Note: This transcript was auto generated then some poor soul sat and listened to it, and followed through correcting any mistakes they spotted. Please however expect human error and shout if you spot an issue. Email: lee [fancy curly symbol] trailblazer.fm.
Verbatim text
Lee:
Welcome to the Trailblazer FM podcast. This is your host, Lee. On today’s show, we have the one, the only great by name in nature, it’s Great Opomu. How are you today, mate?
Great Opomu:
I’m good, I’m good, I’m fine. I’m happy to actually be on this podcast.
Lee:
Mate, I’m happy to have you. I’m also very encouraged the fact that you were completely honest and told me you’d forgotten you were on the show. Yeah, I have to be- Because it means this is a relaxed, non-prepared, but honest raw show today.
Great Opomu:
Sure. I’ll be happy to talk about it.
Lee:
For the folks who don’t know who you are, buddy, could you let us know a little bit about yourself?
Great Opomu:
Okay, that’s fine. As you’ve called my name already, I am Great Opomu, and I’m basically, first, I’m a Nigerian, I happen to run a WordPress agency that works across globally. I’ve been a WordPress professional for about a decade now. With a developer background, I ran away from development because it’s too tedious for me. WordPress was the escape route, which enabled me not just to build simple website, but of course, build applications. That’s what made me strong on this idea, which I always talk about, that WordPress is beyond just building a website, but also building platforms.
Lee:
And folks, if you want to know more information about that, I really, really recommend. Go and read Great Manifesto over on greatopomu.com. There is a link in the show notes. It’s greatopomu.com, and go ahead and just check out that manifesto. And great, I loved reading the manifesto because for me, over the years, we’ve developed an awful lot of tools using WordPress. And I can’t remember when it was, maybe around 2018, I seem to remember in the state of the word that Matt was talking about WordPress as a framework. And that was something that really stuck with us. And we’ve essentially used WordPress for us as a platform for developing custom tools beyond a website. But why do you think that agencies today still treat WordPress predominantly as a website platform more than anything I actually did ask myself that question initially, and as we are seeing it now, in fact, it’s becoming clearer to me.
Great Opomu:
I think one thing is lack of trust for the WordPress ecosystem. Lack of trust. What I mean, it’s simple. People don’t trust WordPress to the extent that they believe it can handle complex solutions. They assume that whatever SaaS tool is out there does it better than WordPress. Therefore, it’s a default to run away from WordPress. That lack of trust on WordPress capability, it is still streamlined towards just blog and pages. Therefore, a lot of agencies I have come across are always sceptical when you talk about doing something very complex with WordPress. That’s a challenge.
Lee:
Yeah, definitely. Can you give us some examples then of what you would perceive as something more complex with WordPress?
Great Opomu:
I think I can give an example which you may say at first it’s very impossible. What I did some years ago was trying to build a custom hosting platform, a podcast hosting platform. What I mean is that there was a particular ministry, it’s a Christian Ministry, that you wanted the podcast to not solely rely on Spotify. Because of the cancellations, you could get cancelled for something you talk about and then it could be removed. They wanted something they owned. Surprisingly, what I was able to do with some plugins, I was able to build a custom podcast hosting platform. Yeah, once it is published on the WordPress website. In fact, I use the WordPress multisite. Once it is published on the WordPress website, it automatically pushes it to every other platform, whether it’s Spotify or Apple Podcast, whichever distribution platform, automatically. That made me realise that, yes, this is very complex. Why would you do something as such as this? This is two years, and that ministry is still using that custom podcast hosting platform without any issues, without any complaints. That can really be complex, but that example proves that WordPress can actually handle such complexity without any issue.
Great Opomu:
In fact, there has been no security issue. I will repeat that again. There has been no security issue. There was never a day I was going to say, Oh, I think there’s a security issue. I need to actually fix that. There wasn’t because, of course, I maintained the standards and then ensure that everything was fine. That’s how it has been on that case study.
Lee:
Is that a combination then of you using WordPress plugins and your own code as well to make that happen?
Great Opomu:
Okay, first of, I’m one who believes that plugins first before code. Why I say so is that there are lots of developers out there who build plugins. The challenge sometimes is people can’t seem to find the right plugins, not even know these plugins exist. This was actually built with plugin. If I’m going to say custom code, it’s about 1-5%. There’s a plugin called podlove, P-O-D-L-O-V-E. Org, podlove.org. It’s the plugin that enables one to be able to build such cost on podcast hosting platform.
