20:33.745 --> 00:20:38.445 It should be increasingly viable to do this with modern technology using 00:20:38.445 --> 00:20:42.795 something like Wondersuite to take care of the bulk of the work for you. 00:20:42.795 --> 00:20:44.064 Is e 00:20:44.064 --> 00:20:47.555 Matt: commerce or WooCommerce the biggest elephant in the room when 00:20:47.555 --> 00:20:50.084 it comes to optimizing WordPress? 00:20:50.094 --> 00:20:53.355 Like is that where you probably spend most of your brain cycles 00:20:53.364 --> 00:20:55.305 thinking about optimizing or is it? 00:20:55.845 --> 00:20:56.544 Or is that not it? 00:20:57.375 --> 00:21:05.164 Brent: So, not really, and the reason is because we use, our WooCommerce, right? 00:21:05.165 --> 00:21:10.254 So, we did a, we did a variety of, of, of tests, from a vanilla WordPress 00:21:10.254 --> 00:21:15.394 installed, to one with, with our plugin installed, to a, a complex blog. 00:21:15.875 --> 00:21:20.225 With all of our plugins installed to a WooCommerce store, and we 00:21:20.225 --> 00:21:23.365 compared all of these right in the vanilla install that has zero plugins 00:21:23.435 --> 00:21:25.455 is obviously the fastest, right? 00:21:25.455 --> 00:21:27.575 If you didn't have if you don't have any content or plugins or 00:21:27.575 --> 00:21:28.965 functionality, then it goes great. 00:21:29.725 --> 00:21:33.565 So we spent a lot of time comparing the these approaches. 00:21:33.875 --> 00:21:38.395 And what we found right was, we really don't need to optimize for the case where 00:21:38.395 --> 00:21:42.999 nobody's Got any content when we want to optimize for the case where people have a 00:21:42.999 --> 00:21:47.360 lot of content because we want to be able to help people grow into that space and 00:21:47.360 --> 00:21:52.379 then that left us, you know, comparing sort of a complex blog that did everything 00:21:52.379 --> 00:21:56.489 wordpress can do and had large images and small images and posts and pages and 00:21:56.489 --> 00:22:01.560 comments and everything and then comparing that against a complex WooCommerce store, 00:22:01.860 --> 00:22:07.475 we actually found that, you know, the, the, the, as a The testing progressed 00:22:07.865 --> 00:22:09.895 that their trend lines moved in sync. 00:22:10.385 --> 00:22:11.905 They might've been a little bit different. 00:22:11.955 --> 00:22:15.495 WooCommerce is a little bit more complex and running on top of 00:22:15.495 --> 00:22:16.935 a complex blog, essentially. 00:22:17.195 --> 00:22:18.475 So it's a little bit slower. 00:22:18.525 --> 00:22:19.765 Not a lot, but a little. 00:22:20.285 --> 00:22:24.145 And when, but still you watch those speed trend lines, those performance indicators, 00:22:24.145 --> 00:22:27.905 and they just really move in sync as we make changes and do different things. 00:22:28.534 --> 00:22:32.455 So we made that, the decision at that point to be able to say, well, let's 00:22:32.465 --> 00:22:37.335 use the store, the WooCommerce store as our primary test suite because 00:22:37.335 --> 00:22:39.584 it's an indicator of everything else. 00:22:39.925 --> 00:22:44.295 That, that, you know, would be tested behind us and, you know, it has a number 00:22:44.295 --> 00:22:46.925 of, of common plugins to, to WooCommerce. 00:22:47.235 --> 00:22:50.014 And then we, you know, have complexity around those skews. 00:22:50.394 --> 00:22:53.914 So I wouldn't say that we spend a lot of time thinking specifically 00:22:53.914 --> 00:22:55.424 about WooCommerce, right? 00:22:55.654 --> 00:22:59.815 We use it as a test that indicates how well we're doing everywhere. 00:23:00.055 --> 00:23:01.695 So every optimization we make. 00:23:01.930 --> 00:23:06.439 It already sort of takes WooCommerce into account as a core element of that metric. 00:23:07.190 --> 00:23:11.480 Matt: When the, I'm just going to start to laugh before I ask this question, but 00:23:11.680 --> 00:23:14.490 when the product team came to you and they say, Hey, we're building Wondersuite. 