Done With Wordpress

WordPress may be great for a lot of people, not for me anymore. Like, I'm done. That's fine. Just put it out there. Not everything can be for everybody. And WordPress doesn't have to be for me.

Welcome to the Marketing Team in One podcast, where we have conversations about the issues one person marketing teams face when trying to meet their goals with limited time and budgets. Now, here's your hosts, Eric and Mike. What are you crying about today? WordPress. It's supports most of the internet, Mike.

It's a wonderful platform. It's incredibly powerful. It's empowered so many companies to succeed, grow. I mean, it's a hell of a success story. I mean, like for an open source thing to be powering like 40 percent of the internet. I haven't looked at the recent numbers, but, and I mean, there's a lot of people who've made a lot of money and built businesses around, around it.

So, I mean, it's definitely a success. I can't dealing with it for so long. It's, it's just starting to drive me crazy. A lot of, a lot of little things. So it's, it's a platform that's, um, let's just say has some downsides. It's free, man. I mean, come on. Yeah, but I, I, I have a big contention against that, that free thing.

Yes, it is. It is low cost and, and everything. But I think, um, I don't know as I put it this way, I've. He'd been working in WordPress for 14 something years. I've built every type of website. Right. And, um, so. I've seen, I've seen the good, the bad and everything. Um, it wasn't until a little bit more recently.

I started looking outside of WordPress things and realize that there's just like a lot of things that we, that you just take as, Oh, that's WordPress. And then you see, they're like, Oh, there's other people who don't deal with these maddening things. And for me, they're maddening, like, but for others, they might not be, maybe they're just acceptable.

But I think, um, I'm just kind of getting to the point where I'm not completely dismissing WordPress. It's not, but it's more like a, you know, what, maybe scrutinize. what you're, what it's for, what you're using it for, what you're trying to accomplish with it. And maybe, maybe there's better options out there that, um, yes.

They might cost a little bit more money, but not a lot, not, not even, not a lot more. Didn't WordPress start off at the beginning is just kind of, I mean, what, what, what became the downfall of WordPress? Why is it fallen so far out of grace as opposed to when it began? Was it a simpler platform? Is it just one of those?

What's the dynamic of the development of that platform that's made it so horrifying at this point? Oh, that's a great question. Um, horrifying. I think, I don't think many people there's, I, I've talked to people who've been aware of the things that I'm annoyed with for years, right? So like, there's been a minority of people that probably feel the same way as I do now at this point.

Um, but I think what makes it horrifying to me is that the, I think one of the number one things that is a big selling point of WordPress is actually a big Achilles heel for it. And I think it's the flexibility. Like, um, I mean, I've, it's, it can be great for a blog. It, you know, that's what it, that's its roots are

Right. And then it, um, it can be great for very simple brochure sites. Um, you can do a lot of really great things with it. Um, but, and then the flexibility of like, Hey, you know what, I want to add a social sharing, like Icon thing to that. There's a plug in for it. I can go download that plug in. I can add it And wait, there's so something as simple as just adding a social icon You have to go get a plug in for that or you have to have some developer shops.

That doesn't seem like a big deal but It's not. And that's what's so great about it. Like I, I can, I can be empowered to like build a site and build in a lot of great bells and whistles and solve a lot of like my little problems I have with the website because people have developed a plugin for it. And so the, the plugins are very empowering.

You can do a lot of great things with them. Um, but. Uh, the Achilles heel, part of it is every little thing you add in there, just kinda like, I think weakens the found overall foundation of the website. Hmm. Um, how many, I mean, like, how many plugins do I really need though, Mike? I mean, I don't need all those plugins, right?

I mean, it could just one or two is that's, I. Yeah, you can be very, but you have to be very disciplined and like really scrutinize some things, you know, like I think not my strength, I think that, um, I mean, I should probably put my biases out there too, right? Like I'm, I'm a designer first and foremost, right?

So I care what things look like. I care that it matches, like I think a per a brand is the most important thing and that consistency around the brand and your website is one of the most visible things out there. So, so it should. be somewhat unique, be close to unique, and it should reflect your brand, right?

