KadenceWP We Discuss Full Site Editing & Much More
Ready to take your web design skills up a notch? Our special guest, Benjamin Ritner of KadenceWP, reveals game-changing tactics and proven techniques that will revolutionize your approach to creating impactful websites.
Gain invaluable insights from one of the industry’s top experts and transform your designs into masterpieces! Don’t miss out – hit play now and unlock a world of possibilities.
#1- Ben, can you give us some background connected to what led you to start developing KadenceWP?
#2 – What are some of the main challenges Gutenberg still faces, and do you have any insights on how you feel these challenges should be managed?
#3 – What have you learned over the two to three years connected to developing KadenceWP that you can share with the tribe?
#4 – Where would you like Kadencewp to be in the next 18 months, and what gets you excited connected to what you and the team are building?
#5 – What business tools and services do 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?
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The Show Main Interview Notes & Links
[00:00:01.790] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back to the W. P. Tonic this week in WordPress and SaaS. I’ve got a great interview. This is a show. I’ve got a returning guest. We’ve got Ben from KadenceWP. Returning. We had a fabulous discussion, I think it was over a year ago. Time flies, doesn’t it, Ben? It certainly does. So, Ben, would you like to give the new audience and listeners a quick 20, 30-second intro about yourself and what you do at KadenceWP?
[00:01:12.530] – Benjamin Ritner
Yeah. I’m the founder and Product Lead for Cadence WP, in which we create tools to help people build effective websites. We specifically focus on WordPress and the front end. How do we give you the tools to design and create the content that is going to make your site effective? So, theme and block plugins are our primary tools. Then, we have extensions beyond that into WooCommerce, pop-ups, conversion optimization, and things like that.
[00:01:48.360] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, it’s fantastic. We use it at WP-Tonic and have been delighted with it. I’ve been really looking forward to this interview with Ben. We’re going to be going round about what was the story aroundKadenceWP, and how Ben started to develop it. What he sees as the challenges around Gutenberg and the opportunities? We’ve got a number of great questions, it should be a great show. But before we go into the meat and potatoes, we’ve got a couple of messages from our major sponsors. We’ll be back in a few moments, folks. We’re coming back. I want to also point out I’ve got a new sponsor for most of December. It’s Omicend. Omicend is an SMS and text messaging plugin. They had a great following or still do with Shopify, but they saw the light folks and thought they would go into the woo space. It’s specifically aimed at woo commerce, but you can use it on a learning management membership, community focus website. Looks a fad plucking. I’m struggling. That’s not the Scotch, Eva. It’s too early for the Scotch. I like our great leader. It’s just fantastic. You can find more information about this plugin plus the other major sponsors, plus a curated list of other great plugins and WordPress services by going over to w-hyp-tonic.
[00:03:30.010] – Jonathan Denwood
Com/deals, wp-tonic. Com/deals and you find all the goodies there. What more could you ask for? Probably a lot more, but that’s all you’re going to get from that page, folks. Sorry to disappoint. I’ve made a lifeof time of disappointment. Oh, Ben. At least I get a laugh of Ben. I think they’re not bad, are they? They’re not bad little jokes. I get no response from them at all, Ben. I don’t know if we touched this in our last chat, but it was a while ago. I’m getting so old, my memory, I can’t even remember what I said yesterday. What was the founding story behind Cadence? Because I know you were totally independent and then you partnered with, I don’t know, Solid. Is the official’s title now, Solid?
[00:04:36.160] – Benjamin Ritner
Yes, SolidWP. In fact, we have an umbrella company called StellarWP, which is where Cadence and Solid and LearnDash and the events calendar and Iconic, all are brands inside of that. That is owned then by a hosting company, which is LiquidWeb and Nexus hosting. Yeah, it’s a fun dynamic. But Caden started with just me. I was doing freelance. Many people get in this way. I was building websites for people and the tools, or at least what I wanted to be able to do with the tools that were available, I couldn’t do. I started to build out my own theme and some of my own plugins and was using them on client sites and decided, hey, maybe I’ll just release a version of this for free out into the wild and see what people think and then did that. It got really popular. That was a virtue theme back in 2013. In that theme’s heyday, it was up to 300,000 active installs. That was around 2015. That took off and we made a pro version of it, started selling that. Before long I was like, this is all I do now because the support and the continual improvements on that product and just I was getting the sales and it was like, this is what I should invest my time into.
