Is The Future of WordPress Headless?
With Special Maciek Palmowski Development Advocate Analyst at Kinsta.
Are you curious about the direction WordPress is heading? In our latest show, we uncover the rising trend of headless WordPress architecture and its impact on websites. Explore why developers are embracing this modern approach that separates content management from presentation layers. Get inspired by real-life examples showcasing faster load times, enhanced user experiences, and endless possibilities for customization.
#1 – Maciek, for the audience, can you give us an outline of what the major concepts are linked to headless WordPress?
#2 – What is it about headless that gets you so excited? also, what do you see as some of the major challenges connected to the concept?
#3 – You have, for the best year, been working with Kinsta as a development advocate analyst. Kinsta, can you give an insight into what you do on a daily basis connected to this role?
#4 – Have you any views or insights connected to making WordPress easier and more popular with the broader development community?
#5 – What are some of the business tools and services that you use to run your business daily that you could recommend to the audience?
#6 – If you return to a time machine at the beginning of your career, what essential advice would you give yourself?
This Week Show’s Sponsors
LifterLMS: LifterLMS
Sensei LMS: Sensei LMS
BlogVault: BlogVault
The Full Show Transcription
[00:00:11.890] – Jonathan Denwood
This is Episode 883. We have got a great guest. I am not going to pronounce his second name because I do not want to embarrass you and you beloved audience. We’ve got Maciek. I probably butchered that as well. But he is also… But that’s his fault because he put the word magic in my mind. He’s the development advocate at Kinsta. We’re going to be talking about all things headless, quite appropriate for the month of October. Headless, connected to WordPress, I might add. So Maciek, would you like to introduce us, give us a quick intro, a quick 30-second intro about yourself and about what you do at Kinsler?
[00:01:10.530] – Maciek Palmowski
Oh, of course. My second name is Palmowski. It’s just to… You did a great job with the first name, so really kudos to you. I work at Kinsta. I work as a Devrel in general. But for most of my career, I was a developer. I still always say that I am a developer working as a Devrel because I still feel like a developer at heart, and the problem is that it won’t ever change. At Kinsta, I’m responsible for mostly making sure that all of our content, everything we release, is developer-friendly, like the documentation, like every landing page that is aimed at developers, so all the wording, everything that is for sure, that it will be good for every developer. They will feel that it’s for them. Of course, the second part is everything related to other developers, like talking with them, thinking about some partnerships, and so on, and also representing my company at different podcasts, webinars, and events, for example, here.
[00:02:24.130] – Jonathan Denwood
Thanks, Rob. Obviously, I’ve had a great relationship with Kinsta. They sponsored the show for over a couple of years. Brian Jackson, who used to work at Kinsta, is a friend of mine. I know Tom as well at Kinsler. They’re a great team. I know the Kinsta setup quite well. I’ve got my great co-host, who is patient and insightful. Kurt. Kurt, would you like to introduce yourself?
[00:02:57.830] – Kurt von Ahnen
Absolutely, Jonathan. My name is Kurt von Ahnen. I own a small agency called MananaNoMas, which focuses largely on membership and learning websites. I also worked directly with Lifter LMS and WP-Tonic and hosted my own podcast, MananaNoMas.
[00:03:11.690] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s great. In this show, we’re going to be talking all things headless around WordPress and headless around SaaS as well, but with a focus on WordPress. But you should find the conversation really interesting. I think it’s an exciting concept. It’s been around for a couple of years, but I think it’s developed as well. We got a real expert on the show. We’re just going to do a bit of a deep dive. But before we go into the meat and potatoes of this, I’ve got a couple of messages from our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Are you?
[00:03:50.720] – Maciek Palmowski
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[00:03:51.790] – Jonathan Denwood
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[00:03:54.200] – Maciek Palmowski
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[00:03:55.210] – Jonathan Denwood
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[00:03:56.430] – Maciek Palmowski
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[00:04:00.100] – Maciek Palmowski
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[00:04:06.120] – Jonathan Denwood
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[00:04:06.540] – Maciek Palmowski
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[00:04:10.460] – Maciek Palmowski
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[00:04:16.390] – Maciek Palmowski
When checking out, give Sensei a try today.
[00:04:20.250] – Jonathan Denwood
We’re coming back, folks. Just want to point out we’ve got a couple of great special deals from the major sponsors, plus a curated list of all the best WordPress plug-ins. You don’t have to crawl the internet, my great tribe, to find the best solution for a customer. You’ll find them all on this list with additional special offers. To find all these goodies, all you have to do on your keyboard is go w-tonic. Com/deals, w-tonic..com/deals, and you will find all the goodies for October there. What more could you ask for? My professional WordPress tribe. Probably a lot more, but that’s all you’re going to get from this show. I say that every episode, and they just love it. The more you insult this lot, the better off you are, Mairik. Mairik, whatever I’m going to say. Oh, it’s just magic. Let’s go for magic, actually. It’s going to be easier for me. I’d say magic. Can you give a quick outline about what you… If somebody was asking you what headless meant around WordPress and they weren’t a hardcore developer, how would you explain the key concepts around headless and why they should? Okay, yeah.