Lee:
Yeah, that’s good. I think the benefit as well of using third parties would predominantly be things like the support as well, because if we’re going to say to people, Hey, don’t use a podcasting service. Why don’t you run your own? If somebody was going to build it from scratch, then that’s a lot of work for them. That’s a lot. That’s going to make them want to go for, say, the software as a service podcasting solution, or if they were going to build it for themselves, there is the worry, therefore, of support. And reasonably, most agencies don’t have the ability to continue to maintain a code base or say this podcasting solution on into the future. Whereas if it’s a third-party plugin, you would hope that there is some community support. Would you go for predominantly community/free plugins, or do you lean towards paid plugins, et cetera?
Great Opomu:
I lean towards both. For this one, it’s actually a free plugin. It’s heavily like… There is heavy, I would say, constant development because somehow the developers are active, they are constantly doing that. I would link towards both. The reason is most some agencies, as long as you can have all the features you need, many agencies don’t actually need the paid support. But there are others who need them. If you agency. For me, there are a few cases where I had to contact a plugin developer to say these are the issues we are facing and then need to resolve, but sometimes we can find a way out. But if you’re running an agency that you do not have a developer background, you do not have someone who is a developer in your team, I would always say go for the paid because of the support. It’s very important. But if you’re one who can manage your way around some technicalities, and if you’re concerned about budgets, you can go on the side of free/community.
Lee:
I think that’s true. I guess for me, personally, if I were going to produce something for an enterprise company, then I would want to make sure that I had some backing with regards to a paid product. For example, I would pick, say, Gravity Forms if I was doing a form builder rather than going for any free I know Gravity Forms has been around for a ridiculously long amount of time. There’s an awful lot of support documentation out there, and that company has existed for an awful long time. There’s still a risk, of course, that they may eventually close up shop. But I also understand There is enough people out there still using it that even if Gravity Form said, Yeah, we’re done, there would be enough community out there to continue to help and support and maybe even help me offload Gravity Forms as well. At some point in the future. I often feel safe there as opposed to going for something that’s free and maybe hasn’t had any updates for, say, a year or two. That always gives me a few concerns.
Great Opomu:
Definitely. Even I myself, I am usually afraid of that, especially when it’s a… Even when it’s a paid plugin, one has to be very careful of the plugin because there was a time we actually bought a plugin to solve a complex issue WordPress, like having a file manager so that several users can access several files. We did purchase one and we ended up requesting for a refund. The reason wasn’t because we are not just satisfied. Yes, we weren’t satisfied, but the support wasn’t giving the feedback as they ought to. Therefore, the option we had was to just cancel it, give us a refund, and then we a solution. We did figure out a solution with Custom and all that, but that’s another challenge. While you go for a P, also ensure they are reliable when it comes to support. Or else it’ll be like a free plugin.
Lee:
Just to drop in at a bit of a name, happyfiles.io is a very good plugin if you want to be able to manage files on your custom meta inside of WordPress, which is actually by the folks behind Bricks, I believe. It may be worth checking that out either yourself or anyone else listening. Always happy to name you up a good plugin. But on plugins as well, you often find that, or I’ve found with some of these paid plugins that offer very specific solutions, maybe a payment integration to a platform that many people haven’t heard of. I don’t know. Sage Pay is a bad example because a lot of people use that nowadays. But a few years ago, it was relatively rare. I remember buying plugins for WooCommerce to be able to support SagePay, but the actual plugin itself was just terribly written. It did the job, but it put JavaScript, it put code everywhere, on Every single page in the admin, but also in the front-end as well. It wasn’t conditional. It wasn’t loading things conditionally when it needed it. It was just a poorly written, slapped together plugin. I think that is something that contributes to the fear, I think, that agencies have that they’re going to get a bloated website.
Lee:
Would you agree?
Great Opomu:
Definitely I do because there are situations where we have to actually uninstall a particular plugin because it wasn’t well-developed Apart from bloat, there are even situations where I have come across that the plugin does the job, but then ends up even causing another That issue. For example, I think one I came across was at the time I was trying to resolve something. I think this was the case of Elementor. The plugin actually did the job we wanted, but not Now, it was causing conflict that Elementor wasn’t loading it properly anymore. In fact, to take a longer time, we have to enable safe mode to actually access it. We weighed the balances and said, If this is the case, We would rather do away with our plugin, use a custom code. That’s how we left that. As we keep mentioning this, I think these are some of the hidden challenges that sometimes we who use this plugin I’m not patient enough to relate back to the plugin developer. We just want to remove it and continue with the work we are doing.