[00:06:16.760] – Benjamin Ritner 1
It’s a lot easier or I shouldn’t say easier. It’s a lot different than doing freelance. But when you have significant growth, it’s very exciting. That was some very exciting years. I quickly started to build the team. Then like everything, we got to get to challenges. Year three hit a challenge and we went from our peak sales. We cut our sales in half the next year. Then it was at that point that I created Cadence Blocks. I’m getting the timeline wrong here, not year three. At that point, I created cadence membership. I created a couple more themes and more products. We started to build back up. Then in 2020, created Cadence Blocks and launched that. That really took the company to the next level. Then in 2021, ended up selling to Look at Web, which not like an acquisition where I come and leave, but one where I come and get to be a part of driving this. I was at a place of critical growth and trying to figure out how do you manage that. So getting some help and some people quickly, and that was huge. Now I help lead product in other areas of Stellar too.
[00:07:37.490] – Benjamin Ritner 1
I’m able to consult with the team at the events calendar to say, Hey, how do we do this? How can we do this? Vice versa. I can go to some very smart developers.
[00:07:48.130] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, you got some great talent. You got the giveWP people, haven’t you? Yes. You got some really great people under Stellar, haven’t you? Some of them are not… I know we don’t know one another that well. We’ve only spoke a couple of times, but I get a great feeling from you. You’re very talented, but you seem to be very grounded and humble, even though, and quite a few of the other stellar people get the same impression. Was you self-taught or did you go to university in computer science or were you totally self-taught or is it a mixture?
[00:08:38.070] – Benjamin Ritner 1
I was self-taught on the coding side. I like to think of myself as not just a dev, but a dev and product designer and probably not masters and either. I know a lot of devs who are a whole lot smarter than me, and I know a lot of designers who are a lot smarter than me. But being able to think about both. I went to the university for design and media arts and understanding how do you sell things through design. Then the coding part, I was self-taught. Started when I was in high school. I just got really interested in learning code. You start with the basics of Microsoft front page and learning how to tweak things in CSS and then.
[00:09:23.300] – Jonathan Denwood
They can progress. Hopefully, I don’t embarrass you here. I rate you with some of the top people like Pippin, Williamson, and Jack from WP Fusion. I place you in the top 10% of work. Well, I.
[00:09:42.910] – Benjamin Ritner 1
Appreciate that for sure.
[00:09:44.690] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s a compliment. I think you’ve been very humble about your achievements, really. He hasn’t paid me for that either, folks. Don’t say there’ll be a check to say that. That’s my honest opinion. Where are we, Gutenberg? Because I want to be really supportive. It’s been a strange project. It’s very easy to criticize it in some ways, but on the others, it’s driving almost 45% of the internet. It had its 20th anniversary. A lot of people have made a good living from it. The- The web page building experience had to be improved otherwise it was going to die. But there’s been a lot of… That’s why I’ve stuck withwell, why I bought in, because we still offer Alimator, but we were looking at… Because we knew Gutenberg was the future, so we offer, with our hosting packages, we offer as well, and we let people choose or they can use their own thing. But I didn’t want to go fully native because of what we’ve seen with full website editing. I knew about you, I had confidence in you, and I’ve been trying it on my own projects, and I’ve really loved the experience. I either I’m using Alame to Beaver Builder or cadence and swapping around, but I’ve got it set in my mind now.
[00:11:41.900] – Jonathan Denwood
I just think you’ve done a fabulous job, but I’m really delighted that I chose Cadence because how do you see where the Gutenberg native project is? How are you going to position Cadence WVP and what you’re seeing, maybe you can give an outline.
[00:12:03.980] – Benjamin Ritner 1
Yeah, that’s a big question. Let’s start with the Gutenberg project. I would say it’s come a very long way. It what we have now, if you think about it from a, Can I just start up WordPress? We’re so used to pick your theme, pick your plugin, pick your page builder, all that stuff. But if you think about from one side of like, You can get started now with a full site editing theme, 2024, and customize that in ways that you were never able to do previously with any core theme. It is a lot more intuitive than any experience prior to Gutenberg for a brand new user who’s not coming in with the baggage that we are of like, I’ve tried 10 different page builders and I know what I like. In terms of like that and just page speed, the improvements to using full-site editing and just that basic setup to get your basic website going, which is what… The part of the growth we have to admit with WordPress is, it is the free option out there. So you get a lot of entrepreneurs, you get a lot of people who are just starting up and they’re trying to figure out, can I make a living doing this?
