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Verbatim text
Lee:
Welcome to another episode of the Agency Trailblazer podcast. This is your host, Lee. And on today’s show, we are going to be talking about essential WordPress tools that you should be looking at for 2019. Yep, 2018 is nearly over. I know that went ridiculously fast. And if it went fast for you, that actually means you are getting older. So when we’re kids, we’re all like, I can’t wait to be grown up. Now that we’re all grown up, it’s like, why is time going so fast? Why does the average work day seem like five minutes? And why is it already 2:00 PM and I’ve done nothing? Anyway, that’s probably for another conversation. But in today’s episode, I want to share with you what we’re going to be investing our time in as an agency because we believe these are the tools that are going to help us to succeed in 2019. Now, I don’t want this to be a one-way conversation, which isn’t actually a conversation. That’s just me spouting my opinion. So the best place for you to have a conversation is either in the comments of this episode on agencytrailblazer. Com, or you can head into the community on agencytrailblazer.com/group and join the free Facebook community where we can have a conversation, a respectful debate, obviously, not an argument, about what our opinions are for the tools of 2019.
Lee:
If you disagree with me, that’s fantastic. We need to have that conversation as well. If you agree with me and you think I’ve actually missed stuff as well, then let’s also have a conversation in there as well. So the first tool that we’re really going to be heavily investing our time in is Gutenberg. I know that is a big shock to a lot of people, but we actually really like Gutenberg for quite a few reasons. Number one, it’s actually a really nice interface and I really enjoy We’ve been activating it now for a considerable amount of time, back when it was really, really, really, really, really early alpha, so that we can make sure that the products and services that we’re offering are still compatible with WordPress in 2019 when Gutenberg, I believe, is going to be out there in the wide world being used. So any new sites we’ve been building, we’ve been investing time in using Gutenberg for seeing if we can at least make it compatible et cetera.
Lee:
Now, Gutenberg is to replace the classic editor, as it is now called, which is the tiny MCE, WYSIWYG editor that looks like a word processor, and it is getting a lot of backlash because the user interface is not necessarily something that people are used to using. That’s particularly clients who are used to a word processor versus Gutenberg, which is more block-orientated. So there’s definitely that. But then there’s also the amount of bugs that have actually been in Gutenberg itself, which has got a lot of people worrying. We’re going to have a tried and true editor that is going to be completely replaced by something that is completely new that has had an awful lot of bugs. And obviously a lot of the backlash about Gutenberg has also been that they are pushing it out as fast as they possibly can. So that is scaring a lot of people. There’s also been fears around things like custom fields, and there’s also been fears as well because Gutenberg is much more of a JavaScript-based as opposed to PHP, and a lot of us WordPress developers are PHP first, as it were, and JavaScript second. So now that I’ve just said all that, why on earth would we be considering using Gutenberg?
Lee:
Now, quite simply, one of the main reasons we will be committing to Gutenberg in this upcoming year is that is the direction that the team behind WordPress are heading. They are all in. They’ve made it very clear that’s the direction they’re going in, and we don’t want to be left behind. It’s important as part of an agency that is able to be scalable to ensure that they are also able to change with the times. So we need to be upskilling, be that learning some more JavaScript, be that learning more about Gutenberg, and be that also implementing Gutenberg into some of the sites that we’re working on make sure that we understand what we’re working with and making sure that we can continue to provide excellent service on the WordPress framework for our clients throughout 2019 and on, of course, into 2020 and beyond. Also, I actually quite like the interface, and that’s quite a shock. I know that clients might struggle with it initially because it’s very different, but I personally like the interface, not necessarily just because of the blocks, but because I’m going to be able to create some really nice input interfaces in a similar manner that I used to be able to do with advanced custom fields and lock that down within the Gutenberg framework or the Gutenberg UI.
Lee:
Another reason reason why we’re much happier to commit to Gutenberg now than we ever were was because of our second tool. And this will make a heck of a lot more sense when we share with you what we’re continuing to commit to using in 2019, and that is advanced custom fields. Of course, it is the old favourite of the industry. It allows you to create custom fields against post types, and it is phenomenally powerful. Elliot is a freaking legend. The team behind it are incredible, and they have continued to change with the times, which means they are offering full support for Gutenberg. You’re able to create your own custom Gutenberg blocks with custom fields inside of them, and they’ll also continue to support the old architecture with regards to post-meta, etc. So that means as a PHP developer, that gives us a soft in into the Gutenberg world because we’re able to get the best of both worlds. We’re able to dip our toe into the scary waters of Gutenberg whilst using an old favourite which supports both techniques and interfaces. Now you’re going to see a common theme. All of these are connected and are very much a part of our development stack as we build websites for our design clients.
