Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to Within WordPress, the podcast about WordPress and people in and outside of WordPress. And today with me is Elliot, and he's kind of in between, and we'll talk about what that actually means later. Welcome, Elliot.
[00:00:19] Speaker B: Hello, Remkus. Thanks for having me. Really appreciate it.
[00:00:22] Speaker A: Well, thanks for showing up and thanks for enduring the technical difficulties we've had for the past 26 months.
[00:00:30] Speaker B: Yeah, we got there in the end. We got.
[00:00:32] Speaker A: We got there.
I basically ask anybody who joins me on the podcast the same question. For those of the listeners that do not know Elliot, would you please introduce yourself? Mr. Richmond.
[00:00:48] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm Elliot Richmond. I'm a web developer. I run a software company with my partner Rachel, and. Well, actually, she's not my partner. I get that wrong. She'll kill me for that. We're married. It's my wife.
[00:01:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:01:03] Speaker B: I've been developing with WordPress for about 20 years. So as old as WordPress is, really, I focus primarily on WordPress, although I have developed with other things and I do stuff on YouTube and I also more recently run a kind of pizza delivery business as well, at the weekends with the family. And now we employ about five staff, which is where we can talk about that later, which is what I meant.
[00:01:34] Speaker A: You're kind of in between.
[00:01:36] Speaker B: Yeah, so, yeah. And I also run the local meetup in Cheltenham, so I'm involved with the community as much as possible.
I converse with people like yourself online and other. Other people. I try and contribute to project itself WordPress.
And yeah, I've. I've been doing it for 20 years and it just feels like yesterday since I started, so.
[00:02:01] Speaker A: Oh, don't. Don't get me started on that one. Yeah, I feel old when I tell people who are in WordPress for three, four years and go, yeah, I've been working with WordPress for quite a while. I'm like, yeah, you have?
[00:02:17] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. It always surprises me that when you look back, you think, where's that time gone?
[00:02:21] Speaker A: It's ridiculous.
[00:02:25] Speaker B: But yeah, never a dull moment, always enjoyed it. And I think there's always time to learn as well. I'm always learning new stuff, whether that's from new people I meet or listening to podcasts like, like this one, or watching the community online.
[00:02:39] Speaker A: So, yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree. There's a. There's a lot of joy to be found in this particular niche of work.
You like learning and because this is learning, this is constant learning.
[00:02:51] Speaker B: Absolutely, yeah.
[00:02:53] Speaker A: And you know, when we're talking learning, I. I'm very quickly thinking, you Do a lot of teaching on the topic of WordPress on YouTube and I'm particularly curious.
So let me, let me preface the question that I'm going to ask a little bit more. There's a whole wide variety of YouTubers talking about WordPress in one way or another. There's a, there's a big group that just does it mostly on the page builder side of things and hypes up stuff and solutions and whatnot. That's a particular market, that's not my market. And, and I don't think that's your, your, your neck of the woods on the Internet as well.
Was that a conscious decision of this is what I'm going to do on YouTube and for this. And.
[00:03:48] Speaker B: I think you needed to be authentic and genuine on YouTube and it's, it's what I know, so why not teach what I know or tell others kind of my background?
If they can learn something from me, so be it. If they don't and I'm, I'm too niche, then, yeah, find something that, that suits you. But I like to stick.
Like you mentioned about, there are two different groups in the WordPress community. There's users and then there's developers. But there's also lots in between as well, like business people, consultants, SEO people, and they kind of come into WordPress for various different things. But I've always been involved with. I learned to code at a very young age and I like the fact that you can type something into a computer, run it and it does stuff, something happens. It's like that always made me feel quite curious and I was amazed once when I went to school, I think it was like the end of primary school where my friend's dad who worked, I don't know, I think he worked for the government or something. He actually built a computer and brought it in and it was just like this chipboard and he was, we were all like lining up to play games that he'd programmed into it.
So I think that was my earliest sort of memory of getting involved or being interested in code. So, yeah, I've always been interested in that kind of technical side of things.
But in terms of the YouTube stuff, I'm quite. I need to outlet all of my creativity. So there's a lot of creativity in, in terms of. I. I've got like 12 guitars around the house, I've got keyboard behind me, I've got a little one here that you probably can't see, which I table with.
So when it comes to the YouTube stuff, that is quite creative. As well. Whether it comes, whether it's to do with scripting or editing and motion graphics, I really enjoy that kind of side of things.
And I think with code, I'm a visual person, so it's important to.
For me to understand something and how it works. I like to understand it visually as well as technically.
And if I can get that across to other people, I feel I've done my job by sort of imparting my, my knowledge to them.
[00:06:17] Speaker A: So I see that, I see that and I, I recognize the, the creative outlet. I'm not doing much on YouTube just yet, but I will be and in the prep for it is, is fun already because it's, it's a very different kind of learning. Right.
