032 – So much Drama In The WP World! How we’re dealing with it.

00:01.55
Jeff
Hello and welcome to the WP SEO show. I am a co-host Jeff joined here with my co-host Pete. Oh, I almost called Jeff, but Hey, Pete, how are you doing? And quick question. Are you ready for some drama?

00:13.36
peteeveritt
Oh, I love a bit of drama. Love a bit of drama. Not being in the drama so much, but sitting on the sideline with the popcorn, you know, just popping it back there. Cold beverage. That’s, yeah. Oh, I love a bit of drama.

00:26.06
Jeff
That’s that’s like one of my like online challenges to see how many of those animated gifts of people eating popcorn I can post in various like groups and posts and everything like that. like Whenever there’s drama, I’m like, look, I don’t want to make it any worse, but I’m going to witness it.

00:38.19
Jeff
i’m good I want to sit here.

00:38.49
peteeveritt
Yeah.

00:39.11
Jeff
I want to experience every second of it.

00:40.43
peteeveritt
And and you you want to you want to leave a comment because that way you get notified of the other comments. So so if the stuff really does hit the fan, you’re like, yeah, um not now i’ve not now I’ve not got the the like ah fake popcorn. Now I’m really into the good stuff.

00:55.29
Jeff
Yeah, now I’m literally actually going to my kitchen, finding a bag of microwave Jiffy Pop and throwing it in the microwave. No, but in all seriousness, I mean, I don’t I don’t I don’t want to like recap everything because it’s just it’s been beaten to death already. But there has been so much drama in the whole WordPress, I don’t want to say community, but ecosystem. I don’t know world. I don’t I don’t know what the best term is here. But it has been a little overwhelming. And at first, I’ve kind of just been like, that’s cool. We’re just going to kind of just ignore it, let it pass. And I mean, I want to add anything to it. But I think honestly, at this point, we’ve got to talk about it. If any if anything, just to kind of like, kind of go over what we’re seeing or playing. I don’t know. You know, I mean, there’s so much to talk about here.

01:38.77
peteeveritt
There is and like full transparency for everybody here. We’ve agonized over whether this is a good thing to do to to record this show.

01:45.75
Jeff
Yeah.

01:47.58
peteeveritt
we’ve you know Normally when we pick, we we have we have a list of topic ideas, we we sort of bounce some ideas around what would make good episodes, what wouldn’t. This one, and Like you just said, we feel like we should talk about it, not in a derogatory way. We don’t want to get into the weed weeds of who did what to who. That’s a very Yorkshire expression for everybody that’s not in England. But um but on the same note, we we want to acknowledge it because it does feel like It does feel like there’s a ah shift going on at the moment for whatever reason it started um and it it’s creating uncertainty throughout the industry um and and that’s something that we need to acknowledge.

02:27.69
Jeff
Yep. I mean, I guess we should probably do the TLDR real fast. And if you haven’t heard anything for some reason, you’ve been living under a ah rock lately. ah WordPress and founder Matt Mullenwig, not happy with WP Engine, a hosting company.

02:42.85
Jeff
That’s all I’ll get into it because I don’t I understand what’s going on. But you know what I mean? It’s just OK. So they’re not happy. And they’ve basically blocked them from the WP plugin repository, which seems really kind of

02:54.57
peteeveritt
Yep.

02:57.36
Jeff
gross, kind of in inappropriate. But again, like I said, not an expert, not a lawyer on this stuff. um But then to take it a step further, they literally overtook took over over to I don’t know what the best term is here, but they um almost want to say stole advanced custom fields. um They rebranded it and hijacked it essentially in the repository.

03:16.06
peteeveritt
Yep.

03:17.11
Jeff
At the end of the day, is anything going to change? Probably not, but it just feels really bad. and It’s like one of those first red flags that you start seeing when you’re and you know working with a company or an industry or whatever, and you go, oh, that’s not good.

03:29.49
Jeff
What’s next? What’s next? Because if it can happen to them, it can happen to anybody. and there’s i’t even I should have looked at the numbers, but what what would you say? Tens of thousands of plug of plugins in a repository probably?

03:39.57
Jeff
I mean, there’s yeah there’s so many.

03:39.70
peteeveritt
Oh, if not hundreds of thousands, yeah, absolutely.

03:42.49
Jeff
so This is probably just a you know drop in the hat, but at the same time, it could be anybody. It’s kind of scary.

03:49.42
peteeveritt
Absolutely. it’s ah There’s 60,000 free plugins in the WordPress repository. And just just as we say, we’re staying completely side agnostic here. So Matt, if you’re listening to this, none of this is about you and WP Engine.

04:03.11
peteeveritt
If you’re listening to this, none of this is about you either. Although between the two of you, you have given us a decent show to to watch and to

04:11.20
Jeff
Yeah.

04:12.47
peteeveritt
and to comment on here. Um, but, uh, I should also just clarify what you said about automatic taking over in brackets in quotes, uh, advanced custom fields.

04:23.10
peteeveritt
It was the free version of our ACF that was in the WordPress repo. They haven’t taken over ACF pro or any of WP engines, direct paying customers.

04:28.76
Jeff
Right.

04:31.41
peteeveritt
Um, and I think the other thing you’ve got to say is that WP engine have been quite intelligent. Um, WP engines communications. I do have a WP engine account. I don’t personally host sites with that, but I do have some clients that are on there and have access to it and have therefore been um ah receiving some of their emails. And they’ve very much been playing it down that it’s not an issue and things will be taken care of and this, that and the other. And I believe they’ve managed to find a way of forking the the WordPress repo using a series of VPNs in such a way that’s going to make it hard for automatic to try and shut it down.

05:12.43
peteeveritt
And you can now update plugins again through WP Engine, but it all feels a bit like a ah sort of like a sticking plaster on ah ah over a you know severe wound.

05:23.80
peteeveritt
it’s um it It doesn’t inspire confidence, let’s let me put it that way, that that it’s a stable solution that can run for the long term.

05:28.00
Jeff
No.