00:23:14.755 --> 00:23:18.965 It's going to have AI and it's going to do all these things and start doing all 00:23:18.965 --> 00:23:23.195 these like complex queries to layouts and helping users create content and 00:23:23.195 --> 00:23:24.494 pulling images and stuff like that. 00:23:24.814 --> 00:23:28.795 And they were super excited because most product people are, and then they come to 00:23:28.795 --> 00:23:32.515 somebody like you, who's more the realist in the room, they go, okay, then you 00:23:32.515 --> 00:23:33.885 say, oh, but we're going to need more. 00:23:34.095 --> 00:23:35.105 We're going to need a bigger boat. 00:23:35.385 --> 00:23:37.725 to steal a line from the Jaws movie. 00:23:37.915 --> 00:23:40.085 We're gonna need a bigger boat to power this stuff. 00:23:40.645 --> 00:23:41.524 Was that a thing for you? 00:23:41.524 --> 00:23:45.375 Like, oh man, you're bringing all these crazy features, but now we have to expand 00:23:45.385 --> 00:23:51.144 the footprint of the infrastructure a bit to kind of handle the extra capacity 00:23:51.144 --> 00:23:52.744 for something like Wondersuite on top 00:23:52.744 --> 00:23:53.334 Brent: of WordPress? 00:23:53.805 --> 00:23:56.185 Fortunately not, and I think I would credit that. 00:23:56.525 --> 00:24:01.595 Very strongly to the cross, you know, the cross functional performance team, right? 00:24:01.595 --> 00:24:02.415 They're already in the room. 00:24:02.485 --> 00:24:06.335 They're already, you know, sitting with us as we go through this, this type of work. 00:24:06.735 --> 00:24:10.404 And so, you know, the architecture was built such that, you know, the 00:24:10.404 --> 00:24:14.715 majority of that AI work doesn't have to take place on the same server that 00:24:14.724 --> 00:24:19.534 is providing your, you know, providing content to the rest of the world, right? 00:24:19.884 --> 00:24:25.585 The hosting servers will serve up your website, but the AI process. 00:24:25.935 --> 00:24:29.605 Will will happen on a separate environment and and really so you know you sort 00:24:29.605 --> 00:24:35.690 of by designing the architecture In that way of isolating, hey, we have 00:24:35.690 --> 00:24:40.860 isolating how we want the customer to be able to experience their website. 00:24:40.860 --> 00:24:41.090 Right? 00:24:41.090 --> 00:24:44.429 We want an environment and a technology that's focused on that. 00:24:44.709 --> 00:24:47.320 And then we still want to be able to add this feature set, but they don't have 00:24:47.320 --> 00:24:49.889 to exist using the same CPU and RAM. 00:24:49.889 --> 00:24:50.070 Right? 00:24:50.070 --> 00:24:51.810 They don't have to compete for resources. 00:24:52.290 --> 00:24:56.125 And I think that, you know, what really gave us the ability to 00:24:56.135 --> 00:25:00.515 do that was because we're, they weren't operating in isolation. 00:25:01.075 --> 00:25:04.765 They knew, you know, sort of the challenges that we were dealing with and 00:25:04.765 --> 00:25:08.875 what we were trying to optimize for and how we were trying to work on edge cases. 00:25:09.295 --> 00:25:13.184 And they were able to say, Oh, so we're going to build it with, you 00:25:13.184 --> 00:25:15.054 know, this architectural segmentation. 00:25:15.810 --> 00:25:17.530 And we were able to say, yeah, great. 00:25:18.030 --> 00:25:18.520 What do you need? 00:25:20.070 --> 00:25:23.090 Ended up being relatively simple since we're already working together. 00:25:23.750 --> 00:25:26.360 Matt: Alright, so let me just pull back again, once again, 00:25:26.370 --> 00:25:27.770 back into my early days. 00:25:27.780 --> 00:25:31.680 This is how I got into all of this stuff, was I used to work at Circuit City. 00:25:31.900 --> 00:25:33.600 And I used to sell computers at Circuit City. 00:25:34.330 --> 00:25:39.355 And one day I remember a customer came in to Circuit City and they said, Hey, 00:25:39.565 --> 00:25:41.775 give me the cheapest computer you have. 00:25:41.825 --> 00:25:42.765 Now, this is back. 00:25:42.865 --> 00:25:45.795 I'm talking like Pentium 1s and 2s. 00:25:46.185 --> 00:25:48.304 Pentium 3 was just on the horizon. 