You know the subject, you talk about it.
I mean, I talk about it at workems and stuff like that to my peers, to you on X and other places.
But sitting down and doing this sharing of knowledge on a video platform is entirely different and still foreign to me.
Um, what, what is the. You, you. You. One of the things you said was the, the. The visual graphics that you make part of your videos, which is personally one of my, I think one of my favorites of all the people out there in how you display things. I, I really enjoy watching the, the visualization of the concepts that you, you talk about. How, how did that come? Because did, did you have any background in that or was it like I'm a going just dig myself in and figure it out?
[00:07:38] Speaker B: Yeah, well, my, my background was working in agencies back in the 80s and 90s, so I, I've kind of got a graphic background anyway, so I can redraw stuff, get concepts across, whether that would be in terms of a graphic sense. When I worked at agencies, I translated that into visual web design as well when I went freelance, taught myself kind of code. But I also brought the skill of graphic design to the table as well to clients, which again has been an asset for the, the kind of software and agency stuff that we've done in the past.
So.
And I was very good at art as well at school, so my art teacher pushed me in that direction.
[00:08:28] Speaker A: I guess that's the thing that shines through them because like I said, it's noticeable that you put a lot of effort into it and they're, I think they're always good representations of the, the models or the, the flow of whatever you're discussing.
Yeah, I mean, thank you.
[00:08:46] Speaker B: That's kind of you to say. Well, because, you know, when you put stuff out, you never really know whether it's cheesy.
[00:08:52] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Good.
[00:08:54] Speaker B: Or unless you get that feedback. So.
[00:08:57] Speaker A: So I'm saying that I'm not one for the flashy stuff. Like, the most amount of minutes I've seen of a Mr. Beast video is maybe two minutes, possibly three. It's just I'm not built for that.
There's at least probably three decades between his target audience and where I'm at. I'm 52, so maybe that plays a role, but I don't. I like it if somebody takes the time to display information in a visual manner that is not forced, as in hyped up and glamorized to the. I don't. I don't care for it. Again, I'm really aging myself here. But, yeah, this is.
[00:09:41] Speaker B: I think it comes part. It's natural progression, isn't it? As you get older, you just slow down and you actually need the things to be slower so you can take it and absorb it more.
So, yeah, maybe that's just a natural progression. And why I'm not as energetic as Mr. Beast.
[00:10:00] Speaker A: No, I mean, we have. On the WordPress side, we have energetic colleagues as well. Right. For instance, Ferdi. Ferdi Koprasook.
I think it's fantastic how he can present himself on YouTube and present the things he wants to discuss, but that's not me. Like, I'll never be that, nor do I care to be. But it's fascinating to have.
And I've had normal conversation with him as well. There's a difference between when you talk to him in real life versus how he's presenting. And I'm way.
The way I present on video is way closer to how I am, which I suspect you are as well.
But that difference, that Persona switch, I don't have it. I don't try to have it either, but I don't have it. And I like it when other people also go like, no, this is who I am. And I'm being sincere in what I'm sharing.
[00:10:56] Speaker B: It's.
[00:10:57] Speaker A: I'm carrying the story and I'm telling the story, and it's. It. And it works just the same.
Right. It's. It is entertaining, but it's not entertaining in the men in. In the. In the. In the. The manner of. I'm trying to be too entertaining.
[00:11:10] Speaker B: I don't know.
[00:11:10] Speaker A: I'm rambling, but I think you understand what I'm saying because I see you nod.
[00:11:14] Speaker B: Yeah, Yeah. I think you can be over. You can overdo it with. With the energy. There is. There is a Kind of balance and there's a technique. It's like, you know, like when you're composing music, you have a beginning, middle and end and you have climaxes and you have drops and then you finish with something mellow.
And I think you can apply that to video production as well. But you have to, you kind of have to.
I mean, I am still learning. I don't know.
I wouldn't say I was professional by any means. If it comes across as I am, then that's just a lucky, lucky dip. But yeah, I'm still learning.
I do study, like how to keep people engaged without being too boring. So I try and start with a little bit of a hook maybe, but then kind of mellow it out. But yeah, it's.
Yeah, there is a balance and there is a technique to it. But I definitely, I don't think I would. I don't want to be making those music videos, let's say, because it's the content, right? The content is.
It's hard to get across sometimes. And if somebody just says you need to set up your configuration like this. And if I look at my early videos, I kind of can see if I watched this and I had no idea about code and I had an interest, I would just have no idea what I was on about. So I kind of study that and I try and break it in, trying to adapt the complexity into more simplicity to then hopefully get across.
[00:12:50] Speaker A: And that is the biggest challenge. Right. Let's be honest. The.
[00:12:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:56] Speaker A: Is that a Steve Jobs quote where he says something along the lines, it's the, the complexity is in the simplicity or something?
Yes. Yeah, that's very much true.
