384 - Will Etch Save WordPress? with Kevin Geary

WordPress is in a tricky spot…and while still over 43% of websites on the internet use it, other platforms and builders are picking up steam and gaining in market share.

My big questions are:

• Has WordPress reached it’s potential?
• Is WP just for old dudes?
• Will Gutenberg (aka the block editor) EVER improve?
• Do people care more about WordPress or their page builder of choice?
• Is the WordPress leadership team secretly a commune outside San Fran?

All of that and more is covered in this episode with repeat guest Kevin Geary.

Kevin has been on the leading edge of making products for WordPress which help designers build faster, best practice sites that are focused on maintainability and sustainability.

His new venture etchwp.com has loads of potential to not only rival and overtake the cumbersome native block editor, but many page builders as well.

If you know Kevin, you know there’s no fluff, no hiding opinions or stepping around honest thoughts. I always love talking to folks who are 100% transparent and that’s what you should expect in this one.

Head to the show notes to get all links and resources we mentioned along with a full transcription of this episode at joshhall.co/384

Episode Transcript

Kevin Geary (00:00):
There are predators circling WordPress, but they
haven't been able to take it out, and that's only because it's
open source.
If WordPress was not opensource, it would have died years
and years and years ago, right?
So what I've been saying is,hey, we better wake up, like.
I don't think this ace in ourback pocket of open source is
going to be there forever,because there could be other

(00:21):
open source providers that comealong with a modern environment
and like the experience thateverybody wants.
The WordPress is donezo at thatpoint, right.
So we don't have a lot of time.
Clock is ticking.
We might want to start takingthings very seriously.
Welcome to the Web DesignBusiness Podcast, with your host
, josh Hall, helping you build aweb design business that gives

(00:45):
you freedom and a lifestyle.
You love.

Josh Hall (00:50):
Welcome, friends, into episode 384.
This one doesn't need much ofan intro.
We're going to get right intoit.
Kevin Geary is back on the show.
Those of you who are WordPressusers probably know he needs no
introduction.
The reality is, there's a wholelot going on with WordPress
right now A lot of uncertainty,a lot of questions, a lot of

(01:12):
things up in the air, a lot ofleadership conundrums, a lot of
drama.
Who will sweep in to save theday?
Will it be Kevin Geary with hisnew product Etch?
Will that replace the god-awfulgutenberg block header?
Oh, so much more is covered inthis one.
Here's kevin geary.
Make sure to head to the shownotes for this one to get all

(01:33):
the links that we talked about.
We do cover quite a bit.
That'll be at josh hallco,slash 384, and if this sounds of
interest, obviously I recommendscratching your edge.
Uh, that jokes right.
Here we go, kevin.
It's so good to have you back,man.

(01:54):
Good to take some time to chatwith you here.
Let's just get into what theheck is freaking going on with
WordPress.
Freaking going on withWordPress.
Let's have some fun.
If you could describe thecurrent situation that WordPress
is in in one to three words.
It can be as vulgar as it needsto be, what would it be?

(02:17):
And it could be three separatewords and they could be three
states.
What's the state of WordPress?

Kevin Geary (02:23):
You know, it's like that old relationship thing
where somebody just says it'scomplicated.
You know, that's what I wouldsay it's complicated, it's a
complicated situation.
We have a community of peoplethat's massive, obviously, and
brilliant, talented, passionatepeople, and those people are,
for the most part I think wehave to keep our eye on this

(02:45):
ball Like, those people areresponsible for the success of
WordPress.
I mean, it's thousands offreelancers and agencies and
DIYers and these are the peoplethat really, really really have
moved WordPress forward, alongwith all of the third party
developers that have built allof the tools that we use on top
of WordPress on a daily basis todo the work that we are doing.

(03:08):
I think a lot of people andMatt thinks Matt is highly
responsible for all of thesuccess of WordPress, or a big
part, or whatever, and considershimself to be driving the ship
or whatnot.
But I look to the third-partydevelopers and I look to the

(03:30):
community when I say why isWordPress successful?
And really specifically, it'sthird-party developer tools
Element or Divi.
You cannot discount the impactthat these tools have had,
whereas if we say, well, whathas automatic really done?
Well, there's that Gutenbergthing, you know, that most
people opt out of and a lot ofpeople are still standoffish

(03:51):
about.
So, you know, I look to theelementers, the divvies, the
third-party developers, theagencies.
These are the people moving.
So I have just stayed out ofthe drama and I'm like it
doesn't matter, like he doesn'the, and that drama doesn't
really matter to me.
I'm more concerned with whatthe community is doing.

Josh Hall (04:13):
So we just joked before.
I think like one second beforewe hit record, we said like etch
may be the only optimisticthing, aside from some.
I'm excited about Divi five andsome other upgrades and other
builders and tools, but I'mwondering where is the optimism
right now?
Is it with?
Is it with these third partybuilders?

Kevin Geary (04:29):
Yes, it 100% is, especially with regard to Etch,
because Etch brings somethingnew to the table.
It brings a brand newexperience for using WordPress.
It's not just a page builder.
It's not just like a newelement or a new divvy or
something like that.
There are a lot of aspects ofWordPress that people are not
super excited about.
There's the disjointed WP adminUI.

(04:51):
You know where you have half ofthe old UI and then in FSE land
it's a completely like newmodern UI and that's confusing
and it's not great.
And media management that's notsuper fantastic.
Nobody's super hyped aboutmedia management in WordPress.
They're always asking for morefeatures.
They're probably never going tocome.
If they do, it's just going tobe years down the line.

(05:11):
You know major stuff has to berefactored in WordPress because
it's very old, and you'relooking at core functionality
that people really rely on, likecustom post types and custom
fields not being native probablynever will be native, existing
in what I call magic areas, andthis creates a very disjointed
workflow.

(05:31):
There's a disjointed UI.
There's a disjointed workflow.
We have the theme system, whichwe could get into, which I
think is super archaic andshould be abandoned ASAP, and
you look at something like Etch,where you get everything that
you need to do your job.
You get the page buildingexperience, but you also get the
code editing experience insideof that, which has never

(05:52):
happened before, really, inwordpress.
You get the media management,you get the custom post types
and custom fields.
You get you get all the thingsthat you wanted wordpress to be
in a single package and in a newlayer, and you don't have to
wait on Matt and you don't haveto wait on automatic to find the
funding or find the people orwhatever they need to do that
they haven't been able to do toto unify this experience.

(06:15):
And so, yes, when people likethat's literally what we're
hearing people use etch andtheir feedback is not like, oh,
this is fantastic, or this isbetter than Element, or this is
better, that's not the feedback.
The feedback is this is what Ialways wanted WordPress to be,
or this is absolutely whatWordPress should become Like.
That's the kind of feedbackthat we're getting and, yeah,

(06:36):
that's why people are, andshould be excited.

Josh Hall (06:40):
When did when did you take it seriously?
I mean, my first impression ofEtch was that it was going to
rival the Gutenberg and just thenative block editor.
But as upon skimming yourvideos and hearing some
real-time feedback from folks, Ihave a student, Antoine, who's
a super fan of yours and really,really enjoys Etch.

(07:00):
So far he's an early adopter.
Yeah, it seems like it's muchmore than just that.
Enjoys that.
So far he's an early adopter.
Yeah, it seems like it's muchmore than just that.
But I guess I'm curious likewhen were you?

