What Makes a Plugin the Right Choice for You?

Not all plugins are created equal. Discover key factors to consider before choosing the right plugin for your website or project

Are you overwhelmed by the multitude of plugins available for your projects? In this show, we simplify the selection process by highlighting the key factors that determine the right plugin for your needs. From functionality to compatibility, we break down essential criteria to consider. If you’re looking to enhance your workflow and maximize efficiency.

This Week’s Sponsors

Jetpack: Jetback

Ninja Forms: Ninja Forms

LifterLMS: LifterLMS

Rollback Pro: Rollback Pro

The Show’s Main Transcript

[00:00:16.540] – Jonathan Denwood

Welcome back to the Membership Show. This is episode 189. In this episode, we’re going to be looking what makes a plugin the right choice for you. If you’re using WordPress, and both me and my— Kirk, my co-host, thinks you should be, choosing the right plugins and not choosing the wrong ones will really make a big difference to your experience using WordPress and building it, your membership, your community-focused website. Kirk, before we go into the main part of the show, would you like to introduce yourself to the new listeners and viewers?

[00:00:54.640] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah, my name’s Kurt von Ahnen. I own an agency called Mañana No Más, and we do a lot of great work with the folks over at WP-Tonic as well.

[00:01:03.870] – Jonathan Denwood

Oh, thanks. And should be a great show. We’re going to really try and guide you in making the right choices, give you a kind of framework. But before we go into the meat and potatoes of this show, I’ve got a quick message from a couple of the show’s major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments, folks.

[00:01:24.460] – Speaker 1

WP-Tonic is sponsored by Jetpack. Managing WordPress sites shouldn’t mean stitching together a pile of disconnected plugins. Jetpack brings security, performance, publishing, growth, and AI tools together in one WordPress-native toolkit.

[00:01:42.920] – Kurt von Ahnen

Use what you need: backup, scan, boost, social, video press, stats, and more, all with modernized, Dashboards built into WP admin. For your site or your clients’ sites, see what Jetpack can do. jetpack.com. WP-Tonic is sponsored by Ninja Forms, and let’s talk about one of their powerful tools, conditional logic. Conditional logic is the clearest example. Every rule for the whole form lives in one panel instead of being buried field by field. On client work, build speed and low maintenance are part of your margin. A form that is fast to configure and that a client can run afterward without coming back means less friction during build and less support load after the handoff. Ninja Forms, powerful and genuinely easy to work with without being dumbed down. To learn more, go to ninjaforms.com.

[00:02:43.140] – Jonathan Denwood

We’re coming back, folks. So how do we introduce this subject, Kirk? How would you introduce it to somebody, a new client, somebody that’s asked you about this?

[00:02:55.150] – Kurt von Ahnen

Well, you know, from the agency perspective, Jonathan, I think it’s just kind of important to reset like the way we might think about something because we’ve got, you know, decades in the space, right? So we’ve, we’ve got certain, certain built-in filters that we have that other, other people like new to the WordPress space don’t have. And so when I’m talking to new clients, clients and they say, oh, I want to have something that goes XYZ on my website. And I’m like, well, I don’t really have anything in my quiver, you know, that answers that directly. They’ll go, well, I did a quick search and ChatGPT recommended this, this plugin, and all you have to do is, you know, install this and activate this and it does everything I need. And, and I, I’m, well, let’s, let’s not just jump in there, folks. Let’s, let’s, let’s qualify this first. And I think that that’s I think that’s the crux of our real conversation today is, is just because something says it’ll do something or just because ChatGPT says it’s the thing, there’s still some criteria that if you’re going to run, especially if you’re using a website to make revenue, then you’re going to want to make sure you use some best practices and make some sound decisions.

[00:04:03.740] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, I think, you know, it’s technology, things change. We can’t You know, we have to accept that. But on the other hand, the plugin directory at WordPress.org has some fundamental issues that somebody that’s not dealing with this wouldn’t be aware of. It’s fantastic as well, but it’s just that a lot of the plugins in there haven’t been maintained or updated. They’re still allowed to be in the directory for some reason. I don’t, I don’t really know.