Would you say that the topics you cover in your videos are a one on one on the things you come across in your work, or do you pick certain topics like this? Be a good explainer. Let me make a video of this. How does that work?
[00:13:25] Speaker B: It's definitely based on my experiences. So if I've, if I've had problems, I've been dealing with something I'll jump into and I'll study as deeply as I can. And then that's when I tend to sort of translate that into. This would make a good video, I think, and then just explain based on my experience and hopefully somebody's having the same experience or they don't know. I mean, I'm doing a lot with AI at the moment as well, which is a big learning curve. So there's lots to learn about AI and how that translates into this world.
It definitely has a place but in certain sectors it might not like the medical sector, it is catching up and it will change in the next few years. But is how you use those tools and bring them together and make them, make the bridge between, you know, what you used to do or the way you used to do stuff and how you can leverage using it to benefit what you do, what you still do. And that is with WordPress.
[00:14:32] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I can see that.
As you said medical stuff, I am reminded of the meme that I saw not too long ago where somebody said, your future doctor is using ChatGPT to graduate from med school.
Maybe it's time for you to pick it up as well.
I was like, I don't know if that's good as sound advice, but for sure, it's the world we're slowly but surely entering into.
It's omnipresent AI is everywhere and you're going to have to assume that everybody uses it in some, some fashion.
What do you use it most for?
The actual code or the scripting or.
[00:15:16] Speaker B: For my YouTube stuff.
It's a combination of things. So we had an exchange between myself and Brian Cord. So we were talking about he put a video out, I think it was the last WooCommerce video and there was a massive difference. It was really slick and I jumped on that and sort of applauded him for that and I said it was really slick and then we kind of had this conversation and I basically just open sourced it. So what I do is I just talk into the mic. I'll take a concept, maybe it's something I've been working on or experience recently.
I'll talk it through. I'll use my accessibility setup so that I can. It speaks to text and then I'll take that, that text and then I'll put that through.
If I haven't done it through Whisper, I'll put that through ChatGPT and then Polish it. So it's still in my narrative and it's the way that I explain things. Rather than saying to ChatGPT, Write me this concept and then it comes out with all this flowery rubbish that is definitely not my speech, my narrative.
So that's how I use AI in that sense, in terms of code.
More and more I'm using it to just get stuff done.
Because for me to write a function might take me, I don't know, five, ten minutes thinking about stuff. I can just put it in the narrative, put it in Claude or into Telex, which is an automatic product, which.
[00:16:50] Speaker A: Is really good, scarily Good.
[00:16:53] Speaker B: Yeah. So then it's a question of checking it. You know, if you, if you've got a developer background and you understand it, you can check it and you, you know what it's like. You say, do this thing, it comes back, you check it and you then explain that you've not done it in the right way. And then it says congratulations or yes, you're absolutely right, and then it fixes it.
And so it's not perfect. So I tend to find that although I'm getting stuff done, I'm typing less code, I'm getting more stuff done, but it still takes just as much time because there's still a lot of refactoring or just checking the code, it's not quite right. Maybe the spacing of something isn't right. If you want to put an icon next to a button or something, it'll put it all together for you, put all the code in the background and engineer it. But the look of it isn't quite right. So you're kind of constantly refactoring all that exchange of getting it to your vision, as it were.
[00:17:56] Speaker A: Fine tuning.
[00:17:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
So sometimes if you start from the ground up and just code it.
I wonder if the time comparison would be pretty similar. To be honest, I was going to.
[00:18:11] Speaker A: Ask if the Pareto principle is at play here. That 80% of the work is done much, much faster and the last 20 just takes about 80% of the time because we're, we're fine tuning so much and as we're doing that, we're learning how the AI interprets and we need to adjust our next prompt to have that interpretation be no longer an assumption or in include, I don't know all.
Like for instance, I'll have a few things per project that I create where I have the rules and a lot of it. If I need to create a new project, I'll copy it and it's code related.
I'll copy and paste a whole bunch of instructions that are telling me how I want the output, what assumptions I want it to have, what assumptions I wanted to verify, what assumptions I do not want it to have.
And in doing so, those instructions I keep refining and I, I feel like I'm, I'm, I don't think I'm at 8020 anymore, but I feel like I'm, I'm closing in on 85. Maybe on a good day, 90 to 10, like bulk faster, a little bit of fine tuning, tweaking done, doing this, this and that. I also discovered that on design Things like, how do I want it to look? A markup. I'll find an example online, I'll take a screenshot, I add it to it, and this is what I want. And it'll, it'll do it, It'll go like. I, I hear you. I see what you. All right, all right, I got you. I like that.
[00:19:51] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I had a, a bit of a, a light bulb moment maybe a few weeks ago, and it was like I realized the old developer in me realized how much kind of you think in the peripherals when you're coding.