Kevin Geary (07:10):
like damn it.
I got to do this thing Cause wecan't wait on WordPress anymore
.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a greatquestion.
Um, people ask me for years tobuild a page builder and and I
actually did a long thread onTwitter about this, uh,
yesterday, um, and I said no, Isaid no, like repeatedly, and
I'm on live stream after livestream, like every live stream.
I did cause I did weekly livestreams for a long time that I
would just say no, no, no, no,no, we're not going to do it.
And it's cause I didn't reallyhave a good vision for what it

(07:33):
was supposed to be and what,like, the next era of WordPress
was supposed to look like andwhat the next era of page
building and WordPress wassupposed to look like.
And I don't like buildinglookalike products and Me Too,
products.
Oh, you got a product, me too.
Oh, I'm just going to do it alittle bit better.
We don't like doing that.
We like bringing actualinnovation to the table.
And it was until last year,probably the beginning of last

(07:56):
year, where I started to get areally clear picture of what
needed to happen, and my CTOMateo put a couple other pieces
into place.
Happen, and my CTO Mateo, put acouple other pieces into place
and we just started looking atthe landscape of, first of all,
like what was the premise thatthese tools were all built on
and why have they made thedecisions they've made?
Why do they have thelimitations?
Why do you know, professionalsand aspiring professionals tend

(08:19):
to look at a lot of these toolsand say I would never use that.
Why do they say that and why dothose limitations and problems
exist?
And we started to realize thatall of that is essentially
self-imposed.
These are not technicallimitations, they're just
self-imposed limitations becausethey're designing software for
a specific user and that usertends to be because it's the

(08:40):
biggest market DIY, beginner, etcetera, et cetera, not aiming
at, like, the professional,because it was always like well,
the professional will just livein a code editor or whatever
they do.
They do their stuff over there.
They're never going to use thisanyway.
That was kind of the theory orthe thesis, right, and we've
completely like turned that onits head.
And we know that whenprofessionals, even coders, use

(09:03):
an environment like Etch wherethey can visually see what
they're doing, but they have nolimitation.
That's the thing is, there wasalways a tremendous cost to
using these page builders.
It was a cost in terms of yourcode output.
It wasn't clean code, inaccessibility issues and
limitations in functionalityissues and limitations.
There was this cost andprofessionals would never tend

(09:24):
to say, ok, I will accept thosecosts, like they don't want
those costs, right.
And so we build an environmentthat doesn't have those costs
but brings all of the efficiencyand all of the ease and all of
the unification where I'm notbouncing around back and forth
from VS code to the block,editor to some other thing,

(09:45):
editor to some other thing.
Um, all of that put togethercreates an environment where
they're like oh, okay, this islike.
This is literally a, a new erafor, for wordpress, how?

Josh Hall (09:51):
does.
How does edge fit in with otherbuilders?
I'll ask some kind of basic one.
I was one questions on behalfof anyone who doesn't know
really anything about this.
Like, yeah, is this?
Uh, again, my first thought was, or my impression was, that it
was just a better block editor,but much more than that.
It sounds like it can replacebuilders as well.
Where does this fit in in theWordPress ecosphere?

(10:15):
Like, are people going to beable to choose Elementor, divi
or Etch or Bricks or Etch, or isEtch going to be the one to
replace them all, including theeditor?
I mean, is that what we'relooking at Essentially?

Kevin Geary (10:27):
yes, so we call Etch a unified development
environment so you can do all ofyour development work in Etch
when you're building a website,just like Bricks or Element or
Divi allows you to build a pageand you can build templates with
it and so on and so forth.
You can do that in Etch.
You can, for sure, do that inEdge.
But Edge goes well beyond allof that.

(10:47):
You can manage media in Edge,you can create custom post types
and custom fields and it'sbuilt.
It's the first environmentwhere, instead of saying how can
we build an environment that'seasy for beginners and lay
people and DIYers to use, whichis pretty much the premise of
every existing tool we are thefirst environment that says how
can we truly innovate aprofessional workflow in
WordPress?

(11:07):
And so we give access to thecode right.
We create, we prioritizefeatures like true component
functionality where you haveprops and insane levels of
conditional logic available toyou.
You can author JavaScript, youcan author PHP.
We've done things where the CSSlike there are styling panels,
just like you will find anelement or a divvy right, so you

(11:29):
can add an element to the pagevia drag and drop.
You don't have to write code ifyou don't want to write code,
but you do have access to thecode and if you select an
element, you change thebackground color.
What we have is it's calledbidirectional CSS authoring, so
there's style sheets attached tothe elements.
Right when I fill out thebackground input, I can see Etch

(11:52):
writing the CSS right there andif I want to touch that CSS, I
can edit the CSS and it willedit the input as well.
They're bidirectionally relatedtogether.
So there's no cost to usinginput panels like there are in
other editors.
So there's no cost to usinginput panels like there are in
other editors.
All everything that we aredoing, the loops, the logic, all
of it is designed forprofessional use.
But it's also in a packagewhere, if a beginner wants to

(12:15):
come and learn and this is, likeI think, the biggest point,
because there's two differentscenarios that are going to
happen as a beginner.
If you're a beginner and you're,like I, want to learn web
design, ok, if you go intoElementor, you are not going to
learn web design as much as youare going to learn Elementor.
Like it is a proprietaryworkflow.

(12:36):
They use proprietary names forthings.
They don't follow standardpractices.
You're going to learn Elementorand you can get confident in
Elementor and all of that, right.
But if you really going tolearn Elementor and you can get
confident in Elementor and allof that, right.
But if you really want to learnweb design, you need to go on a
tool that speaks the languageof web design.
And Etch speaks the language ofweb design.
And so when you're learning inEtch, you will come out
empowered to actually know whatyou are doing, and then you're

(12:56):
going to be using a tool thatdoesn't have any limitations.
So, yes, it replaces to answeryour question it would replace
an Element element or replace adivvy.
You can do all the pagebuilding stuff in it.
You just don't have any of thelimitations of those tools.
And you can do other thingswith a unified workflow, like
creating custom post types andcustom fields, managing my media
.
I don't have to go somewhereelse to do those things, which

(13:18):
that does.
That disjointed workflow doescome at a tremendous cost.
You know, if you are having tostop what you're doing, you're
building an about page orwhatever, and you're ready to
make your team grid.
I use this example all the time.
I want to create a team grid,right, all my team members on
there.
Well, the best way to do thatis to create a custom post type
for your team members.
This is how you manage contentin WordPress.

(13:40):
Well, in order to do that, Ihave to stop what I'm doing in
every other tool and I have toleave the tool and I have to go
to a different tool, usuallysomething called ACF or Metabox.
Right, that's where I create myCPT, which, by the way, is an
add on for WordPress.
You can even do this nativelyin WordPress.
And then, when I create the CPT, I need to attach custom fields
to it.
Well, where do I go to do that?
We have to go to a differentarea.
So, in a completely differentarea, creating these custom

(14:09):
fields, and when I'm done doingall that, I have to go to a
different area to put the datain for those things, to put the
person's name in and theirheadshot and all of that.
That's a different area.
So I'm now four different areasinto this workflow before I can
then go back to the tool I wasalready in and finally make the
grid with a loop, pulling thoseteam members in.
That is a very inefficient,disjointed workflow, and this
happens dozens and dozens anddozens of times across normal
projects, where in Etch, none ofthat has to happen.

(14:30):
In Etch I'm building the aboutpage, I get to the part where I
need to create my CPT.
Okay, just create my CPT rightthere in Etch and then I create
the custom fields right there inEtch and it's all native in
WordPress.
It's not proprietary to Etch,okay, and we'll talk about the
block editor in just a second.
But I'm able to.
I'm even able to put the datain for my team members in that
custom post type, because I canmanage posts, I can manage pages

(14:51):
in Etch.
I don't have to go anywhereelse.
So tremendous efficiency, zerolimitations.
And then, really, the icing onthe cake.
The icing on the cake is thatEtch is the first environment
that liberates your datacompletely out of the builder.
Okay, so where?
If you build something inElementor, it's trapped in
Elementor.
If you build it in Divi, it'strapped in Divi.