00:25:48.535 --> 00:25:51.695 Anyone who has no idea what I'm saying, you are very young. 00:25:52.764 --> 00:25:54.264 You probably don't remember these CPUs. 00:25:54.535 --> 00:25:56.545 But anyway, the customer comes and says, give me the cheapest. 00:25:56.860 --> 00:26:00.539 Computer you have, I'm going to run this thing called Linux on it. 00:26:00.879 --> 00:26:02.379 And I was like, what is this Linux? 00:26:02.379 --> 00:26:06.350 And back in the day, you could actually buy software off the shelf. 00:26:06.709 --> 00:26:10.489 And he went over and he grabbed a box of Linux, which I think 00:26:10.489 --> 00:26:13.129 at the time was Mandrake Linux. 00:26:13.179 --> 00:26:13.529 Sounds right. 00:26:13.530 --> 00:26:14.139 And he checked out. 00:26:14.310 --> 00:26:17.949 Yeah, and he checked out and he took his 300 computer. 00:26:17.949 --> 00:26:21.510 I was like, that guy is not going to do anything with that 300 00:26:21.530 --> 00:26:22.889 computer in this operating system. 00:26:22.909 --> 00:26:24.069 And then I got into the world of it. 00:26:24.340 --> 00:26:27.540 Fast forward, that's what got me into like, into the IT space, 00:26:27.570 --> 00:26:31.210 building networks, again, for the local company, and just like really 00:26:31.210 --> 00:26:34.779 enjoying open source, and that was my first foray into, into open source. 00:26:35.210 --> 00:26:39.000 Does the landscapes, what does the landscape look like, uh, inside 00:26:39.249 --> 00:26:40.929 Bluehost for that operating system? 00:26:40.949 --> 00:26:42.559 Is it, it's all Linux driven? 00:26:42.599 --> 00:26:44.179 Is it Windows driven these days? 00:26:44.514 --> 00:26:49.614 Is it like Ubuntu or Gentoo? 00:26:49.615 --> 00:26:49.915 What's the 00:26:49.915 --> 00:26:50.655 Brent: pattern look like? 00:26:50.975 --> 00:26:55.794 Yeah, it's still very much CentOS and we're transitioning towards Alma. 00:26:56.175 --> 00:27:00.635 But the, you know, across, if I were to, you know, take a step back and look 00:27:00.635 --> 00:27:04.454 at, you know, hosting in general and New Fold as a whole, got everything, right? 00:27:04.464 --> 00:27:08.354 There's a lot of companies that have come together to sort of make this space. 00:27:09.139 --> 00:27:12.800 But predominantly, you know, we're building our own kernels. 00:27:12.860 --> 00:27:15.419 We're building our, our own Apache. 00:27:15.450 --> 00:27:16.960 We're building our own PHP. 00:27:16.970 --> 00:27:19.079 We're building most of the stack ourselves. 00:27:19.489 --> 00:27:24.399 So we're less concerned about the, the operating system that is necessarily 00:27:24.399 --> 00:27:30.000 involved and more concerned with like that guy running Mandrake, you know, how 00:27:30.100 --> 00:27:34.700 slim we can get each of these layers and still provide the experience we need. 00:27:34.700 --> 00:27:37.390 Because, you know, the thinner each one of these gets, the 00:27:37.390 --> 00:27:38.690 more performant it tends to be. 00:27:39.209 --> 00:27:43.169 So what we're looking for is, is modularity more than we're looking 00:27:43.189 --> 00:27:46.969 for, you know, even, you know, hyper modern operating systems, right? 00:27:46.969 --> 00:27:48.899 We're looking for reliability and modularity. 00:27:49.159 --> 00:27:50.100 What's the biggest 00:27:50.599 --> 00:27:54.509 Matt: bottleneck for WordPress in terms of performance? 00:27:54.530 --> 00:27:55.860 Is it the database layer? 00:27:56.530 --> 00:27:59.290 Or is it PHP and, and, and JavaScript? 