If you forget AI and just build something, you forget what you know and you just code it and you make assumptions down the line. You think, oh, I'll do it this way because I don't want to create problems down the line.
Maybe you might shorten a function so you'll run some data through another function and then you just bring all those functions together.
Um, you, for that whole mindset, it, it makes you realize when you're prompting because there's lots of stuff you just do, which is second nature.
And now my prompting is a lot more, I spend more time prompting than I used to do thinking about writing code, if you get me, if that makes any sense.
[00:20:47] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it does, it does. Oh, I mean, when I first.
[00:20:52] Speaker B: Yeah. So when, when I probably speak for everybody, when you first used AI, it's like, oh, build a function that does it or build this app that does that and they go bang, bang, bang. And it's not required right now. If I did the same thing, I'd probably write a mini essay and then get AI to write the markdown document for that and then use that markdown document to feed that into the AI.
[00:21:14] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:21:15] Speaker B: So, yeah, I think what you say about the 90% of getting the prompt right and then the 10%, that 90% is becoming lesser and lesser.
[00:21:26] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I have a side project, a site that I'm building with WordPress and all of its functionality is non existent. So the goal is for you to create a garage. And inside that garage you have rides. And per ride you can have logs. So you log what you've done to your car, to your bike or whatever.
You can add images, you can add text, you can add, you know, embed video, all of those things, but nothing like that exists. Right. So, and it's not just slam in a few custom post types, it.
There's a whole bunch of rewrites, there's a whole bunch of functionality inside the logs and the notifications and you Know there's a whole array of features and sub features and sub, sub features, et cetera, et cetera. And I play with AI the most on that project and I probably could have finished it. I was just saying this is a week me just programming, building it.
I don't have that week, so. Which is why it's a side project. But playing with the modularity of the prompting to understand what is the minimal thing, I need to type. So for you to understand and not go crazy and run wild.
I actually enjoy that process as a process on its own.
I used to write the longer essays and I do that less and less for as long as I can get away with it.
[00:23:00] Speaker B: Yeah, that's interesting.
[00:23:01] Speaker A: Yeah. And yeah, it seems to be there's good days and there's bad days, but on the whole I'm, I'm not too disappointed on the, the results that I see. And there's zero ETA for that project to be ready. It will be ready at some point. But it's fun playing with, with that project as like this, I know what I want, I know what it needs to do.
How can I get it to build a plugin like that where everything interacts, where it loads fast, where it doesn't introduce bloat, where the jobs that it needs to do fire off async, queue up perfectly. You know, all of those things like action scheduler, everything needs to, you know, the whole Shabam and it's fun to think about the.
No, no, I think I have a good idea of what this would look like. I think I have a good idea of what that functionality should be like.
Huh? What am I missing? Well, dear AI, tell me, what am I missing? Are there examples out there that I could use this as an example for? And you know, just playing with that is just fun. It's just fun. Fun.
[00:24:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:15] Speaker A: I think here you go.
[00:24:18] Speaker B: You can lose yourself in AI without a doubt and you could end up going in different directions than you would expect to go. And if you ask AI to do one thing one day and you ask it to do the same thing the next day, it will do something completely different. Yeah, so it's, it is interesting in that sense. But yeah, you can go wild with it. And I've often actually just used it in my day to day planning of stuff. You know, I've got a lot of junk in my office, you can't see it, but there's a lot over there. And I just say how can I sort this out? You know, I'll just have random Chats like that. And it comes up with some interesting stuff. Like, what is this kind of stuff that you're trying to get rid of? Can you recycle it? Can you? And I, I'm like, no, I was just going to throw it away. Actually. That's a really good idea. So.
[00:25:02] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:25:04] Speaker B: In terms of like, creativity, it can spark different ideas and you can feed off that. So.
Which I guess is what you're doing with your side project. Yeah, yeah.
[00:25:14] Speaker A: I mean, again, I know what it needs to do. I know what the fun in that would be if I, you know, let's say somebody has a garage with four or five rides and, and two of the rides I, I absolutely love and two other rides I go, whatever, I don't care for that car. I want to be able to subscribe to the two.
But I generally want to know what he wants, what he does on the garage side of things. So if he's introducing a fifth one, he's gonna log that somewhere and I want to know about it. Right.
So how do I, how do I make that happen? And, you know, does that make sense? And, and yeah, like you just said, I, I, I ask it to verify and what would you do? Like, do you see three different scenarios of how I could treat this? And that's just fun playing.
Yeah.
It's kind of wild to think the position AI has taken in because there's a lot of studies done, right, where they tell you introducing AI into somebody's workflow numbs the mind. And it's a 100 a case of use it or lose it, meaning if your brain is not being activated in a creative way, you lose that sense of creativity.
But I find that if I'm aware of that principle and I, I ask it to trigger me in my creativity and then have it being creative back to from my response and then vice versa. And you know, at infinitum, then I actually find myself being way more creative than. Because there's stuff that I would have never thought of, like mind blown. I didn't know you could do that. Chat dpt thank you.