Lee:
That’s a really valid point, to be honest. I am guilty of that where I’ve gotten frustrated with the plugin. I’ve just removed it. I’ve not provided any feedback. I’ve just moved on with my life because frankly, I’m busy and I need to find something that will work for the client. Speaking of what works for the client, though, I do agree with you that WordPress is ridiculously powerful. And can do so much. But where would you draw the line between, I think we can do this in WordPress versus there is a reasonably priced paid service that I could recommend to my client that would solve the problem and not cost us lots and lots of time in development or testing, et cetera. Where would you draw the line as an agency to say, actually, I think you need to use this third party service?
Great Opomu:
I think so far, there are two rules that actually guide me. One is specialisation. In other words, what is the need of this client? If it’s a specialised need, then WordPress may not be able to effectively handle that. For example, if it’s a booking plugin, oh, there are lots of booking plugin that I can always recommend for WordPress. But if they actually need a booking plugin and they need to connect to a CRM that is even outside of the WordPress ecosystem, let’s even say Salesforce, I would then say, Okay, with that, we’ll recommend to you Calendly, because before I’m going to use any of these other plugins, What happens is that we are going to do custom integrations. When we do custom integrations, we would definitely ask ourselves, what is the cost of this integration to the customer? Would the customer be willing to pay for maintaining that custom integration? Why even do that custom integration when it would be easier to actually just use a system that already provides that? Because custom integration for us as an agency requires that we We have to be maintaining, we have to be updating as what was updated.
Great Opomu:
Is that cost-effective? Is that even productive? Because it’s not just cost-effective, is it productive? If analysing that situation, it’s not, then we can say, Just move over to this SaaS solution. Another thing which is the second rule I always use is on the client end, are they willing to even pay for basic maintainers. Because for example, we can instal a booking system, but we also know that to ensure that the booking system always works and it’s safe, there should be at least constant monthly updates that’s just updating the plugin. Over time, we’ve realised that many businesses will build website. They just want a presentation website. With that, they are not willing to pay so much, even for maintainers. In fact, they only just want to pay for the domain and hosting renewal. As an agency, we do not want to risk that factor. Except the business themselves are so interested in their website. They want to do the installation themselves. They want to just be going back to the website and the back-end and accessing that. In such case, we advise and say, Okay, you can actually use this plugin or that plugin, and then you can actually go ahead with it.
Great Opomu:
Those two rules, specialisation and clients are willing to actually see their WordPress beyond just presentation.
Lee:
I totally agree. Just to throw in some examples then. We’ve developed an awful lot over the years. One of the most weirdest case solutions for WordPress, which I don’t know if you would recommend this or not, was a booking system for rooms in a physical office. We ran WordPress on a local server, local host. It had no access to the internet, but it presented these booking forms that would go on iPads. iPads were relatively new at the time, so companies were buying them for fun, and they were sticking these iPads on the doors outside meeting rooms. We synchronised with the main exchange calendar, and we allowed people to book meeting rooms literally there and then or into the future and showed a schedule. That was all just using a local host WordPress on a server. However, It reminds me of the then amount of support that that client would have needed. I mean, this was what, 10, 15 years ago, a very long time. Obviously, they don’t use that anymore. They ended up using just an off-the-shelf product. But the amount of money that they invested in getting that set up and custom-built and then not wanting to spend any more money to keep that maintained, highlights to me, I think, is a very good example of probably taking WordPress too far With a client who isn’t willing to pay the money when there are definitely services out there that you just don’t need to go that far anymore.
Great Opomu:
As you said, that it reminds me of the manifesto which is WordPress for operations. Why it’s like WordPress for operations? We have three phases or three use cases of WordPress. We have the marketing, we have the enterprise, and we have operations. Marketing is what everyone wants to do. Just build a website for visibility to generate leads, to generate traffic. That’s it. Then we have the enterprise, which is on the high side, media companies or large organisations who deal with multi sites or who deal with custom workflows, and they use that a lot. Then we have operations. Operations is like it’s in between marketing and enterprise. It’s more or less leveraging WordPress to do some bit of enterprise things and then also do a lot of marketing things as well. It’s an idea of how much cost can we save for this. I’ll now give an example of even how WordPress itself can actually be cost-saving, even for operations, which is a bit enterprise, but not so very enterprise. We have a client. They actually run a newsletter, and they have about Now, it’s in Africa. I think maybe, again, later on, I’ll share how WordPress forced me as an African to actually look for solutions.
