Matt: Eric Karkovac, welcome to the WP Minute.
Eric: Hey, thanks for having me, Matt.
Matt: Not really welcome you to that.
I mean, you are here.
You are the essence of the WP Minute, the man behind all the freelancer articles
that we're going to discuss today in this nice, nice little year end recap.
but it is always a pleasure to, to have you here.
We're chatting about one of your losing teams, the Saints, before
we hit record, about them Orioles.
Eric: I think they're going to be good again.
They're spending some money this year.
I think that's going to be a good thing.
Matt: We're going to talk about today is some of the great articles that, Eric
has handpicked from his, stack of work that he's done for the WP minute over
2024, some of his top five articles, wherever you're listening, watching this.
if you have a favorite.
article that Eric has written on the WP Minute.
Go ahead and share it.
Post it.
Put it in the comments.
Don't forget to like and subscribe.
we have five articles that you're pulling out today and one of them
is obviously going to be talking about automatic versus WP Engine.
We just saw a judge rule on the injunction case.
We'll save that to the end.
Because, you know, we're not going to give it all the way up at the
front, right, Eric, we don't want to just, you know, give them the great
controversial news right at the start.
We'll save that to the end of, of today's conversation.
When I asked you, Eric, to go back and pick your favorite articles from
the WP minute, what were you thinking?
What, what made these top five your favorite?
Eric: I think all of them address some pressing WordPress ecosystem and
community, and I really think all of them have an impact on freelancers as well.
So it's.
It's stuff that maybe we don't talk about other than the, WP Engine stuff.
Things that we don't talk about necessarily every day, but things
I think that we run into quite often when we're using WordPress
and we're working on client sites.
Matt: You selected here's, here's the articles you selected.
How does automatic versus WP Engine impact freelancers?
We're going to save that one to the end.
Why small WordPress UI changes are big deal.
Go ahead and use WordPress your way, which is one of my favorite, articles
from, 2024 using WordPress often means subscriptions, lots of them.
We're actually going to start with that one since we're on
the tail end of the holiday sale that all of us sort of jump into.
And then data liberation needs to happen within WordPress too.
Oof, that's a, that's an interesting one amidst all of this WP Engine
stuff and especially that sort of like real vocal public call to action
for, from Matt about data liberation.
It was sort of like.
One of the milestone things that he had said over to 2024 where
people like, okay, cool Sounds good.
How do we get there?
Who's gonna do it first?
Which platforms?
You know, and it's certainly taking a backseat to all this
controversy I want to frame for the WordPress freelancers out there.
I've been recording a session on what people are really struggling
with, with WordPress and, and their freelance business or their agency.
Right?
You know, freelancers, boutique agencies.
Of course, the WP Engine stuff is super difficult, right?
To navigate.
Yeah.
Stressful.
but I'm wondering if, if people have been seeing it, have an impact
on their business or the future of their business, like our clients.
Referring to it our clients pulling back because of this thing from your
angle eric has I know we were going to talk about like your article
specifically But I want to talk about the the future of freelancing and agency
stuff for a second into 2025 Has this been a challenge for your business?
Have your clients said, Oh, I heard about this WP engine thing.
I don't, I don't like what I'm hearing.
Has that come across your radar at all?
Eric: It has come across a few different scenarios.
in one scenario, I have a client on WP engine.
He wasn't too thrilled about the situation when he couldn't update his plugins, due
to WP engine being blocked from wordpress.
org.
so we definitely had some conversations around that.
And there was another scenario where, you know, we're looking to move
an enterprise site to a new host.
And that became kind of a, a real concern there.
even if the.
We don't move it to WP engine per se.
You still have to wonder when you're picking a host.
Okay.
Well, what's next?
What's.
You know, it's WP engine, just the first of many that are going
to get this kind of a situation.
So it's, it's definitely there in people's minds every day.
I think even, even with advanced custom fields,
Matt: what about the, did the discussion of Just simply using WordPress, come
up with this enterprise client, or are they already built in WordPress?
So there's no turning back now, but did they say something like, Oh,
you know, maybe we should be going Drupal or something else, nothing
Eric: like that.
Thankfully, but it was, you know, it, there just is that extra uncertainty
when you're looking to move hosts and it's, it has to be a factor now.
I think you have to.
To really weigh heavily about where you're moving your site, just in case,
you know, something should go wrong.
One
Matt: of the challenges from running an agency again, ran one for a decade.
and, still, I still see and hear the same challenges that people
are having, hard to find clients.