So the design is important. And so I've never been one who's thought it was great to grab a theme that somebody's developed or take something that somebody else has designed and like tweak this, tweak that, and that, you know what? That's, you know, it works and for a lot of people if they're, if it works is the, you know, check mark of success.

That's fine. But I've tried it. My brain doesn't work that way. It's like, so, um, so then you like, well, what, what design flexibility do I have there? What can I do? You know, for the first part of my time with WordPress, I was learning how to design. You know, doing front end, I guess they'd call it front end engineering now, but it was basically like it was web design.

It was writing HTML, figuring out how to pull in the stuff that's in WordPress and the content management system into those designs. And it became a lot more about coding at that point than it did design. And for a long time, that was the way things went. And so, you know, I think in, in that zone, you could create some really great websites and everything, as long as you don't want to steer too much from a, a common structure for everything, right? Like, so inevitably there would be something that maybe they're like, Oh man, I wish it did this, or I wish it, I wish it had this information right here. And, You're like, okay, that's great. So we know we get to design. We have to design that thing.

Now we have to go in and we have to code it and we have to double check that it works on all the browsers and everything. So it was like this big loop of things and, um, in talking to more and more people, it was like the WordPress is sold as this kind of like flexible thing. Well, it is flexible if you know how to code and work with themes.

Build your own themes or what you end up reaching for. And I think a lot of people went for, for a long time, or these like uber flexible themes that could do 12 different types of websites. And they became really good at like how here, Oh, I, I work with this theme and this theme only. And that that simplifies the stack of things that need to be worked on.

Um, but it's still, you're, you're layering on, you got WordPress and then you've got a theme, right? And you're learning how the theme works, right? So everybody, nobody says, Oh, I, I build this themes website. They all say they were, they do WordPress sites, right? Well, you come to find out as you work with all the different WordPress sites, or if you look in, if you have any experience jumping from, let's say just five, the odds of those five, when you log in and try and manage them, them being the same is, I think, very, very small, because everybody's kind of taken their WordPress thing and the flexibility, they've added all these different pieces, and, um, so it's not as, there's a lot of non transferable knowledge from one site to another.

Yeah. So, so saying you're a WordPress person, you might not be, you might actually know how that one theme worked. Yeah. And so. You're a theme person. Yeah. And then, and then there's, I think there was an evolution that happened when the tools matured a lot, where the themes started doing less of the heavy lifting and they became a lot more general purpose.

And then people built on these page builder plugins like element or beaver builder. And so then it got even more abstracted, right? So you've got your WordPress thing, you've got a theme that allows you to do some things. And then you've got a page builder that allows you to do a lot. You have like a lot of design functionality.

You, you can embrace the function, the, the flexibility of the platform. You can do a bunch of different designs as a designer. That's really empowering. It's awesome. Right. But. Um, I think that, and what, what I'm seeing now is that that, that alone, that piece that's added on and the abstraction from WordPress sort of creates so many, like more headaches or in, in, in these are probably not as acute to people who are the only ones building their sites and managing their sites.

But if you're working with just one other person on a website, um, things can get kind of mad, upkeeping things can be maddening because. WordPress itself has the ability, has been working a lot to try and figure out how to, um, provide more design flexibility and customization with their base tools. And there's a lot there, but there's probably a lot to be desired and people are like reaching for, they want something different than the WordPress themes.

They find the other theme, right? That's kind of limiting. Those theme makers are trying to, you know, Do their own things to customize the things, and they're all baked, all that stuff is baked into that theme, to that theme. It's not like you tear that all out and be like, all right, I'm just doing the look and feel of this page.

Then you do the page builder on top of that. Right. So now let's say you designed a website and you're on vacation and we need to make a couple changes to it, and then I come in there and I'm trying to figure out how to fix the main menu. I just want to add, um, add a new menu down there with a couple, couple links and everything like that.

Favorite one just, yeah. Each one of those layers is a place where that could be done. And each one of those layers has a different interface for how you would make that happen. Sweet. So how do you, how do you share that knowledge in like, how do you get on the same page if you've got multiple people working on it?