05:33.34
Jeff
Yeah. And ah you know given given where we are in a situation right now, I’m not really, I don’t have a problem with WP Engine. And I think they’re doing what they need to do. You know what I mean? they’re just Because they’ve got customers and they’ve got to keep supporting them. And I don’t think there’s going to be any real issues there. It’s just it’s going to become this chism or chasm you know between the two of them.

05:52.91
Jeff
and trying to figure out, well, who’s right, who’s wrong, and how are we going to go about it? Well, WPPS is going to take care of their customers, not going to be any big problem there. Like you said, they’ve already figured out how to you know keep the updates going, and they’ll continue maintaining the plugins. um But it just it’s it’s going to start causing conversations with clients that I don’t think need to happen because it’s things that they don’t even need to worry about, yet here we are, right? So Like because of this drama, now we have to have these talks. And I’ve had emails from clients and they’re like going, hey, should we should we leave WP Engine because now it’s not secure. And it’s like, well.

06:26.18
Jeff
It’s, it’s secure. I mean, yeah, there might be a security issue right now that has been raised with the plugin and there’s, you know, it’s, it’s a mess, but you’re not at any risk. Everything is fine. We’ve got everything taken care of. Um, but we’ve had to have this conversation and then they’re going to start going, well, are we even, why are we even using this? Why are we using WordPress? Why are we, you know, and what was the, uh, we saw it in, in ah on Facebook yesterday, somebody lost a $40,000 contract.

06:54.60
peteeveritt
Yeah, yeah.

06:55.35
Jeff
you know, because because of this, and it’s like, it would have been fine either way. But the drama doesn’t help the business. ah Yeah, and

07:04.16
peteeveritt
Well, and that’s that’s kind of the, we were saying this just before the call, that’s one of the great things about WordPress is the WordPress community. um And ultimately from Matt’s side of things and the information he shared, that’s that’s really what’s driving the issue with WP Engine that in his view, they are profiteering too much and not contributing enough back to warrant using the WordPress trademark.

07:24.49
Jeff
and

07:29.65
peteeveritt
i’m The on the flip side, though, something like this happens. And one of the worst things about WordPress is the goldfish bowl of the community that you can whip up a storm and and create fear and create, you know, all of this anxiety and angst and actually blow things out of proportion within itself.

07:40.77
Jeff
yeah

07:52.47
peteeveritt
And, you know, Then you flip the coin to end clients, end users that aren’t necessarily developers, don’t really know what this is about. They don’t really know what open source software is. They don’t they don’t have to care about why this stuff works.

08:08.05
Jeff
They might not even know what WordPress is.

08:08.04
peteeveritt
but what

08:09.49
Jeff
They might just work with you and say, cool, I trust you. You built my website. Thank you.

08:13.33
peteeveritt
Absolutely. But then, then all of a sudden there’s this PR thing that happens and they just, they just hear something negative about WordPress. And all of a sudden that’s enough to give them cold feet about, you know, using it or about placing that new project that you were just thinking about. And who’s the real loser in that? Well, it, to a certain extent, it’s the end client, but it’s also the developers that are involved in this sandwich between They kind of know what’s going on and should hopefully know that it’s going to be all right, but clients that don’t want to use it because they’ve heard something bad. And you’re in this weird kind of love triangle thing where you’re always going to be that bottom piece of the funnel. And that’s where ultimately the people we know, the the agencies we work with, maybe some of you guys listening to this show become kind of the collateral damage in this. And that’s that’s really what’s quite sad.

09:05.97
Jeff
Yeah, I will say a little bit. This has kind of opened my eyes to maybe my um imbalance within the community or the ecosystem, whatever, because, like, you know, this really stemmed from the complaint that WP Engine doesn’t contribute. And I’ll be I mean, I’ve never contributed to WordPress Core. I’ve contributed to multiple plugins and themes over the years. But most of them have probably been premium ones, actually. So I’ve worked directly with the developers to kind of go, hey, here’s a bug, you know, here I found and here’s how to fix it or whatever.

09:34.91
Jeff
um But like you’ll never see my name in any of the WordPress you know core devlogs or anything like that, even though I would be honored to have done that. so I guess I have to step back and go, well, am I doing my part in the community? and I’m just asking. you know I don’t know. I don’t know what the answer to that is. and it it It definitely kind of helps us understand that there’s two sides of WordPress and other things like this too, where There’s people that are building businesses off of this. I mean, you know thanks to WordPress, I can support my family, keep a roof over our head, you know have this podcast and you know support ah hundreds of small business clients through the work that we do. and That’s very rewarding and it feels very good. um But that’s also pretty much strictly you know selfishly beneficial. I’m not helping the community in this. I were helping quite a bit of

10:22.94
Jeff
you know clients and small businesses and people. So I you know i don’t know, I guess you know it’s kind of a big, it’s a big thing.

10:30.90
peteeveritt
It’s a huge thing. And it then also flips back to, well, what’s the what’s the ethos? What’s the etiquette of something if you launch a thing as open source? I mean, should you really launch something in that manner if you’re really expecting something back in return? I mean, you know, is that written into any contract? Anyway, it’s never been written. ah Now, I’ll be perfectly honest and say I haven’t read the WordPress dot.org Terms and conditions from start to finish and however on on the same note is it. Something that you can really impose on people to if you’re if you’re launching something in an open source kind of manner you know that’s the nature of open sources. It’s open source you can take with it take it and do with it what you will that’s how it develops.

11:16.97
peteeveritt
um So yeah, it’s it’s all just throwing so many questions up in the air about authenticity, integrity, expectation. it’s It’s just untrue. And two weeks ago, well, when was WordCamp US? Two weeks ago? Three weeks ago? This wasn’t even a thing.

11:37.93
Jeff
Yeah, it’s only been a couple of weeks. It’s so only been a couple of weeks and it feels like it’s just completely derailed the industry. Although to be fair, also almost nothing has really changed. I mean, at the end of the day, you know i mean nothing has truly, really changed other than the kind of couple of things with ACF and WP Engine. but As far as you know like you and I and and people listening to this and you know our our customers going, nothing’s really changed day to day. I don’t know if it will at the end of the day, but it definitely is making me lose a little bit of sleep.