[00:04:51.820] – Kurt von Ahnen

Some are basically abandoned. I looked up one for a customer 2 weeks ago. She just absolutely demanded that, you know, we look at this option. And when I went there, it had been established like 18 months ago. They put their product in I don’t know, 14 months ago, less than 10 installs. And I put it on a staging site to test it first, Jonathan, and it just flat out didn’t work. And when I tried to go to the creator’s website looking for any kind of support or documentation or anything, that website didn’t exist. They had already folded up shop and left.

[00:05:28.880] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah.

[00:05:29.060] – Kurt von Ahnen

Like, and that happens more than people want to admit. And, and it puts, it puts new people in a really bad light within the space.

[00:05:37.060] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, my understanding, but I’m not sure about this, Kirk, so I haven’t had time to— is that only about 5, you know, actually a lot— a small percentage are active. There is a lot of plugin projects in WordPress.org directory that have been abandoned or haven’t been updated for a number of years.

[00:06:04.280] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah.

[00:06:05.480] – Jonathan Denwood

You know, but the updating, if it’s, if it’s a very simple, it’s just doing one thing, that doesn’t mean, but it needs a lot of checking over. And now, you know, but the truth is, if the client’s got access, admin access, or, you know, you can do it, you probably with AI, you can make your own custom plugin solution for something. They want done. I think as a tool in the hands of a professional, that’s probably quite useful. In the hands of somebody that doesn’t really know what the hell they’re doing, I’m not so sure. But it just— everybody’s all over the place about this, aren’t they?

[00:07:00.550] – Kurt von Ahnen

Well, right now it’s just a real tumultuous time. And so I thought maybe the first part of this podcast would be like, how do you actually vet or examine an unknown plugin before you make the decision to even try it? And then I thought maybe the second part of the show would be like, just because AI’s there, do you use it? Like, do you put in the time and the energy to create your own custom plugin to handle something, or— You look for someone else that’s already done the work, that has support. You know, you, you pay them once for the product and it’s got updates and supports for a fair amount of time. Those are— it’s a, it’s a, it’s a very strange moment we’re in right now.

[00:07:40.490] – Jonathan Denwood

Very strange. It’s all over the place. And people have different reasons why they’re saying they have different— some people, it’s their honest belief, others are they’re pursuing monetary gain for their— but that’s the only basis of their opinions. Yeah. Um, it’s a very, very up-in-the-air time. Um, you know, I don’t know, I’ve— we’ve extensively discussed this, me and Kurt. Um, I’ve been thinking about For a long time. I don’t think I’m naturally anti-AI, but on the other hand, I think a lot, a lot that surrounds AI, the actual commentary, it’s been kind of exhausted me in some ways. So I kind of made a quick list here and I gave it to Kurt. And number one, what problems are you actually trying to solve with the plugin? You know, I think plugins are great, but really neat, you know, if you’re going to be trying out new plugins and that, it’s best to do it on a staging website, which we can provide at WP-Tonic, and any good quality hosting provider will provide a staging site. I, I, um, I would just pull the latest version of your live website to this stage and try out a plugin.

[00:09:33.840] – Jonathan Denwood

Um, and then if it looks okay, then I would probably try it on the production. But, um, I really, I think people rush into it because It’s enormous. It’s a great part of WordPress. Nothing is ideal. Any website solution has its strengths and weaknesses. But, you know, you just don’t want to keep putting more and more plugins into your website. It’s finding a happy balance, and that’s difficult, isn’t it? What do you think?

[00:10:12.700] – Kurt von Ahnen

Well, I totally agree. In fact, I’ve, I’ve said before on other shows, you know, I believe that some of the true value of Mañana No Más and the WP-Tonic for that, for that matter too, Jonathan, is we’ve done, we’ve done the work over time and we’ve identified, you know, a core 15, 18, 20 plugins that become our backbone, you know, our tech stack. And we go, you know, we can, we can leverage 80, 90% of our clients’ needs with this tech stack. And I think where we come into, you know, where we come into these conversations and we have this confidence and this knowledge, I think that that’s where the real value stems from. But it’s that extra, you know, 8 to 12% that’s not solved with that tech stack that I think this comes up with. When you say what problem are you actually trying to solve with the plugin, I think it’s really, really important for the listener to understand what that question really implies. Is there a problem? A lot of times people are just looking for a shiny bauble. They’re just looking for something new to put on the website or something exciting or, you know, a little marketing speak.