[00:05:46.180] – Maciek Palmowski
First of all, I would start with explaining the opposite of headless, so monoliths. This is what by default, WordPress is. Our CMS is responsible for two things. First of all, we can add the data, manage it. Every time we go into our WP admin, when we create a pass, we are managing data in some way. This is the one thing that we are doing with work. But on the other hand, Workforce is also responsible for showing all the data we just created on the outside. We are doing this thanks to themes and with the sprinkle of black. Our CMS is responsible for everything from data management to showing the data on the outside. This is monolith. Headless breaks it a bit. We can use something else in WordPress, but let’s say we are still using WordPress. We will still use WordPress to manage data. This is great because every person on the team who was just working with the website through the admin panel won’t feel any different. What changes is the way how we display the data because WordPress won’t be responsible for this at all. We will have a separate application for this.
[00:07:09.320] – Maciek Palmowski
It might be a JavaScript framework. I didn’t know we can use Vue, we can use Astro, whatever we want. There are so many ways. But it doesn’t have to be a JS framework. It can be anything. If you want to build for some reason our website using crust, okay, do it. Laravell? Yeah, of course, go for it. It’s up to the team who will be responsible for building the front-end, what will they choose? But to communicate, there is a need for an API, and WordPress either has its API built inside the REST API or we can install a graph to one. I remember there are two plugins, one by WP Engine and one by, and I now forgot his name, sorry for this, but in general, the WP Engine one is the most popular. That’s what happens. Of course, on the first thought might be, Yeah, this is almost the same, but you are adding this extra step of connecting those things. It was working in monolith, and that is true. But headless starts making more and more sense when we start connect many data sets sources into one place. In one place, we have a blog from some different source.
[00:08:36.280] – Maciek Palmowski
We, for example, have e-commerce system because let’s say we have a block on WordPress, an e-commerce system on Shopify. We have some data stored in Notion that we want to display. So yeah, everything gets into the same place to our front-end. Everything is connected through APIs and it works.
[00:08:58.210] – Jonathan Denwood
Can you say amore… Well, is it a way of doing a sophisticated, what I would call a mesh-up? A meshing up?
[00:09:10.630] – Maciek Palmowski
Exactly. Because this is also the thing I always think about… You should start thinking about going headless when you started to think which part of the data that you have to get from somewhere is the most important. When you start to feel that there are many sources that has the same priority, it’s not having… You could start adding those things to your WordPress site. But you will think that the WordPress shouldn’t be the most important part if everything has the same priority. It’s better to have this prompt and that this separate and all the data.
[00:09:51.800] – Jonathan Denwood
You’re going where I thought you would go because I’m getting the impression what you’re trying to say there, because I’m not an active developer anymore. Thank God I wasn’t doing the service to WordPress by being one. I was better than I probably thought I was. But I’ll give you the impression because there’s always a level with WordPress where you’re doing something with plug-ins and then the customer wants something that the plug-in can’t do, so then you either adapt, you do a customer add-on or you do a full custom plug-in and then there’s something else they want and you add in it. But I think there’s always a certain level where if you’ve done prediscovery and you know what they’re looking for rather than just doing a… We’ve all done it by the back seat, morphology. But if we know, I think there’s a stage where you’re better off instead of trying to solve everything with custom plug-ins, you’d be some ways better off going headless. Am I on the right track there or am I missing it?
[00:11:07.800] – Maciek Palmowski
I think so. I always think about this perfect headless setup as a bit of a spider’s web with all those connections. You have this one central site and all those APIs connected to different third-party tools or your own APIs. So it’s all about the central point that gathers. It gathers all the things from the outside you. At some point you just stopped adapting your WordPress to do things for which it wasn’t created and you just start using different tools for the job. Like I said, let’s say Shopify. I know that e-commerce is also great, but for example, Shopify for e-commerce, blog, WordPress, and some raw data notion. There are so many other solutions all over the web that have an API. If they have an API, why not use it? Why not connect it with your website? You don’t have to adapt your WordPress to do something. Just connect it directly because why not?
[00:12:12.330] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, I would to you, Kurt.
[00:12:17.990] – Kurt von Ahnen
This is one of these episodes, Jonathan, where I’m just going to feel like an idiot the whole way.