12:13.05
Jeff
you know um

12:15.42
peteeveritt
Yeah, and that’s kind of why we wanted to record this show, because there was a part of that this this was the overarching feeling. umm one I’m talking for myself, I don’t want to talk for you, mate, but the the overarching feeling I had as we were talking about whether we should or shouldn’t do this was basically to say,

12:33.07
peteeveritt
but We don’t have any of the answers, but we have discussed what we are or not going to do about this, which we’ll go on to in a second. But what we did want to do was just put ourselves out there. We both own agencies um alongside SEO Hive.

12:48.37
peteeveritt
And we are in this boat with with you. So, you know, we are part of the problem and the solution and we are collateral damage alongside you, dear listener, just as you are, you know, to to WordPress, to automatic or to WP Engine.

13:05.79
peteeveritt
so you know, however you feel about this, whether you’ve got a strong feeling one way or the other, or whether you’re completely agnostic and just want to close your eyes off to it, you know, we’re in that boat with you as well. And that that was kind of really why i I thought, yeah, we should actually record something about this, even if we’re not going to give an opinion one way or the other.

13:25.04
Jeff
Yeah. And you know, so now we’re kind of sitting at this stage where we’re going, well, we got to sit back and wait and see how things, you know, play out, shake out and stuff. See who’s going to do what, if if anything. But what, what I kind of keep telling myself is that this is only reinforcing how important it is to be diverse in your business. And i I want to say in your agency, but I think that goes beyond just having an agency, right? and you just These could probably be applied to your clients as well.

13:54.33
Jeff
And like I said, I love WordPress. where i’ve I’ve literally been on the WordPress but train since Matt started it. I mean, Matt and I used to chat on forums back in the day before it was called WordPress. And it has gone to places that I never expected, you know what I mean, over these over these years. And um I love it. It’s still what I think is the best platform out there, or the best tool out there for the for most jobs. You know, if I’m going to build a website, we’re probably using WordPress.

14:23.66
Jeff
But it’s also reinforcing that at this day and age, WordPress is not the only solution out there. And I say this is, this is the WPSCO show. Obviously we’re WordPress evangelists. You know what I mean? Like we’re huge fans.

14:35.41
Jeff
But if you know if there’s a client that says, hey, we’ve got you know ah as one service and we need a booking form a contact form and a small page, we’re getting to the point where now we’re going to start asking questions is if WordPress is even the best fit for that.

14:49.10
Jeff
Because it might be a $20 a month Squarespace site. That might be fine.

14:52.95
peteeveritt
And.

14:53.50
Jeff
And you’re just going to avoid all this drama. Do you own the the software? Do you own your website exactly? Not quite, not fully. Does it matter if you know what I mean? I mean, how hard is it to export a couple pages of content and move to something else if you decide to in the future? It’s not a big deal. So these kind of issues, these drama, these questions, it is it’s it’s I can see it already going to start steering people away.

15:17.85
Jeff
and And we’ve had ah through some of our white label partnerships, we’ve had multiple people this month and I have no idea if it’s connected. Multiple clients go, hey, we’re taking things in house and move into sites like Squarespace.

15:28.73
Jeff
And i I truly don’t know if it has anything to do with this.

15:28.97
peteeveritt
Yep.

15:31.57
Jeff
It’s out of my kind of control or, you know, ability to consult with those clients. But but it’s happening and, you know, I’m just going to kind of be prepared for it because it’s not the end of the world.

15:43.13
Jeff
It’s just a matter of kind of feeling comfortable doing a little bit different things than you were doing before.

15:47.76
peteeveritt
Well, and I think that’s that’s kind of ah coming back to where as an agency owner, where I think we should be heading right now, which is. At the end of the day, you can only control the bits you can control and we can’t control WordPress. We can’t control automatic. We can’t control the WP engine. What we can control, however, is the way we approach things for our clients and as an agency.

16:15.48
peteeveritt
ah you know i’ve I’ve been on the soapbox a few times on this show. As as an agency owner, I passionately believe that actually we shouldn’t be businesses that have like a one size fits all model. If the purpose of your agency is simply to get people on maintenance plans, so you’re just going to bash out any kind of WordPress website in order to sell the maintenance plan, then actually that’s that’s not really a great model for your business. It might work out financially in terms of your recurring revenue ultimately, but yeah you you’re kind of missing the point as to why why businesses are paying you for the website in the first place.

16:52.21
peteeveritt
You know, any, any spend that a client spends with you or me as a digital agency owner is an investment from that client in their own business. And what they really need is the right solution for them.

17:06.02
peteeveritt
And beforehand, you know, I wouldn’t even consider whether WordPress would or wouldn’t be the right solution because you can do so much with it that actually it’s the framework that you hang the right thing on. But you’re dead right. Now you get into the point of thinking, well, actually should, you know, yeah you’re bringing that into question. Should WordPress be the right thing for this? Or you’re right. Would a would a Shopify site be better? Would a Wix site be better? Would a Squarespace site sight be better for that particular client with that particular need?

17:35.14
peteeveritt
And it’s um so come back to what I will be doing and what I would advocate we all did is actually just keep on focusing on what’s right for the client.

17:47.54
peteeveritt
Obviously you have to make money. Obviously we you want to build services on recurring revenue. That’s exactly why we have SEO Hive. It’s entirely there to help you build recurring revenue.

17:54.17
Jeff
Yeah.

17:56.33
peteeveritt
But actually we only want to, we only want to serve clients where that is the right thing for the client and therefore it’s the right thing for the agency and therefore it’s the right thing for us to help you deliver.

18:07.99
peteeveritt
And I think that’s, yeah, that’s what I’ll be doing is just focusing down on my clients.