00:27:59.300 --> 00:28:04.149 Is that bottleneck MySQL and the queries and, you know, I, I, I 00:28:04.560 --> 00:28:05.980 haven't been in the space very long. 00:28:06.100 --> 00:28:09.640 You know, I haven't dug deep into the space infrastructure wise and like how 00:28:09.640 --> 00:28:13.340 WordPress impacts like server loads, network loads and all that stuff, but 00:28:13.340 --> 00:28:15.830 I know that there's a lot of people on the web that are talking about 00:28:15.830 --> 00:28:19.869 Jamstatic and static websites and oh man, if you're using WordPress and you 00:28:19.880 --> 00:28:21.875 have All of these types of software. 00:28:21.875 --> 00:28:23.845 It's just, it's just a slow experience. 00:28:23.845 --> 00:28:25.345 Go headless, they say. 00:28:25.385 --> 00:28:27.875 You know, and it's just like, well, WordPress still works. 00:28:28.145 --> 00:28:31.425 And it still works on like 90 percent of the infrastructure out there. 00:28:31.824 --> 00:28:33.764 What is that bottleneck and is there something that you're 00:28:33.764 --> 00:28:35.394 looking, that you look towards? 00:28:35.915 --> 00:28:38.135 Maybe WordPress optimizing in the future? 00:28:38.645 --> 00:28:40.895 Brent: Well, I think that it's, it's interesting that, that 00:28:40.895 --> 00:28:42.065 you talk about headless, right? 00:28:42.065 --> 00:28:46.175 Because you can get a headless experience with WordPress relatively simply. 00:28:46.635 --> 00:28:50.685 So if you, if you think about WordPress is doing a number of 00:28:50.685 --> 00:28:51.765 things in the background, right? 00:28:51.765 --> 00:28:54.705 It's, it's querying a plugin, it's reaching out to to MySQL it's 00:28:54.705 --> 00:28:58.065 com, you know, working through PHP and constructing an HTML page. 00:28:58.425 --> 00:29:02.265 And then it's providing that HTML page to Apache, which delivers it to. 00:29:02.450 --> 00:29:03.410 the end user. 00:29:04.200 --> 00:29:08.740 If you are able to say reliably that that page hasn't changed since the last 00:29:08.740 --> 00:29:10.880 time it was built, then you can cache it. 00:29:10.880 --> 00:29:14.960 And that's what caching plugins have been doing for, you know, a decade and a half. 00:29:15.560 --> 00:29:21.409 But with, with more modern technologies, you can actually present that HTML 00:29:21.409 --> 00:29:26.570 page up into a CDN like CloudFlare and be able to say, this is static. 00:29:26.610 --> 00:29:28.900 Keep it cached for X number of minutes. 00:29:29.550 --> 00:29:31.540 And now what you're really looking at is. 00:29:31.939 --> 00:29:36.500 It's a static HTML page that is essentially a headless homepage 00:29:37.139 --> 00:29:42.339 sitting up at the CloudFlare caching layer being presented to your, 00:29:42.370 --> 00:29:44.299 to your end users upon request. 00:29:44.949 --> 00:29:49.289 So I think that that's where, where, like where some of this diverges, right? 00:29:49.289 --> 00:29:52.719 And that's where it's limiting some of the headless adoption because it's not unique. 00:29:53.085 --> 00:29:57.215 To just building a static page and publishing it in a headless space. 00:29:57.595 --> 00:30:00.395 Other systems can already do that, including WordPress. 00:30:01.045 --> 00:30:05.385 Uh, and that I think is where, you know, some of that difference really lies. 00:30:05.685 --> 00:30:09.655 Speaking to, you know, the complexity of generating those pages. 00:30:10.215 --> 00:30:11.565 It can be very site dependent. 00:30:11.855 --> 00:30:18.115 The page that does a lot of complexity with plugins to be able to generate, you 00:30:18.115 --> 00:30:23.415 know, various blocks or page elements can be very diff, can be much more 00:30:23.415 --> 00:30:27.895 complex than a page that uses, or a theme that uses, you know, multiple database 00:30:27.895 --> 00:30:32.435 entries to display a bunch of different comments alongside multiple blog entries. 00:30:33.005 --> 00:30:34.885 So it can be very site dependent. 00:30:35.145 --> 00:30:39.330 And so I think you end up having to sort of Optimize for each space. 