[00:11:29.480] – Kurt von Ahnen

You know, I’m looking for a little pop, a little pizzazz. Folks, you gotta grow an audience and have a proof of concept done. Like if you’re in the membership and the learning space, you know, you’ve gotta build your audience. Don’t worry about pizzazz and pop. Like let’s— Let’s build a community and get something going first. And so I see a lot of people thinking they have a problem when they don’t. They have like a made-up wish or a made-up want that’s not a need yet.

[00:11:57.260] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, they’re just good to— it’s like I say again, I’m going to be saying this quite often, tediously often in this podcast. It’s a balance. Yeah, it’s about— I’m going to be saying that a lot. I apologize, Kirk, but I apologize beforehand. It’s a balance because installing more and more plugins will slow down your website in the end. It’ll probably mean that I will— your hosting provider will have to ask you to go on to a next-level hosting package. It, you know, if you remove it, if it’s coded correctly, removing it should take it out of the database. If it isn’t, it probably will leave residues. It, it does increase the obligation of you, which we at WP-Tonic, and I’m sure Kirk with his agency, or any professional, or if you’ve got a maintenance package, will update the plugins weekly or whatever. But the more plugins and you haven’t got from your hosting, from your agency, from your freelancer, then not being updated, they will become a— they could become a major security problem. It’s just finding that balance, like I said. So let’s move on. How well does it work with the theme? Well, theme’s a bit outdated.

[00:13:28.530] – Jonathan Denwood

The theme is still there, but we’re dealing with page builders and starter websites. Now you’ve got AI added. To, and I think it’s going to be a mixture of being able to use AI with a starter theme. And in some ways, I think it’s overemphasized. You know, WordPress is slow and, and well, there’s, there’s that, you know, there’s There’s loads of WordPress that, you know, my experience of WordPress website on decent hosting that’s been set up the right way, it’s pretty quick. It’s normally somebody, you know, I’ve, I’m there, you know, I had to do a lot of work on the WP-Tonic because it’s an old website. Is just installing plugins, not cleaning things up. It— but if you keep it simple, you remove a lot of these problems. But, and also nowadays, modern page builders, they do a lot of the stuff that you needed a plugin for, don’t they? What do you reckon?

[00:14:48.100] – Kurt von Ahnen

Well, yeah. So the page builders pick up a lot of space. And then one thing to remember is, and again, WordPress is open source. And so you’ve got access to do things that you can’t normally do in a SaaS platform. But like, you could have a 1-line code snippet that can execute something for you or fix something for you that in the past somebody might have wanted to build a plugin around. And so there’s all kinds of ways in WordPress to attain what you’re looking for. To Jonathan’s point, like, I didn’t really think, you know, perfect page speed was going to come our way as an agency, but we did the work on the Mañana No Más website, and as of yesterday, that site was scoring a 100. So we’ve done that. And then we have a, um, we have a BuddyBoss site that we just did some work on, and we got that up to a 92 yesterday. And so you can get performance out of these websites, but you’ve got to be vicious about cleaning things up. The database has to be clean, the, you know, the links have to be correct, like everything in the site, all these puzzle pieces have to fall into place.

[00:15:55.960] – Kurt von Ahnen

And then you have to have the right, you know, hosting resources, obviously, to be able to support the package and the, you know, the concurrent logins that your site experiences as well.

[00:16:07.150] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, I just, I just think it, I think any site that is important, important to your business in any shape or form, it should be in a CRM. It’s, you know, you should have the ability to be able to log in and visually or put a snippet of code. You should be— you shouldn’t have to rebuild the website every time you— I’m sorry, I just don’t agree with it. I just think, I think if you’re AI bro and you’re pushing your AI course and you’re all in, and don’t get me wrong, you know, I think with a platform like WordPress and you’re building more custom solutions, that a while ago would be insanely expensive. But because of AI, you know, we’ve got to get real here, I feel, Kurt, but it’s only my opinion. The reason why WordPress grew was a cheaper solution to, to building totally custom websites.

[00:17:14.540] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah.

[00:17:15.260] – Jonathan Denwood

That’s why WordPress grew so rapidly. And other, like Joomla, Drupal, other CRMs, they enabled people to build websites at a cheaper price level. But I think there’s a bound— first of all, yeah, that’s, you know, so you’ve got to understand that. So you want to add anything or do you think I’m waffling a little bit?