(15:13):
Okay, all these tools, they allwork the same way.
Etch has a feature that we callautomatic block authoring,
where essentially, it takeseverything that you build and it
converts it to core Gutenbergblocks automatically and it
keeps them bidirectionallysynced.
And so if I build a page inEtch and I hit save and I go
back to the block editor.
That exact page that I justbuilt will be sitting right

(15:35):
there in the block editor andit's no longer even related to
Etch at that point and the siterenders with the block editor.
So we're liberating people'sdata and the block editor now
becomes a very simple clientediting interface where a client
, if a client, needs to editcontent, they can just log in,
open the block editor, do somesimple content editing, hit

(15:56):
publish.
That all comes back into Etch,but it also goes to the front
end.
It's just bidirectionallysynced at all times and
everybody has a great experience.
The pros can do the pro things,the clients can do the client
things.
It's all native in WordPressand it's just a great experience
.

Josh Hall (16:09):
Well, you just answered like five of my next
questions there, Kevin I wascurious about how the block
editor would literally fit andwork in with this, but that
makes a whole ton of sense.
You mentioned the admin areafor WordPress.

Kevin Geary (16:22):
What about?

Josh Hall (16:22):
that.
Does that affect that you?

Kevin Geary (16:23):
mentioned the admin area for WordPress.
What about that?
Does that affect that?
It doesn't.
It doesn't change the admin.
What we essentially determinedwas if I can, if we can just
make those aspects of the adminthat we think are never going to
be improved or the improvementsare far off into the future and
people are just going to keepbegging and begging and begging.
It's not that we need to do it,it's that we need to create a

(16:44):
tool and a workflow where peopleit just makes those areas
irrelevant.
You know, if I can manage myposts and pages in etch, I'll
just do that because it's amodern interface and it's
lightning fast and it's got waymore control and I can see I can
control the data columns andeverything that I want to see
the way I want to see it.
Why would I ever go into theWordPress version of that?
If I can create custom posttypes and custom fields, why

(17:05):
would I ever go into ACF orMetabox and those old school
interfaces and all?
There's just no reason to.
So you just avoid them andessentially what the workflow
becomes is you pull up your site, you hit edit in Etch and then
everything happens there and youdon't have to go anywhere else,
and it's just, it's nice.

Josh Hall (17:25):
You're a bricks guy.
Well, maybe until etch.
How's that?
Are you gonna leave bricks then, once that's?
Yes, I've already left.

Kevin Geary (17:28):
yeah, I've already left.
I've already left bricks.
Um, I've done, I've been doingall the videos on my channel, um
, for the past month or so havebeen in etch um.
You know we're that far along,like my uh, the digital gravy
site is rebuilt in etch um andthe my garyco site is being
rebuilt in etch right now.
Like we're building real siteswith it, which we said our goal

(17:50):
was one year to build brochuresites.
We're way ahead of schedule onthat and the brochure sites
thing is even going to like it's.
We're even well beyond that.
I mean, we have the mostpowerful components of any
environment.
We have an extremely powerfulconditional logic engine.
We have the most robustselector system out of any
environment like this.

(18:11):
You have the free code editing,you have the auto block
authoring, so much of the magicis already happening.
So, yeah, it's going to bequick, is it a theme or again?

Josh Hall (18:22):
I'm going to stick with some very elementary
questions.
Is it a theme or is?

Kevin Geary (18:25):
it a plugin?
Going to stick with some veryelementary questions Is it a
theme or is it a plugin?
A really good question.
It's, um, it's both.
So the, the entire environment,is a plugin.
So you add the etch plugin, butfor the auto block authoring
and to hook into WordPress's FSCsystem.
Because, again, if you make atemplate in uh, let's say, you
make a blog post template inEtch, that template actually

(18:46):
exists in WordPress FSC.
Like, if I go into FSC'stemplate area, I will see that
blog post template right there.
It is all native.
Everything that you're doing isconverted to native WordPress,
right?
So that aspect of it, in orderto hook in, has to be done
through a theme, because that'sWordPress's architecture.
So essentially, what we giveyou is the plugin, which does

(19:07):
pretty much everything, and thenthe theme, which is just a
blank block theme.
Essentially, that enables theblock functionality.

Josh Hall (19:12):
Okay, I was just curious if there is a way to use
a combo of Etch and somethinglike Divi or a page builder for
like.
If we were to use Divi for like, certain pages, if that's what
somebody's comfortable with, butthen use Etch for blog posts
and repeating content and clientstuff, sounds like that setup
wouldn't work, though right, Idon't know if they could.

Kevin Geary (19:34):
I mean, maybe theoretically they could exist
side by side.
It would be a situation wherethe site was already built with
Divi, for example, and youwanted to tack on a landing page
that you wanted to build withEtch.
Maybe you would have them existside by side, but if you're
starting a new project, it justyou wouldn't need Divi at that
point, Like Divi wouldn't berequired for anything that
you're going to do on theproject.

Josh Hall (19:55):
So it's plugin and the theme.
Is that right?
Are there two uploads?

Kevin Geary (19:59):
Yeah, the theme essentially doesn't do anything
related to what you're.
All it does is hook intoWordPress's architecture.
That's all it does.

Josh Hall (20:07):
Well, I want to just highlight what you said a little
bit ago which is crucial and Ithink I don't know of anyone
else in the industry is doingthis to where you have the
options available for the prosand an option for the clients
with the basic block editor.
I mean you could do similarthings with Divi and other
builders, as you know, to createlike a basic template or just
use the text editor block editor.
I mean you could do similarthings with Divi and other
builders, as you know, to createlike a basic template or just

(20:28):
use the text editor or blockeditor.
But I mean we're running intoso many problems now that we're
years into WordPress.
I have my own issues withjoshhallco, which is Divi 4,
slow and unscalable.
I've made it unscalable.
You would not have been happywith Josh, you know.
10 years ago, when I came outwith that site, but I didn't
know any better.
So, um, it is interestingbecause now that we are years

(20:50):
into particularly WordPress anda lot of these agencies are
running so many different siteswith certain builds, I mean I do
feel like you are on theforefront of a lot of happy
people in 10 years, you knowlike looking back and like thank
.
God, we didn't create a blog ora podcast that has, you know,
500 episodes using one builder.
It's a native platform, yeah.

Kevin Geary (21:13):
Yeah, absolutely.
Plus, you know we're gettinginto the era of AI and obviously
that's going to be a big partof people's workflow going
forward, be a big part ofpeople's workflow going forward.
I really feel strongly that ifyou are going to use AI to
assist you in your workflow, youshould absolutely be using a

(21:34):
tool that speaks the language ofweb design.
Why?
Because AI speaks the languageof web design.
Ai doesn't speak Elementor, aidoesn't speak Divi or anything
else.
It speaks the language of webdesign, and the examples that
you're going to get, by the way,are supplied in code, okay.
And so if you're asking Grok orClaude or ChatGPT, hey, can you

(21:55):
build me a nav menu that lookslike this and has these
requirements?
It's going to spit back HTMLand CSS and JavaScript.
Okay, the ability to importthose things into another
builder not so much, whereas inEdge I can literally take the
HTML it gives me and I can pasteit in and everything just
renders and I can attach the CSS, because we're going to have a

(22:15):
we already have the prototypefor it, but we're going to have.
We're going to be the firstenvironment that I know of where
you can literally import HTMLand then scan a URL and say find
the style sheets that are onthis URL, find the styles that
belong to this thing I justimported, and import just those
things, and it will import it.
And then that section thatyou're trying to import, or that

(22:36):
component or whatever it is,will just come to life with no
bloat, with no excess stuffbeing imported.
You're gonna be able to justtake HTML and CSS and even
JavaScript from anywhere andjust plug it in and play.
You're gonna have AI in theinterface where you're saying,
hey, I need you to do this.
Ok, it's going to do it allinside of Etch, with Etch's
native controls.

(22:57):
That is vastly different froman experience standpoint than
trying to use a builder thatdoes not give you code access.
Because when you don't havecode access and AI spits back we
know AI is not perfect AI isgoing to spit back something
imperfect and you're going tosay, ah, it's not exactly what I
wanted.
And then you're gonna have toreprompt it and then reprompt

(23:18):
again.
And then we all know also thatas you reprompt and it fixes
those things, it's like tends tobreak other things and it's
like, man, if you just gave methe code, I could fix it, like I
can make it the way I want to,but you can't touch the code in
these other environments.