00:30:39.720 --> 00:30:43.980 So, for example, you know, we partner with cloudflare to be able to publish, 00:30:43.990 --> 00:30:48.880 you know, the static content, but we also, you know, optimize my sequel to be 00:30:48.880 --> 00:30:51.140 able to get the queries out pretty quick. 00:30:51.410 --> 00:30:53.110 Then we add object caching. 00:30:53.400 --> 00:30:57.360 At the PHP layer so that we don't necessarily have to do database 00:30:57.360 --> 00:31:01.740 lookups if that hasn't shifted and we then add in, you know, additional 00:31:01.760 --> 00:31:06.950 elements like static file caching if somebody isn't using cloudflare for, 00:31:06.970 --> 00:31:10.950 you know, images, videos, PDFs, you know, static content that doesn't ship. 00:31:11.500 --> 00:31:15.700 So it's, it's more about, if I'm an individual WordPress developer, right, 00:31:15.700 --> 00:31:19.010 I'm responsible for one website, I'm responsible for, I don't know, whitehouse. 00:31:19.230 --> 00:31:19.540 gov. 00:31:19.610 --> 00:31:22.850 I'm going to be optimizing for that individual use case, and obviously 00:31:22.850 --> 00:31:26.470 I encourage those developers to do that, regardless of where 00:31:26.470 --> 00:31:27.760 they're hosted or what they do. 00:31:28.230 --> 00:31:32.780 But at the same time, intrinsically, it's our responsibility at Bluehost 00:31:32.790 --> 00:31:37.040 to make sure that we're optimizing for each element, under the assumption that 00:31:37.040 --> 00:31:38.630 different customers have different needs. 00:31:40.260 --> 00:31:41.600 Matt: Last few questions here. 00:31:41.610 --> 00:31:46.190 Do you interface with the core contributing team that Bluehost 00:31:46.190 --> 00:31:50.180 sponsors, like John DeRoges and, and the rest of the, his colleagues 00:31:50.180 --> 00:31:51.960 that, that work in contributing to 00:31:51.960 --> 00:31:52.260 Brent: core? 00:31:52.470 --> 00:31:55.950 Yeah, yeah, John, I talk to fairly regularly, JD. 00:31:56.125 --> 00:31:59.155 He's on our, he's on our performance committee, I guess, 00:31:59.275 --> 00:32:00.465 our performance working group. 00:32:00.995 --> 00:32:02.765 And, and we'll talk to him pretty regularly. 00:32:03.165 --> 00:32:05.745 And then, you know, we'll have conversations around, you know, 00:32:05.745 --> 00:32:08.605 we'll pull him in as, as we look at, at different caching layers. 00:32:08.605 --> 00:32:12.695 When we were working on object caching in the PHP layer, for example, and we'll 00:32:12.695 --> 00:32:16.185 have, have some of those conversations with him, but we'll also, you know, 00:32:16.185 --> 00:32:18.925 talk to him more broadly about, hey. 00:32:19.255 --> 00:32:23.505 You know, when are we thinking that WordPress will support PHP 8. 00:32:23.545 --> 00:32:27.945 3, because we definitely don't want to be putting it, you know, as the 00:32:27.955 --> 00:32:31.095 default version for new customers if WordPress isn't ready yet. 00:32:31.605 --> 00:32:34.975 And we'll have conversations with them about, hey, we're 00:32:34.975 --> 00:32:37.345 noticing this bug when 6. 00:32:37.345 --> 00:32:38.275 4 came out, right? 00:32:38.605 --> 00:32:42.285 Many hosting companies were, were encountering a bug, an 00:32:42.285 --> 00:32:44.975 unexpected bug that we were seeing in a, in a number of places. 00:32:45.475 --> 00:32:48.465 And, you know, we were able to work with him directly on it and pulled 00:32:48.465 --> 00:32:52.775 him into our, our phone calls directly with our developers saying, here are 00:32:52.775 --> 00:32:54.315 API calls have stopped functioning. 00:32:55.095 --> 00:32:57.865 And so, you know, we, we work with those guys a lot. 00:32:57.875 --> 00:33:01.925 And in particular, JD tends to be the guy that we'll work with the most 00:33:02.225 --> 00:33:04.765 brilliant mind, just an incredible mind. 00:33:04.925 --> 00:33:06.785 And he understands how to work with, with. 00:33:07.150 --> 00:33:11.670 The community and us extremely well like he he's able to sort of adapt 00:33:12.050 --> 00:33:15.750 between different conversations better than most every developer I've seen. 00:33:15.800 --> 00:33:16.070 It's very 00:33:16.070 --> 00:33:16.610 Matt: impressive. 