And that's where it's like, I think back a lot, I was at a, at a some networking function and somebody said, Oh, you build things in WordPress. And she's like, you know what? I, I have this damnedest problem with my menu and I can't really get it to work. And I'm like, well, what themer is it? And she's like, well, I don't know.

It's WordPress. I'm like, oh, are you using a page builder? I don't know, it's WordPress. Well, no, it's, it's not. It's not the same thing, right? So like, there's, I, that, level of like complication is something that I, I've been feeling for a long time. That's one of the big reasons why I just, I'm kind of, I'm done.

I'm done. So done with it. It's over. Well, that's the thing is inevitably every client and most of our clients, small businesses, small organizations, they don't have the team. So they're asking us for help. And it, it's inevitably comes down to, this is all perfect, except I just need that one thing that we do that one thing.

And you're like, Okay. That's not on the theme. It's not on the page builder. Now we're now layering on that one thing that needs that. Like you said, the social yeah, there's inevitably that, like that's every client everywhere. It's perfect. But for that one, and then the one. It could be that Jenga piece that creates all, yeah, I mean, so the, that the layering of those things, all the plugins and all the things like, I mean, that's the, the stack of WordPress, a theme and a page builder that's, I've never seen people stop there as far as like what plugins are done.

There's always It's an addiction. Five to ten, sometimes twenty more. Right? And Every one of those, for the most part, is done by a different developer. Some of them are just doing it because they're trying to fill a need. Which is actually kind of awesome. That's what's one really great thing about WordPress is that you can see a need, you can fill it and provide that to everybody.

But inevitably some of those things they're doing it on their free time and are freelancer. And then if they're any good, they're probably getting another job somewhere else. And then that falls to the wayside and it can't be updated. Right? So you've got that element, you've got the premium. People who are probably better to put your the premium plugins are better to put your for me I would trust that more because it's can't they're being paid and incentivized to keep this thing Running and everything like that that's adding cost to your website.

So it's no longer a free website. It's no longer a free thing, right? And there's so many just different, um, all those different people have different approaches to how they would do things. Right. So every, the settings for those things could be in different places, not exactly where you expect the, from a like coming in and trying to figure out what's going on.

And if you're coming in blind and trying to help somebody, you could spend hours just trying to figure out, okay, well they're using this for this and this for this. And Oh wait, I haven't come across this plugin before. Where do they put that kind of stuff? And there's no. There's no standardization on a lot of pieces of it, and that's, it's, it can be tough.

It can be really tough to manage. They update at different rates, you know, this has a different schedule and maybe then the, then the main WordPress updates and then everybody else, it's all broken and they'll get to it and they'll fix it. And this one's fixed immediately. This one may never get fixed, you know.

And the good premium ones, they, they're, they're ahead of the game, right? They know. They know that WordPress has been working on this update. Yeah. They, they're less impacted by those things, but the ones who are kind of doing it as, as an aside, you hope that those things are limited to really simple tools and not integral pieces to how your site is built.

Which seems to be, always be, there's that one thing. Just that one thing. And then collapse. Yeah. Ultimate collapse. Yeah. It's not pretty. Yeah. It's usually on a Friday night, too. That's always fun. Oh, it never happens when you want it to happen. No. Hey, I got nothing to do. I wish something would come in and just like, give me something to do.

Oh! Oh! Yeah, I think you're not, um, being fully aware of what your tool, if you're not thinking all the time that this is something that needs to be updated all the time and keep on top of you, like letting, letting the website languish and not update the core and not updating plugins, um, on a very regular basis is just a recipe to get hacked or have problems.

Right? So I mean, One thing I like to ask myself is do I want to spend my time doing that? Do I want to spend my time just like going through and you know what in a lot of cases It's not very it'd be it's a it's a few minutes. Just run some updates check that it's running. It's fine Mm hmm. What happens if one of those updates break something?