Josh Hall (23:32):
That's a really important point too with the AI
thing.
Just because, like, there'sDivi AI and does Elementor have
AI, they probably do, I feellike every, every page, a lot of
it.

Kevin Geary (23:40):
Most of it is just content related, though right
now I think it's not structuralmuch, yeah, and said it's it's
based off of that builder.

Josh Hall (23:54):
So, yes, no, that's a great, great point.
I'm really curious because Ifeel like you're still using
circle for your inner circle,right, yes, so it's a very it's.
It's not fair to compare thembecause circle is so different
from wordpress, of course, inevery regard, but the last
couple years, I think, probablyaround the time when you really
made Etch a priority and a focus, I've just realized these other

(24:16):
companies are just light yearsahead with innovation and
getting things out quickly.
I am like astonished by howslow and fragile and like stuck
the wordpress team is from theleadership down, and again, I
know, you know I would.
I'm not envious of that role.

(24:37):
It's 44 percent of the internetstill right now, plus maybe, um
, you know, because of all thethird party builders and apps
and developers, that everylittle decision has so many
layers behind it, but still, Ijust I don't know.
I guess, hearing you talk aboutwhen you did this, it just kind
of felt like we all got to apoint where like, okay, this is

(24:59):
just not going to get better.
It's just not, gutenberg isnever going to get to a place
where it's like this is awesome.

Kevin Geary (25:04):
Yeah Well, a lot of people don't realize they've
been doing it for seven years.
You know, the Gutenberg projectstarted seven years ago.
It still doesn't haveresponsive controls.
It still doesn't have a lot ofthe basics we just figured out.
Because we're adding SVGsupport into Etch, it has no
support for SVGs.
You can't add an SVG element inthe block editor.
After seven years, thiscraziness, it's lunacy and it's

(25:32):
because they hide behind the.
It's an open source project andwe all have to come together
and you need to be a contributorand da, da, da, da da.
I think a lot of that is.
They like the advantages ofopen source in terms of free
work and marketing and you know,just open source attracts a lot
of attention in those ways.
But when it comes to actuallygetting things done, that's what

(25:52):
they hide behind that wall ofexcuses.
Well, I mean, you know itdoesn't even make any sense.
Like you can, you can literallyhave a team the way you have in
any in any software company.
You can literally have peopleassigned to do things like I.
Just just I repeatedly hearthat wordpress, from an
organization standpoint, is alot of people just kind of

(26:13):
wandering around, just doing,kind of working on what they
want to work on and there's nota lot of direction.

Josh Hall (26:18):
I feel like it's a commune like I feel like, you
know like they're just all inlike robes and it's very like.
Well, bro, what should we dotoday?

Kevin Geary (26:29):
it's a lot of that.
I mean, I've heard it frominsiders that, like you know,
yeah, that's kind of the, it'skind of the vibe.
So yeah, I think it's aleadership issue.
For sure it's not a fundingissue.
It is now.
It is now they've pulled thefunding because of the WP engine
and all of that, but it was nota funding issue before, it was
just an organization issue and aleadership issue and an excuse

(26:52):
making issue.
You know there's a lot ofexcuses for like why something
can't get done or why it hasn'tbeen done or whatever.
And you know like they alwaysI've been told 15000 times like,
well, go contribute the feature.
So many people have contributedfeatures and they go absolutely
nowhere.
And there's no transparency onwho actually, at the end of the

(27:13):
day, approves or disapproves afeature from being included, and
so there's no guarantee that ifyou spend all the time working
on the feature that it'sactually going to be put into
core and it's just a it's, it'sa distraction, it's like, oh,
here's a guy complaining.
Let's just let's send him downa rabbit hole of go go work on
the feature yourself and thenmaybe he'll just get lost in
that rabbit hole and we'll neversee him again.

(27:33):
I think that's literally whythey tell people that.
So yeah, it's never going to,it's not going to get better,
it's a very, very slow thing andit's not going to change
anytime soon, in my opinion.
So we have to just build on topof it.
That, just build on top of it.

(27:54):
That's what I've always said,like that's already.
Where the success came from wasbuilding on top of it.
If Elementor didn't, it did notexist, and and Divi and Beaver
and all of those, a giganticportion of WordPress's community
would not exist.
Those are pivotal, pivotaltools in that era of WordPress
and we can't discount that, andit's going to stay that way
going forward.

Josh Hall (28:04):
That's a great point and I do think there's a lot to
say about the, the respect ofthe, the first round of page
builders especially.

Kevin Geary (28:11):
I mean I was I've been using divi since early 2014
and yeah, I mean, back in thosedays it was just an absolute
game changer, but yeah, I meanthat that's literally what
empowered people to do totransform wordpress from a
blogging engine into somethingwhere people are actually
building huge marketing sites,dynamic websites, e-commerce
sites like that.

(28:32):
Automatic didn't do anything tofacilitate that.
That was all third partydevelopers coming in and
enabling that to happen.
And if that did not happen inthe third party market, it was
going to be gatekept by coders,essentially because and that's
still if you, they tell me allthe time like, oh, the block
header doesn't do that thingthat you want it to do Open VS
Code and make a custom block.

(28:52):
No, come on man, this is 2025.
Like, this is not what weshould be doing.
It should not be like oh, ourbasic thing doesn't get the job
done, so now you got to open acompletely different environment
and hook into this thing.
Come on man.

Josh Hall (29:13):
This is craziness.
This is not going to moveanybody forwards.
What's interesting is thechange of the DIY landscape
recently, over the past coupleof years in particular.
I don't think there's anycoincidence that late 23 is when
things shifted from what I sawin WordPress and just web design
in general.
But you mentioned the DIY thingearlier.
Now I don't see WordPress as aDIY solution at all.

Kevin Geary (29:32):
I mean as you mentioned.

Josh Hall (29:33):
Divi Elementor, more so than Divi, even as far as
like DIY is doing it.
But to be honest, if you're asmall business owner and you're
trying to tinkle around withyourself, or even if you're just
a very, very newbie webdesigner or junior, there's
these tools.
I mean Wix Studio.
It gets a little morecomplicated.
You can with wix studio, butsquarespace show all these
others are so much betterpositioned for diy tools.

(29:55):
So wordpress.
I think the the real conundrumthey're in is like, yeah, do
they just go all in helping thepros?
But I mean, you're taking thatseat for them.
Like what, what?
They can't, they're not goingto help the pros.
I think they're in a very.
They're stuck in between a rockand a hard place with, like our
DIYers are fleeting.
We've got these builders.

(30:17):
Our core stuff is just terribleright now.
So Kevin's here to save us all.
You're here to save WordPress,aren't you?

Kevin Geary (30:24):
I said years ago.
I said years ago wordpressorg.
There are two different formsof WordPress.
There can be, and there can bemany, many, many of them.
Actually, WordPressorg is thecore software, but nothing is
stopping a hosting company fromlike automatic Automatic is a
hosting company, okay, Nothingis stopping them from taking the

(30:47):
core WordPress experience andtransforming it into a different
experience for a specific typeof user.
Okay, and that's whatwordpresscom does.
In a lot of ways, it does itpoorly, but that's what it does.
It's what it attempts to do,and any hosting company can
actually do that if they want,if they want to do that.
And what I told people yearsago and the person I told it to
and a bunch of other peoplelooked at me like a goldfish and

(31:10):
.
But it rings true.
It's still true to this veryday and it's proving itself to
be more and more and more trueevery day that goes by.
Wordpressorg is a professionalplatform.
It is a platform for.
It is not a platform for my momor her cousin or anybody else
off the street.
And you could just look at thefundamental aspects of this, why
you got to choose a hostingcompany.