I need, I need to think about that, actually, you know, I, I have responses like that, which is, which is just funny because I'm sure you've seen the, what was it, the meme that went last week where some young kid walks into a store and the guy asked him, hey, how you doing? And he goes and then looks at his phone and asks, chatgpt, how am I doing?
[00:27:25] Speaker B: Yeah, if you become numb in that sense, I Think you should start worrying, but.
[00:27:29] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, sure. I mean, I hope that's a caricature, but, you know, I'm sure there's idiots out there that actually live their life like that already.
I don't share any social thing with.
[00:27:42] Speaker B: It, but yeah, it also has the, the other flip side of it where it's beneficial to maybe somebody who's quite smart, but maybe they're dyslexic, let's say. Yeah, they can leverage, they can leverage it in a different way and they can get, you know, their ideas out and not have that immediate shutdown because, you know, you've got the keyboard warriors out there saying you can't type correctly in pobar, which is.
I've come from that fraternity as well. So AI helps in that sense, but.
Yeah, so it works both ways.
[00:28:15] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that's, I think on the, on, on what you do for.
Together with your.
Well, when you said wife. Right. Not, not partner.
[00:28:28] Speaker B: Definitely my wife. Definitely my wife.
[00:28:31] Speaker A: What, what kind of work do you focus on? What is the, the sort of stuff that, that you attract in, in terms.
[00:28:40] Speaker B: Of the, the software business? Yeah, yeah. So we worked at the agency, an agency before she went self employed and then I worked freelance and we weren't a couple at the time and I'm going back over 20 years, so. And we've only recently we been married less than two years.
So that's why I still, I, I'm still in that kind of, that habit of not I, I even. We went to the DIY shop a few months ago and I bumped into somebody, I said, oh, hi, Nikki, this is my wife Rachel. And she looked at me, said, what?
So even she's not quite used to it either. That's funny. But, yeah, so in terms of the, the kind of stuff we do, I kind of forced Rachel into doing the, the kind of development stuff. So I was kind of pushing for that 20 years ago and she was more from the kind of graphic design and project management, management side of things and account side of the business, which she still does in marketing and she's still very good at that, which is why we've had success with the other things we do.
So from, I don't know, from base level, it's just basic websites for startups, but then it goes into more complex stuff for entrepreneurs. They want very specific things to fit a niche because they've seen, you know, a gap in the market right the way through to working with government, UK government.
So the spectrum has been quite broad.
As you know, anything is Possible.
When it comes to code and developing something, it's just the time you have to do it. But more recently, you know, the balance has changed. So Rachel doesn't really want to continue with the kind of software stuff because there's other things happening. I still want to continue with it, which has kind of like been the natural progression for me to.
Okay, I'll just start teaching stuff on YouTube and I'll get more involved with the community locally and globally, wherever I can. So that's kind of. Yeah, that's kind of. I hope that answers the question. I wasn't rambling too much, but.
[00:30:59] Speaker A: Yeah, no, no, no. It's more like my curiosity was in the. The types of jobs that you do, because that was leading up to one of my next questions.
You. You discuss full site editing in a couple of your videos, the concept and the creation. And I was wondering if you are fully on board with full site editing or are you torn or what is. What is your view on that?
[00:31:32] Speaker B: I don't think it's there to hand over to create something really exotic.
It's there to build stuff.
If you want to get a presence online.
When it. When it starts to become more niche and more technical, you have to do a lot of stuff to get it to do what you want it to do. So I'm on board with it. Like 60, 40, I'd say I do. I know it's going in that direction and I will continue to use it. When I. When I kind of realized I would probably never have to write CSS again in my life, I warmed to that because CSS is not my strongest point.
So, yeah, the benefits there are great. And obviously the intrinsic design and the way that the output of the block editor has been done in an accessible way and the performance side of things is great.
But when it comes to things hanging left and then should be centered on mobile, you've then got to get your hands dirty. So from a no coder's point of view, that's when it gets frustrating, I guess.
And that's kind of like the 40% of me.
[00:32:49] Speaker A: I empathize with that and I fully get that.
I think there's two things that I think maybe two and a half that are just too disruptive for going fully, fully in. Because I agree with your premise where it works for the vast majority of sites, but as soon as some level of complexity is introduced, which you now have to solve inside a block, and you can, because you can use it as a.
I use ACF Pro as a wrapper for any block that I need to create with complexity of php.
But the responsiveness and the, and so that's one thing and I think the, the second part to that is the, the responsiveness and the sequence of blocks because very often you want to flip things around for mobile presentation, right? Something that is your, your call to action can be sort of like three columns and then the third one be the call to action or right below or whatever. On mobile you want to have it way more front and center.
That sort of control is just. There's just way too little you can do about that.