Well, that's the thing is you got to go back and QC most of the pages that are affected by that. If there is something like that functionality, double check it. Yeah. Make sure it's still working because it could be, yeah, everything looks great. It's beautiful. You build a website. Let's just say you print an annual report.

You leave them both alone. For five years, you go back to the annual report, you pick it up, pretty much looks the same, right? I mean, I've rarely gone back and like, wait, I can't, where's page seven and eight? Like, they're just gone. Like, I can't even like, find those pages. Website, five years in, Lord knows what's going on inside of that website.

And you've done nothing and nobody else has done anything. So you think you could just set it, forget it? No. Well, yeah. I mean, Yeah. Shit just breaks sometimes. I mean, for that example, specifically, like that's where, like, when I, when I talk about like scrutinizing on the front end, like what is WordPress the best tool for that?

Like, is this a website that is a snapshot in time? Like, like an annual report? Like when you're done, are you going to go back and edit it? Like, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you're not the, like WordPress is, uh, is not the tool for that. Because again, there's all the dependencies that get built up that need to stay up to date and everything like that.

There's, there's probably far better options for that. The only other option that would maintain its integrity over time would be a hard coded straight up HTML website. Would you say? Cause and You know, I think, I think the browser landscape is a lot better than it used to be like 10 years ago, where like, yeah, there might be some browser changes, like.

I don't know. You've probably gone to old website, really old websites now. And you're like, wow, those look busted up, you know? And it might not be anything because of WordPress. It's just because of the changing landscape of HTML standards and all that stuff. I think that stuff's kind of, kind of flattened out, right?

So it's not as big of a deal, but throwing, um, putting something like that into a system. I mean, WordPress is a content management system. It means that you're managing content. You're intending to do that over time, right? Like if you're not doing that, you're most likely not for an annual report. Yeah. Why, why add a system to it?

So it's like content management, but it's also platform management system. In a sense, you've got to kind of put that also in there. It's not just content that you're managing. It's everything underneath the underbelly of your website in a sense. Yeah. The. non stable feeling around WordPress websites that, you know, that build over time that it just, sometimes it just wears out.

I mean, it's just like, God, why can't it just be done and fixed? I think you have to go into it knowing that it's not, that it's a, it's something beyond, like we say a lot, right? Like we have to, a website, something that should get regular care and feeding. And usually when we're talking about that, we're talking about like keeping.

information up to date, like, like refreshing it, uh, refreshing parts of it on a regular basis. So it reflects your, the audience you're talking to, and it's providing value to them, right? That's usually what we think of, but really the care and feeding when it comes to WordPress sites is that you have to, you know, Know that you know what it's it's acting up.

You got to go in there and lay down the law and Get it back together again. And and so That's not something I really thought of too much until I started looking at other Other alternatives and it was like, oh wait, there's things where we don't need to Like, manage the care and feeding? What, what, what, what are you talking about?

Other environments, what does that mean? Like, what, what's out there? What, what's the landscape look like outside of WordPress? Well, I mean, um, I, I think Webflow's a great platform. option now, because it checks a lot of the boxes and things that I would look for in a new, in a website builder. And there's, I mean, there's a framer, there's a bunch of other like, kind of like, I would say like next generation tools where they've figured out that you don't need to be a coder to be able to design a website that you, that you want to build.

Um, and there, They're cloud hosted. You can, um, so they take care of the hosting and the platform management. There's not a bunch of plugins that are all together. I think what I'm, what I'm looking for now is, is like, is there like a benevolent dictator that's kind of looking at the platform as a whole and trying to, and thinking about the user experience of people who are trying to update and manage.

The entirety of this website and part of being a benevolent dictator is like saying no to some things to you. Like you're not going to have every tiny little feature built in there. And yeah, while it would be nice, the more of those you add in there, the more it undermines the overall customer experience or, you know, user experience of that tool, you know?

So when you have that, you, um, you don't have three different interfaces or three different ways to do the same thing. You go to the right, you go to the same basic spots inside the admin on the back end of the website to go in and manage certain things around it, but it's, you're never in some base code system or having to call a developer to like fix this one thing that I paid for a plugin and it doesn't seem to work or, okay.