(31:30):
Well, they're already my mom'salready out on that right there,
she had no idea what you'retalking about.
You have to one click installit.
Then, as soon as you log in,you have to understand this
concept of plugins and themes.
You have to go through anentire theme library not
realizing that the theme you'rechoosing is not just look and
feel, but it's actuallyarchitecture, because WordPress
made the brilliant, brilliantdecision to marry look and feel

(31:54):
with architecture in themes.
Okay, that, which is anothermassive mistake which they're
continuing to make with theblock editor.
I don't know why.
Um, and then if you've finallypicked a theme which also kind
of picture architecture, you'rethen in a situation where it's
like, okay, I need, I needplugins to add on functionality,
because that's not core.
And if you just pick any pieceof functionality, like I need a
slider, Okay, Well, it's notjust go find a slider plugin.

(32:17):
It's literally like how aboutyou try out 10 slider plugins
and see which one actually isgoing to do what you needed to
do versus might have some dealbreaking limitation that you
don't even know about?
Navigating this.
There's so many prerequisites.
There's understanding postsversus pages, understanding
permalink structure.
These are all very, verytechnical things and WordPress

(32:39):
does not make it easy.
There's no onboardingexperience.
And that has led me to concludeWordPressorg is for people who
know what the hell they're doing.
It's not for my mom, it's notfor the mom, it's not for the
rando business owner.
Okay, Rando business owners thatare on WordPress are on
WordPress most often becausethey hired somebody who said
we're going to build your siteon WordPress, and now they're a

(33:00):
WordPress user.
Okay, they didn't chooseWordPress, they didn't go.
Oh, that looks like the mostfriendly environment Wix,
Squarespace.
They are dominating WordPressin the beginner and the DIYer
market because they have aunified experience that takes
all of those technical hurdlesand gets rid of them.
And WordPress is unable to dothat, completely unable to do
that, except for WordPresscom orany hosting provider.

(33:23):
So I said for a long time andthis is what killed me about it
the block editor especially, bythe way.
So they built this whole nativeblock editor thing and it's
super simple and dumbed down.
And I was like why is it sosimple and dumbed down?
Why can't a professionalactually do work in this?
And they're like well, you haveto think about the layperson.
And again, I'm like thelayperson who's not using

(33:45):
wordpressorg because it's sotechnical, because all the other
10 hurdles they couldn't getpast.
So you have to get past 10technical hurdles to make it to
what they call is like a dumbeddown super basic environment.
None of that makes any sense,it's not been thought through
and we need to abandon thatcompletely.
We need to accept wordpressorgfor what it is.
It is an open source CMS forprofessionals to do professional

(34:08):
work on, and sure you canonboard people onto it like the
professional can onboardsomebody else and help them and
assist them and all of that.
But it's not just for peopleoff the street to walk in and
sign up like it's fucking Wixand have a good experience.
That's not going to happen.

Josh Hall (34:21):
Yeah, it's so true.
We had a family friend who,about our age, like pretty savvy
too and I remember just shecouldn't even get wordpress
installed and it was just like,I mean, most people, yeah, it's
to us, it's like, oh yeah, yougo here and you're here, but to
delay, and yeah, even a basicinstall is like rocket science.
So, yeah, very, veryinteresting times that we're

(34:44):
living in with wordpress.
Do you know the statistics,like where are some of these
other platforms?
As far as popularity?
I mean, I know, obviouslypopulation is growing.
That means more people areonline.
So, you know, percentage may beskewed, even if the numbers are
down for WordPress.
But where's, like, the bestplace to see the latest stats?

(35:04):
Do you go to, like W3Tech orwhatever it is?

Kevin Geary (35:06):
You can go to BuiltWith.
You can go to BuiltWith andcheck the Wix stats.
You can check them againstSquarespace.
Wix is dominating in a lot ofways.
A lot of people are hype onFramer.
I think mainly it's designersthat they don't really know
anything about the coding sideof things, because Framer's code
output is absolutely atrociousand there's a lot of limitations

(35:29):
with it, and it's just here'sthe thing like WordPress.
Why does WordPress still exist?
Because it's kind of a dinosaur.
It doesn't have an onboardingexperience, it's really only for
professionals, but it continuesto dominate.
It continues to dominatebecause it has the ace in its
back pocket, which is it's opensource.
So if you look at Wix, it's notopen source, squarespace not

(35:49):
open source, webflow not opensource, and so that's the
linchpin of WordPress thatthey've been essentially
surviving on.
I mean, it's like we have thereare predators circling
WordPress, but they haven't beenable to take it out, and that's
only because it's open source.
If WordPress was not opensource, it would have died years

(36:10):
and years and years ago, right?
So what I've been saying is hey, we better wake up, like.
I don't think this ace in ourback pocket of open source is
going to be there foreverbecause there could be other
open source providers that comealong with a modern environment
and like the experience thateverybody wants.
The WordPress is done, though atthat point Right, so we don't

(36:31):
have a lot of time.
Clock is ticking.
We might want to start takingthings very seriously, whether
that's via Edge, and of course,automatic's not going to take it
seriously.
We already know their MO, so Ithink Edge kind of positions
this as all right.
We've got the open source thingand now we have a modern
environment that sits on top ofit and we can do our work.

(36:51):
And, by the way, the client,the beginner, the lay person
who's being onboarded, can comein and use that very simple
block editor to just do theircontent edits and hit publish
and call it a day, right.
So everybody's happy andnothing huge needs to change.

Josh Hall (37:07):
We both run communities and I don't know
anyone who has joined mycommunity under probably 25 who
uses WordPress.
I mean, there is a massive,massive, and that may not be
completely fair to say.
We may have a few, but but thatmay be more of like.
They looked up web design onSpotify, I saw my podcast and

(37:28):
then I, you know, helped getthem into wordpress.
But what I'm trying to say isthe generation coming up is not
going into wordpress.
It is a dinosaur.
It's viewed like that, it'slabeled like that, it is like
that in a lot of ways.
Um, what needs to change?
Is it etch?
Is it?
Is it?
Is it the onboarding?
Is it the positioning?

Kevin Geary (37:48):
or is it fair to just not worry about that
positioning?
Well, it's the positioning?

Josh Hall (37:50):
Or is it fair to just not worry about that and just
be the place where the pros go?

Kevin Geary (37:56):
Yeah, that's exactly it.
It's the positioning.
It's positioning.
If you try to continue toposition WordPress as a Wix
competitor or a Squarespacecompetitor, wordpress is going
to lose that battle every singletime.
And it's not just going to losethe battle on the onboarding
experience and people actuallybeing able to technically do
things on the platform.
It's going to lose in terms ofmarketing Wix's marketing

(38:16):
dollars versus what's put intowork.
I mean, it's like it's like ait's a behemoth against a child
Like it's, it's, it's.
it's not even a competition.
It's not even a competition.
How does WordPress?

Josh Hall (38:27):
even market, by the way, I don't.

Kevin Geary (38:36):
I competition.
Um, how does wordpress evenmarket, by the way?
I don't.
I don't know if I honestlyreally does not.
It doesn't, it doesn't.
So we go back to why is itsuccessful?
Um, it's successful becausemillions of agencies and
freelancers onboard people.
They, they use the software asprofessionals and the and
clients come to them all thetime.
I mean this used to happen to meover and over and over again
hey, we need a new website?
Okay, great, what's yourexisting one on?
It's on GoDaddy.
It's like, okay, well, we useWordPress, here's why, here's
all the benefits.
And then I'm like, oh, yeah,sure.
Well, guess what?