[00:12:23.180] – Jonathan Denwood
We never thought we did it. I’ve told Kurt multiple times not to be concerned because it hasn’t stopped me because I know bugger all about anything. So get over it.
[00:12:39.370] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, I was looking into headless and I was like, for the longest time, I couldn’t figure out what was the benefit because I’m like, I kept thinking in a WordPress to WordPress framework. I kept thinking, Why am I separating the backend from the frontend just so the end user can see a website that’s all put together? I already had a website that was put together. Why am I all this stuff? It doesn’t make any sense. But then someone said something to me that it just unlocked it. It was like, it’s not that you’re removing the head and there’s no head, it’s that now you can add multiple heads. Now you can have one that goes to a WordPress front end. You can have one that goes maybe to your podcast. Maybe you put your podcast content into your data and that goes right to your podcast. Then I started thinking, Well, that sounds amazing. Then the paranoid person in came out and I thought, every time I have a customer that wants a custom this, a custom that, tweak this, tweak the other thing and plug all this crud into my WordPress environment, it gets unstable.
[00:13:41.540] – Kurt von Ahnen
At what point does this headless thing get unstable? Or is the glory of it that it’s more stable?
[00:13:50.360] – Maciek Palmowski
Let’s start with the favorite word of every developer. It depends, right? It depends. Because I can tell you that I have this presentation that I am doing from time to time about headless WordPress and of course, it ends with, so should you use WordPress? Yeah, it depends. But this is the thing that I think that first of all, headless will be as stable as all of its services. So if we will try to connect one of the service that isn’t that stable, yeah, we will have a problem. But on the other hand, right now we are going a step further because this is this term that… I mean, this is why Netflix bought Gatsby. Not for Gatsby because it wasn’t their reason, but mostly because they had this platform called Valhalla and it’s called the Composable Web. This Composable Web is like this another layer that integrates all the data from all the sources. So it makes it more stable because your front-end will start connect with just this abstract layer that will get all the data from the outside. This should provide a much better stability because this layer will take care of some problems, will probably cash some of their results to make sure that everything seems stable.
[00:15:22.720] – Maciek Palmowski
But yeah, on the other hand, I wouldn’t never say that Yeah, go headless, it will change your life. No, that’s not true. It’s just a tool. I think that this is one of the biggest problem with headless right now, not only in WordPress, but everywhere, because there are some companies that try to enforce to use headless because they are just trying to make money on it. That’s okay. We can very often hear, Yeah, go headless. Your life will be better. Your website will be faster. You will get more clients and so on and so on and so on. We are just waiting for the part that you will get all those unicorns in your background and rainbows. That’s not entirely true because headless is just an architecture. It’s not good or bad. It will depend on our business. I can imagine many, many examples where going headless will just won’t work because there is a trade-off. There is always a trade-off. Because we will gain some flexibility. But on the other hand, we have to connect everything that we have. This is what you mentioned about the stability. Also, it’s just different. If you are used to and you are happy with how your monolith website works, that’s perfectly fine.
[00:16:51.520] – Maciek Palmowski
It works, it earns money. Why not? Leave it as it is. The fact that so many developers are writing that Headless is amazing doesn’t mean that it will work for you. It’s just an architecture. It’s not a silver bullet or anything like this. This is the thing that I’m very often trying to tell everyone that headless can be cool, but it doesn’t have to. It depends on so many things. Even lately, if I remember, and it was, I think, amazing because amazing. Because amazing, we know them for the AWS and the fact that they are using microservices for almost everything. Lately, they decided to combine some of their processes into a more monolithic approach because it’s cheaper, it’s stable, it’s better. It’s not like that headless will solve all the problems. You have to always think about it, evaluate. Like always, it depends. It depends.
[00:18:07.670] – Kurt von Ahnen
Nice. Thanks, Meshik. Over to you, Jonathan.
[00:18:10.430] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. But on the other hand, are there any particular scenarios, any particular industries, any particular developer projects that have come on your radar that were perfect fit for headless WordPress that come to mind that you can… I’m struggling for the right word. Showcase in this section of our interview, has anything come to mind that was a perfect fit that’s been on your radar recently?
[00:18:49.640] – Maciek Palmowski
I see that for some reason, and I understand why it’s happening, many online magazines, so let’s call it press-related, very often go headless. Let’s look at TechCrunch because Techcrunch is headless. If I look at the Polish market, the biggest blogs that we have, the biggest technical blogs are built on headless WordPress. The reason is very simple because still when we think about the CMS from a developer point of view, we think about all those shiny cool things that there are in a CMS about the technology and so on. But most people working on such website don’t care about it. They have to have an environment to create articles, to create new content. For them, having the stability, the same flow that they always have on every day, it’s crucial. Thanks to this, I’m sure that all the authors at Techrunch or those Polish websites, for them, they got used to WordPress. They are using it for many years. On the other hand, the team that is responsible for the development of the website, of adding new features, they can add them without worrying that it will affect the authors too much because they live in separate worlds.