[00:17:48.030] – Kurt von Ahnen

No, I think if we drive it back to our core conversation about how do we select a plugin, you know, we said, does it solve an actual problem? Like, A, do you actually have a problem? Does it solve the problem? And then you touched on, you know, theme hosting and other plugins. Like, does this thing play nice with the other tools that you already have on the website? You gotta remember, a lot of plugins add either a custom post type or, you know, something in those lines. And so if it takes a column in the database that’s named the same thing by another tool, there’s going to be a conflict, right? And so you just want to, just want to kind of be like open to that. So I agree with Jonathan, like if you’re going to play and experiment, do that in staging, uh, as opposed to a production website. And then I think the next thing we were going to cover, Jonathan, was, um, the developer who made the dang thing, like who made it. And, and when you’re in the WordPress repository, you can see right in the right-hand side of the repository How many people have installed it?

[00:18:48.660] – Kurt von Ahnen

When was the last time it was updated? Who made the dang thing? What’s their main website? Like I said at the beginning of this show, like we actually installed a plugin, it didn’t work. We went to the creator’s website and it didn’t exist anymore. Like gone, done. Like, so obviously we’re not gonna use that plugin. If there’s zero connection, even if I could use AI to fix that, like, you know, if all the core work’s done, the plugin’s there and I go to Claude and I say, hey, take a look at this plugin we just added, it’s not working and it fixes it or Band-Aids it or stitches it together, I still can’t give that to a client. There’s, there’s no, there’s no reasonable understanding that that’s going to be sustainable.

[00:19:28.310] – Jonathan Denwood

You, you would be totally negligent, you know, if it’s, if it’s really a website that doesn’t really matter. But any website that time and money and it always generating income, no professional would do that. They would be negligent. But there’s lots that would.

[00:19:47.090] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah.

[00:19:47.330] – Jonathan Denwood

But, uh, somebody that’s honest, totally honest, like you, Kirk, you know, you’re a totally honest individual. Um, I try and be honest. I’m not here to rip people off. I’ve got my faults, but I’m not here to rip people off. Uh, I just want to make an honest, reasonable living. That’s all I want to do. Um, I, I got into this game for the freedom. You know, and other reasons. But that was one of the main reasons, right?

[00:20:21.000] – Kurt von Ahnen

Are you going to paint half your face blue and ride a horse?

[00:20:24.720] – Jonathan Denwood

No, I don’t know. What was that about? You lost me on that.

[00:20:30.730] – Kurt von Ahnen

Mel Gibson’s movie Braveheart. Give us our freedom.

[00:20:33.900] – Jonathan Denwood

Freedom. Yeah. Crazy bugger. But, you know, like I said, Kirk said, who developed it? Has it been updated? Now, how many people are using it? Um, you know, these are crucial things. Um, this isn’t black and white, but if the site’s important and having something that’s stable, unless it’s doing very something very, very simple, I really think I would go see if they’ve got a paid version. Because if it’s a free version and it’s popular, they’re just not going to be able to deal with it, with the support requests or something. They’re just not going to, based on my experience. But it’s not solid though, you know. I think it’s a good time for us to go for our middle break. When we come back, we’ve got some more advice about How do you choose the right plugins for your membership community website? We will be back in a few moments, folks.

[00:21:45.310] – Speaker 4

Updating plugins and themes shouldn’t feel risky. That’s why over 300,000 WordPress users trust WP Rollback. With just a click, you can safely roll back any plugin or theme. No manual file uploads and no downtime. And with WP Rollback Pro, Pro, you can download premium plugins and themes, tools like Elementor, Gravity Forms, and more. Track every rollback you do with detailed activity logs. Protect your workflow and take the stress out of updates. Learn more at wprollback.com.

[00:22:21.200] – Speaker 5

This podcast episode is brought to you by LifterLMS, the leading learning management system solution for WordPress. If you or your client are creating any kind of online course, training-based membership website, or any type of e-learning project, LifterLMS is the most secure, stable, well-supported solution on the market. Go to lifterlms.com and save 20% at checkout with coupon code PODCAST20. That’s PODCAST20. Enjoy the rest of your show.