Yeah. And I mean, and some of those things are limiting, limiting. But I'm also coming at it from the point of view that you, you value some flexibility in design. You want something that you can trust, um, over time, something that will be kind of speedy that won't like get bogged down too much, you know, um, Cause that's all the overhead sometimes in WordPress stuff when you layer in all that stuff gets insane, right?

I mean, it's, yeah, it bogs everything down. It doesn't do the right things. It sets up weird problems. Cycles and what you could do to combat all that stuff. You can add another plugin in, Hey, what a good idea. There's plugins for optimizing. Then you have a plugin that you can pay for to optimize your, all the stuff that you've thrown in there, like optimize the database that's in there, optimize the images, optimize how the JavaScript is compiled together and served out and everything.

And that's another cost that you can take on. So it's like, I don't know. I, I really just started looking at. Okay. What's there's, there is a like true cost of ownership of a WordPress site. And, um, and then let's just, you know, be aware of that. Like there's, there's the actual hard costs that you're paying for.

And there's also a lot of opportunity costs, things that are built into owning a WordPress site that I, that's where I don't think a lot of people really think about it. And there are, and for a lot of people, maybe that's fine, but I'm thinking if you're, if you're the only person running your website and trying to get the materials out, you know, get like running marketing campaigns and running all these things, uh, An unexpected bomb on your website that blows up.

You don't have time for that. Well, and it needs to be fixed urgent immediately. It's not like it's a, yeah, it's a pressure cooker, like stress type thing that you just like, and I don't, I'm to the point now, I don't believe it has to be that way. And so going into it, Um, eyes wide open, like I did some rough numbers to kind of think about this a little bit.

Like, um, if I, if I was going to use, oh, if I went into a word and I knew I wanted to stick with WordPress and, but I want to, or maybe I had to prepare of. Case study for why I went, why we should use WordPress. And I had, I had a boss who wanted to see costs of everything. You know, one, I would, you'd have to say, what's the hosting cost of this?

Like, how much does it just cost to put it up there? And you can, you could host a website for like five bucks a month or something like that, but you also have to, on those hosts, you have to take care of a lot of things to make sure you're secure, fast things are up to date. Right. So like I, at this point where I'm at now.

Those aren't worth it. And especially if you, if you're getting any decent amount of traffic, you're going to see the problems with it right away. It's going to be really slow because you're. Operating with all these other 5 websites that are sharing computing resources. It's a nightmare. So I'm, I'm always looking to step up, like, you know, all the big hosting companies like GoDaddy and Bluehost and SiteGround, all these big ones, they have managed WordPress hosting, where, you know, They can take some of the things off the, off your plate, right?

They can take care of like updates and security and scanning and backups and stuff like that. But doesn't that just set it up for them? They're doing it. I guess they'll tell you when they're doing it so that you can look for the stuff that breaks after they do that work. Cause that usually, yeah, they'll have like little email updates or something where, you know, that things are up to date, right?

But that's not cheap, right? Like go daddy. It's anywhere between like 12 a month to 20 a month for that, that level of service. So, so we've got 20 there. Then, okay, but like, I don't, I've, to the point, like, put it, I've lost a lot of man hours fixing problems from plugins that were free. Um, and look like they did a lot of great stuff, but then, you know, bit me in the ass later, right?

It was like, so always looking like premium type products, right? So the next thing would be finding some kind of theme that allows, allows you to some flexibility. A lot of those have some kind of associated costs with them. Usually they're pretty minor one time, like, you know, 50 bucks, whatever, but you got to include that in your cost report.

Okay. Right? Yeah. Then a page builder. That's, you know, Elementor, you can, you know, I guess there's a free version, but it's very limited. So you could, so you're usually going to jump to the next level. It's like 50 bucks a year, 60 bucks a year. Right? So that's a part of it. Right? So when you start, I started adding and adding these up along with, Some kind of form builder.