18:14.56
Jeff
Yeah, it’s fantastic to have recurring revenue. It’s fantastic to have care plans or a maintenance plan, whatever you want to call it, whatever’s in that scope. um And you can still do that with other platforms.

18:25.00
Jeff
think I’m not saying people should be switching away from WordPress. I’m just you know kind of hypothetically speaking here, right? Like if it comes up. you know And we’ve got, even though ah WordPress is our bread and butter, I mean, the vast, vast majority of our clients all use WordPress.

18:39.39
Jeff
We still have care plans for clients on Shopify, for clients on Squarespace. I don’t think we have any on Wix right now, but we have. um And it’s you know you’re losing the technical stuff that you’re helping. So in a sense, it’s not quite as valuable. But at the same time, we’re still being their concierge. you know we’re We’re updating things for them. We’re ah changing the content. We’re their web guy or web people.

19:03.90
Jeff
With WordPress, you were doing a lot of things like managing the hosting and the plugins and the things. and when it comes down to a powerful site, yeah, I still want WordPress. But if it’s a basic site, maybe that’s overkill.

19:16.27
Jeff
And just look at the best fit, you know, um I love WooCommerce.

19:16.67
peteeveritt
Yeah.

19:20.55
Jeff
But yeah, when we’re consulting with a new client about an ecommerce store, let’s figure out their needs and figure out Shopify might be the better fit, you know, it just might. um It’s different.

19:31.12
Jeff
There isn’t, you know, one size fits all. And and we could even for kind of back or backtrack that all the way down to WordPress tools like page builders. you know, everybody has their favorite page builder, they insist is the best and it does this and that. I’ve used them. and I admit I haven’t used bricks. But I’ve used all the other ones. They’re all the same, like 99% of the same. Okay, if you can use one, you can use the other. If you can build a WordPress site, you can build a site on any other platform out there. So I guess I’m just trying to inspire people to at least feel comfortable pivoting if they need to or

20:03.88
Jeff
you know, seeking out new solutions or just like you said, figuring out what the best solution for their client is because it isn’t always going to be a, for example, a WordPress divi site or element or done this so the client can update everything. They’re not going to want to, you know, we’ve been there before.

20:21.35
peteeveritt
So here’s here’s a question. This is maybe going a bit further than we anticipated this ah this episode to go. But one of the last decisive things that happened with WordPress was the development of the block editor. And alongside it, the development of the classic editor plugin, which is still, I believe, at the time of recording, the most downloaded and installed plugin on the WordPress repository.

20:44.13
Jeff
Well, that’s just because there’s so many old sites people don’t want to to bring up the to date.

20:48.68
peteeveritt
Well, maybe, but still, you know, it it was one of the, the most decisive things of, of recent times. So, I mean, if you then apply this to.

21:00.63
peteeveritt
ah apply that to to this situation. you know What could this mean for WordPress? could this mean look in In groups like the admin bar, I can’t count how many times I’ve seen posts in the last 10 days or so about, oh, well, maybe we should fork WordPress. i mean Frankly, that’s a terrible idea.

21:18.76
Jeff
Yeah.

21:19.15
peteeveritt
i’ the That’s no criticism against anybody that suggested it or anybody that’s thought it. Maybe even some people that have done it. But the amount of support and issues and security fixes and look this this has been an open source platform for two decades, if not longer. And there’s developers worldwide working on this to patch it up when it needs it.

21:44.98
peteeveritt
one man or one group of people taking on their own version, particularly, I mean, this could be a hacker’s night a hacker’s dream. um Just identifying WordPress sites with random version numbers because they’ve been forked and trying to apply.

21:59.31
Jeff
Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, thank you.

22:01.66
peteeveritt
No, not at all.

22:02.35
Jeff
And there’s already plenty of four versions out there, too. I believe classic press is a version. i’m I’m not too familiar with them because, yeah, they still interest me for those same exact reasons. It’s like it it’s certainly possible for them to be kept and everything like that.

22:16.09
Jeff
But that is just such a daunting one sided thing. I can’t I’m I’m literally sweating just thinking about even like being part of a project like that.

22:25.61
peteeveritt
the Yeah, I mean, the the real problem you’ve got is it’s firstly about the amount of work, but secondly, it’s it’s about the thankless unpaid task of having to keep that thing up to date because the minute you have production sites live with your forked version of WordPress in there, you’re kind of duty bound to keep that thing up to date for the rest of eternity.

22:46.64
Jeff
yeah Yeah.

22:48.54
peteeveritt
um Yeah, it’s not a mantle I would want to take on and certainly not one I would i would encourage others to. If you see it different from differently from me, that’s absolutely fine. Like we say, this is all about just us shooting the breeze about the things that are going around in our head about this hashtag WP drama.

23:09.42
Jeff
Yeah. And we’re all going to have kind of different perspectives on it, too. Like, like, you know, forking it and doing that is is a perfectly valid thing to help continue to kind of grow the the WordPress ecosystem and and all that community.

23:21.18
Jeff
But it doesn’t really make sense for professional use. And of course, now we’re going back to, well, you know, or should we be banking on using WordPress professional stuff? And, you know, I don’t know if that’s the gist that they that automatic wants to put out there.

23:34.16
Jeff
But at the end of the day, we are there are countless people that have made WordPress is their focus, their business, their specialty. i mean I’m surprised you can’t major in WordPress and college yet.

23:44.57
Jeff
i mean Probably next year, maybe your next decade or so, it’ll be like a college degree, but it’s you know it’s huge. People do it for business, so we have to. and You and I, we have to have these talks from a business standpoint because our livelihoods depend on it.

23:58.29
Jeff
and Many, many other people below us, their livelihoods depend on it.

23:58.62
peteeveritt
Yeah.

24:02.05
Jeff
so ah you know It’s important and I think we’re both pretty impassioned by it. We’re both a little burnt out by it and also optimistically positive I think still because even though this stuff is happening, the fact that it’s happening and so many people are passionate about it shows you that the the basis is there you know and people are going to keep this going and and whatnot, but things will probably change a bit.