[00:20:38.560] – Maciek Palmowski
That’s cool. I think that giving the stability, and this is like I said, this is a reason why I see why Headless is very often used in those magazines or those bigger blogs, because let’s call them blogs, but they become very often small web portals. But it still gives the same experience for the authors. This is the most important thing. I couldn’t imagine being an author at some of those websites and relearning the flaws one every, I don’t know, two or three years because the developer said, Hey, we found something new and exciting. Let’s implement. It would be a nightmare.
[00:21:24.460] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m going to ask you a question that’s not on the list because I want to keep the conversation going until we go for a break. Where does Gutenberg fit into this and is using React? Does it have any overlap? Because I know the page builder, the conflict between Gutenberg and… Let’s take a really popular page builder in the developer world, Bricks. Bricks has been getting more traction recently, and on my understanding, it’s built on Vue rather than React. Obviously, Gutenberg’s built on React, which was a controversial decision at the time. I’ve always preferred View myself. I think it’s a much easier for my standard of developer. It’s much easier to use than try and get my head around React, which it’s a totally out of a normal CSS, PHP hacker, medium-level developer. React is all to get your mind round. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe you disagree. But is there any overlap around headless, around which page builder, editor that you’re utilizing?
[00:23:02.020] – Maciek Palmowski
No, it shouldn’t. It shouldn’t because we very often have to remember that… This also depends on the way how we want to use headless. Because I would say that there are two main scenarios when we are just decoupling the backend from the frontend. But it’s all about the one website. There is another scenario when we have one WordPress that powers multiple pages. For example, it powers our… Let’s say we have a company that does a lot of things. It powers our homepage, it powers off our lending pages and our mobile app that is also something separate. Every time when we go and we edit, for example, in our WPM, the About Us website because we just earned some awardsboard. We change it, we publish it, and after a few minutes, all of those websites that are connected with it have their content change. This is another approach. I’m talking about those two ways because this depends, because if we are using this way, we have to remember that our CMS is just for data. It’s not for building the website, building how they look. It’s more just about getting the data and the data is then displayed by the frontend in some way.
[00:24:36.430] – Maciek Palmowski
In such case, the page builders wouldn’t have that much sense. Good and bad, on the other hand, why not? Because it consists of blocks. Then we can convert those blocks into components, into whatever we want. We can do something about it. But with the more just the coupling way, I can imagine that we could use this page builder a bit or more. But still I would probably go to use the CMS mostly just for data and the front-end would be responsible for the way how we present it, how we interpret what was created in the content. But like I said, I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t work with Gutenberg. It will. We just have to add a small little thing because normally in the API, we just got this big blob called the content and we have to change it to be an array of arguments that we can just pass to our front end and do the whole magic there.
[00:25:37.790] – Jonathan Denwood
I see where you’re coming from, but I’ve also seen this in a similar argument: what functionality should be in a plug-in and shouldn’t be in a theme? I’m not having a go at them; the one that comes to mind is great people. I understand why it’s happened. The one that’s regularly on our radar is Buddyboss, where they’ve done a mash-up, where they mix functionality in the theme and also in the plug-in they provide. But they’re not the only ones. It’s one of my main criticisms of the leadership in WordPress. They never really built out a solid framework and guidance about what should be in a plug-in and what shouldn’t be in the front end. But on the other hand, I suppose that’s what you get with open-source projects, don’t you? That’s one of the concepts. There are great benefits, but nothing in life has total benefits without any minuses. You just have to make a judgment call, don’t you?
[00:26:55.940] – Maciek Palmowski
Exactly, that’s right.
[00:26:58.080] – Kurt von Ahnen
One of the things that you guys were talking about that really came to light for me was in the use case with the magazines and the writers, and then Jonathan asked about Gutenberg; Gutenberg is an absolute pleasure to write in with the full-screen editor as a writer. Whereas, like Elementor and some of the other page builders, you’re always stuck in that little box off to the left. From that perspective, I could really see where that really would be a useful tool. The writers and the content creators, people that publish the words, they get that wonderful working space, but then all the design and stuff is handled off-channel.