(38:57):
Now that person's a WordPressuser, now their site's on
WordPress, and we're justconstantly doing this popular.
It's because of us.
It's because of us, right, andpeople are educated on that,
like I would.
I would probably.
It would stand to reason thatthose young people that you're
talking about haven't done a lotof thinking on open source

(39:19):
philosophy, haven't done a lotof thinking on why should I be
on an open source platform, whatdoes it mean to own my content
and own my website and not haveto lease it from somebody else?
And if I'm going to build areal, actual business, why
should I do that on my land andnot somebody else's land?
Those are like very importantphilosophical discussions that

(39:42):
young people typically don'ttend to have, and so they need
to be educated on that.
Well, who educates them?
Well, I automatically not doingany marketing, wordpress not
doing any marketing.
So they have to watch WordPressbeing for professionals, you
know.
If they're deciding I don'twant to be a professional, like,
I just want a website, okay,well, like they're not going to
watch the pro tutorials andadopt WordPress and all of this.

(40:06):
So, yeah, we have to focus onour people.
Our people is do you want to bea professional web designer on
the modern web and an opensource platform?
Then you need to be usingWordPress and now we take those
people in and we don't worryabout anybody else.
The other people will beonboarded by the people that we
get.

Josh Hall (40:22):
Yeah, you're totally right.
You just you just laid out abeautiful marketing strategy for
WordPress.
It's very similar to how Irecommend that web designers
sell the value of a websitecompared to social media when
clients are like what do I needa website if I have a Facebook
page?
It's rented land.
It's not your home, it's youknow you're at the mercy of

(40:42):
their whim.
That is truly the marketinggold for WordPress, I think.
Very, very interesting pointthere, and I only mentioned that
because I'm just wonderingyounger entrepreneurs getting
into web design or marketingtoday.
I don't know if maybe there'sjust more of an emphasis on
design and aesthetics or ifthere is just an aura of

(41:06):
wordpress being old.
I mean, I say this because oneof my younger web designer pro
members was like I logged intowordpress and it just looked
awful and I was like yeah, yeah,yeah, I, I get it, I can't yeah
, I get first, like I understand.

Kevin Geary (41:20):
So, yeah, they log into etch and they won't.
There won't be the problem.

Josh Hall (41:23):
Yeah, because I think you end up going with framer or
one of those.
So, uh, yeah, it is anotherinteresting.
Just you know, as as I'm reallythinking about the next five to
ten years, as far as we canjust looking at the landscape, I
think that's another hurdle.
But I think you're totallyright, kevin.
Like, like, the core ofWordPress in people terms is
already there.
There are, you know, hundredsof thousands, maybe millions of

(41:47):
solopreneurs and agencies usingWordPress as their main builders
.
So I feel like it's really justa matter of strengthening the
core, what's already there tohelp it succeed.

Kevin Geary (41:58):
Strengthening yes, strengthening the core, actually
putting out very helpfulcontent, pushing professional
development forwards and reallyappealing to people who want to
be professionals, which, by theway, includes designers.
And this is a good point thatyou made, because this is how
Webflow really kickedWordPress's ass.
For a very long time, theyappealed to and actively

(42:21):
recruited very talenteddesigners, and when very
talented designers come in, asyou know, you can build a great
looking website on almostanything, right?
So, yeah, the technical side ofit might be hugely different,
but somebody just surface levellooking at like, oh, there's a
website on the internet.
You can build a very beautiful,awesome, modern website on

(42:42):
pretty much any platform, right?
So if you have a bunch oftalented designers rushing into
Webflow, building thesebeautiful sites on Webflow, and
then people are like it createsa culture of like Webflow, good
design, modern, goes to get like.
That's a narrative that peopleattach onto and it attracts more
talented designers and moretalented people, right,

(43:05):
wordpress is the opposite.
Wordpress does not attract, itattracts everybody and it
attracts a lot of people.
And this is crazy to me, like Iwent to WordCamp WordCamp, eu
right, were you at EU last year?
Okay, okay.
The running discussionunderlying everything was have
you seen the WCEU website?

(43:26):
Have you seen it on mobile?
It's awful looking.
It didn't work on mobile.
This is a WordCamp.
This is an officialorganization sponsored event,
not like a local meetup.
Yeah, and I was like guys, Iwas like you got to understand
this.
Like this is an official,organization sponsored event,
not like a local meetup.
Yeah, and I was like guys, Iwas like you got to understand
this?
Like do you think Webflow wouldbe caught fucking dead with a

(43:47):
website looking like this fortheir platform?
No, like, what are we doing?
And people look at that andthat contributes to the oh, I
see a dinosaur looking websitecame out of a dinosaur looking
CMS.
What is the conclusion?
That every single person isgoing to come to, not the one we
want them to come to, right,and so we're not doing ourselves

(44:08):
any favor in that regard.
I'm talking about people at thetop and the people putting
these organization eventstogether.
Like we got to get our shittogether.
We've got to get our shittogether and stop.

Josh Hall (44:18):
Stop shooting ourselves in the foot like this
so I have a two-part questionand it's together here because I
want to ask you, like when andif there is a time to not use
wordpress, you chose circle,like I did for your community.
Why did you choose circle andnot just use an lms or something
on wordpress or a communityplugin or something?

Kevin Geary (44:36):
yeah, it came down to technical stuff.
With regard to like I, first ofall, I think communities, like
community functionality and youlook at things like push
notifications is a very simpleone.
It is a it's, it's, it's an appbased thing, and trying to do
this on WordPress not that youcan't, it's just you're sticking
a square peg into a round holeis what it feels like, and like

(44:59):
you might be able to cram it inthere, but it's just not going
to be.
It's not the best fit, you know, and there's a lot of overhead
and there's a lot of maintenanceand there's a lot of keeping up
with everything.
And so I look at something likeCircle where I'm like, okay,
all right, this does everythingI needed out of the box.
It's not going to be perfect,but it's going to be 95% of what
I want and what I need, andit's a great experience.

(45:20):
And it's got the app to go withit.
It's got the push notifications, which is very important for
making a community successful.
Like the idea that somebody hasto log into a computer to like
that's not good.
You know, they need an app,right, and they need to be able
to do this stuff on the go.
So that was all very, veryimportant.
And it's so fast to set up andno maintenance and so easy to
maintain.
It's just like.
Let's do it and people will belike, well, you don't own your

(45:42):
stuff.
I'm like I do.
I have every single person'semail address.
I have all my content archives.
I can move anywhere I want toat any time.
If they decide they didn't likeme and shut me down or whatever
, I can move it.
It's fine.
But it's on WordPress.

Josh Hall (46:05):
All my websites are on WordPress, Something that's
on the side, like that.
I feel like I can use aplatform like Circle.
So when is the time to not useWordPress?
What use cases would yourecommend today?
That maybe another solution isall right, and I ask this
because I don't know if you knowthat Circle I think I can say
this publicly Circle's comingout with a builder oh, okay, A
builder on top of their stuff.
Siteground just released I mean, tons of hosts are releasing

(46:30):
like actually fairly goodbuilders for something simple,
not something scalable and, youknow, super legitimate, but by
golly a portfolio landing pageor something could probably go
up there just fine.

Kevin Geary (46:45):
What are some use cases that maybe don't need to
be on wordpress?
Um, I mean, it's hard to ask mebecause, like, people will say,
like, oh, I use this for simplesites and I use wordpress for a
bigger project, like that'swhat I'm getting to.

Josh Hall (46:50):
Yeah, I'm wondering like, yeah world, where that
works, or I mean I get it.

Kevin Geary (46:54):
For some people, like for me personally, I'm so
involved, involved in experiencewith WordPress that I can spin
up a single page landing page onWordPress as fast as I could
actually probably faster than Icould do it on any other
platform so it would slow medown to go try to use a
different platform.
Now, that's not the case foreverybody.
Um, I would say, if you're asmall business owner, uh, you're

(47:16):
a lay person and you're likeone, if you don't have a website
of consequence is what I callthem.
Like there's no consequence tothe website disappearing or
performing, like it's just ahobby kind of thing, whatever.
Okay, like, yeah, sure, youdon't have to use WordPress or
whatever.
If you're trying to validate aconcept, validate an offer,
validate a landing page, and youdon't want to hire somebody yet

(47:37):
you don't have the technicalskills, you can put that
together with any other toolthat you want.
Like, I mean, go to go to, uh,uh, what's that design tool that
everybody canva, canva.
You can make a website withcanva these days, right, like,
go do that If you're just tryingto validate a concept.
But if you are doing somethingof consequence, that's serious,
that you want to own, I wouldsay it should be done on

(47:58):
WordPress.
It doesn't matter if it's onepage or 100 pages, like it
should be on WordPress.