24:25.77
Jeff
We’ll see some change.

24:25.95
peteeveritt
But yeah, we will. and And I think that’s really what’s going to be the interesting part of this. Whilst whilst we do like sitting here with the popcorn and watching the drama unfold, the the thing that’s going to be really interesting is like we’ve we’ve already seen certain plugins removing themselves from the WordPress repo just through fear that their their plugin may be taken and duplicated and automatic do with it what they want.

24:53.30
peteeveritt
i what’s going to be really interesting though is how this then folds out or plays out over the next few months because a solution ah There was obviously a big fallout that was news. The solution won’t be big news like that. The solution will appear slowly over a period of time, maybe as some very small steps. And, you know, the world will move on and there will be a new equilibrium with things. And it’s going to be interesting then to see how that plays out in terms of leadership or automatic, in terms of what this has potentially done to the WordPress and WP Engine brands.

25:31.03
peteeveritt
and themselves, because ultimately this was about trying to protect brand, brand identity. um And yeah, it’s a

25:41.15
peteeveritt
It’s, it’s going to be, it’s going to be interesting to see what that new equilibrium is. As I say, that new kind of balance that we all get to right now, I probably wouldn’t go and sign up to a new WP engine account, just in case, you know, if you’ve, if you’re considering your new next hosting options, I’d probably scratch them off the list for for a few months.

25:53.54
Jeff
it

25:59.29
peteeveritt
That’s not to say anything bad about WP engine, as I say, but just there’s an uncertainty there, but you could say that about any host, you know, I yeah.

26:05.20
Jeff
Sure. Yeah, it could happen to anybody tomorrow. you know And the fact that WordPress is still promoting Bluehost all over the place.

26:07.72
peteeveritt
Oh.

26:10.77
Jeff
Sorry, but don’t like Bluehost. Yeah.

26:13.97
peteeveritt
Yeah. Yeah. But no, seriously, I mean, ah all of my own client hosting is managed through Cloudways. What if they take an issue with Cloudways and block ah any server in their IP address out of the ah out of the repo, you know? ah it It could happen to to any of us.

26:30.43
peteeveritt
So unless you have something that is a direct effect of this, right now I’d just be planning on focus on your business, focus on your client’s businesses, particularly because your client success will reflect on your success and and just keep on keeping on. But maybe just with that caveat of when you’re looking for the right thing for your client, maybe add a question mark next to WordPress as well.

26:54.66
Jeff
Yeah, maybe, maybe. And you know, you mentioned you probably wouldn’t sign up for a WP Engine right now. and i And I do agree with that. But it’s less about this situation. And more so that there I just think that their pricing is a little too much for what it is. I think it’s it’s kind of unfortunate that I can’t recommend them right now given everything but they were the company that i hosting company that I still continued up until weeks ago. um I don’t know why I looked at my watch to see what the date was, but um up until very recently um that I still recommended when people wanted to manage their website and are hosting themselves. Just because I know that they’re really up on security, their technical support is very good,

27:33.85
Jeff
Um, but their pricing is the same as our managed hosting and maintenance plans. So I don’t know why you wouldn’t, you know what I mean? You could pay somebody to literally be in charge of your website for the same price. So it doesn’t really make sense. But, um, but I know people that are, they want to, they want to manage it themselves and feel comfortable doing it. And I said, well, they’re the ones you got to go to, but now like I don’t, you know what I mean? And it’s not a reflection on them. It’s just a situation that’s tough to do that. So that’s kind of unfortunate.

27:58.89
Jeff
But I had a conversation the other day where I said, you know what, there’s this cycle that I’ve seen going long enough. And so i I say this now whenever we’re going, Hey, yeah, cool. Let’s try this new hosting company. Give them about three to five years before it’s time to move on to another one.

28:13.20
Jeff
And I’ve been doing this for like 20 years now and that has held heads held steady. I think cloudways is probably the longest we’ve kept people at for probably going about five years now. And, uh, and it’s starting to get towards the end of that cycle.

28:22.85
peteeveritt
yeah yeah i know i sometimes i sometimes try and peek my head over to see whether the the grass would be green or somewhere else and i know there’s i know there’s plenty of other hosting companies out there please don’t message in and say oh you should try xyz i know they’re there but.

28:25.40
Jeff
So yeah

28:41.89
peteeveritt
the The setup that I have with all the dedicated stuff and then the shared stuff that I have in it would take like weeks of work to move from one to another.

28:50.08
Jeff
Yeah.

28:52.07
peteeveritt
oh ah Well, you’ve you’ve had a little insight into the number of sites. I think there’s a hundred and thirty eight applications I’ve got in my cloudways account across a whole range of servers.

28:59.54
Jeff
Yeah.

29:01.62
peteeveritt
con can’t realistically move in all of those really, and then repointing all that DNS, I’ve got better things to do with life. Something would really have to go wrong for me to need to put that time and effort kind of in.

29:13.45
Jeff
Yeah. You’d have to have a lot of cost savings really to do that. And, and to be fair, we’ve worked with many of agencies taking, I don’t want to say taking sites away, but they’ve come to us with, Hey, we’re at WP engine with, you know, 200 websites and it is costing us a buttload of money to try to cover all of these.

29:32.74
Jeff
And the whole process has been how do we migrate them at an affordable rate? And when you look at other prices, it makes it really good sense to do that sometimes.

29:39.66
peteeveritt
yeah Yeah, absolutely. absolutely i do have a ah do no i do have a ah I do have a client that’s on WP Engine.

29:42.31
Jeff
But if it’s cloudways moving away from there, I’m not going to save any money. so

29:49.60
peteeveritt
They renewed the week before WordCamp US and they pay annually. So they contacted me when this ah they they had this really weird…

30:01.84
peteeveritt
like that They’re a client. They’re an architects business. They don’t keep up to date with all these WordPress stuff. And they had then this email from WP Engine sort of alerting them to the fact that in fairness to WP Engine’s email, like I said earlier, it was massively playing down what was going on.