[00:27:35.230] – Maciek Palmowski
Yes, because this is the thing that… It’s not even about headless; it’s about the concept of the CMS per se. This is my problem with the full site editing and with the fact that when we are creating content, we are also designing many things inside of it. I have a huge problem because I’m from… Maybe I’m a bit from the past when the separation of concerns was so important. I always see that it’s better to have data as data. That’s it. We can have some arguments for this. Let’s say there is a box that has some role. For example, it’s a button; it’s a warning box or whatever. But let’s not style it at all. Let’s style it on the front end, knowing that it’s a warning box or something. This is my big problem with one way Gerodenberg works because it has two ways. One is this dynamic, when we just have the separation of data and when the data is passed to the front-end. This is very similar to the way headless works because we have data to pass it, and the front end builds it with the way we style everything in it, and we save the whole HTML.
[00:29:07.300] – Maciek Palmowski
I had this discussion with one of the agency owners in Poland about… Because I always work with those bigger clients, so we did redesigns, but we had to leave the content as it was. So, it had to be universal. Every time I created a website, I was already thinking about how the update process to another version will look like. I asked him, Hey, but with the Gutenberg and the data saved inside as HTML, how do you think about the update process? Oh, I don’t. We will just build another one, and we just move the content separately. Because when you redesign the website, you change the content. I was like, Okay, we were dealing with different types of websites. All right.
[00:30:01.910] – Kurt von Ahnen
Should we move to break?
[00:30:03.210] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think that’s a good idea. Thanks for that, Kurt. We’re going to go for our mid-break. It’s been a great conversation. It’s always a balance in these conversations when you’ve got a true expert, like Metric, I wish I’m butchering his name now. It’s all your fault. I’ve got Magic in my mind there. I’ll put it down there. Use Magic. I use Magic. I use Magic. It’s the guest’s fault. It’s put, Simon. You know, if you’re a regular listener to this show, that I was doing quite well for me, until you put Magic into my mind, because I can butcher every guest’s name. But we’re going to go for a break, folks. We will be back with this great conversation. We’ll be back in a few moments. This podcast episode is brought to you by Lifter LMS, the.
[00:30:52.790] – Maciek Palmowski
Leading.
[00:30:53.380] – Jonathan Denwood
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[00:30:57.220] – Maciek Palmowski
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[00:30:58.780] – Jonathan Denwood
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[00:31:00.760] – Maciek Palmowski
Training-based.
[00:31:01.570] – Jonathan Denwood
Membership website, or any type of eLearning project, Lifter LMS is the most secure, stable, well-supported solution on the market. Go to Lifterlms. Com and save 20% at checkout with coupon code podcast 20. That’s podcast two zero. Enjoy the rest of your show. We’re coming back, folks. I just want to say if you’re a developer and you’re looking for a great community, why don’t you look at joining the WP, Tonic, Facebook group? We have a mixture of WordPress developers and people building great membership websites. If you’re looking for maybe some new customers or conversations, why don’t you join us there? You’ll find the link in the show notes. I love you to join the group and be part of the conversations. Let’s go on to the next page. You’ve got this new row with Kinsda. I don’t know how long you’ve been in this row with Kinsler.
[00:32:14.790] – Maciek Palmowski
Exactly a year. I can.
[00:32:16.670] – Jonathan Denwood
Tell you that.
[00:32:18.350] – Maciek Palmowski
This week I had my first yearly review. I’m still working at Kinsler.
[00:32:25.530] – Jonathan Denwood
It was going all so well until you decided to go on this podcast. It was all good. You made that fatal era of coming on this God-forsaken show. There we go. But we all make mistakes, don’t we? As long as we learn from them. What are some of the main things that you’ve learnt in this year? In any new position, it’s a slight gamble going out of your comfort zone. You’re a very experienced developer. Obviously, you made a judgment call that you wanted to test yourself a bit and move out of your comfort road. What are some of the main things that you’ve learned during being this new road for you?
[00:33:09.450] – Maciek Palmowski
It wasn’t such a jumping out of my comfort zone because it already happened in my previous job when I worked at body. This was the first time when I became a Devra. I remember that the first my official title there was WordPress Advocate because we were trying to help WordPress developers to learn more about CICD. Later we learned that it’s also worth maybe try it somewhere outside of WordPress. These were the first steps when I started thinking also a bit outside of the WordPress itself. This is also a thing that led for me to interest in headless and so on and so on. But at some point I learned that Kinsta was, because it was more than a year ago, it was before the moment when they were launching the Kinsta application and database hosting, which is a very self-explanatory title for hosting for applications and for databases. This meant that Kinsda decided to also see how it is outside of WordPress. We are still in WordPress. We are still doing the best. We are still adding features there. But we’re also trying to grow a bit further from this. I thought that, yeah, this is the perfect place for me to go because I’m at the same position.