00:33:17.240 --> 00:33:21.180 He was employee number one at my agency when I started it so I'll. 00:33:21.495 --> 00:33:22.895 I'll, I'll take the credit for that. 00:33:23.045 --> 00:33:23.255 Yeah, 00:33:23.345 --> 00:33:24.085 Brent: it was all you, man. 00:33:24.225 --> 00:33:24.685 It's all you. 00:33:25.415 --> 00:33:25.635 He's 00:33:25.635 --> 00:33:28.215 Matt: a heck of a baseball player or was, but you know, 00:33:28.215 --> 00:33:29.465 now he's old and he has a kid. 00:33:29.555 --> 00:33:30.335 Yeah, just kidding. 00:33:30.395 --> 00:33:31.055 Just kidding, John. 00:33:31.055 --> 00:33:34.715 If you're listening to, if you're listening to the podcast today, if, 00:33:34.725 --> 00:33:38.775 if Bluehost ever does or Newfold does a softball league, internal softball 00:33:38.775 --> 00:33:42.165 league, scoop him up, don't let him go 00:33:42.165 --> 00:33:44.435 Brent: to, we're globally distributed, right? 00:33:44.465 --> 00:33:46.485 That's a lot of people to get on a plane. 00:33:48.315 --> 00:33:50.955 Matt: If it does happen, Brent, this has been a fantastic. 00:33:52.025 --> 00:33:55.535 It's great to kind of learn how, uh, you all are approaching the 00:33:55.545 --> 00:33:58.735 infrastructure and the performance and the impact of WordPress. 00:33:59.285 --> 00:34:02.960 Is there anything else that That you want to touch upon, that you, 00:34:03.020 --> 00:34:06.350 that you think your team or teams do really well for WordPress. 00:34:06.350 --> 00:34:13.210 So the listeners know that you're paying attention to the quality and the output of 00:34:13.590 --> 00:34:16.530 the experience of WordPress and Bluehost. 00:34:16.880 --> 00:34:19.030 Brent: I just want to be transparent and say, right, there have been 00:34:19.030 --> 00:34:22.820 periods in Bluehost history where we have not been performant. 00:34:23.025 --> 00:34:26.345 Where you have not lived up to our own standards, and I think that that 00:34:26.355 --> 00:34:29.455 has, you know, pretty dramatically shifted over the past couple of years 00:34:29.455 --> 00:34:33.585 as we've really readjusted how we approach, you know, customer success 00:34:33.615 --> 00:34:35.885 and, you know, the overall experience. 00:34:36.305 --> 00:34:40.035 And I would, I would say that, you know, people who had a bad experience with 00:34:40.035 --> 00:34:42.615 Bluehost in the past, I understand, right? 00:34:43.000 --> 00:34:47.610 I, I, I came, I came through those days and it wasn't, you know, our best period. 00:34:48.030 --> 00:34:48.890 We're better now. 00:34:49.050 --> 00:34:53.740 And we've really put the work in to, to make that experience a lot more effective. 00:34:54.020 --> 00:34:57.700 And we're now seeing, you know, of course, you know, external validation of that, 00:34:57.760 --> 00:35:01.700 you know, with various other awards and tests proving that we've had success. 00:35:02.090 --> 00:35:04.980 So just speaking, you know, sort of as a capstone, right. 00:35:05.690 --> 00:35:06.600 Give us a try again. 00:35:07.430 --> 00:35:08.310 We've been working on it. 00:35:08.350 --> 00:35:11.830 We admit that we haven't been perfect, but we've really come back around and 00:35:11.840 --> 00:35:15.720 hopefully we've gotten to a point where people who had a bad experience in the 00:35:15.720 --> 00:35:17.260 past will have a great experience now. 00:35:19.120 --> 00:35:20.610 Matt: That's it for today's episode. 00:35:20.650 --> 00:35:23.450 Get the weekly newsletter at thewpminute. 00:35:23.450 --> 00:35:25.290 com slash subscribe. 00:35:25.340 --> 00:35:28.490 Want to support the show and join a slack group filled with 00:35:28.490 --> 00:35:29.950 WordPress professionals like you? 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