30:17.14
peteeveritt
But for somebody that didn’t know anything about what was going on, it was like them sticking a big red flag up and saying, yo, we got a problem, dude. So the client gets in touch with me to ask, well, you know we know you don’t host with WP Engine, where where would you recommend? And that’s when one of their team went and said, yeah, we’ve just paid like $1,800 for a year’s worth of hosting. So we know we’re not going to be going anywhere anytime soon.

30:42.60
Jeff
It’ll, it’ll, they’ll be fine. It’ll work fine.

30:44.37
peteeveritt
hi

30:45.32
Jeff
Justin.

30:45.27
peteeveritt
That’s what I said to them. but

30:46.33
Jeff
Yeah. I mean, even as of right now, we’ve just had to go through and install basically the direct version of advanced custom fields free or pro from ACF. And now everything’s fine.

30:56.93
Jeff
I mean, everything is going to just keep ticking forward as it was, you know, a couple of weeks ago, no big deal. But hey, we got a lot of info to talk about on this podcast.

31:02.98
peteeveritt
See, I’m quite fortunate.

31:05.94
Jeff
What’s that? Sorry.

31:06.27
peteeveritt
Absolutely. Well, I’m quite fortunate. So i I have an LTD of Advanced Custom Fields from back when Elliot, Elliot, well, yeah, there you go.

31:12.26
Jeff
Oh, so yeah, no same.

31:15.10
peteeveritt
So.

31:15.38
Jeff
Well, it was like $35 like 10 years ago or something.

31:17.51
peteeveritt
yeah out like Yeah, it was a ridiculous amount.

31:18.40
Jeff
so It’s a good deal.

31:20.11
peteeveritt
but I dread to think how many how much it would cost me now to have the number of sites on ACF that I do. um But thankfully, because of the way this is all rolled out, anybody that has an ACF Pro account on their WordPress installs, they still get the updates direct from WP Engine.

31:38.08
Jeff
Yeah.

31:38.64
peteeveritt
So it’s only the free version, as I said earlier, that’s been ah that’s been changed. So thankfully that sort of hasn’t affected me because every site, because it’s an LTD, unlimited sites, they’ve all got ACF Pro on.

31:49.01
Jeff
Yeah, yeah, that’s been really convenient most of most of ours are around there but we have a few for some reason just have the free plugin that’s that, said you know, is installed years ago and it’s just been taken. So we just replaced it with the same free one but from ACF directly and apparently that will bypass the ah

32:03.44
peteeveritt
Yeah.

32:04.15
Jeff
the update issues and everything so everything’s fine but yeah you know like we said it’s uh i don’t know red flags maybe maybe not we’ll see but it certainly is uh it’s kind of it’s a little unsettling it’s not what i wanted to kind of have on our plate at the end of the year here as we’re winding things down for 2024 but hey you know it’s entertainment

32:22.81
peteeveritt
But, you know, there there will have to be some kind of resolution put in place. And it’s going to be interesting to see who’s going to sort of pull their pants up and be the the the grown up and the, um you know, the professional in all of this.

32:41.47
peteeveritt
I think that’s the thing that’s really sad about all of this is that it just makes the whole thing feel and look a bit juvenile, you know, where

32:51.02
Jeff
Mm hmm. Yeah.

32:52.94
peteeveritt
Okay, we don’t all want to be stuffy business people. You know, Alan Sugar, Lord Sugar with his tie on and his ah Rolls Royce and his helicopters and his private jet. We’re not all when all want to be that kind of business person. But on the same note, like we’ve said, businesses, people’s livelihoods depend on this. There’s a responsibility when it comes to this stuff.

33:16.00
peteeveritt
And we just, the problem is the whole WordPress community is being tainted a little bit by just being kids in the playground. And I hate that.

33:24.67
Jeff
Yep. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. That’s a great community, but, uh, you know, there’s always, I was going to say weak links. That’s not what I’m trying to say, but you know, there’s always ah any, any group of people you’re going to find someone that you don’t get along with or that doesn’t agree with you or isn’t a team player. I’m not saying anybody in particular is that right here, but when you have a group of this size, it’s actually pretty mind blowing. It’s gone as well as it hasn’t to this point.

33:51.44
Jeff
Like really, actually, if you think about it, you know, it’s taken this long for major drama, I suppose. Like if the biggest thing was the block editor, like drama a couple of years ago, then I guess we’ve been doing pretty good.

34:01.87
peteeveritt
Yeah, well, and that that unfortunately, that’s really what taints this ah this a little bit because i’m I’m really not going to get into specifics here, but we do know that there have been kind of personal accusations about or personal comments about, you know, who the hell do you think you are and, you know, this kind of thing. And and actually, you know what, we we are a community. We are all should be equals in it to a to a certain extent. And um you know if you if you take If you take everybody as an equal, when you’ve got a group of people that are big enough, it means that those people that are on the extremes, let’s call them, they are you know the the extreme annoyances versus the extreme um kind of over the tops.

34:46.06
peteeveritt
If everybody’s equal and the group’s big enough, they that that level sort of averages out, if you see what I mean, and and everybody can still be included.

34:51.99
Jeff
Yeah.

34:54.38
peteeveritt
Whereas the problem you’ve got the minute that you start acting at the extremes is that ah the The vast majority of people in the middle that would create the average all of a sudden they don’t count for much and that’s that’s where it really becomes that’s quite a philanthropic thing to say I don’t know where that came from.

35:12.99
Jeff
I was pretty deep. I’m impressed. I’m impressed. I don’t even think I can follow up with anything. pete I think that’s just the mic drop. ah

35:19.79
peteeveritt
might drop, yeah.

35:20.75
Jeff
End of the conversation.

35:21.05
peteeveritt
Well, you know, I’ve gotta use my i’ve got to use my ah my clever credits up at some point this year, so might as well be now.

35:21.55
Jeff
No, I don’t know. We can still talk, but that’s all I got to say.

35:28.00
Jeff
You know, I just talk up on some of those.