Lots more competition.
We got this AI thing happening these days.
I'm really leaning into advising people and I've been doing this
even for the WP minute, right?
Like finding sponsorships is like a business is difficult across the board.
I don't know many businesses that simply print money unless you're
in energy, you know, and, and you're, you know, drilling for oil.
Like I don't, just don't know of any business that just comes easy.
And I'm really leaning into experience, human experience.
Like what are the things that really connect that you can't find in AI, right?
You and I have had these discussions with WP minute writing content.
Hey, tutorial content is great.
But tutorial content that is drawn from a real experience, like a real
experience that you had dealing with a client, implementing a solution, and then
training somebody and teaching somebody how to do that, that's the future of
content for me anyway, at least for the next couple of years, human experience,
connecting with people that is.
Customer service, I guess the essence of customer service is what I'm
thinking people should be leaning into if they're starting an agency or
freelance business headed into 2025.
What are your thoughts on finding customers trying to find a
leg up on the competition and everything happening in the space?
Eric: Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head when you're
talking about experience because That's how we learn things.
I mean, you can type any question you want in chat GPT, but is
the answer going to be correct?
Is it going to apply to your use case?
Those types of things are, you know, novels to humans.
I mean, that's.
What we do, right?
So I think if you can show that you are responsive and you take care of
your customers and that you have, you know, that experience and know how,
I think that's going to bode well.
And I also think sometimes in the freelance game, we tend to,
you know, chase clients that maybe aren't the best fit for us.
we talk about volume more than quality and In that case, you know, I'd rather
have five, like really good clients that pay well and that, you know, communicate
well, then have 25 clients that are substandard in paying and a pain to deal
with, you know, I, I think everybody's got to set up their business to focus on
where they want to be and how they want to work and who they want to work with.
You know, don't chase things just because they're there, focus on,
you know, Achievable goals and show people what you can do and why it's a
benefit to them to have you on board
Matt: your outlook for 2025.
Are you shifting things up?
Do you have any sort of like goals or objectives?
Like, are you trying to find the quality client headed into 2025 at
least for your freelance development?
Work.
I know you're multifaceted.
You're a writer, an author, a best selling author and, a WordPress developer.
But do you have any goals on like finding the right customers?
Do you need to go find new customers?
What's it look like for Eric in 2025?
Eric: I try to be careful about how many new customers I bring in a year.
I have a lot who have been with me for over a decade and I try to keep
those relationships going strong.
I think one of my goals this year is actually going to be to focus on being a
little more proactive with those clients that I already have, talking to them
about things like, you know, upgrading PHP, making sure your site's compatible.
maybe it's been a while since there's been a redesign, something
like that, that, brings in.
Revenue, but doesn't require me to go out and, and hunt new clients
and, you know, spend a ton on marketing or things like that.
I, I think sometimes we also forget, you know, the resources we already
have available to us and those client relationships we have can be
beneficial for, you know, not just till the site launches, you know, they
can be beneficial for years to come if, if you have a good relationship.
Matt: Yeah, yeah, 100%.
And I think that, you know, that's where you're, you're leaning into
again, that human interaction.
There's so many, you know, customers that can, it's easy as
you're, it's easy to forget your customer and to engage with them.
I know it sounds silly when you say it out loud, like, well, how would I,
I'm there, I'm hosting their website, I'm, I'm updating their plugins.
That's all, you know, Great.
And that's all like on the technical side.
But I'll tell you that the client doesn't see that, right?
They don't know.
They're not looking at the updates, right?
And like, maybe you're sending them a report.
Okay, fine.
They're looking at a bunch of data, you know, or graphs
or logs that you send them.
It's like, Oh yeah, pretty.
You say that's totally different than opening up a conversation.
Like, how's your business going?
What else do you need on the WordPress site?
what else do you need in, in social or content?
Anything I can do to help, you know, establish this.
and that just enhances the relationship, which is crazy to even have to say that in
headed into 2025, but it's a real thing.
it's a real thing that folks need to lean into, I think, for future success.
Eric: Yeah.
Think about it.
Everybody's already got a website out there pretty much, right.
Except for maybe a startup or, you know, something new out there.
So how do you help people maximize what they have and how
do you, you know, capitalize on that while also helping them?
Matt: Let's dive into your first.
Article today.
for those of you watching, you can see, the quick title featured image.
And before we hopped on the call, Eric, you'll love to know I whipped
these five articles through ChatGPT and I said, pull a quote from it.