That's that I would call the two or the one and a half point and the other one is. Is navigation like horrible?
Like yeah. Have you, have you seen Mike McAllister with Ollie WP where they introduced the menu designer? Have you seen that? Have you played with that?
[00:34:33] Speaker B: I haven't played with it.
My only fear is the responsibility you have to apply to that because it's going to be a great tool and it's going to be useful for majority of people but there's going to be.
What comes with that is responsibility. If you start building mega menus and landing pages within menus I think that's dodgy ground. That's my only issue with that kind of thing. So it is.
I agree that the whole navigation experience in WordPress, it's not great. What I tend to do is to just do it directly in the database which is not for everybody to do.
[00:35:19] Speaker A: That I would call it utter shite.
The menu is pretty much the only thing I cannot hand over to a client that is there's clients who are savvy and I, I, I, I, I'll create a video for them, I'll walk them through it as we do it and I'll make the video available to them.
What I cannot explain is all the intricacies of the menu to somebody who just doesn't get it.
And as antiquated as the old system was, people got it. It's pretty simple. Here's a menu. I've created it and now I'm. I'm sliding stuff into there and if it's not available in the stuff that I can sl.
Custom link and it works and I can put hierarchy to it and I can save it and then I go to my theme and I tell you at the locations that I have available where I want to display the menu I just created.
It's not the best ux, but it's solid and it works and I cannot do that.
I simply Cannot tell them to do that. And what I like about Mike's solution.
[00:36:28] Speaker B: Is.
[00:36:30] Speaker A: Yes, they are technically called mega menus now, but you could create a lightweight version of a mega menu which kind of looks like a normal menu but with a little extra and using a list block, a paragraph in there.
I can live with that.
Should you go all overboard and build these huge ass mega menu things for every single site? No, no, of course not.
But the controls, he, they, I say Mike, but it's Patrick also.
But the controls that they have made available and the more visual approach to it, I'm very much on board with that.
[00:37:12] Speaker B: Yeah, I should play with it and give it a go. But it's like all of these things, it takes somebody in the community to push Core, I think. And that is the great thing about the community is that you do have that because the nature of the open source and you can hook into the functionality, you can in terms of like the plugin ecosystem.
I think that that's always been the strength of WordPress. It's been a double edged sword. It's been its strength and its weakness. But you can get some, you can get some.
You bleep this out, I hope, but you can get some dog out there that is no good for anybody. But when it comes to pushing things forward, you need things and people like Mike to do this.
And that's when change starts happening. So until it's out there in the wild and you see people using it and it starts to sort of seep into the technology that we've got, then I think you'll start to see changes in Core.
[00:38:16] Speaker A: It's very similar to when Woo Themes at the time introduced the menu.
Because believe it or not, for, for those of you listening to this, at a certain point in time WordPress did not have a proper menu system.
You would just have a list, a bunch of list items, that's it.
And WordPress 3.0, I think introduced, and this is probably 2010, introduced a menu system that was based off of a implementation that woothemes introduced for their themes.
It was considered good enough as a visual cue of how it should work. It was entirely reworked. I don't think much of the code, if any at all, made it to Core, but conceptually that thing that we now call the classic menu is derived from an invention from Wuthemes.
And I kind of see Mike doing the same thing here because I'm pretty sure whatever they've done is going to be overhauled and made better or made more versatile. And all of those things.
But to end up with a system where we have a menu. And as I'm saying this, it's kind of wild that we're so niche into this small little thing inside a CMS that we all love.
But my hope is that ultimately we end up with a version of a menu that behaves in a better version and more compliant with all the standards than what Mike has created now, but will be attributed as the inspirator for this particular implementation. I have high hopes we end up in that situation.
[00:40:03] Speaker B: Yeah, I totally agree. Totally agree.
And we need people like Mike to do things like that.
[00:40:10] Speaker A: We need a dozen of mics, if not a couple of dozens.
[00:40:14] Speaker B: Yes, indeed, indeed, indeed.
[00:40:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
Hey, you referenced it a few times already. And I've been dying to ask you, how does a guy that is so involved with writing code, building websites, write, creating wonderful tutorials on YouTube, suddenly find himself in the I'm a. I'm a pizza baker, actually phase of his life?
[00:40:44] Speaker B: Well, the honest answer is, I have no idea how it happened. It just happened. Those are the best.
Yeah. My. I'm blessed with a brilliant wife who's very good at marketing.
When she knows there's a good product and she's got something to work with, she can. She can market it really well.
I grew up in the Mediterranean. I was brought up on, you know, like fresh breads, fresh foods, pastas, pizzas, and I've always made pizza. So when the pandemic came and hit, some of our retainers got reduced.
[00:41:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:41:22] Speaker B: And I was talking to lots of people in the community.
There was.