35:31.79
peteeveritt
Hey, there here there’ll be some coming around in a Black Friday deal in a few months, so don’t worry about it.

35:34.56
Jeff
Oh, all right. Black Friday, my favorite holiday.

35:40.55
peteeveritt
Wait, Black Friday is a holiday?

35:43.91
peteeveritt
I thought it was the day after Thanksgiving. Well, Thanksgiving was the holiday.

35:46.47
Jeff
What’s that? Oh, I thought I thought we were giving thanks to the purchasing we’re about to do on Friday.

35:52.79
peteeveritt
Oh, really? ah right Yeah.

35:53.83
Jeff
That’s that’s.

35:54.27
peteeveritt
have Have the day off to mentally prepare yourself for all of the money you’re going to spend on crap that you’re only going to use once on Black Friday.

36:00.22
Jeff
Yeah, exactly. Stuff I think I’m going to give to everybody for Christmas and just keep for myself because I forgot where I put it.

36:06.50
peteeveritt
i’d I’d love to think that all of these people, now now we’re going now we’re going off piste, but all of these people that go like, yeah, I don’t spend any money on Black Friday.

36:19.02
peteeveritt
I’d like them to look in places like their Amazon account and but even eBay or supermarkets or wherever and say, you know what, I’ve never bought never bought a single thing because there wasn’t a deal like ah a prime.

36:35.12
peteeveritt
Do you have prime days over there? We have prime days in the UK where

36:37.59
Jeff
Yeah, they’re like every other month now. I don’t understand why they’re so frequent.

36:39.32
peteeveritt
Yeah. Yeah. So it used to be Amazon’s thing for Black Friday in the middle of the year. So it was detached from Black Friday. um Yeah. So if if you’ve never bought anything and you can genuinely hand on heart say that you’ve never taken anybody up on an offer, then fine. Feel free to judge people that spend money on Black Friday. But unless you’ve bought everything in your life at full price, if people want to spend money on Black Friday, let people spend money on Black Friday. I i don’t go out and

37:10.52
peteeveritt
The thing I would say is i don’t I’ve never bought anything as a Black Friday sale that I wouldn’t have bought anyway. I might have bought it on Black Friday because there was a better deal, absolutely, but I would have bought it anyway.

37:24.57
Jeff
I think that I can agree with that, but I’m not 100%.

37:24.81
peteeveritt
But yeah.

37:27.87
Jeff
I’m like, no, i’m I’m a sucker for a deal. I might’ve bought a few things that I probably shouldn’t have. But I will say I’ve got a lot better about it in the last couple of years. I’ve just been like, nah, I’m good.

37:39.42
Jeff
When we were younger, my old roommate nine and I, we were you know tech computer guys before it was popular to you know get hard drives and like Target and stuff. And we would wait outside of Best Buy all night long so we could get a hard drive for like half the price or a video card for like half price.

37:53.83
Jeff
you know And it’s just like, oh my gosh.

37:56.13
peteeveritt
Yeah. All right. I can’t compete.

37:56.82
Jeff
Now it’s like 10% discount. What’s the point? You know and you just do it online. but

38:00.54
peteeveritt
I can’t compete with that level of geekery. No.

38:03.46
Jeff
Well, they’d only have like five too. So you’d wait outside all night long. And if you were like six in line, you didn’t get anything. It was terrible.

38:10.57
peteeveritt
ah So we used to have these, we used to have these computer first. You have computer first in the US.

38:15.71
Jeff
ah Imagine we probably do, but I have not been to one for at least 20 years.

38:19.97
peteeveritt
Yeah. Yeah. i i Right.

38:20.80
Jeff
But that was like my high school business, like building computers for people.

38:23.64
peteeveritt
Yeah. So I’ve, I’ve been to one. in Sheffield, where I live now, and I’ve lived here for 22 years so yeah so yeah probably a similar kind of time but when I was a when I was a teenager yeah similar thing you know we’d we’d go and um build our own PCs and just play around with stuff and then you know make it work and save up your pocket money or whatever to get your new RAM or your graphics card or whatever it was and um yeah we did it all through computer fairs because that’s where that’s where stuff was the cheapest and it’s just not the same now you know both my kids have

39:01.53
peteeveritt
Gaming PCs, which I had to come to you for advice for because I’ve only used Max for like the last 17 or 18 years and and we found them online. We did customize them a little bit, but the customization was done on a website when it arrived here. It was all in a shiny box with.

39:17.98
peteeveritt
builders foam in it that i had to take out and all this kind of stuff. And it was great. It was a lovely experience. You know, don’t get me wrong with customer. The customer satisfaction was was great, but actually it wasn’t the experience of building these things and then it working and getting frustrated, then realizing you didn’t have the right the right connector cables or, you know, ah real realizing that all of a sudden you couldn’t run like even though the the motherboard had four starter connectors on it, it would only ever take an input from two.

39:46.06
peteeveritt
And, and all of that problem solving stuff.

39:47.09
Jeff
Well, like there’s like a little jumper pin somewhere. You got to switch to make it all work. I know. I miss that too. I miss that too.

39:53.53
peteeveritt
and oh It was just like, and and I’m sure that, you know, I, I’m quite a, I’m quite a logical problem solving kind of person.

39:53.73
Jeff
It was so fun.

40:03.19
peteeveritt
So much so annoys my wife, you know, she, she just wants to talk about something and I’m instantly trying to fix it. Cause that’s, that’s the way I’m wired. Um, but. I’m sure that a whole load of that comes from that period of my life where it was, you know, I’m not going to, I want to figure this stuff out. I’m having fun. if I’m not going to kill anybody, you know, I might electrocute myself once or twice, but I’m not going to kill anybody. um And it’s, ah it you know, it helped me learn. And my kids now, how do they do it? That’s dad to do it, because dad fixes everything.