Something that I could quickly use as a visual, to have on the video,
side of today's conversation.
So the first article is using WordPress often means subscriptions, a lot of them.
Here's a quote from Eric.
Theoretically speaking, you could have a dozen subscriptions from a dozen vendors.
Each has a different pricing model, which is so true.
In the WordPress world.
We're coming off the tail end of, you know, all of the Thanksgiving,
Black Friday holiday sales that, you know, sort of just rush
into the market 50 percent off.
I know we were doing 50 percent off at Gravity Forms, tons of people,
purchasing Gravity Forms, either for the first time or for their clients.
It's an amazing time to be a WordPress plugin company or theme company.
first off, did you pick up any new deals?
This, these last few weeks,
Eric: I was so proud of myself.
I did not buy anything new.
I did take advantage of a, of a renewal on a couple of things
that had a discount with them.
So I was happy about that.
But usually my, my problem is I start seeing, Oh, I can use this.
I could really use that.
And then the plugins just kind of sit there.
So I was kind of proud that I did not do it this year, but I
do have a ton of subscriptions.
Matt: I did pull out a poll.
I should have, I should have, looked at this first, but I did put out
a poll during the holiday sale and surprisingly a lot of people voted.
I just asked, like, are you buying it for the first time, buying a
plug in or theme for the first time?
Are you doing it because, and are you going to use it right away?
That's what it was.
I think he's going to use it right away.
Are you holding onto it for future?
And there was a surprising amount of people who responded that they were just
buying things to, to maybe eventually.
Use them.
It's not something I've ever done, but I, I can see why, like, I can see why
people have an attraction to a particular product and I might use that someday.
I might as well scoop it up for 50 percent off now or whatever the deal is.
that makes total sense.
Why did this article make your top five?
Eric: I think it's an ongoing kind of struggle for freelancers too, because
when you look at it, part of the deal is, you know, dealing with clients, they're
not always up for more subscriptions.
They, and I think this is a hard.
Thing for us as freelancers, we have to kind of describe why
those subscriptions are necessary.
Like, think of a client that has a WooCommerce store.
Okay.
They, they may not understand why, a certain shipping method isn't
available right away, in a default install or why, you know, they
can't have a customized product.
in a certain way.
You know, it takes those extra subscriptions to get it done.
And I think that kind of becomes a problem in WordPress as you scale.
for a small site, it's not that big of a deal.
You can put gravity forms on there.
Great product, put it on, get your forms all set up.
But what happens as you scale and you need more and more functionality and
all of a sudden you're managing, you know, 20 subscriptions and they're
all renewing at different times.
And They all have different rates and sometimes they go up in price and
you hadn't budgeted ahead for that.
So I think it, it's something that we need to think about
in how we work with clients.
You know, first of all, do we really need that subscription?
Do we really need what that product is giving us?
And second of all, I think it also.
It's something that, you know, we've had this debate forever
about a WordPress app store.
Not sure that's ever going to happen, but at least not on wordpress.
org.
but,
Matt: Oh, you say that Eric, but you have no idea.
I have no idea that that is
Eric: for sure.
But especially after this year, I don't know anything anymore, but, but
it is something that freelancers have to deal with on almost a daily basis.
Every site we build.
There's, you know, a handful of subscriptions, it seems like,
and that's great to, you know, we want to support the developers.
We want to make sure that they are getting paid for their hard work,
but it does become, you know, a management nightmare after a while.
So I think that's, that's something that probably not
going to go away anytime soon.
Matt: Yeah.
I'll tell you, it's, it's, it's just an, it's wild space this morning.
I stumbled upon a.
Plugin, it's just randomly like I went, I actually went to go check
on, advanced custom fields to see if it was back in the repo.
And I just quickly pulled up the repo and I just saw some
other plugin that caught my eye.
I can't remember the name of it right now.
It was like, you know, Gutenberg block collection.
I was like, oh, this.
Name looks cool.
Icon looks cool.
I clicked on it.
Never seen it before.
7, 000 active installs and I clicked on the, they have, of course, they,
you know, list everything on the repo page and there's a pro subscription.
So I'd learn more.
I click it.
I just want to see, you know, how much they charge and it's like the typical
47 97 1 47 pricing and I'm just looking at it going, wow, how did we, you know,
how did WordPress land on this pricing?
Yeah.
Like across the board, 47.
97, 1.