Everything went online, so there was lots of opportunities to speak to people. So. And I think Dan maybe was doing the Meetup London Meetup online, and Andrew Palmer was involved, and they were talking about pivoting their restaurant clients to an online ordering system.
And just one day I said to Rachel, I said, you know, I'm talking to people in the community and they're pivoting their clients. Like, you know, for instance, we were doing. I was just trying to get the concept over that somebody that does what I do, we. You could pivot. Like I would make pizza and we make money like that. And she said, right, let's do it. We're gonna do it. Yeah. And then within.
Within three weeks, she had me set up this site and I was thinking about all the complexities of, you know, the ordering system only being open two days a week, making sure that nobody could over order. So there's only so many slots, so I can tap into Woocommerce. To do all of that.
I can ensure that when people put their postcode in that they can't order if they're outside of a four mile radius.
Because at the time we were sending our boys on their bike to deliver pizzas.
So. And we were sharing it between car deliveries as well. But now my boys don't work for us anymore, but we do employ like five staff.
So yeah, it's just gone from something that was a throwaway comment to an actual micro business that now Rachel sells licenses for and they can have the software that I've built and the whole process, the marketing process and it's just.
Yeah, it's one of those, I think somebody said it's a pandemic success story where there was a lot of failures.
[00:43:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:43:19] Speaker B: Businesses going out of business because of the pandemic.
And we saw it a lot with, with limited companies, you know, weren't getting there, you know, furlough and stuff like that and weren't getting money off the government. So yeah, it was just one of those things. And then it was only going to be a temporary thing, but it, it's just carried on so.
[00:43:40] Speaker A: That is so funny off the back of just a remark.
[00:43:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:43:46] Speaker A: When you say you, you were growing up in, in the Mediterranean, what does that mean?
[00:43:54] Speaker B: So I went to like kindergarten in Malta. My dad worked in Libya, so he worked on the dry rigs, on the oil rigs and we, we all lived in a villa. So he was working six weeks on the field and then coming back for six weeks.
So during that time I was eating. I don't know, whenever you go across Europe in the uk, the, the diet, but if you go to Europe, it's all fresh foods. There's fresh pasta, everything's made fresh. And my new favorite place in the world or in Europe is Italy because they're, they, they're so passionate about their produce and it's all local and all of their flavor.
Yeah, absolutely. So you don't get these, the kind of dominoes and anything like that. So everything is fresh and that's kind of the basis of our, or the marketing that Rachel has done in terms of the pizza business. So.
Yeah. But it's kind of like being one of those things that's been in the back of my head when you, when you eat fresh bread that's been made with a sourdough or you have sourdough that's made from a culture, you just get this, this taste that when you experience something else, you just long for that.
It's Almost like a home coming.
[00:45:11] Speaker A: I recognize that.
[00:45:13] Speaker B: Yeah. So it's always been my passion to recreate that whole. They call it hobbs in Malta, which is just like a Roman bread that they keep their sourdough culture going for. Well, it's probably been going for hundreds of years. If you ever get to go to Malta, go to one of the fresh bakeries and get yourself a hobbs. It is the best bread in the world, so.
[00:45:35] Speaker A: Well, I. I still haven't been to Malta. It's on my list.
[00:45:40] Speaker B: Or Italy.
[00:45:42] Speaker A: I go to Italy all the time.
Every year I go to Italy at least once.
Quite possibly my favorite European country, but I have a few more, so. I really love Spain. I'm certainly the south of France, big fan as well.
And. And as much as I love Italy, by the way, the whole pasta thing, that's not for me.
[00:46:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:46:11] Speaker A: Before we started recording, I told you about carbs and me.
Not the best mix.
I like it, but it doesn't do for me what it does for other people. My wife will absolutely always pick something with. With either pasta or some kind of dough. So all the breads and all the variations, and I go like, yeah, can I just add eggs and bacon, please?
[00:46:37] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, Spanish cuisine is probably ideal for you then, because there's lots of meat, lots of protein.
[00:46:43] Speaker A: Yeah, well, actually, my most favorite food that I eat in Italy is bisteca fiorentina, so. Steak Fiorentina?
[00:46:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:46:56] Speaker A: It's like 800 to a kilo.
Absolutely massive. But I love it. It's just you. Like, I have the biggest, biggest smile when I eat that food. I don't know, it's just.
Just really good.
But that's. That's.
[00:47:12] Speaker B: You're a meat man.
[00:47:13] Speaker A: I. I am, I am. And having said that, I. I am now eating meat again for three years, and I have been eating close to vegan for almost 10 years before that. And before that.
[00:47:24] Speaker B: Oh, wow.
[00:47:25] Speaker A: A lot of meat also. So there's a whole bunch of cycle then.
Yeah, well, if anything, I'm even more.
I think the proper term is animal based.
There's some people who go full carnivore. That's not for me. Like, I. I know a guy who. Who takes a chunk of butter and just takes a bite and absolutely loves the taste of butter and the whole creaminess. And I go, yeah, no, no, well, that's not. That's not me either, but that would.