[00:13:21.900] – Benjamin Ritner 1
Can I get something online? Even just like, Can I get my passions out there in the web and get feedback and get an audience? And for that, I feel like WordPress has really progressed in the right direction. We have a tool that is very usable, creates a fast, responsive website. I think where it gets tricky is then you have all of the people who built on WordPress over the years to make it more like that for their end users, and also to extend it to the moon in terms of just being able to do anything you want to with this software is one of its huge superpowers, is it was extremely extensible. I think where we get a lot of the friction right now with the community, especially the existing community, is the way in which you extend it is changing. It’s not changing like it was this way and now it’s this way. It is changing fast and slow. The changes come fast, which is annoying because today if you go and build for it, in six months, it won’t work. But then at the same time, it’s like… It’s also like big changes that you have to figure out, am I going to go all in on this new way of thinking or am I going to support both?
[00:14:42.690] – Benjamin Ritner 1
Am I going to go-.
[00:14:43.960] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, that’s why I like using cadence, because I can leave those decisions to you and your team. You can be the interpreter of those decisions. Because I’m not having a bet. I totally agree with you. I think the team that are running the Gutenberg project, the recent team, apart from some very public trips about the debacle, about the short code and a couple of other things. But in general, I think where they’ve been taking the project, it seems a better direction in general. Yeah. You can.
[00:15:33.000] – Benjamin Ritner 1
Get into the nitty gritty of hindsight is 2020 and also we can all have our own opinions on data structure. Do we do this data structure right? Did we do this transformation right? Should we have spent another two years developing Gutenberg and then released it and had a much bigger buy-in and a much bigger, a much more polished product? There’s a lot of ways that you could criticize how it is, but inevitably we’re here, and is there a path forward? And do I see a path forward? Absolutely. I think you can critique a lot and I could as well, but I do see a path forward of we can build on this, we can change the minds of our current customers to start thinking in new ways and we can do it in a way that isn’t like, okay, everyone has to re-make their website. It’s more of like gradual… Do you want to be able to enter this? You can do that.
[00:16:33.250] – Jonathan Denwood
You touched about one of the major problems is that they’ve been putting in changes and you built a site for a client because there’s different buckets of user base here, isn’t there? There’s the DIY, the business owner, which you touched upon. Then there’s the freelancer, a cockways or implementer, which Divvy really understood that audience because the founder came from that semi-background and he understood. Then you’ve got the agency and they’re looking for something much more different than the DIY. You’ve got all these different buckets, haven’t you, looking for different things? I’ve just lost the track of where I was taking it. There was a plan where I was going, actually, Ben, but I’ve lost it. But would you agree about the buckets?
[00:17:28.730] – Benjamin Ritner 1
Absolutely, yeah. I think that it still is the power of WordPress. It can serve the brand new person who’s coming in and never built a website before, and it can serve the agencies who are building these hundreds of thousands of other websites that are very complex and have crazy extra data and all of that that.
[00:17:53.100] – Jonathan Denwood
They’re working with. Before we touch upon that, because cadence from the more agency professional and looking to build more complicated websites, cadence has been criticized a bit. It doesn’t offer the functionality, but I think you’ve got some new announcements that will change that situation. But I think before we go there, I think the two factors that are reasonable criticism is that, Gert-en-Burg to get where it is, even though you’ve got to take into account all the technical and practical hurdles does seem to have taken a very long time. That time has allowed that vacuum, like any vacuum in WordPress, people see, we had a few opportunities and that vacuum has filled it in with a number of website page-building solutions. That’s great for them and I wish them well, but the problem is it made the technical overhead for plug-in professional or plug-in producers in general increased because they had to support different page-building plug-ins. The other decision, which is my personal stance, is the decision of using React and not using Vue was the wrong decision because I just love Vue. I still a bit, and I always just preferred Vue the way it works, but that’s a taste.
[00:19:41.280] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s an individual thing, isn’t it? In some ways, I do understand the decision to go to REACT. I’m not saying it’s wrong, but it’s just my personal. First, would you agree that it’s just the time it took and that had consequences? What’s your view about the choice of choosing REACT?