[00:34:45.140] – Maciek Palmowski
I still want to be the part of WordPress community. I still want to have a chance to work with this community, go to work camps and so on and so on because I’m going to work in Europe is like my traditional way of spending a week of holidays because I’m going to some city in Europe, next to Tarino, and with my wife, with my kid. It’s like a whole week of, first of all, first meeting the people, the WordPress people, then seeing the city.
[00:35:22.240] – Jonathan Denwood
Learning- They do choose fabulous locations, don’t they, for their.
[00:35:27.350] – Maciek Palmowski
That’s true.
[00:35:28.290] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m not having a go at WordPress USA, but the places they… But I suppose I’ve been unfair. They’ve just got a lot more cool places to choose to host there.
[00:35:41.530] – Maciek Palmowski
I’m so happy with the upcoming WordPress. The WordPress arena, I’ve never been there, so why not?
[00:35:48.510] – Jonathan Denwood
I just got a quick follow-up question before I throw it over to Kurt. I sense outside the WordPress bubble, the developer world outside the WordPress bubble, as I call it, that WordPress is not seen as a very cool developer environment. That is true. It’s… I think some of that’s true and some of that’s very unfair. Is there one or two things in your mind that the WordPress community could do that would make WordPress more attractive to the purpose?
[00:36:32.970] – Maciek Palmowski
I think this is something very difficult and this is also connected with the leadership. It’s also one of the biggest problem is how popular WordPress is. It’s very difficult to make very important, but also backward compatibility breaking change if you have this more or less, let’s say, 50% of the market. We are steering a very huge CMS with community. Every step, every small step we’ll make can be disastrous in consequences. In theory, we should play it safe. On the other hand, we, from time to time, see that some decisions are made just like that.
[00:37:28.750] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s a strange concoction, isn’t it?
[00:37:32.460] – Maciek Palmowski
Yes. This is sometimes weird that in most cases, I think that we are playing it likeparanoidly safe. Sometimes we have those ideas that, Let’s do some and.
[00:37:52.930] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s – Quite appropriate for October, witch’s brew, we would say in the UK. I don’t know if you know the same. It’s a real witch’s brew.
[00:38:02.960] – Maciek Palmowski
Oh, I didn’t know this. I didn’t know this. But I think I get what it means. This is a problem here and this is also a problem for developers. We know many developers that decided that WordPress is still using that language.
[00:38:23.950] – Jonathan Denwood
You don’t know me. I’m interrupting a little bit, but do you think it was linked… It’s linked to the obviously drive to JavaScript libraries to things like React and other libraries. Obviously, the tradition in WordPress was PHP. Was it really just a consequence? It’s not all WordPress is full. It was just a consequence of that move to JavaScript libraries to front-end developers outside of WordPress.
[00:38:58.570] – Maciek Palmowski
I think it’s a bit more complicated because I see a problem here. This was also very often said by quite a few developers. Why does it happen that, for example, when we talk about JavaScript development, we can use more modern tooling because it’s JavaScript, let’s use those modern tools, modern standards, and so on. When it comes to the PHP development, and let’s go with the legacy because it’s safe and the people are using it, people are used to it. This caused this unnatural thing because I know that some PHP developers were mad at it. How it happens that some part of WordPress gets all the new shiny tools. The thing that is the foundation of WordPress still has to use the same stack we are using for quite a while. We still see the problem when it comes to the PHP releases and the PHP compatibility of WordPress. It’s still a problem. Juliet, very often, says about it, writes about it, alarms everyone about it. She even had a plan at some point to have to connect the PHP and the Flives together with WordPress’s releases, which wasn’t ever done. Everyone thought it will, but it didn’t work for some reason.
[00:40:45.820] – Maciek Palmowski
I think we have a lot of problems. I think everything gets on top of the fact that we are so big. Really, every decision… I can understand the leadership, let’s be honest. I understand Matt that he has to be extra careful because right now our main thing is we have, let’s say, 50% of the market. This is huge, no one else has it. But if you want to maintain it, he’s trying to play it safe. We can look at Drupal. Drupal at some point decided to… That’s not true because Drupal is- Did you have.
[00:41:32.730] – Jonathan Denwood
To do that? This conversation was going so well. Drupal is very interesting. You’ve made me all hot and bothered there.
[00:41:40.470] – Maciek Palmowski
No, but really, Drupal is very interesting because they decided at some point, that it doesn’t have sense to develop everything on their own. They decided to start moving on to use the symphony framework. Let the guys from Symphony handle a lot of things like database connections and everything. Think. The problem was that when they introduced it, it created some totally breaking changes and they were okay with it. They said in the long run, it has sense. And they were right. But then they made a second mistake. They decided, Yeah, we should go one step forward. I think it was Next Gen’s further release of Drupal, that again broke the backward compatibility completely. So if they did it once, probably they would be in a much better position right now. But they did it twice and they are still in the process of rebuilding. But now they are standing on the very solid foundation of Symphony. Symphony that is developed by many developers, it’s funded and they can only take care of the CMS rather than many things, and like I said, the database connections and so on and so on. With WordPress, we have a problem because with most things, we are handling them on our own.