47, it just seems to be like the recurring trend for any kind of,
you know, theme or plugin shop that has launched within the last decade.
and that was interesting to see, but then there's like the flip side of it where
there are some providers out there where, you know, pricing is different when When
it goes, after the first year, so it's like, yeah, get a deal now next year.
It's like three times the price.
and that is also, something that can happen that can surprise the consumer.
So it's not even just like the amount of vendors somebody has to deal with.
But like you said, you know, it's just this variety of pricing.
and some folks, some places out there are, you know, the price is not what it seems.
you know, when you first buy it, which is, which is not
fun for the, for the consumer.
So I can understand why consumers like average users can like
freak out about this stuff.
Eric: Yeah, it gets to the point where, you know, you almost have
to just look on a daily basis.
Who's doing what with, with, with the things you subscribe to because
yeah, they can change quite a bit.
I had a plug and do that to me earlier this year.
it turned out that they like tripled the price after the introductory year.
And.
I didn't see any mention of it in any of their official emails.
It actually came to me in a PayPal email that was generated after my purchase.
there's like a little note inside that PayPal email.
It says after the first year you will be charged X amount.
And I was like, really?
There was no documentation, you know, in the official things sent from the
developer and I was like, that's probably not going to win over a lot of friends.
Matt: It doesn't help the consumer, but I'm sure it
satisfies the legal side of things.
let's move on to the next article.
Data liberation needs to happen within WordPress too.
quote, the process can be messy.
We may need to grab data from different database tables and columns, that
may also encompass multiple plugins.
That is definitely.
A quote pulled from AI, in the first two moments of hitting record.
This is why you don't trust AI to anything.
Data liberation is certainly not going to be easy.
pivotal moment, like we were mentioning before, we heard Mullenweg talk about it.
We thought data liberation was going to be, I mean, I
thought like, okay, makes sense.
Who's going to rally the troops to do this?
I haven't seen many troops rallying to do this.
what has happened within WordPress 2 mean to you?
Eric: So what I'm talking about is kind of what this AI quote is actually.
We're talking about, you know, data liberation originally came about
when we're talking about like moving from Wix or Squarespace or Shopify
to WordPress, having tools that can allow us to easily grab that content.
Put it into our WordPress install, but there is also an issue with
working within WordPress as well.
say you have an e commerce site or a membership site, you may want
to pull information about a user's purchases from root commerce.
But then you may also want that same report to have some of their member
press data or whatever membership software they're using, or maybe
they're using an LMS in there too.
So how do you grab data from all these plugins and combine it into one report?
That's pretty heavy stuff to do right now.
There's no plugin that I've seen that can reliably do that.
Now, I will tell you, I did cheat with AI on a project this year for a
client that needed something like this.
I had it write me a custom MySQL query to take from these different tables and
to put everything into a CSV file that I could export and give to the client.
It actually worked, but it was even with AI, it was a few hours
and, you know, a lot of back and forth trying to perfect it.
So I think when you're looking at, you know, getting the data from your
WordPress website, it's not easy.
you know, unless you're going with the standard WooCommerce reports that
are included in a default install, you really going to have to, to work hard
to try and get everything you want.
And that's a shame because.
Our sites hold so much valuable data.
And if we have access to it, that makes that allows us to make better decisions.
But, you know, the first part is getting it and putting it all together, which
is kind of an impossibility right now, but the way things are set up,
Matt: there's a, yeah, there's, there's so much things I love and hate about
WordPress and where we're at, you know, in the, in the history of, of
WordPress, particularly now, but, when I first saw this, I was like, you
know, what'd be, what would be great.
And I've talked about this before, and this is well before, you know,
we've been challenged with this thing.
WP engine stuff, but I've often challenged the idea of five for the
future and giving back to WordPress and, you know, doing, embarking
on projects like data liberation.
I've often challenged the sentiment of it by challenging
other brands to actually do it.
You could boil it down to just like calling Matt's bluff.
I mean, it's pretty harsh statement, but I would say it's calling Matt's bluff.
And I've said this about, five for the future.
Hey, look, if you want.
if, if bigger brands, let's say like GoDaddy is what I reference
in one of my, more formidable articles, keys of the kingdom.
It's like, look, GoDaddy could just say, here's 20 million.
Here's Juan Soto money every single year for developers that just
come in and commit to WordPress.
What would Matt do if a hundred GoDaddy Showed up to commit to, to WordPress.
I think, you know, on the surface, I think he would smile
and be like, Oh, that's great.
But I also think that he would be challenged with, how the direction
of WordPress is managed because you'd have, you know, an army, a troop of
people coming in to commit to WordPress.