[00:20:03.870] – Benjamin Ritner 1
The time, I would say, definitely had consequences, especially how long it’s taken us to get through this stage. I don’t think anyone thought that we would be four years into like, Gutenberg adoption and still have so many users using and choosing to use the Classic Editor, so many users are not going to full-site editing. And I can lay out why. I mean, that to me is obvious. Full site editing is just not there yet, but there’s a lot of people who are not going there. And so what it does is it creates a lot of confusion in the system and a lot of weird… I can tell you from our side, it’s weird to support full site editing and for the people that are using it and then not for the people that aren’t. The way that the page load is different, the way that the whole editor experiences is different. That creates a lot of technical hurdle, like you said, of developers trying to create a system that’s like, this is how it’s going to be used, except for maybe it’s going to be used like this and maybe it’s going to be used by this.
[00:21:13.270] – Benjamin Ritner 1
Getting all of that in this long of a transition, it’s long and there’s consequences for it. I think we’re even seeing a general stalling out of market share of WordPress. I don’t know that I would point directly to Gautonberg as being the sole problem, but I think it’s part of the problem.
[00:21:32.650] – Jonathan Denwood
This transition is.
[00:21:35.440] – Benjamin Ritner 1
Part of the problem. As for using Reactor View, I don’t have a strong opinion on that front. I learned to react first and so then it’s what it comes down to. What did you learn first? I don’t have a real strong feeling. That’s where we could go back and say, we could criticize a lot of those early decisions that were made. I think that it would be really good for there to be some open discussion about like, yeah, we made some of these decisions incorrectly in a closed room, not really opening up for more audience. At the same time, I get the struggle of you bring too many people into decisions and you don’t get anywhere.
[00:22:22.410] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, it’s like anything to do with leadership is a balance, isn’t it? I think having a committee, it’s like having a guidance committee, but then a CEO has to be elected one individual for a four or five-year period and they should have the authority unless they do something financially or around the sexual area that will bring discredit to the organization or financial shoud, Gaggins, they should be left alone to run things with guidance from the committee with those parameters that they can’t jump in unless something that’s already been written out, so everybody knows where they stand to a certain degree. But yeah, you’re right. You’ve got to avoid what’s happened to other similar open-source projects where you have things run by committee, which normally ends up in disaster, doesn’t it?
[00:23:32.710] – Benjamin Ritner 1
Yes.
[00:23:35.220] – Jonathan Denwood
People just lose. They’d rather die somewhere else. They’re facing another committee meeting. They’d rather take a gun and finish themselves off. What are a couple of things that you wish you have learned in the process of building out cadence WP? Because you and yourteam. First of all, I know it’s a mixture of full-time contractors and that, but in a rough ball, what is the size of the cadence team? Do you mind sharing that?
[00:24:13.560] – Benjamin Ritner 1
Yeah, right around 20 people right now. Right. A little, like 18. You’ve got the largest part of that is support. We handle a lot of support, especially anyone who’s been in the theme business or even any page builder, when you’re the primary thing, you get the support of all the external extras. We get the support of like, Hey, this obscure plugin is causing this error. We get that support. We have a big support team to handle all of that.
[00:24:51.440] – Jonathan Denwood
What’s a couple of things you… Well, before we go there, obviously some of your major competitors in the Guittenberg block… I don’t know if you see Caden… I see Cadence WP as the modern version of Genesis, really, of- I.
[00:25:15.140] – Benjamin Ritner 1
Take that as a compliment.
[00:25:16.920] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, because they are a great team. Obviously, some of their key… Brian’s gone with WP Engine and Jason is a personal friend of mine. They’re just a great team, all the people at WP, they’re the quality people because Jason’s a top individual. But I see you the same, the two Bryants, they were both really quality people. I see that in you and what you’re trying to do at Cadence. I do see you as the modern version of Studio Press and Jen. But I never got into that really, Ben. I was always reluctant. I never really got into the Studio Press thing.
[00:26:08.660] – Benjamin Ritner 1
I didn’t, but I have a lot of friends that did and I really admired the community that they created and the sense of community that was there was extremely powerful.
[00:26:21.650] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. What are a couple of things on this journey to build up cadence, WP, that you wish you knew you understood a bit? Are there a couple of things that you’ve learnt through that if you were advising somebody, you would tell them?