[00:22:59.890] – Jonathan Denwood

Coming back, folks, um, I want to point out that I do a newsletter, do it every week. It’s normally about a subject that we deal with in the podcast I do. I do about 3 podcasts a week, uh, one where I’m the producer and co-host, and the other, um, 2 I do with Kirk. And I normally take one of the episodes that I find the most interesting and I add a bit more commentary retour it. I’m probably going to do a totally separate video about a particular episode and give my spin on it. And then I go and find some interesting stories and I curate those in a list and I put those into the newsletter as well. It’s totally free. You can get it by going over to wp-tonic.com/newsletter. Wp-tonic.com/newsletter. On to the next point. What does good support and documentation look like before you buy? Well, that’s why I say you normally get that if it’s a pro version. You know, it’s a paid— they’re offering a paid version. You know, And I think having reasonable documentation and some support process is important, especially if it’s a money-making website. What do you reckon?

[00:24:32.840] – Kurt von Ahnen

If it’s a revenue-based website, I am not adding tools that don’t have substantive documentation. And I think this is something that I think I afflicted myself with this, Jonathan, because now that I’ve done support with LifterLMS for so long, I realize not a lot of people are wired this way. But I’m a very self-sustaining agency owner. If something doesn’t work, I go through the documentation, I go through the site, I turn off all the plugins, I look for the offending conflict, I follow that diagnostic tree to figure out what’s wrong. And then when I go to the documentation, I need that documentation to have details. I know that this sounds like a commercial, right? But I’ve been involved with LifterLMS now for a decade, and I think they have one of the strongest examples of a knowledge base for a plugin product. Like, it’s just anything that comes up in your LifterLMS website, you can almost always find at least a direction to go in with their knowledge base, plus they have a support channel. And so that’s kind of my benchmark when I’m looking at new tools. Like when I’m talking about Fluent, Fluent CRM, Jonathan, I know is one of your favorite tools.

[00:25:53.850] – Kurt von Ahnen

If you go to Fluent CRM Pro in YouTube, they have an entire playlist library of every in and out of how to use that platform. And so I have no qualms whatsoever putting that in a customer’s website, giving them the link to the playlist, maybe a quick tutorial on how to do things in their own website, like a screen share. But man, they’re good. They’re good to go because they have everything they need to successfully use that product going forward. A lot of these plugin companies give you next, like they say, download the zip file, upload it, you know, activate it, go to settings and put in your license or whatever. And like, that’s it. You don’t get a lot of details. And so knowledge by trial and error is not the way to build a revenue-based website.

[00:26:43.860] – Jonathan Denwood

No. And this, this is affecting not only WordPress, it’s affecting other platforms, you Because of AI, you’ve seen more and more SaaS solutions just being pushed out. Popping up. With that, their about page tells you nothing about the founder, who’s behind it. There’s no, hardly any documentation. There’s nothing, but it’s all over the internet now, isn’t it, Kurt? Do you agree?

[00:27:18.520] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah. And it makes me really hard to, you know, with confidence make a purchase and leverage that tool.

[00:27:25.620] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah. I’ve got here, is the pricing model sustainable on your members as your membership grows? Well, I kind of put that down and I forgot why I put that down there. I think, well, in WordPress, With the plugins, it’s not really gonna be an issue, is it? Um, it’s only agency issue, you know, depending if you’ve got— if you’re buying an agency version of a plugin, how many websites you can actually produce or that. Yeah. But for the individual, I think it’s one of the strengths because in the membership, you know, um, you’ve got the Stripe fee, but normally you’ve also got additional fee as well, haven’t you? And I’ve noticed with the SaaS competitors in membership community, they’re all putting their prices up, aren’t they?

[00:28:22.770] – Kurt von Ahnen

Well, they are, and they’re looking for a higher cut of whatever your sale is. All of them, though, on the bottom, some of them used to be 2%, 3%, then a lot of them were 5%. And now you can look at some of the bigger platforms, you know, and they use the whole like, we have a marketplace ploy. But, you know, yeah, you’re looking 15%, 20%, 25%, in some cases more. that you’re giving up out of your revenue. And, you know, when you’re joining someone else’s platform and their marketplace might give you some traffic, paying 15 or 20% for that, that doesn’t seem that bad in the moment. But when you get successful and you’re bringing in your own traffic or your own referrals from your existing community, and you’re not getting the traffic from the marketplace, and you’re still paying 25, 30%, That’s painful. That’s really—