[00:43:12.200] – Maciek Palmowski
Again, having this 50% of the market.
[00:43:16.590] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m sure that- It’s not all bad. You have a company behind WordPress that’s got a billion dollars of VC funding, almost $900 million of VC funding. There’s not many open-source projects that have a company behind it that’s like I said, almost got a billion dollars of funding, is it?
[00:43:43.410] – Maciek Palmowski
That is true. Thatit is true. This is really interesting when we think about open source. One of the most important things about we see in open source that it’s free, both in the way of we can share the and how very often we can use it for free. But it’s really interesting how much money does open source make or enables many companies to make.
[00:44:13.670] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, I’m just saying it as a firm for all the criticism you can make at Matt is that his decision, I don’t know if he regrets it, there probably is some days that he deeply regrets the decision. But I think in his heart, he doesn’t regret it. But also he benefited from all the initial work and traction that Open Source gave him. You make your deal with the devil and then you’ve got to stick with it, haven’t you? Or you sure or wise do. Over to you, Kurt. I think.
[00:44:57.100] – Kurt von Ahnen
I’m going to break it down and come to an easiertake an easier path. Maasik, just what tools do you use? What tools and services do you run your business with daily and what tools could you recommend to our audience? To be.
[00:45:13.470] – Maciek Palmowski
Honest, this is the moment when… Because I remember that at some point, going back to my developer career, I said at some point, if there will be a day during which I will say that Calendly and Slack are my favorite tools, please kill me. Guess what? Here we are. Being at Everald switched the way of which tools I am using because I am less of a developer right now and it’s very important for me to plan my meetings. So yeah, currently. I also really enjoy Slack because this is the way how we communicate. They really added some… I still don’t have the new way.
[00:46:08.240] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m sorry. I love it and I hate it. What a dog’s breath of an interface. What an add to it.
[00:46:18.060] – Maciek Palmowski
They added some cool features along the way, for example, I really love the mark for later feature. It’s so useful, especially at our company, because the company itself works 24 hours a day because we have people all around the world. I wake up and I see I have so many things on Slack that happened when I wasn’t working. The first thing, I just go just to save for later, just to make sure that I won’t forget about it. But yeah, still because at heart I am a developer and I still have to build many things. I like those.
[00:47:00.500] – Jonathan Denwood
The thing that you said about Canon D, I’m really excited that the Fluent team, they’re going to be producing their WordPress version. I’m really excited when that comes out because I think it’s something… There are some calendar solutions in the WordPress, some great ones, but I’m just looking forward to what Fluent… Because I think there’s been something really missing in the WordPress space and I’ve got great confidence in the Fluent team based on what they’ve produced so far. I’m really looking forward to that. They can send me the check in the post later on, actually. Sorry, back. You want to ask the next question, Kurt, because I might be doing something.
[00:47:47.150] – Kurt von Ahnen
No, that’s totally fine. I was having my own flashbacks to try to get used to Slack, and I’m still not a Slack expert, even though I’ve got nine people that demand I use it.
[00:47:59.020] – Maciek Palmowski
I also, before working at Kinsta, and most Slacks that I was at was quite small. Here we have 400 people from different departments, a load of channels, a lot of those temporary channels when we have some- Don’t.
[00:48:17.950] – Jonathan Denwood
Do you mind me asking? You might actually… I’m butting in again; I apologize. But you probably don’t know this. Is Kinsla totally bootstrap, or did it take investment?
[00:48:35.220] – Maciek Palmowski
I know it was bootstrap, but I think. But I don’t want to make a mistake here.
[00:48:41.490] – Jonathan Denwood
Especially when your year’s assessment is coming up. I don’t want to do that. I don’t want the responsibility of getting you.
[00:48:48.480] – Maciek Palmowski
Into- It was a week ago. Don’t worry. But still, to be honest, I’m not sure. I think, and I don’t want to say.
[00:48:56.230] – Jonathan Denwood
Something wrong. If it is, they’ve done an amazing job to Kinsta in the Kinsler team. It has all been bootstrap. It truly is impressive.
[00:49:07.460] – Maciek Palmowski
For sure, for many years, it was bootstrap. And yet they did. They did an amazing job. When I learned that there was a chance to work at Kinsler, I was like, Yeah, great. I use the product. It’s great. I can go everywhere and be honest about it. Hey, I work at Kinsetide. It’s amazing because I-.
[00:49:27.500] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, you could just say without having to take a shower afterward.