[00:26:41.090] – Benjamin Ritner 1
Yeah, there’s a lot. I would say I’ve made a ton of mistakes, and I’ve learned a lot and that’s led to some successes. I think if you’re just starting out, one of the things that everyone assumes is that the best product will win the day. That is not true. The best marketed product will win the day. I think it is crucial that anyone looking to start something go and learn marketing. You’re going to need marketing help as you grow and all that stuff. But there’s a mindset shift that comes when you truly understand some of the basic principles of marketing and how to market that will integrate into your product and it will take your product to a much more usable and marketable and successful product. I see a lot of people who have great ideas, they have good execution, write good code, even good design, but they don’t understand marketing and how marketing is such a key part of telling the story of your product and allowing your customers to buy into that story and use it. I think that’s like I would go and read story brand and I would go and read Seth Godin and teach yourself marketing even as a developer of a product because I think that you need to understand the story behind what you’re trying to accomplish in your product and get that story to consumers for it to be successful.
[00:28:29.430] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s great. I think that’s very insightful. I’ve moved on, but we should always cut for this before we go for a mid-break is what I mentioned there’s been some criticism. What’s that criticism? That’s probably not the right word. That’s probably the wrong word, but I can’t think of the right word.
[00:28:51.110] – Benjamin Ritner 1
It can be criticism. We get lots of criticism.
[00:28:55.720] – Jonathan Denwood
I think it’s clearly aimed at- I think it’s clearly aimed, but it’s criticized that people say, Well, I’m not going to name. We’re going to utilize this plugin, this page build or that page and cadence just can’t do that intense query work that we’re looking for. But I think you got some announcements around that, haven’t you?
[00:29:20.130] – Benjamin Ritner 1
Yeah. We just, in the last two weeks, released our Advanced Query Loop block. It’s by far the most complicated block we’ve ever created from a technical standpoint in terms of using a custom post type built on another custom post type to render out. We have a custom database that runs all the indexing for it. In short, it allows you to query posts of any type, and you can clear multiple types on your website and then show those in any way you want to. You can design the card templates however you want to. Then you can apply filters that will live render on the front end, so you can sort by category or change the order or do all of that, pagination, and search all within one container block that has a bunch of these subblocks in it, like filter blocks and pagination blocks and search blocks. All of that happens, and then we use Ajax and the REST endpoint, the REST API, to bring you live or rapid results to those filters. So if you’ve got a ton of products and you want to see a specific category, you can click the category, and without having to reload the page, we’ll bring up those posts from your database.
[00:30:42.070] – Benjamin Ritner 1
We’ve indexed all of that filtering so that it’s a rapid query to the database. You’re not doing these really exhaustive queries to bring that content up. It’s a potent block for doing things with any query and filter on your website where you’re like, I need to be able to change the order that I’m seeing this stuff in, and I need to be able to have three different filters where I’m filtering by brand, and I’m filtering by category, and I’m filtering by some other attribute. You can now do that inside of cadence blocks using our advanced query block, which is really exciting, and that’s been a big thing. The other thing that came with that is support for repeater field content. Using ACF, if you’ve got repeater fields, you can now basically source your repeater field block with a repeater field internal MetaField and then sub source out whatever. You can template out exactly how you want that metadata to look, and then it’ll repeat for as many repeater fields as you have. There’s some really cool stuff in terms of that’s much more advanced.
[00:31:55.630] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s aimed at the higher freelancer agency. Because you really seem to understand the DIY, the themes you provided, the framework, you really seemed that… We’re offering Cagent Child themes. We built out a small library of 15 child themes that we offer in our particular market, which is membership, and LearnDash is a significant partner with us. We developed about 15 child themes, and you helped us a little bit with a technical issue, which we’re much appreciative of, Ben. But it’s just a fabulous framework. That’s why I said I see you’re taking the historical place of studio press. I think we go for a break. When we come back, the question I’m going to start off with in the second half of the show is how, in your judgment call, because some of your competitors have taken full sight editing Gutenberg to heart, but you seem to be waiting. I wanted to investigate what your position around this is. We’re going to go for a break, folks. I think it’s been a fabulous chat so far. It’s always great talking to Ben. We will be back in a few moments, folks. We’re coming back, folks. I just want to point out we’ve got another temporary with us for the month of December.