[00:29:13.840] – Jonathan Denwood

I can tell you, anybody that’s been successful online, they’re all— they’re almost all of them have been burnt by not having as much ownership of their online website and business as much as possible. They’ve always been burnt. Obviously, we’re in 2026. You’ve got to use social media, you’ve got to use YouTube, you’ve got to use TikTok, you’ve got to use Instagram, you got to use Meta platforms, got to have SEO strategy, got, got to try and build up your email list. Um, these are all important, but apart from the email list, you, you’re relying on the goodwill of other people. They own their platforms, they, they can change their business model, that they can, they can get competitors complaining about you’ve done something and get you banned. There’s all sorts of shenanigans and things that go on, but you need the maximum control over your core and that’s your website. Yeah, you know, it might be reliant more and more on AI models recommending your particular course, your particular— Yeah. But, you know, you’re still going to need content, you’re still going to need activity, you’re going to still need people talking about your course for you to show up in large learning models unless you’re paying paid advertisement.

[00:30:51.470] – Jonathan Denwood

And that ain’t gonna be— that’s, you know, until you’ve got a solid concept of, you know, what you’re selling and you’ve proven the concept, using paid marketing is a bit iffy, innit? So How easy is it to migrate away if the plugin stops working for you? Well, that, that really needs to be investigated because there’s a wide spectrum out there, isn’t there, Kurt? What do you reckon?

[00:31:26.580] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah. And it really just depends on like what you’re doing. For instance, you know, maybe you’re using GamePress for something and it’s overkill and you’re like, I just want to have confetti whenever someone submits a form or completes a course, right? Well, then you put in, you know, confetti, right? From Sunflower Sunshine Apps or whatever it is, right? Derek, Derek Askauer. So that’s like a, you don’t have to migrate anything. There’s nothing to migrate. You just turn something off and turn something else on. But there’s other things where you’re actually putting data into those systems and you wanna make sure that you have the know-how, the expertise, or, you know, that quick easy button answer to go, how do I get my data out of this thing before I remove this tool.

[00:32:10.560] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah. And you know, it’s not gonna— it’s not perfect in the WordPress world. You know, if you use a certain page builder and then you go to another page builder, obviously AI is changing that to some degree. I know you’ve been doing some experiments.

[00:32:30.380] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah.

[00:32:30.620] – Jonathan Denwood

In that area, and it will only get better and better. But, and so AI is changing that possibility of moving from one page builder to another much more easier. And the same with core plugins as well. But it’s not perfect. But compared to the world of SaaS, it’s a lot more easier because my, but I think they’re probably— I think AI is affecting that maybe as well. I don’t know. But, um, because it’s not open source, it’s probably going to find it a lot harder. Um, where AI is, you know, because WordPress is open source and it, and it can read the code and it’s just going to find it a lot easier to help you migrate something. All right, well, um, yeah, go on. Sorry.

[00:33:28.650] – Kurt von Ahnen

Oh, I’m sorry, I was gonna kind of help us transition there because, you know, you mentioned AI, right? And then we were talking about the plugins. I think one of the major questions at the end of this episode for, for even a DIY user is, well, if there’s so many, you know, trepidations, if there’s so many obstacles to using a plugin you’re not horribly familiar with, Should I just code this myself? Should I just make this? Should I just, you know, we’ve shared space with like people like Spencer Foreman, right? And Spencer Foreman’s like, you don’t even need plugins anymore, just make your own. My friend Fernando can do it. That’s reasonable for him. He’s got expertise in the space. He knows what to expect for the outcome. But for the average DIY person, I do some quick math. Me and Toby on our show, we talked about, you know, he goes, oh, I built this really cool plugin and it took us about 20 hours. And I was like, 20 hours? I said, dude, if your agency rate’s $200 an hour, that cost you $4,000 to make that plugin. You know, ’cause that’s time you could have spent working on customer work, right?

[00:34:37.080] – Kurt von Ahnen

And so is that tool that you had fun building, is that tool that you kind of leveraged AI for, you know, is it worth the $4,000 plus the AI credits and subscriptions you burned to build that thing? Or could you have just bought some preexisting plugin tool or SaaS platform that might be $300 a year as a subscription, right? Well, at $300 a year, you could use it for 13, 14 years to break even on the $4,000, right? And so I think there’s definitely— well, to use your term, Jonathan, there’s a balance, right? You really need to think it through and go— Hey, it’s cool that I could probably make this on my own, but if I make it on my own, do I want to babysit it, look for updates and manage it ad infinitum forever and ever? Or would I rather have a reputable source that I purchased the tool from that’s in charge of, you know, maintenance and upkeep and updates and all those things? And, and I’ll tell you, for me personally as an agency owner, Jonathan, if there’s a suitable reputable plugin available, I’m going to spend the money, get the pro version, and use that for my clients.