Josh Hall (48:02):
Yeah, that's a good point, Good rule of thumb and,
like you said, for folks who arereally really proficient with a
certain tool even thoughtechnically it's more complex.
There's no reason to jump shipfor something simple when you
can just bust it out yeah.

Kevin Geary (48:13):
It's like what would I?
I mean, even even if I went toCanva like I would want, it
would be uh, horribly like.
I would just hate it, probablythe way I've hated somebody like
I try to use canva.
I try to use wix pro uh, whichis like their professional
version, like wix studio is whatit's called and I was like this
is frustrating as hell.
um, and it's just, like I wouldbe 10 times slower than anything

(48:35):
else and and by the way, that'sI'm not saying that it's a
brick-specific thing, or evenetch Like I could do it in
bricks, I could do it in etch, Icould probably do it in Divi
faster than I could do itanywhere else.
Like it's just, I just.
These other builders don't makea lot of sense to me.
They don't speak the languageof web design, they just they
drag you, put it down.

(48:55):
It absolutely positionseverything.
It wraps it in 18 000 divs.
It just.

Josh Hall (49:06):
it's a nightmare um, so not the way I work.
So for me I can't do that.
But I understand people off thestreet, you know, maybe they
can.
How are you positioning etchwith everything we've talked
about to this point?
I mean like, and particularlywith the amount of agencies who,
like, like my agency, we've gothundreds and hundreds of sites
using divi.
It would.
It would require a massivechange to to move from a builder

(49:26):
to etch.
Now we can start with that onsome new sites and things like
that.
But I guess I'm wondering, likeI don't want to say how you're
going to compete with those,because maybe that's not even
the goal.
But how are you?
How is etch?
How do you envision themarketing of Etch over the next
few years, with things like Divi5 coming out, elementor
probably eventually revampingsome things, the block editor

(49:48):
not changing at all?
How you know?
How are you going to?
Where's Etch going to fit in onhow this is positioned, moving
forward?

Kevin Geary (49:54):
Yeah, in my experience one is you know a lot
of people told me that peoplethat use page builders they are
afraid of technical stuff andthat's why they use a page
builder.
And if you talk technical tothem or you position like you
have too many technical features, they'll run away.
They're just they're notinterested in that.
And and I did this free coursecalled Page Building 101, which

(50:17):
anybody can go look up onYouTube it's just like hundreds
of thousands of views at thispoint.

Josh Hall (50:22):
Yeah, we'll link that in the show notes too.

Kevin Geary (50:23):
Yeah, for sure it's a really like anybody that
really just wants to learn forfree, like the most, like you
will know, at the end of thatcourse, more than 98% of people
building websites in the modernera like on, especially in
WordPress or in a page builderenvironment.
So tremendous education.
But the biggest thing that'scome out of that is the feedback
and I'm literally watchingelementer user after elementer

(50:46):
user.
I get the emails all the time.
The Divi user after Divi user,beaver user after Beaver user.
They are saying one is like youknow how long I've had like
imposter syndrome where, like, Ican put the sites together but
I really don't know what's goingon under the hood.
And now they feel free of thatand they're like they actually

(51:07):
are running towards technicaltools and technical knowledge
because they love feelingempowered.
They love feeling of theyactually know what they're
talking about when they talk totheir clients and when they're
advising their clients and whenthey're building sites.
They love the fact that thesites they're building now are
scalable and maintainable sothat when things need to iterate
and change, it's easy for themto do that and it's not a

(51:27):
nightmare and a hassle andthey're not having these awkward
conversations with clients like, ah, we didn't really build it
to be able to do that, you know.
And like that's not aconversation you ever want to
have.
So they're empowered andthey're running towards
technical stuff and so all wehave to do with etch is demo it
Like I don't even have to sellit.
Literally, as in the same thinghappened with automatic CSS I
just build things and dotutorials, and the tool I do it

(51:50):
in people are like what the hellis that?
What was that?
I want that thing, right, cause, they see and this was the
intro to page building 101 wasliterally like hey, open your
page builder.
Like, let me, I'm going to openmine, I'm going to open and I'm
going to open all of them.
We'll look at the sevendifferent ones and I want you to
see the clear differencesbetween something like an
Elementor and a Bricks, right, Iwant you to see the differences

(52:12):
in the code output.
I want you to see thedifferences in what this class
system allows you to do.
And, by the way, people shouldrecognize because I've said this
as well it's clear that we'reentering a new era because for
the longest, what was I?
A proponent of A class-basedworkflow.
Okay, when we use classes andthen variables.

Josh Hall (52:31):
Oh, hold on Okay you're going to lose me for a
second.
It's all right.
It's all in video.
I'm in here.
We'll keep it rolling.
I don't.
I don't edit anything out ofthe podcast.

Kevin Geary (52:40):
I'm in Florida and I'm on my B set up and my B set
up as a Sony camera that likesto overheat.
Okay, so that's what happened.
It overheated, um it, I turnedit off it.
It'll hopefully come back tolife in just a minute, um, okay,
so essentially we have, youknow this, class-based workflow
variables, components, loops andlogic, yada, yada, yada.
Okay, what is Elementor nowcoming out with?

(53:03):
A class system?
They are they are migrating.

Josh Hall (53:07):
DB5 is very similar.

Kevin Geary (53:08):
DB5 is going with this variable first approach
right.
They're moving towards this erawhich is, by the way, away from
, and I'm going to.
I think it's going to be veryinteresting to watch.
They have a giant community ofkind of DIYers and lay people
who chose that tool because itwas less technical.
And now they're making the toolmore technical and I'm curious

(53:30):
to watch how that happens.
But again, I just have to demoEtch and people just love it and
they want to use it.

Josh Hall (53:35):
Well, a recurring theme for this conversation that
I love that you've beencircling back to is it's just
good to know web design, likethe core principles.
Um, it's funny because my toptutorial on my youtube channel
is how to manually migrate awordpress website.
I threw it together in like anhour thinking you know, whatever
, I just this is how I know todo it no plug-in, no, no premium

(53:58):
, anything.
It's just you go into thedatabase, use my sequel and
that's how you do it.
To this day, kevin, people arelike this is the only tutorial
that worked.
Uh, even though it's, you know,seven.
No, it was 2017.
So, yeah, seven years old andit's still killing it.
It's the only one that is likeit stands the test of time.
I do think there should be areal emphasis on standing the

(54:19):
test of time.
I do think there should be areal emphasis on standing the
test of time with web design,just knowing those good old
classic principles For those whodo want to know those, like
what you need to know,regardless of any platform, any
tool, maybe for those who aregetting into web design.
Now, what are just like thebasic categories that people
should know?
Html, css, a little bit of Java, what?

Kevin Geary (54:41):
do you think?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I said thatthe mandatory requirements are
HTML and CSS.
Those are the mandatoryrequirements.
Page building does a lot ofheavy lifting in terms of PHP
and a lot of heavy lifting interms of JavaScript.
So those tools will.
They will get you very far, butyou should start to.
You don't have to learn all ofJavaScript, but you have to

(55:03):
understand the basicfundamentals of JavaScript in
terms of, like, what is actuallyhappening, you know, like, when
I click this button, how isthis other thing changing?
Just kind of understanding howit works.
But when it comes to HTML andCSS, you really need to practice
those.
You need to be an expert atthem, because HTML goes into and
this is why you can't just relyon a drag and drop environment.