[00:33:39.140] – Jonathan Denwood
We’ve got Cloudways with us, and they’re making a special offer. You get a 40% offer for four months. You can find all the details by going over to wp-tonic. Com/deals, and you will find the coupon code for the Cloudways offer on that page. We really appreciate them being a sponsor this month for the WPtonic show, which is independent media, and it really helps cover the costs of producing the show. Like I said, I don’t know where the Divvy is for some of your competitors because I think they’re still in transition. Obviously, they’ve made it totally public that they’re going to Gutenberg and offer a block solution similar to your own journey in the business model in some ways. Then you got a couple of other major block competitors, Gutenberg, in the block area, but they’ve decided to embrace complete website editing, which I understand but don’t really agree with. I actually agree with your position because I sense that you’re just watching. What are some of the critical things that you’re watching before? Do you think at some stage that cadence will embrace full-site editing? If that’s the case, what triggers would make you and your team decide it’s time to embrace it?
[00:35:30.760] – Benjamin Ritner 1
Yeah, it’s a good question. It’s one we get a lot. I think where I stand is if you want to build on full-site editing because there’s something about it that you really like, go for it. 2024 is a great theme. You can use cadence blocks and build on that, and that’s awesome and gives you more power. I would say that the majority of people have not tried full-site editing. Then they come to us and say, Why don’t you support full-site editing? I say, Well, how have you tried it? To which they say generally no. I said, Well, please go and try it and come back to me and tell me what you liked and what you didn’t like about it. The general feedback I’m getting and the reason why we’re reluctant and waiting, and I wouldn’t say waiting, we’re planning, is that full-site editing is excellent if I want a brochure website. But if I’m doing anything more complex than that, if I want any difficult navigation, complex header, or any different layout from my desktop header to my mobile header, all of a sudden, that becomes a real challenge in Gutenberg. Just being able to say, I want my logo in the center and logo on the left on mobile, you get some weird stuff going on where you’re like, I want the nav here, but I want it over here on desktop.
[00:36:50.150] – Benjamin Ritner 1
That can be what is holding people back. We’re targeting to say there are not a lot of benefits to using full-site editing. You can make an argument, and I would say it’s a pretty weak one, but you can do it. You can make an argument that it’s a little bit faster. You can make an argument that it’s a little bit easier for a new user to use. I can buy into that. It’s a little bit weird to be like, I need to edit my header and the customizer and my content on the page. I get that. That flow is weird. With the site editor and complete set editing, you don’t have two different areas of design. But it’s not more accessible if you’re unfamiliar with just understanding how templates work. That’s where it gets people really lost when they can’t just go and click a button to say, I want a sidebar on this page. That suddenly becomes very complicated to pull off if you’re not very familiar with templating and understanding how to use some of the tools. There are some benefits, and then there are some significant, big drawbacks, especially when you get into doing dynamic stuff where you’re triggering certain sections of content on particular pages at certain places, all of that starts to get a little bit weirder with complete set editing.
[00:38:27.680] – Benjamin Ritner 1
We’re targeting it as we’re going to work through the navigation and header piece and build that out. That’s currently a project we’re working on internally to say we’re going to create the best dang header navigation block experience we can. And that’s going to be a bit of a mix. I mean, one thing that I’ve been pushing for, and that is important to me in terms of the way that we’re building with full site editing, is that there is two different modes that people are in when they’re building website. One is more of a data entry mode, like hey, I have this data that I need to get on this website, and they’re not thinking about design. The other one is like, I need this data to look pretty. There’s a lot of times where that can be merged and a lot of times where it’s actually way better if that’s separate. If you’re thinking about entering in a list of like, this is how my navigation is going to be versus designing my navigation. We’re going to build interfaces for how do you do data entry-to-data entry on this and how do you do design on this?
[00:39:32.230] – Benjamin Ritner 1
That’s the key, I think big key right now. The other one is like, WooCommerce, so much of our customer base, so much of the customer base, they’re using other plugins as well. They’re using WooCommerce, they’re using LearnDash, they’re using other tools. Those tools aren’t yet there yet. They’re not ready for full-site editing. There’s no rush to this, there’s no reason to dive in right now. You’re not building something that’s not going to work in five years if you’re building it in a classic theme, because we know classic themes are going to be around for a long time and that this transition into Gutenberg is going to take a long time to get into full-site editing. I think eventually, Mole and Wag will get us all there. His push and his drive is going to push WordPress into the majority of people using full-site editing themes. I don’t think that will be the entirety of people using WordPress. There will be a lot of people using WordPress that don’t use full-site editing themes, and I see that for as long as people use WordPress. We’re approaching it of like, we’re going to support, we’re always going to support how you built it.