Lee:
And the next tool that we will be committing to is a suite of tools from the guys at Beaver Builder. So we’ve used Beaver Builder now for, I think around three years, and it has got better and better and better, especially once they introduced the Beaver theme a Timer option as well. So let’s start from the top. We have Beaver Builder. That is the page builder that we are able to use either on single sites or in multi-sites. And we’re able to white label that as an agency, and they give us full control to override things like the help file so that we can provide our own and we can also disable tonnes and tonnes of the default options in there. That’s the default modules and create all of our own as well. The documentation is fantastic and we’ve been able to create websites for clients with custom modules that ensure that they will build a website that looks like the design that’s being supplied, which is really, really important when it comes to having some page builder. You don’t want people to just go ahead and butcher the website and of course, have something that looks totally off-brand.
Lee:
So Beaver Builder, ACF, those sorts of tools have been essential for us to make sure that we can ensure a high quality and keep people on brand, but also give them that feeling of freedom and flexibility to at least be able to enter the content, make it look great, and put it in the places that they want to, and they can obviously test things as well. Now for us, where the real power comes in is the Beaver Thema option, which once activated, will allow you to not only design the headers and the footers of your website in Beaver Builder, so that takes away a whole load of extra HTML CSS, etc. But it also allows you to design the layouts of all of your post types, your category, archives, et cetera, et cetera. You can also build parts that you can inject into specific areas of your website. So that in its own right is phenomenally powerful. The icing on the cake for us is the integration with advanced custom fields, which therefore allows us to design the outputs based on the data that have been placed into those custom fields. So again, not only are we creating page lists, so that’s category list, archives, etc.
Lee:
But we’re also able to output a great design for the data of a post type that’s using all of the custom fields. And we can also test that using the switcher to see what it would look like for different posts, different existing records to ensure that our output is going to look fantastic. Beaver Themer has saved us a phenomenal amount of time, allowing us to focus on the output, allowing us to focus on the data structure, and also, most importantly, allowing us to spend more time in the back-end functionality. Finally, the theme that comes with Beaver Builder is both compatible with the original plugin and with Themer, allowing you to very easily design the new headers and the new footers very quickly and easily. And there is, again, tonnes of documentation where you can override the customiser and all of the options that are in there as well to ensure that you’re giving your client, the end user, the absolute best experience that they can have with without you having to overwhelm them with all sorts of stuff. I think it’s clear that page builders are certainly going to be much bigger in the future, and we need to find a way that we can provide those tools to our clients whilst not overwhelming them at the same time, and again, whilst keeping them on brand, because I think that is something that is so important.
Lee:
As more and more people are building their own websites, I imagine there are going to be more and more uglier websites out there. So let’s help our clients to stand out by giving them the tools they want, but also making them look good all the time. Now, I want to throw in a wild card here. And the next tool that we are investing a lot more time in is Elementor. We They’ve owned Elementor for like, I don’t know, two years, two and a half years, because that came out not long after Beaver build-in. We’ve always kept our eye on it and we’ve watched it with fascination as it’s just got better and better. Now, what they’ve done is baked in this ability to be able to design your headers and footers and layouts, etc, into the Elementor Pro plugin. So you don’t need to instal two or three plugins, etc. The difference they have, though, is there is no one specific theme that they will bundle in with that. So you’ll get Elementor, it will work with whatever template you have, and the pro version then adds a whole lot of extra modules and that ability to extend the design further in a very similar manner to the way that Beaver Thema works.
Lee:
Now, the big difference between the two for us has always been the Elementor, we feel is more focused on designers as opposed to developers. I mentioned with Beaver Builder, there is great documentation. We’re able to easily create our own modules, and we have a lot of control over that as developers, and we can also do white labelling, etc. In the meantime, Elementor’s strength is the amount of control over the design that you have. Now, that could be a negative because if you’re handing this over to a client to use, that can be quite difficult for them to use and to understand, which is why obviously we gravitate a lot towards Beaver Builder. However, Elementor gives you so much more control of the design. Things that we can do in Elementor perhaps would need us to write our own CSS or our own JavaScript inside of Beaver Builder, as opposed to just being able to do it easily at a point and at a click with Elementor. So for us in 2019, although we’re not necessarily going to roll that out for our clients, we’re certainly going to be using it on a lot of our own websites moving forward.
Lee:
We are actually building one right now. I can’t tell you what the website is, but we will be launching that very soon and hopefully it will blow your mind. And we’re actually using Elementor and absolutely loving it because we’re able to create landing pages very quickly with some really nice designs that are prepackaged in there. So we’ve We really, really enjoyed using that. We’re not going to be pushing that to clients, but we’re certainly going to be using that in our own marketing efforts best we can. And obviously in the future, perhaps if we can find ways to customise Elementor, then maybe we will look at rolling that out for our clients as well. I would be really interested, actually, if you are rolling Elementor out for your clients and giving them access, etc, then what are the experiences that your clients are having with that? Are they butchering the website? Are they even using it? Are you using for them? I would love to know. Hit us up in the community, agencytrailblazer. Com/group. That is the free Facebook community. Okay, now I mentioned that Elementor does not come with a theme bundled with it, but we do recommend a theme that we actually use for Beaver Builder and for Elementor, and sometimes with no page builder whatsoever, and that is the Page Builder framework.