[00:47:58] Speaker B: Make me feel sick.
[00:47:59] Speaker A: Yeah, well, as do I. I turn away my head when he does that.
That's not for me.
[00:48:05] Speaker B: I love butter on toast, don't get me wrong. But yeah, I could, I, I couldn't take a bite of it now. No, it's not for me.
[00:48:12] Speaker A: If, if, if the.
Would you say it's like a franchise system or is it a licensing system that you are running for the pizza business?
[00:48:24] Speaker B: Rachel calls it a license. So you basically get, there's, there's marketing techniques in there that are kept secret and, but they are genius.
I can't tell you about it, obviously, because it's in a, in a, in a manual, but there's lots of little things like that and, and also the kind of the social media side of things and creating a story before you launch and obviously then the software side of things. So basically, yeah, you just buy the license, you get the training. There's a, there's a pizza course that comes with it. If you're not familiar with making pizza, but basically the way it's sold is that you can make, just working two days a week, you can make two and a half kids a month on top of your. As a side hustle, that's good money. So for, yeah, for a lot of people, especially at the moment when times are changing with technology, people want, you know, with the cost of living as well. They want that comfort of being able to know that they can earn a little bit of money on the side.
[00:49:30] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:49:30] Speaker B: And for a side hustle working two days a week, it's not bad. Not bad at all.
[00:49:33] Speaker A: No. And certainly not considering the, the money that's involved with it. But, but here's a, here's my fun final question for you.
I've introduced it as the pizza business, but as you're explaining it, I'm realizing it. It, yes, pizzas are being made, but you are actually extending your normal business with a software licensing business.
I think that's funny because that's the best way of.
Can I use dog fooding in this context? Yeah, maybe.
But that's the best way to learn how to build your software, to actually use it, extend on it, thrive on it, market it, the whole thing, and you get to build it, which is super fun, if I know anything.
I mentioned one side project. I have more side projects and four of them are live. So I learn from that, I play with it, and I, you know, put my new ideas in the next version. That's a super fun project. And you're doing that on a scale where I'm assuming you get to eat great pizza, I'm assuming you get to help other people find passion in their life and make money with it.
And you get to build on top of what you already built as a continuous improvements and all that. I mean that's got to be like triple, quadruple fun.
How close am I?
[00:51:04] Speaker B: Yeah, I do absolutely spot on. I feel blessed to be in the position I am.
I've got plans to release this as a product for people to buy anyway as a standalone thing, as an ordering system. There probably are things out there, but I've been through this process, process and I know what is needed not only from the ordering point of view, but also from the, the, the kitchen point of view. So you've got two chefs, there's an ordering system. In the back end, there's a delivery system so the delivery boys can click on a link and it'll give them their route. To get to the, the delivery point, we use what three words to actually pinpoint. So when somebody's ordering the, the way that postcodes work is it's just a general area, but it, especially in the winter now we get them to actually pinpoint and mark their, their front door. And on bigger sites, say it's a school or a hospital and you want to order a pizza, you can have it delivered to the exact point. So they, when they go through their ordering system they can put a pick a marker and that's awesome. That's where the, the delivery start and end point is. So all the delivery boys have that as well. So it's not just about an ordering system. There's a whole lot of other stuff that gets involved with it. And obviously if you want to deliver more, you can widen your footprint. You can go up to 10 miles if you want to.
But you know, that's like a setting. You set the radius, we set ours up to 4 mile radius.
So and that's big enough for us. But yeah, so the plan is that yes, there'll be a version of this, that will be a plugin that hopefully I can get into the repository which I'm working on at the moment called Pizza Pilot.
And it's going to be a similar system for our licensees, but they're going to get a little bit more extra. Whether I add that into like upsells, upgrades or whatever, I don't know yet.
But yeah, that's the kind of plan. But yeah, I get to build it because I go through those pay points. We know exactly what is needed, what a chef needs, what the delivery people need and what the customer needs. So at the moment is a classic theme, but I'm hoping to sort of at some point when I when I've got this one project out the way is to concentrate on doing it. It's a dual platform, classic and block theme.
[00:53:21] Speaker A: Yep. So super fun.
[00:53:26] Speaker B: I mean, but you're absolutely spot on yet.
[00:53:27] Speaker A: Yeah, this sounds like a super, super fun project. And I hope you do a video on it at some point, because I think that'd be a fun thing to to learn from how you can turn an idea into a business on top of the existing business, but from an entirely different angle.
[00:53:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:53:46] Speaker A: I think it's very inspirational.
And. Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing and thank you for this conversation.
[00:53:54] Speaker B: Well, thank you. Thank you for having me and.
[00:53:56] Speaker A: Yeah, my pleasure.
My pleasure. Thank you so much. Elliot.