Well, well, I think it's going to be some deeper discussions, going
on, you know, I think anyway.
and the same thing for data liberation.
It's like, Hey, I think, you know, when he put it out there, he would say
we would need more people to come to WordPress, which I'm not arguing against.
Sure.
Yeah, absolutely.
But I would also look at that as an opportunity for let's say a Wix
or a Squarespace or a Webflow to come in and go, Oh, you know what?
We're going to make our data liberation tool.
And we're going to, we're going to be, we're actually going to commit
this to this, this project, which at the end, like both camps, at the end
of the, hopefully the consumer wins.
Right?
When you have these things, so a hundred GoDaddys come in to call the bluff.
Guess who wins?
The end user.
Which is, you know, that's the goal, I think, for open source.
particularly challenged again at the end of this year, but I, I, I see
these moments and I'm like, damn, I wish there would be more adoption
from the, from, from the outside.
you know, when, when Matt sort of plants his flag on these ideas and
these concepts, which largely look to maybe influence and benefit himself in
WordPress, I also look at the outside, go, Hey guys, Wix, where you got to,
you got an opportunity here to jump in and make something and guess who wins?
We do, which is ultimately what you want.
A bunch of freelancers who say, Oh great.
Wix made a tool to migrate from WordPress to Wix and it's open
source and it's right here.
So if I ever have a customer that's like, ah, this WordPress thing isn't for me.
Boom.
I can go from WordPress to Wix or Wix to WordPress.
would be amazing, amazing flow of, of data, which I guess as I
speak about it out loud is the idea is the goal for this stuff.
We just need that adoption.
And I, you know, I haven't seen it.
I hope for it in 2025, but it's a challenge for sure to get people on board.
Eric: Yeah.
I don't know how much attention it's getting right now with
all the other things going on.
So
Matt: state of the word coming up, maybe it'll, it'll be the only topic left.
Eric: I'm sure there will be other things talked about that on that particular day.
Matt: Speaking of, go ahead and use WordPress your way.
Like I said before, one of my favorite articles, experimentation
is one of the best ways to learn.
Maybe WordPress is more like life than we thought.
I'll try not to drown this conversation in AI, discussion, which I've been
talking about a lot lately, but I have found a new appreciation for WordPress.
as a monolithic app that it has 20 years of history, 20 years of thousands, tens of
thousands of people committing code to it.
I can pull it off the shelf and just run with it, which six months ago in my head
was like, boy, this is old and lethargic.
And then I started building things with AI and I was like,
Oh my God, this is amazing.
like look how fast I can build like these little ad hoc react JS apps.
and, or the react based apps.
And, What it really had me looking at WordPress, the context of is
I can do this stuff in AI, just like you're doing the SQL stuff.
It took you a few hours.
You're probably, you know, pretty impressed with it.
but there's no, that's it.
It's just, it's gone in the moment, right?
Like I build a little, a little react app.
It's gone because I don't know what the hell I'm doing.
I built it.
It exists.
But there's nobody critically thinking about it.
No one's patching this app that I made.
It's gone.
It's awesome in the moment, but it's gone.
Whereas WordPress, you look at and go, there's community, there's a core
team, there's a vision, kinda, and somebody is caring for this thing.
So it might be, air quotes, slow and lethargic in a 20 year old technology.
But it's, but people are caring for it and improving it every day, and
that's what I've, I've found through my journey of learning how to, to code
with AI, allows me to look at WordPress and say, I appreciate, appreciate it,
and I can do all these different things with WordPress, which again, just
reinforces my, you know, my, my love for WordPress, your thoughts on the article.
Eric: So I think we often get into these debates and you
see it all over social media.
That, you know, there's, there's one particular way you have to do something.
The only one page builder you should use or, you know, forms
plugin or whatever it is.
And people get stuck in these debates and, you know, my, my thought on that
is WordPress is like the ultimate blank canvas for whatever you want to build.
Is it always the right choice for everything you want to build?
That's debatable.
But there are so many different ways to build the same thing with
WordPress, which is good and bad.
But I think it also lends to learning and experience.
you know, I can build a WooCommerce site a certain way, and maybe it
breaks somewhere down the line.
And I've learned that, oh no, I probably shouldn't have done that.
Next time I'll know to do this.
And I think that's, that's kind of how my journey with WordPress has been, you know,
I've, I'm a great repository of things I've done wrong and what not to do again.