[00:40:42.980] – Benjamin Ritner 1
I still push up updates to the virtue theme that was created ten years ago. I make sure that theme works on people’s websites. If you have a site right now and you have the virtue theme, it still is going to work. We’re not going to abandon anything or make it like, Oh, you have to do something, but coming up here and not….
[00:41:02.480] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, but do you think that’s realistic, really? Because I think you don’t want to end up what a couple of other well-known open source CRMs. They had major updates cut off, but too many too often and that destroyed the confidence in… I wouldn’t have that bothered because on buyers, I don’t think they were evil, them were as good as WordPress. They were good in certain aspects, but they didn’t… The people that pushed them didn’t understand the totality of the platform. But on the other hand, don’t you think that sometimes there needs to be, as you give the people a lot of notice, there needs to be, because technology does move on, doesn’t it?
[00:42:02.800] – Benjamin Ritner 1
Yeah, I would say this that we don’t promote the virtue theme on our website. No one should be building with the virtue theme today, right? That technology does move forward, but I don’t think that we could have gotten to a place where Mohanwake said, okay, from Gutenberg forward, that is going to break backward compatibility. But we didn’t go there. We took on the weird data structure that we have right now where all of your content gets saved as HTML in the postcontent field. I don’t see a scenario where we have to cross some bridge at this point that says this is going to break everyone’s site unless they update to a new system.
[00:42:55.420] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, that would be a difficult thing to handle, wouldn’t it? That’s true.
[00:43:00.190] – Benjamin Ritner 1
Yeah, I’m not building any features for Virtu. I’m just making sure that it’s got PHP compatibility and then it still works. I think that that’s the key of like, I don’t think people need to have fear today of being like, If I don’t build a full site editing today, will my site still be good in five years? I think absolutely it will be. I think there will be a lot of people using classic themes, the customiser, that whole experience. But do I think in five years that if you built a new site, you would be using a classic theme? Probably not, and I think that’s the difference.
[00:43:35.140] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, hopefully I’ll be using cadence and just a starter for you.
[00:43:40.080] – Benjamin Ritner 1
I’m planning on that. That’s what we’re building toward, is that you would be using cadence and eventually cadence will have the options to say, Hey, do you want to start full site editing?
[00:43:50.740] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I’m not going to do it next year, but the year after the WP Tonic site is a very large website and it’s a mixture of different bits, but it’s a massive… Because I produce a lot of content and it’s got a lot of pages, a lot of posts. But- I think that maybe the end of next year, I’m going to move it into cadence. Because the amazing job that you and your team, you seem fanatical about speed.
[00:44:24.600] – Benjamin Ritner 1
You.
[00:44:26.130] – Jonathan Denwood
Are un-present.
[00:44:26.910] – Benjamin Ritner 1
Not a knee-performant.
[00:44:28.900] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. I bet because there’s a lot of independent evidence out there that cadence and you and your team have done a fabulous job on there. I can only imagine the amount of energy you’ve had to put in to keep it those speeds up.
[00:44:51.470] – Benjamin Ritner 1
Even in the last year, some of our biggest updates over the last year were improving front-end performance with the way that our JavaScript was written and updating and refactoring. I think that that’s a key part of… Yeah, just where the web is going and where a cadence will.
[00:45:09.600] – Jonathan Denwood
Continue to say- It’s bonkers, really, isn’t it? This whole field is a bit bonkers in it because people’s expectations and their wants around the different things that they want to do with their website presence. Then they want speed as well, don’t they? But their requirements are ever-expanding, aren’t they?
[00:45:32.990] – Benjamin Ritner 1
Yeah. I mean, people want 10 different auto-play videos on their homepage and they want that to be loading in half a second. Those are challenges and they’re not impossible challenges, they’re just challenges.
[00:45:46.750] – Jonathan Denwood
When it comes to cadence, in the next 12 months, 18 months, generally, where would you like cadence WP to be? What would you think? What would you see as a good place for it where you would be… Now you always got to be pushing it, but in the next 12 months, 18 months, I think that’s a reasonable… Any further out, that’s just impossible to tell you. Yeah, I.
[00:46:12.960] – Benjamin Ritner 1
Don’t know. I couldn’t tell you. Exactly.
[00:46:15.540] – Jonathan Denwood
Any thoughts you’d like to share with the audience?