[00:35:49.820] – Kurt von Ahnen

And if I need to tweak a little something, then maybe that’s where I bring in that AI expertise and we add like a single line as a code snippet or something just to get that, that final 1 or 2% that the client was looking for. And then hopefully we’re good.

[00:36:04.900] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, it’s, it’s like, like you said with Spencer, I have time for Spencer because we’ve known he is a friend. He is very, very creative, has a lot of business experience. I don’t, I don’t agree with the totality of his position at the present moment. I just don’t. But I think, I think, but that’s just life, isn’t it? But I do think AI allows you to adapt WordPress to do custom solutions that would cost— would be— it just costs too much even to consider, right? And that’s just— I think that’s reality, right? And I think that’s to the benefit. You know, the main thing with WordPress is, you know, is that it is open source. No. And I think on a, on a really basic marketing website, basic is the wrong term because most of your effort is going to be around local SEO content for large learning modules or for individuals that hit your website, you know, appearing in local search. You know, the bulk of small businesses around local SEO, and they just need a quick website. WordPress got criticized because of mobile speed, but that was down to very cheap hosting providers, in my opinion.

[00:37:49.800] – Jonathan Denwood

And really what we’ve been talking about in this show, basically just— not being fussy about the plugins you’re putting in. But if you use a modern page builder and you just use a handful of plugins, and for a marketing, um, local business marketing website, that’s what you should use. Um, um, I, I think you’re going to be totally happy with the mobile and desktop speed numbers that you get. What do you reckon?

[00:38:25.430] – Kurt von Ahnen

I think so. I, I, and I’m gonna be a little more trans— transparent, Jonathan. I, I, I, a year ago, if somebody would’ve said, oh, my website seems a little sluggish, and I would’ve said, oh, well, you know, what’s it made with? And they would’ve said, oh, well, it’s, you know, BuddyBoss and LifterLMS and a CRM. And I would, well, what’d you expect? Like, you can’t put all that stuff on a website and think it’s gonna fly. But I am learning, you know, again, as an expert in the space, as an agency leveraging AI and playing with some things, there’s usually some improvements that can be made. You know, we can strip out some of those old, outdated, unused, deactivated plugins. We can have, you know, the database cleaned up from that crap it leaves behind. We could really examine the use of some other tools that we think we’re using, but we’re not really using. For people that think they’re SEO experts that never put anything in their Yoast or their Rank Math. That’s who I’m talking to. So if you’re taking up space and performance with tools you’re not even leveraging, well then just pull them out.

[00:39:31.190] – Kurt von Ahnen

Like, just get it out of there. Clean up the site as much as possible. Optimize your images. A lot of people might use an image optimization tool and then over time they just keep adding content and not optimizing the new content. Sometimes you need to clean that up, but we just had a BuddyBoss site go from 92 in page speed this week, and it was through just doing some of the hard work in the backend.

[00:40:01.070] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah.

[00:40:02.530] – Kurt von Ahnen

So it’s out there, basic hosting. You don’t need to go broke, but if you don’t have the expertise, it’s worth having someone join your team that has some expertise that can do that stuff.

[00:40:13.550] – Jonathan Denwood

Right. Yeah. So what’s the best way for people to find out more about you, Kurt?

[00:40:19.080] – Kurt von Ahnen

Mañana No Más. You can get me at mañanonomas.com or on LinkedIn. But realistically, I work with Jonathan on quite a few projects and you could reach out through WP-Tonic to get a hold of me there as well.

[00:40:31.300] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah. And WP-Tonic, we provide— we’re a hybrid, we’re agency, but we have an emphasis on hosting as well. We can help you with marketing, but we specialize in learning, learning models and management systems. Got confused there. And community-focused websites. And we love to help you out. So you can book a free chat with me anytime by going to the WP-Tonic website. We will be back next week with another subject. That will help you be successful. We’ll see you soon, folks. Bye.

[00:41:10.910] – Speaker 1

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