Lee:
The great thing about this theme is it is compatible with both Elementor and Beaver Builder, so it allows us to use a framework that we are used to. And if we are switching out the actual visual builder element, then we’re still at least developing in an environment that we can understand. We know where everything is, we know where all the settings are, et cetera. David and the team have done a fantastic job. I do believe as well that Page Builder framework will work with some of the up and coming page builders as well, like Brizzy, et cetera, et cetera. Okay, so that rounds up some of the tools that we are dedicating ourselves to over 2019. Gutenberg, advanced custom fields with the Gutenberg compatibility, Beaver Builder with the theme and the thema, Elementor for our own internal stuff, as well as the page builder framework that we will be utilising across different projects. So again, come into the Facebook community. If you’re not part of it, it’s free. We’re not going to sell you anything. That’s over on agencytrailblazer. Com/group. Let’s have a conversation in What are your thoughts on those tools? Do you use them currently?
Lee:
Do you think there are other tools that are up and coming that we all as agency owners should be looking at? Agencytrailblazer.com/group. Now, there are a few areas that are up for grabs. Two in particular that I want to ask you about and I want to know what your thoughts are. So do come into the community. Do let us know. The first one is form builders. We are not happy with any of the form builders that are out there right now. Why because most of them either feel bloated or they feel like they lack so much. So for example, Gravity Forms, we have a licence, we will have a licence forever, probably because yes, it certainly does a job. But there are also many limitations, like being able to lay it out nicely, being able to add repeating fields, all sorts of things that we feel are missing in there. And then you’ve got formidable or other form builder platforms which either feel too bloated, too complicated for clients to use or too slow. So we’ve never really found that one solution that we can be really happy with. We usually go to Gravity Forms because no one got fired for using Gravity Forms.
Lee:
It’s tried and true and stable, but we’ve always found it quite limiting. And we’ve often as We’ve all been frustrated by the form builders that we use where we have to add tonnes and tonnes of add-ons to get it to do the things that we need it to do. Very often we’ll actually use advanced custom fields and post types, etc, for certain types of forms. If we just want to keep the amount of plugins or the amount of resource on the site as low as possible. It seems pointless using a form builder as well as advanced custom fields, when advanced custom fields in its own right is pretty much a form builder. I’m interested to see as well where Gutenberg goes, because the interface for Gutenberg is definitely the interface that we can use for form building. I’m pretty sure there is probably a plugin out there already using the Gutenberg interface to build So that’s certainly a direction that I think things could go. But yet form building for us, certainly something we’ve struggled with and found frustrating to find something that will give us the flexibility of design, the flexibility of field types, the flexibility of repeating fields, and finally, the bit I didn’t mention, which was the flexibility in things like products, etc.
Lee:
So for example, again, with Gravity Forms, you can’t easily add tax without doing calculations, or you have to go ahead and buy lots of extra tools like Gravity etc. So the next and final area that we feel is lacking is e-commerce. Now, I know WUCommerce exists, but let’s face it, I think a lot of us are having a love-hate relationship with Wukumers. Yes, it is powerful. Yes, there are tonnes of add-ons to make Wukumers do more than it was ever designed to do. However, that can also be its Achilles heel. We very often find ourselves yourselves in a position where we have Wukumers requirements that go beyond what Wukumers can do. To fill that gap, you need to purchase several add-ons, all at quite high prices. Now, I don’t really mind that because that saves us a lot of development time, but it also does lead to bloated instals and a large learning curve for everyone that’s us internally, as well as for the client in understanding how each and every add-on does whatever it does in different Now, perhaps I’m biassed, perhaps I’m moaning because I’ve seen the same system for so many years, but I would be really interested in hearing what your thoughts are for the future of e-commerce inside of a WordPress Perhaps there is a form builder out there that handles checkout and processing and that thing that could potentially replace the need for a WUCommerce product, and we could get around then with post types, et cetera.
Lee:
What is that out there that you think might offer flexibility in the future? Wukomers do have a monopoly. That is not necessarily a good thing in our opinion, because there is too much out there, I think. A lot of low-quality plugins, a lot of low-quality add-ons, and we think there should be an alternative, but we don’t know what that alternative should be. So until then, we’re stuck with Wukums, but we want to know if there is a better, brighter future for us and our agency. Again, that’s our opinion. Please don’t sue us. That’s just what we think. But we would love to know if there is some alternative, a simpler alternative with good development documentation without all of the extra bloat that we could be investing our time into 2019, 2020. It would be really great to know if there is anything on the horizon. So folks, that is our conversation for today. Like I said, let’s not this be a one-sided conversation. I don’t think that was grammatical, but it doesn’t matter. You get the idea. Come and join us over in agencytrailblazer.com/group. That is the free Facebook community. You’re not going to get pitched in there.
Lee:
It would just be great to hang out, to get to know who is listening, to get to know your opinions, and to learn from you We can all learn together. Agency life can be lonely, and it’s good to get together, and it’s good to have conversations. So let’s grow the community, and let’s have a conversation about what we’re all up to in 2019 and see how we can help each other. We will in the community, and of course, in the next episode.