(55:26):
Html has semantics, html hasaccessibility requirements and
these things have to be decidedby the person building the site.
They can't be decided by a dragand drop tool.
Willy nilly.
If I drag in a heading andlet's say it defaults to H1.
Okay, well, the user could dragin 50 of those.
So now I have 50 H1 headings onmy page.

(55:48):
The page builder doesn't know,like you know.
It doesn't know where you'reputting these or why you're
using or whatever, and so mostpage builders to to fix that
default to H2.
So I can drag in 50, but then auser might end up with no H1
because they didn't know tochange it to H1.
This is just somebody thatdoesn't know semantic HTML and
the very, very basics of it,right?
And you can take this deep intothe rabbit hole of HTML.

(56:11):
There's a lot like when I makea card grid that actually,
semantically should be a list itshould be a UL with LIs inside
of it.
And semantically should be alist.
It should be a UL with LIsinside of it.
And most people don't know thatand many page readers don't
even allow you to change theHTML tags to make it correct,
right?
These are the limitations thatwe talk about, and this is

(56:31):
because people don't know thefundamentals.
And so, yes, you should learnthe fundamentals of HTML.
You should learn thefundamentals of CSS.

Josh Hall (56:36):
W3schoolscom is usually my recommendation.
Do you have anotherrecommendation for learning the
basics?

Kevin Geary (56:41):
uh, I, I love, I love youtube, like I.
I really think that peopleshould he's back, I'm back, I'm
back.
I put that.
I put the.
I put a fan on it back there,I'm babying it right now.
Um, so, yeah, I, I I loveyoutube.
Find somebody you like, who,you like their personality, you
like their personality, you liketheir teaching style.
I will also say this instead ofusing AI to answer all of your

(57:09):
like spit code back at you, youcan open AI and ask it to teach
you the fundamentals ofsomething.
You can ask it to quiz you.
You can ask it to explainthings to you like you're five.
You can say, hey, give me athing that I need to build as
like a test project, right, andthen grade it when it's done.
You can use AI now to teach youthe fundamentals of these
things, and that's what youshould be doing, versus asking

(57:30):
it to just answer every questionfor you and spit back every
solution.

Josh Hall (57:34):
I couldn't agree more .
That's a great point.
I'm so glad you said that.

Kevin Geary (57:37):
before we wrap up, I'm going to ask ChatGPbt
explain etch for wordpress to meit may not be trained on it yet
, because it's so new, I don'teven know what it is I'm on 4.0,
so let's see yeah, maybe not.

Josh Hall (57:51):
plus, we've been very secretive with it.
There's not a lot of published.

Kevin Geary (57:54):
Yeah, there's no documentation or anything like
that yeah, there's some videos.

Josh Hall (58:00):
Yeah, what is it?
What does it say?
I'd be curious.
What is Etch?
Etch is like a magicalclipboard that helps people
build websites for everythingthey need.
It's hallucinating.
They need from their clientswithout all the back and forth
emails.
I don't.
Is this right?
No, this is this can't be right.
Imagine you're building a legocastle.

(58:20):
That's your website, but youdon't have all the lego pieces.
Etch is super smart, okay.
No, this is something else.
There must be a different edge.

Kevin Geary (58:24):
So, yes, well, it just makes it up.
I mean it just yeah, right ithallucinates all the time.

Josh Hall (58:27):
Yeah, like, don't remember.
I will keep an eye on when.
Etch is uh, as you know,available in the uh in the ai
world for for some uh yeah, yeah, for sure um, your page
building 101 free course realquick.
Does that lead to bricks or areyou going to do an updated one
for it?

Kevin Geary (58:43):
Yeah, it was.
It was done in bricks Causethat was the best tool at the
time, uh, to teach those kindsof things.
But it's going to be redone inedge, so I'm going to take the
bricks version down.
And another reason I it's notjust to redo it in in our tool,
um, but a lot of feedback waslike it's 19 episodes and I
think almost all of them arelike 45 minutes to 60 minutes

(59:04):
long.
Okay, uh, which I know is a lotfor people Like they're very
detailed and so it's also hardto find certain things when
you're going back later in thatformat.
Yeah, and I've exploreddifferent formats in the inner
circle for things lately andwhat I found is very granular.
It might be 60 videos, right,but it's so granular that one
they're easy to digest and twothey're easy to find later.

(59:25):
And that's how I'm going toredo the second version.

Josh Hall (59:28):
Same.
I'm learning, I'm about torevamp, like all my courses,
which is incredibly overwhelming, but I know it's time that it's
.
It's the smaller granular bitesize super filterable, super
searchable.
Um pat flynn is actually Ithink it's releasing soon.
He has a new book called leanlearning.
I'm gonna oh nice, I'm gonnacheck that out.

(59:50):
Just because I do think that'swhere online education is going
is like not that, becauseattention spans can be fine as
long as someone's hooked in it.
But I think the quick win, thenature of quick wins, the like
okay, I'm through a three minutevideo, move forward five minute
.
I I'm probably as guilty as youlike.
My course lessons are like 20to 30 minutes and I realized one

(01:00:10):
course lesson has like fivetopics in it.

Kevin Geary (01:00:13):
That could be five to seven minute videos.

Josh Hall (01:00:15):
So, yeah, yeah, what do you know?
Do you have any idea of whenthe new 101 is going to come out
?
Going to come out Cause I, wecan definitely recommend this,
but I'm just wondering.

Kevin Geary (01:00:23):
Yeah, I mean what I , what I did with the last one
is I announced it and then I didit like just every every week
I'd release like one to two, I'drecord them and just release
them as they were done.
So I don't like doing it all upfront and then, you know,
releasing it, and I also like tofeel it out like how people are
keeping up with it and if weneed to pivot somewhere in there
.
Cause I can outline it, but theoutline is just a theory, you

(01:00:49):
know.
It's like.
You know, once we get into it, Irealize, oh, there's a lot of
questions about this.
That was kind of alreadycovered, but people are still
stuck on it.
I might do a follow up, youknow, I might stick another
video in there or something likethat, and I can only do that if
I'm kind of monitoring howpeople are going through it.
So I I'm thinking aboutstarting it probably after
summer.
So when the fall starts, um,because we'll be, september is
literally scheduled to be V1,like the official V1 of etch

(01:01:10):
being launched.
Uh, we'll be much closer tothat, and so, um, there
shouldn't be any limitationswith what I need to teach in it
and we'll be able to just getstarted there.

Josh Hall (01:01:19):
Kevin, thank you for your time.
Dude, Good to catch up.

Kevin Geary (01:01:21):
Good to see you again.

Josh Hall (01:01:23):
And there we have it.
My friends, I think that is agood, honest, real world.
Take on where WordPress isright now.
What's going on, the pros, thecons, the goods, the bads, all
of the in-betweens.
Big thanks to Kevin for takingsome time to come in on again.
I know he was, I believe, in avacation spot and he made some
time to come on for the podcast.

(01:01:44):
So big thanks to him again.
If there's anybody who is on theleading edge of what's going to
help WordPress, particularlyfor professionals who use
WordPress, kevin is somebody Irecommend checking out.
You can go to his website,gearyco.
And if you would like to checkout what we talked a lot about
in this episode his new productEtch go to etchwpcom.

(01:02:08):
That's E-T-C-H-W-Pcom.
That is where you can get onthe list to find out more and
more about that.
So all those links and more arementioned at the show notes for
this one, which will be atjoshhallco slash 384.
If you're a WordPress user,regardless of what builder you
use, whatever camp you're in,I'm sure Kevin would love to

(01:02:29):
hear from you.
I would love to hear yourfeedback as well on this one.
You can leave a comment atjoshhallco slash 384 as well.
All right friends, thanks forjoining.
Stay subscribed, because we'vegot some other doozies coming up
ahead.
We're going to have a funsummer on the podcast, so I hope
you pull up a beach chair, graba drink of your choice and have
a good time.
All right friends, see you onthe next one.