So you could, you know, like contact us, uh, and everything interact, interact. Right. So like those are the bare minimum, like I'm not, I'm not really adding anything else like that, that right there when I did the numbers is, you know, close to 30 bucks a month to manage your website. But you're not getting rid of WordPress, theme, page builder, all these different things and, and the opportunity cost type things that are so like when I, and then I looked at other things and I looked at webflow and I'm like, you can get a basic website there for 14 a month and they handle all those things I just talked about in a much cleaner package in and, um, There's less complication there.

You don't have to worry about security updates. You don't have to worry about, um, plugin updates. You don't have to worry about Is there plugins on Webflow that you need to maintain and keep healthy? No, no, you don't, not to, not that bare minimum. Like the bare minimum I'm talking about on WordPress, like, yes, you can get by with less than those three that I'm talking about, which would be the, the core, the theme, and the page builder.

You probably could get by with just a theme, no page builder and use one of the default themes, but it's not gonna look, it's not gonna be too differentiated from a bunch of other WordPress sites out there. You're not gonna have ultimate design flexibility that you might want, you know. So no, I mean, um, no, I don't believe you can.

I don't think some people would be happy with it. I personally wouldn't be. So in a sense, that would be more of a kind of set it, forget it environment. When you do something on a web flow type site or equivalent. I think so. I think that, um, because they have another strategic thing that I really like is that you can build, they have their builder, their designer, you build everything out.

And the act of. publishing something actually just takes everything you've done and it puts it somewhere else. Like, so it's not tied to the database that you're working on, which is a big thing that WordPress has going on is like all the stuff is tied to a database. And so, um, So it's that, which means it's safer from hacking.

Mm-Hmm. It can be faster. So there, it's a, it's a structure that's built into it that I think is better. I didn't mean for this to become like a web flow promotional Yeah. Thing reach out web flow. But, um, that's the one I have most, that that's what's turned me to seeing some of the Stockholm syndrome type stuff I was a part of in WordPress, that now I'm, now that I'm free.

Right. I'm like, why are we spending that? Why were we spending time on that? We like, so, I mean, what about people who are forced into a WordPress and I mean, is the only option to blow it up and just turn it into a web flow site? I mean, as I, it's a little doom and gloom. I can be honest, be aware of the opportunity costs on the website itself.

And when you're using that platform, so no, that is. you know, go into it wise, wide open, you know, that you have to keep things up to date. You know, that, um, I would, if I was designing in there, I would actually probably for my self preservation in the future, I would try and keep things a little simpler. I wouldn't like add all the different bells and whistles.

I definitely wouldn't be going looking for different plugins Provide those bells and whistles. Yeah. So trying to keep the plugins to a minimum and keep them from, make sure that they're from people that are reputable and trust, and you can trust that we'll be there for a long time. Cause you're really, you're kind of hitching the livelihood of your business.

To these plugin developers that are building it. So just to back up a little bit, like when you're talking like updates, cycles and changes, like what's best case scenario from like leaving a site all on its own, built on WordPress with five plugins, seven, eight plugins, whatever it is, how long do you have until stuff started inevitably breaking on an average?

Let's just say. I think there's so many, that's hard to, hard to answer. There's so many different variables and you know, it could be fine. Like, I mean, I think there's probably sites I built 10 years ago that by and large are probably fine, but you know, we, like recently there's one, one plugin made a pretty substantial update in how they handle things.

And we used it. I used it. It was a core part of the. Of the toolkit that I would use is one of the plugins I used every single time. They made that change, which changed the way that all of the pages that use that plugin displayed the information just in. So that happened eight years later. Should you do a website?

And they're not even look at it for eight years. My argument is no, but you know, like eight years is a damn good run to have very minor problems on something like that. Yeah. Like most of the small businesses and organizations that we work with, um, I'll, some of them just need a brochure site where there's not a lot of functionality.

And that's probably that case. Totally. Absolutely. The case, small, small sites, less than 10 pages. Like here's who we are. Here's what we love. Here's some cool pictures and some funny copy and. We're good. Yep. You know, that's fine. But the minute you add in, Oh, and there's a landing page. Oh, and we're going to run an inbound campaign and now we're going to collect your information and Oh, we're connect with socials or type in here, but whatever.