So I, I've, I've kind of, you know, bank these things in my memory and I think,
okay, I know how to build this now.
I know, I know exactly what I, what I need to do.
And when new things come out, I'm going to try it.
I'm probably going to break it and, but I'll learn from it.
So I think sometimes we have a little bit of gatekeeping in the community about
certain ways to do things and certain tools you have to use or you can't use.
I think we should just let it up to the individual.
That's what WordPress is for.
It's not, it's not meant to be used in one specific way.
even Matt Mullenwiggle, you know, agree with that.
I imagine that, you know, you're building whatever you want, however you want.
And as long as you reach your, your goal, that's all that really matters.
Matt: Yeah.
There, there's a whole world of, again, I don't want to drown this in AI stuff,
but you know, I've been learning it.
I've been learning how to code outside of, outside of WordPress.
And, what I have found is this.
Massive world of frameworks, libraries, and components, in just the React
world, never mind, you know, Laravel, or Ruby on Rails, like, I have
been insulated inside of WordPress for so long, because it's been my
career, largely, and just thinking.
HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript, MySQL database, you know, manage WordPress
hosting, it, you know, it really hasn't expanded beyond that.
And I finally, you know, looked on the other side of the fence and saw
that a lot of that same discussions, but more importantly, that idea of
gatekeeping is, is true everywhere, right?
It's not just in, in WordPress, but certainly as I look to these other
platforms and I'll try to distill this down into like one concise thought is
what, what, What AI has been doing for me to build these little apps is like
the same thing that page builders were allowing people to do 15 years ago
when they first came onto the scene like visual composer, site origin, page
lines, those types of things, where people looked at you and said, whoa,
whoa, whoa, you're doing it wrong.
Page Builder, get out of here with that stuff, right?
You can't be in this room with us.
You have to do it by, by hand.
You must crack open Functions.
php and, and put in your stuff there, and create a new theme, and a
child theme, and do all this stuff.
And there was gatekeeping there because people, Had learned how to do
it for the previous five to 10 years.
And they were telling people, no, no, no, this new thing.
You can't have that, that not, that's not for us.
And now I'm seeing the same thing happen when I start looking and trying to
learn, how do I do this thing and react?
And you just see people like, Oh, must be just, you know, another AI generated app.
It's like, well, man, I'm trying to learn this stuff, which is what
people were doing with page builders.
They were just trying to like, I know, I think.
The person who's doing it the right way, just trying to learn this stuff.
you know, and I, and I think that that experience can
happen across all technologies.
you know, we just see it, you know, primarily in WordPress.
Cause you know, that's where we live.
Eric: Yeah.
And that's okay.
I mean, everybody's got to learn some way, somehow.
And, you know, I, to make myself sound really old, I mean, I can
remember when Microsoft front page came out, I'm like, hell no, man,
I'm, I'm writing code by hand.
I don't need you to put in my, my, my blink tag for me.
Get out of here.
Let me do that myself.
And, you know, you adapt, you adapt over time, you learn and
you're trying to find ways to.
To be more efficient.
Sometimes a page builder is going to do that for you.
Sometimes it's not, you know, the great thing is we have options.
We don't have to limit ourselves and that's.
That's kind of what WordPress is all about in my, my opinion.
Matt: Thanks to FrontPage.
It helped me build, my, high school website back in the day, when our
computer school or computer school, our computer class, I think it was
just called computer class back then.
I don't think there was a real label for it, but, that was one of our
projects is to redesign the high school website and we did thanks to FrontPage.
Next article.
speaking of.
Things that change why small WordPress UI changes are a big deal.
The problem is a lack of communication.
It's not intentional However change in the UI without educating users is likely
to backfire Quote from Eric why small WordPress UI changes are a big deal, you
know I can tell you one thing when they move the focus Featured image location,
my muscle memory of like writing a blog post and scrolling down into the
right to click on the featured image.
I was like, what, what happened?
Where is it?
and even still like a few months later, I'm still like, Oh yeah,
the featured image is up here now.
I got to remember that.
UI changes can have even small UI changes are a big deal.
why this article?
Eric: Well, it's funny enough.
That's the exact problem that I ran into with, with this article.
The featured image changing.
I was training a client actually at the time.
I had no idea that the featured image had shifted up and to
the right of the block editor.
So I'm trying to find out where the featured image is.
And I'm going back to that same old spot that I've been doing for 10 years.
And I look like a fool in front of my client because I don't
know where the featured image is.
Yeah.