40:36.31
Jeff
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, my kids are super comfortable with technology. They’re, you know, they’re really smart with all that, but there is, there’s this, there’s this point that people don’t go beyond anymore when it comes to figuring out technology or playing with things. Cause you don’t have to as much, you know, if we, was pilot gosh, maybe even been like six years ago, I’m looking down at my computer here, but This was the first PC I had in almost 20 years because I became a Mac guy doing video editing and, you know, working in production and stuff for so long.

41:02.98
Jeff
um I still love Macs, but I needed a beefy PC and I kind of want to do some gaming stuff too. And I managed to put this thing together for like six hundred dollars and I had so much fun doing it and it’s still kicking.

41:13.89
peteeveritt
I know.

41:15.24
Jeff
You know, it’s got a good video card. isn’ It’s probably not the best gaming PC by any means, but I don’t really game on it. Um, but that was just such a fun thing. And it brought me right back to like 20, 25 years ago, being a kid and building computers and then, you know, circling back to the whole WordPress thing. That was what got me into WordPress was playing with it and taking it apart and figuring out how to hack it and do fun things. And you know, before any of the stuff, the tools that we use day in, day out professionally were available.

41:40.72
Jeff
people like you and I, and and I’m sure 90% of our listeners just goofed around with it until they like mastered it, you know, and that’s just such a fun thing that people aren’t doing as much anymore these days, but I encourage you to it’s fun.

41:46.60
peteeveritt
Yeah.

41:51.58
peteeveritt
Yeah. But today, like literally four hours ago, my son came home from school, emptied this little plastic bag of bits from ah that he’d been carrying around in his bag all day ah from from his bag on my desk and said, Dad, my watch is broken. I mean, there was only like seven bits in it. I’m like, dude, just put it back together.

42:13.54
peteeveritt
I don’t know what I’m doing. And he walked out the door. If you’re watching the video, he walked out that door ah just over there, leaving all this crap on my desk. So I ended up fixing it just to clear my desk up.

42:23.82
peteeveritt
It’s like, what? What?

42:27.05
Jeff
Well, you took all those watch building classes right back in the day.

42:27.16
peteeveritt
Anyway.

42:30.79
peteeveritt
Yeah, yeah, that’s right. All of them. I mean, the the thing he actually got a new watch. we really We’re going to wind this up in a sec. He got a new watch a few months ago. um because he lost his other one, that’s very like him. And it’s not, we don’t for that reason, we don’t buy him an expensive watch. It’s like nine quid from somewhere. But ah he wanted an analog watch. So his watch doesn’t, it doesn’t have a light on it. It glows in the dark, but it doesn’t have a light on it. It doesn’t have, it’s literally, you know, a analog face with a winder on the side. And the back had come off, he’d been taking it off in PE and the back had come off and the light little motor and stuff had just come out from inside. And it’s like, well, you just put it back together in the right order.

43:10.22
peteeveritt
you know And if you get it wrong, if you got it in the wrong order, then you just take the bits again and try again.

43:14.89
Jeff
Yeah.

43:15.17
peteeveritt
It’s like, there’s only six or seven pieces here. There’s only so many ways they can go together. And guess what? The back is always going to be the last bit to go on. So I’ve made six into five.

43:25.89
Jeff
Oh, if my dad were here, he would tell you stories about how I had did similar things with his work computer when I was about 13 years old. So taking things and putting them back together is fun.

43:35.27
peteeveritt
Oh, dear.

43:38.60
peteeveritt
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Anyway.

43:40.95
Jeff
at least for for me and you apparently, I guess not your son and probably plenty of other people. So sorry if we’ve triggered anybody who doesn’t like taking things apart and putting them back together.

43:45.37
peteeveritt
He just wants to play Fortnite. He just wants to play Fortnite. That’s the thing. He just wanted to get home and play Fortnite.

43:55.19
Jeff
Fair enough. Fair enough. Fair enough.

43:57.75
peteeveritt
So, well, dear listener, I i i was going to say, I hope you found this episode interesting. I do hope you found this episode interesting, genuinely, but i I hope the interest you found is more that, you know, you’re not alone. If you’re worried about any of this stuff or it’s becoming overwhelming, exactly like you said, Geoff, you’re not alone. um Me and JP are in the same boat with you and we’re feeling your pain.

44:21.47
Jeff
Yeah, yeah, it’s, I know we got a little off track here but this isn’t the most ah like, you know, tip fueled episode or anything but yeah I think just write this out and so and I again I keep I’ve been saying this for a long time but feel comfortable trying new things and using new things you know I don’t not saying let’s ditch WordPress by any means but it may not always be the ideal tool for your job. So, you know what I mean? Just just feel comfortable. it’s It’s not the end of the world. um but But yeah, I mean, moving forward, we’re gonna see how this goes. I know at SEO Hive, we, again, we’re still huge WP WordPress aficionados, and we still support it and promote it and everything like that, and we’ll continue to support it. But also, as a reminder, we have always, and we’ll continue to work on pretty much any type of website you can bring to us. So if we can log into it, we’re good. so

45:10.32
peteeveritt
That’s, yeah, that’s basically our criteria.

45:12.15
Jeff
but

45:12.54
peteeveritt
You gotta, you nailed it right there. We ain’t doing raw HTML. If that, if you’re still building stuff in source code, yeah, just you, you couldn’t go somewhere else, but if you log into it, yeah, let us know.

45:24.76
peteeveritt
We’ll be good. All right. Well, look. It’s been fun. We have hopefully gone into some good stuff as well as some random detail about children and watches and computers and that kind of stuff, but it’s always fun. And if anybody’s, we we said, let let’s close on this note. We said right at the start that we started this podcast because we used to have these chats. And at some point we thought we might maybe you should start recording these. And that’s where the podcast came from. Today you’ve experienced what our chats are like.

45:55.08
Jeff
Yeah.

45:56.80
peteeveritt
That’s basically it, right?

46:01.13
peteeveritt
Cool. Well, look, if we if we can help you out, hello at seohive.co, you can find us there. Seohive.co is the website. And otherwise, we’ll see you in the next episode. Have a good week, everyone.

46:11.95
Jeff
Cheers