Yeah. Boom. Can you start, start embracing the functionality that could be a part of your website as being a tool for your business when you start embracing more of that stuff, that's when no run away. I say run away from, from WordPress. Yeah. We call them brochure website. Is that a common brochure websites where it's just a digital version of there?

There's very little expectations of functionality outside of that, which I argue is why have a website done in a sense? I mean, I guess it's proof of life. We're alive. I think a lot of it is validation. Like some people, they might have like much longer sales cycles and they, or maybe they're not even, um, I mean, they've got salespeople out there that are doing all the hard work and people are just like, Oh, are these people who they say they are?

There's probably ways to add on to that, but there's like the return on investment to like make it be a more of a tool. Some people are just like, no, you know what? Like our salespeople are killing it. They've got what they need. Um, we don't need to, we don't need to complicate things. Let's drive people to call us.

Let's make build a relationship right away. Mm hmm. So there there's a place for that Mm hmm, but I think when you think about the cost of Free. Mm hmm, like just really when you're building that out. Just think about it a little bit like is Long term. Yeah, you're gonna have to pay for hosting if you're paying for good hosting bad adds up over time.

If you're paying for, you know, plug in, plug in things that adds up over time. If you're fixing things broke because of a plugin update, because a lot of that costs, that's a developer, that's a specialist. You got to bring in, you got to hire a gun. They come in and fix that problem or waste a week and a half of your life trying to do it, I guess.

I mean, like one site I've got top of mind, it had a membership function where people could, um, Where they would lock down certain parts of the website and you had to have a login to be able to access it, right? Used to plug in that at the time was pretty well regarded and everything and

Running great for a couple years things are things are happy go lucky and you don't the funny thing about Companies when they decide to stop supporting a plug in. They don't necessarily most don't tell you they're gonna stop doing it That's nice. Some do but a lot don't so in this case, they're radio silent.

There's no No, this is an integral part of the website because they have classified information that people need to log in to get to and That went away or they went away WordPress kept updating because they have to because of security and everything like that. This fell behind in the site was stuck.

So, so you could hire a developer to come in and fix that plugin, but like, no, then you're going to have, then you're tied to that developer for a long time. Cause every time WordPress updates, I think you should look for a new plug in that fixes that old plug in probably, right? That sounds like a really No.

No, but then what you're likely would do is, oh, let me go find another plug in. Now, what if you've got a hundred pieces of content there that need to be, um, need to be changed out? to work with the way this other plugin, who is opinionated and how they should set it up. That's again, that comes back to the, like, I'd much rather have a benevolent dictator tell me how, how to lock this thing down and have, have it documented because their way isn't going to change too meaningfully.

If you have one, person building a plugin and their competitors building it. They're probably trying to figure out how to differentiate from each other, which means that their, their way of accomplishing the same sort of goal could be completely different. And so you have to learn that, implement that and try and do it while maybe a core part of your website is not working anymore.

It's just sounds. Makes me itchy. It just makes me want to hate that scenario. Yeah. It's just maddening to, to think of the, the going through all that stuff, because really the ultimate fix is blowing it up and just starting from scratch on a new platform that works best has you answer to as few benevolent dictators as possible.

Yes. It's probably best to just limit it to that one dictator as opposed to. I gotta come up with a better word for, for this, this person, like the, you know, the, the, I'm not going to come up with it right now. The, yeah, I picture a guy behind a curtain, like pulling levers, but it's just one guy, you know, monkeys.

It's a team of guys. It's a team of benevolent dictators. Like it's a, It's, I, I want someone who, I want a, a group of people leading a utopia or trying to build a perfect utopia. Oh, that's better. That's much more pleasant. Yeah. I like that. Okay. Yeah. I can't think of any pop culture references that are too positive around that either, but yeah, we'll work on that.

Well, let's land this plane, Mike. Give us the summary, go back, let's start at the, where did we begin this journey? I want to start off by saying that I don't hate WordPress. It may come off that way, but it is that cousin that you've kind of given up on. You still kind of like them and like, you might, it might help them, but they, they've just kind of like, you know, they're just.