And then I happened to spot this button in the upper right.
I'm like, oh, okay.
And the thing is, there's got to be a way to communicate that.
And, and something I bring up in the article is even a tool tip when you
first log in after installing that new version where things have changed,
you know, a little tour, you know, we had, when you install WordPress these
days, you still get that little tour of Gutenberg every time you go into
the block editor for the first time.
Why not be able to do that when something.
Significant has changed like that.
You know, it just seems to me that we would save ourselves a lot of
hassle, a lot of support requests.
the WordPress org support forms would be probably a little less
trafficked in that, in that moment.
you know, we just need to do a better job of, of communicating when things
change and why they've changed.
I think that would be a huge help because we, we have client sites to take care of.
And.
You know, if we don't know if something's changed, we're not going
to be able to inform our clients.
Matt: just to pull back the curtain of the WP minute, that's on the YouTube
channel, that is one of the things that I try to do in, in my content
is, I get, I try to get real ahead of the new WordPress theme coming.
So I'll try to, you know, this communication thing is, is
super important, like you said, and it's also a challenge.
So I don't throw it all at the core team, like.
Not saying that you did, but I'm just saying in general sometimes on Twitter
You'll see you know everybody just attacking everyone for these changes
not that you know of course I've been guilty of it in the past, but I try to
get ahead of things like here comes the new WordPress theme Like literally here's
the announcement And here's what we can expect from it and then I'll do a follow
up video as it starts to get into like either an alpha release or Certainly into
a beta release like this is the theme.
Here's how it's going changing.
This is what you should, you know, you should expect.
and then after it launches, it's here's how to use it.
And then here's a bunch of like use cases around it.
So I'll do like five or six videos around a core theme.
and I know from folks like Anne McCarthy from automatic, rich taber,
Nick Diego, a lot of these folks will reach out to try to educate Like
the YouTubers and the other content creators to try to like resonate
with that across our audience, right?
I know there'll be new renewed efforts for wordpress.
org YouTube content and things like that and it is this fine balance
because oftentimes you can Just go right into github and be like, I
don't like this upcoming feature.
how can we rethink about, can we really reshape this or rethink
how we're going to implement this?
But the average user is not going to be able to, you know,
do that, nor do they care.
Right?
so there's like, on one hand, there is opportunity to help affect this change.
you know, oftentimes when, like, again, like when they release the new theme,
they'll release the figma files of, and you'll see people designing it.
Like, you'll log into the Figma file, you'll see people shaping it and
doing their thing with the theme.
And that's a perfect opportunity to start leaving feedback, to say
like, Yeah, I don't really like how the, like, where this is headed, or
this is a, this is a great thing.
you know, I think both critical con, critical, So we're looking
for not construct, constructive feedback, or critical feedback,
it can happen in both places.
So that WordPress is nice because it, it, it does have that ability,
but you just have to find it and have the time for it, which again
is challenging for the average user.
We're going to move on to the next article.
Pull this up.
This is the big one.
This is the one everyone's been waiting for.
Eric.
Oh, let's share it up onto the screen.
How does automatic versus WP engine impact freelancers?
another lovely AI quote from Eric to describe the tum tumult in a word.
Uncertainty.
We don't know what's coming next.
That makes it hard to commit to the next project, let alone.
Long term investment in a platform.
Oh boy.
Has the WP engine stuff been a thorn in our side?
from WordCamp US to we're heading into a state of the word, almost Christmas time.
we just had that, injunction come down or the ruling from, the court basically
saying that, look, you have to give back, WP engines access to To, to wordpress.
org.
you have to give them back their plugin.
I don't even know how that is going to happen.
there is, you know, they have to do it within 72 hours.
This happened yesterday.
you have to restore access.
You have to remove the checkbox from log, the infamous checkbox, that you
have a relationship with WP Engine before you log into wordpress.
org restore WP and control of ACF.
it has been a wild ride.
We hinted a little bit about it, of how it's impacted your business, but I know
specifically you're a big ACF user.
How did it impact you there with developing sites and, and
communicating that with your customers?
Eric: I can't say I really did a whole lot on that part of it.
You know, I, I, I've been an ACF user ever since Elliot Condon
built it many, many years ago.
And I've continued to do it.
I love ACF blocks.
There's a tutorial on the WP minute to show you how to make your own
ACF blocks if you're interested.
But, It's something I've kept in mind though, because, you know, what if
somehow that plugin fails or what if, you know, it can't be supported anymore.