[00:49:31.690] – Maciek Palmowski
Yeah, exactly. I had a chance at some.
[00:49:35.370] – Jonathan Denwood
Point to work- You can’t say that with some WordPress-focused companies. You might have to take their money, but you’re going to have to take a lot of showers as well.
[00:49:43.760] – Maciek Palmowski
Yeah. Maybe it was… No, I wouldn’t say it was… But if someone would ask me, Hey, would you recommend it?
[00:49:53.930] – Jonathan Denwood
No, don’t ever go at the people. I’m not going to mention them, but I know some great people who work for some companies, and they say in private, We have to pay our mortgage, so we work for them, but we have to take a lot of showers.
[00:50:07.580] – Maciek Palmowski
To be honest, this is really the cool thing about my job right now. I’m really proud of the team, of the product, of everything.
[00:50:20.300] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, they always say I love them to decide to come back, but I don’t think they’re going to. But I always got on with the Kinsler’s thing. I’m not just saying this for the money because… But there we go. You asked the last question, Kerr.
[00:50:35.000] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, this is Jonathan’s favorite question, so I’m pleased that he’s sharing it with me. Are you familiar with the show Doctor Who?
[00:50:45.420] – Maciek Palmowski
Of course, I love it.
[00:50:46.730] – Kurt von Ahnen
Of course. You already know how much Jonathan loves the show. If you had your own TARDIS and you could go back to the beginning of your career, what essential advice would you give yourself?
[00:50:59.820] – Maciek Palmowski
I think that one of the things that I made a mistake for quite a while was the fact that I did not invest enough in my personal brand. Because during our careers, we will change our jobs, we will change our roles, we will change a lot of things. But the thing that stays is our name. If you look at my LinkedIn account, you will see that I switch jobs quite often. I do because I like the challenge. I like to learn something here because going from one company to another enables you to learn things. I very often had this problem that I always thought, Yeah, I will be representing this company, that company, and people will know me as this guy from company X or from company Y. But that’s not true. I don’t want to be that guy from some company. I want to be, this is Macik Palmoski. He is known because he is Macik Palmoski. This is something that I learned. I think when I started to change my career from being a developer to going into Devro, so when I worked at Body. This was the moment when I started investing more in myself.
[00:52:44.300] – Maciek Palmowski
Of course, it’s not that I am more important than the role that I am doing right now at Kinsler. No, it’s not. But still, I want to be remembered for being me, not for being an employee in some role, someone. I want to be known as much as Palmoski, who is a great devil at Kinsta? That’s great. But like I said, our name will stay with us. And I think it also goes… It also benefits both parties because being known for yourself attracts people. Thanks to this, I can also work better, especially since my role is talking to developers. If developers knew me, it would also be easier for me to say at some point, Hey, here at Kinsla, we have something new. We launched something amazing. You should give it a try. Because they will know me, they will know that I’m an honest devrel, that I’m an honest guy, and that they know me from social media, from conferences, it doesn’t matter. Some of them will give it a try. That’s important, the fact that… This would be my advice. That’s not only to me but to everyone. Invest in your personal brand.
[00:54:19.600] – Maciek Palmowski
It’s really important.
[00:54:20.800] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, that is a super solid answer. Just to bounce off of that, I used to be in the automotive industry, and it’s not uncommon at all for customers to follow a person from dealer to dealer because people want to do business with people they know and trust. That’s super sound advice, man. I really like that. Thanks, Maestro.
[00:54:41.840] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I got to say that-.
[00:54:43.010] – Maciek Palmowski
Oh, and I can say that with developers, it’s the same.
[00:54:46.370] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ve got it.
[00:54:46.720] – Maciek Palmowski
To say that- I have so many clients that follow me.
[00:54:49.040] – Jonathan Denwood
From people- I’ve got to say for this year, that’s one of the most insightful answers that we’ve had from a guest. I’ll give you five out of five for that. We have finished. You really want to listen to that. If you’re my beloved tribe, that was a fantastic insight. Thank you so much, Madcheck, for that insight. It was really powerful, and I totally agree with you. You’ve been a fabulous guest. You must come back next year and have another discussion with us. I’ve really enjoyed it. I think we had the bright blend of tech with not too techy because it can go into really deep conversations. But I think it’s been fabulous. Like I said, folks, please join us on the W. P. Tonic Facebook group. We’ve got a great mixture of developers and people trying to build a great business and this membership business on WordPress. We will be back next week with another fabulous guest because I’m amazed at the quality of people, Nightmap Check, who have agreed to come on the show this month and next month. We’ll see you soon. Bye. Hey, thanks for listening. We really do appreciate it. Why not visit the Mastermind Facebook group?
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