They're just gonna take, they're going to show up to family things and it's going to be the crazy uncle that you just kind of hope doesn't create too many problems at the functions. Right? Like, I think, yeah, I think that there, if you feel any of the like pains of these things, I think the, the big takeaway is that I think it doesn't have to be that way.

And that like, if you're, if you're feeling any of the things that I've just talked about, these frustrations and stuff like that, that give some other tools to try because they've come a long way. I think that's a big thing. But if you are, you are in a position where you've got this WordPress site and there's not a budget to go or time to go like re engineering all this stuff.

Just, just know that, you know, if you can make some strategic moves to reduce the amount of dependencies, keep an eye on, The plugins that, and how long ago were they updated? Like if they haven't been updated in three years, maybe you should be looking for a replacement. Danger zone. Three years. And WordPress puts it out there.

Like you, when you click on the plugins, you can see this hasn't been updated in three years. That's a really good clear sign that you can kind of like maybe work on cleaning out some of the cruft. Did you add plugins a while ago that you don't use at all? Get them out of there right away. They're still cycling and pulling some resource.

I don't know when something might. it might break something. It's really funny how that works. So yeah, reduce the dependencies. The dependencies are like what kind of like just builds up over time. It's so easy to add and add and add that eventually you have this like beast of a thing. So to help our listeners, when they go and search for some of these tools, is this fall under the no code, kind of a no code website builder, or is there, what, what, what would help them go find some of these tools?

Well, I mean, I think the biggest hurdle and the reason that keeps people from looking from these like great tools is the cost they see on the website to do it now. There also might be the philosophical, like, I believe in open source software. I want to use open source software. I'm, I'm not addressing that here.

But if you're looking at Squarespace or Webflow or Framer or something, inevitably you're going to look at the, what their, what is the cost for those things? Well, like look at it and kind of challenge your thinking that like, yeah, that says it's 23 a month. Yeah, it is. But I'd be willing to bet that you might be paying close to that already.

And just hard costs for a WordPress site. Then think about the opportunity costs on top of that. And you might see that there's more of a benefit there. Yeah. And think of the time, you know, what does it cost you to do an hour's worth of work, two hours worth of work? I argue that if you need to get in there and learn and update and change, you're spending hours a month doing that.

Yeah. Which if you were to go ahead and upgrade to a little bit more of a higher level, That does a lot of that, then you're saving money, you're saving resources, right? I mean, if you love that, if you love the Sure. The Crazy. I'm not trying to talk you out of it. I don't. I don't anymore. Well, you manage a lot of websites.

And when one thing breaks on one, there's funny things that happen. There's a, yeah, yeah. Falling pen. Yeah. Kind of a, there's more fun things you could do. Like, I don't know, some of these, I'm amazed at some of the new tools, like some of the things built in there, um, to do add like things that will delight the people coming to your website, right?

Like, Simple transitions from one thing to another, or, you know, um, just in how accessible they are, like little animations you can do and they're accessible in the editor that's built in there, like in, spend time doing that and making it more fun for everybody instead of just like doing maintenance stuff.

Yeah. It's like tricking out your car, spend more time tricking out your car, like adding some spinning hubcaps or something like that. I love those, sure. Who doesn't love those? Instead of like taking it in to change the oil all the time Mike i'm checking in on you. You're gonna be okay. I hope you got it off your chest and you feel yeah I mean you seem more relaxed Yeah, i'm done.

Okay We're not gonna do like I mean wordpress may be great for a lot of people not for me anymore Like i'm done. That's fine. Just put it out there Not everything can be for everybody and wordpress doesn't have to be for me. That's very healthy. Mike- proud of you, You, It's good, you've really grown. Right here on this podcast, I've seen you change.

It's, transformation is beautiful to watch. The world has been deprived way too long. And with that note, I think we'll finish up this episode of the Marketing team of one podcast. Thanks for tuning in everybody. We appreciate it. Let's wrap this up. Thanks, man. Thanks. It’s been great.

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