I'm out of luck because I've got, you know, probably a hundred
sites that have some component of ACF, you know, implemented.
So it's not something I've really been talking to clients about, cause
I don't know what to tell them.
How do you explain this to a person that doesn't know?
But the tool is, you know, I, and I've been a pro user for a long, long time.
So it hasn't really affected, you know, the ability to, to grab the pro version.
those updates continue to roll just like, like, they always have.
it's been the free version that, you know, has had the, the, the hiccup
and how, how you update it and where you get the updates from, but, you
know, it, it, it's something that.
You know, we have to think about on everything we do now.
you know, and I'm sure Matt Mullenweg did not intend for it to get to the
point where we're second guessing every decision we make as freelancers.
But when one company undergoes this kind of scrutiny, well,
what's to stop the next one?
I mean, there have been previous issues with GoDaddy.
Years ago, GoDaddy was a parasitic company.
Pantheon had a, had a run in with, Automatic years ago
over a WordCamp sponsorship.
you know, there's, these things happen and you don't want it to affect your clients.
You don't want to get in the middle of it, but you know, there we are, we're,
we're here, we're, we're in the middle of it, whether we want to or not.
And, so that's something that, you know, for freelancers, we have to kind
of to take that with us every day.
And.
Kind of, you know, scrutinize what we're doing to make sure that we're,
we're putting ourselves in the best position to not have to rip apart our
sites or, you know, having to, move on from tools that we're, we're using.
Matt: Has it ever crossed your mind?
Like when you first started seeing this stuff come about, like.
Hmm.
Maybe I should look at another CMS.
Has that started to like cross your radar or do you have a
backup plan for, for WordPress?
Backup
Eric: plan
Matt: for WordPress?
Eric: No.
Matt: I can't
Eric: say that I do, you know, I'm interested in trying other things.
I I've tried a few other CMSs over the years.
I honestly haven't been impressed just because I like to build things
the way I want to build them and WordPress allows me to do that.
And as long as it keeps allowing me to do that, we're all cool.
But, you know, if it gets in the way of, you know, being able to take care of my
client sites, if it gets in the way of, my ability to make a living with it, then,
you know, you have to reconsider, but.
At this point, I, I think, you know, I'm still fully on board,
but you know, that's, subject to change, I guess, based on, you know,
whatever way the wind blows in 2025.
Matt: watch this space because, I will be announcing a new project
soon, about exploring some other content management systems.
And I've been down the path of really talking to people about these
alternative, I, I say alternative.
They're.
Popular CMS platforms, you know, that are, are doing things their way.
And it is eyeopening, you know, to hear.
And of course, like the biggest challenge that I have found, like having these
discussions aside from, you know, folks who are focusing on like Drupal, or ghost
is that, you know, a lot of them aren't pure, 100 percent GPL, you know, community
driven, but having, you know, talked to a lot of these other CMS platforms recently.
I get why they don't do it.
I get why they don't do it from a business sense.
Largely to avoid things like this.
You know, I mean, obviously, WordPress is just at a massive scale.
So, you know, these things really become much more human problems than they are
like real technical problems in my eyes.
you know, but for a lot of these maybe like indie, CMS, you know, solutions,
Their licensing matters to them for the sustainability of their business.
No different than, you know, Hey, you need to buy a license for this plugin.
you know, for support and these pro features, you know, I don't, I don't
mind that another CMS is charging a few hundred bucks a year for a
license to get access to their CMS.
It just means that they'll be in business to continue to support this
thing, which, and you'll, you'll know the path that they're on hopefully.
and you know, I think that that's just common like business practice.
And sometimes we can get.
a little jaded about like the free and open source and GPL nature of of
WordPress, massive benefit, no doubt.
but sometimes it can sort of like close our eyes to, you know, some
of the, these either alternatives or, or things that might be better
solutions for the particular client that you might be facing or the
vertical that you're in to, to support.
So, yeah, anyway, watch this space.
New project coming soon.
Eric, it's always fantastic hanging out with you.
And especially when we're recapping your five favorite articles from the
WP minute, I really appreciate it.
Eric: Hey, thank you.
I've, I've had a great time.
Matt: you can find Eric's writings every, I almost said every week, but two
to three articles a month, every other week, almost every week at the WP minute.
com the best place to subscribe the WP minute.
com slash subscribe, jump on that mailing list.
You'll find Eric's writing some thoughts from me, a roundup of content
that we do here at the WP minute.
Thanks for watching.
We'll see you in the next episode.