Great Opomu:
Since it’s an African media platform, the challenge was cost. They were actually use this same grid initially, which it’s okay as well, but they could end up paying about 1,500 per month. You Yes, that’s actually okay. But for a media platform that is growing, that is in Africa, they were paying that, but it could be better. What happened is that I stepped in, I said, Okay, since you’re doing this, we can use another platform. Yes, it may be slower, maybe because of the timing, but you get the emails delivered and everything. I just told them, Okay, let’s just set up MailPoet. With this set up, MailPoet, and then I did a configuration for Amazon SES and They connected it together. They’ve been using it for about four years.
Lee:
Which is tiny cost compared, isn’t it? Exactly. No. 1 cent or something per email. Yeah, pretty cool.
Great Opomu:
As at the end, they are spending about 400 per month compared to 1.5 per month. That’s not only saved cost, but it also helped them to own their data and give them a better workflow and They know what they’re expecting every month because we send great. There are lots of challenges. That was an example for me that it’s not just about enterprise, the whole thing, but you could just take a little bit of the workflow and put it into WordPress. With that, they actually pay for maintenance. They are willing to pay. They don’t mind spending the 100, 200 for maintenance because they know what they were paying for before moving in. That’s another thing which agencies They need to learn. They need to learn to convince their customers that WordPress is as much as powerful as many of these SaaS solutions.
Lee:
So, mate, that’s a really good example. And thanks so much for sharing of how some custom solution is a viable option where they’re saving a significant amount of money and they’re owning their own data rather than trusting a third platform. It is going to be more cost-effective for them in the long run as well. Best of both worlds. Sure. As we come into LandMate, if an agency wants to test the idea of offering more than just a website, what’s the simplest operational use case you think that folks could get started with to test the water? So not going as far as what you spoke about, say, with MailPoet cetera, providing email delivery, et cetera. But what’s maybe the first step someone could enter I think now that’s from the beginning as you start a project.
Great Opomu:
We have CRMs, we have booking platforms. Those are the two major ones because it’s a major need. Okay, booking platforms CRMs, and then forms. These are major needs for many businesses. You can actually start with that. What I always advise for agencies, since I started talking about WordPress for operations, is that you can always instal the free versions of these plugins, let them experience how it works, and that gives them the confidence they need to actually even get a paid version or even see you as their partner, not just their website person, but as their operations partner. These three simple solutions, it’s a common thing across every businesses, and businesses will be willing to try it out, and that will open more opportunities to other custom solutions you could offer them to empower their operations.
Lee:
I love that. Yes, I think changing the conversation there and focusing on being a partner. I think the mistake I made many years ago was that I tried to hide that I was using WordPress. I tried to hide that I was using different plugins, and that put the responsibility on me as the agency to be delivering what the client would have felt was a custom solution that had been fully coded by me. I mean, I never said I was fully coding anything, and I said I was using tools, but I didn’t say what. Whereas I think what you shared there is, for example, giving say, a sandbox where the client can test even the free version of a tool. They are working with you in partnership. You’re both on a journey of discovery to see what might work for the client and that they can apply to their website. I really, really like that change in perspective. That gives that shared responsibility, I think, which is very refreshing.
Great Opomu:
Yes. Let me just say one thing, as you said that this is It would be a constant struggle for many agencies who are just coming up, who are just getting started because they are still on the commodity idea. They think that presenting that they do everything themselves will make the clients pay them more. But I’ll just I’ll give something off a bit WordPress so that people can understand. My highest pain are gigs are not even relating to WordPress. It’s even on the aspect of just actually setting up a Microsoft 365 or even doing an email migration from, let’s say, Google to ZOHO. Such experiences taught me something deep. The customer, even if they know what you are using, they don’t really What they want the most is, does this solve my problem? If it does, they are willing to pay any amount for your time to deliver that. Therefore, when you present these tools to them as a tease, it is the ones who are going to stress you out who say, No, I can do this myself. I shouldn’t pay this. But those who truly value their time and who truly value your expertise on using these tools will be willing to pay whatever.
Great Opomu:
And in fact, it builds greater trust because they know that you’re choosing something for them, which even if you are not there, it will still work. And that is a better experience for them than just trying to hide under the bushel and thinking that that would build trust.
Lee:
That is so good, mate. Well, thank you so much, folks. Remember, you can check out Greats Manifesto over on greatopomu.com. That’s greatopomu.com. Buddy, thank you so much for your time. Have a wonderful day, and I’d love to have you back on the show in the near future so we can carry on our conversation.
Great Opomu:
Sure, I’ll be more than happy to do that. Yeah.
Lee:
And thanks for jumping on the show. Even though you are unprepared, you have given us a masterclass in managing plugins for agencies. Thanks, buddy. Take care.
Great Opomu:
Yeah, sure. Bye.
Lee:
Bye.