[00:46:20.110] – Benjamin Ritner 1
Yeah, I think one thing that we’re very short term, we’ve got some goals, some things. We just released a prerelease of cadence blocks with AI, so you’ll be able to generate sections that have AI content and more unique to you images and things like that. As we go forward, AI-generated starter templates is part of what we’re going to try to really land into the field. And then along with all of that, you talked about you guys have a child team Builders, we’re going to be relooking at, okay, let’s make these leaps. We’ve got some new leaps here with AI. Now how do we get this stuff to the people who are building more niche? Because we need to keep creating the data and the software to allow all of these niche peoples. We’ve got the feminist blogging sites that are building out beautiful feminist blogging themes. Let’s get them the tools they need to build and to speak to that audience. That’s the thing for me is I want to figure out how we take the innovation jump that we’re about to go through with AI into cadence, and then how do we get these tools to this audience, this marketplace that’s using cadence to power these niche solution-based stuff that leads to great, great success for those people.
[00:47:53.000] – Benjamin Ritner 1
That’s the thing that’s really exciting me, is how do we make this onboarding experience better for users? Then how do we allow all these people that are very smart in their specific areas the tools they.
[00:48:05.350] – Jonathan Denwood
Need to- I think you’re spot on because I think a lot of people get fixated with Squarespace and Wix. But the truth is that every niche sector, every industry sector has a group of SaaS-based competitors to WordPress that any industry at WPtonic, it’s membership learning management systems, buddyboss. That’s what we do. That’s what we talk about that I have enough of podcasts around membership that’s really grown a lot. I’d started it over a year ago and it’s grown a lot. I’m getting a lot of good feedback about it. But our main competitors are SaaS-based, they’re endless. But I say that there is only three of them that are any good compared to WordPress. There’s Kajabi, Podio, and maybe mighty networks. Circle, it bolts on to WordPress. That’s what their focus was. But there’s an army of them. But the truth is there’s only about three or four that If somebody totally says, I just don’t want to touch WordPress, you’ve got to respect the decision. Obviously, because digital ownership, sovereignty is really important for me, and I just don’t think it’s a great idea to build your whole online business on somebody else’s property. You want as much digital sovereignty as you can get.
[00:49:59.920] – Benjamin Ritner 1
Absolutely.
[00:50:00.600] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s why in business terms, I think it’s still a great idea. That’s my little bit, but I totally agree with you there. What are some of the tool services that you utilize daily, weekly, monthly? Some SaaS projects, some WordPress stuff, whatever comes in your mind thatI think that’s the other thing, I think the great position of WordPress. I see key plug-ins as key Lego blocks. I got this metaphor from Spencer Forum, and I think he was right there. I think we’re running out. When you come back next time, I’ve got some extra questions about how you can keep WordPress competitive, allow new life into the WordPress bigger ecosystem, but how you can improve that people have a mixture of independent plug-ins and don’t end up with a Frankenstein that doesn’t really benefit anybody, that’s a tricky one. I don’t think anybody’s come up with a good answer, really.
[00:51:30.040] – Benjamin Ritner 1
But I.
[00:51:32.100] – Jonathan Denwood
Think one of the ways you do it is you look for quality providers or you look for a company like WPtonic or anybody out there that can provide guidance. These are rectable building plug-ins should be in your stack. I think one of the great things that’s happened lately is we’re great fans of Fluent, CRM, and the Fluent team, and they brought out a great calendar booking plug-in because it was really needed and they brought that. We’re great fans of the Fluent Form plug-in, the Free and the Pro. It’s just a great stack, and combining that with cadence as well with something like WP Vision from Jack, he’s a great developer and entrepreneur in the WordPress space. He doesn’t pay me, folks, for that either. But you see where I’m coming from? Can you see?
[00:52:38.510] – Benjamin Ritner 1
Yeah. I use Fluent Support on a site as well. It’s great to have a shared inbox where you’re not going to have to do.
[00:52:49.140] – Jonathan Denwood
That- Well, we’re using a SAS service at the present moment, but we’re going to move to fluent support. Because I was using it for a historic reason. I’m just lazy, folks. I’ve got so much to deal with. I was using the free service and to have one custom field next year, if I let it renew, it’s going to cost me over $300. It doesn’t seem a huge amount, folks, but all these SaaS 300s build up to a very large bill at the end of the year. You just mentioned Fluent Support, what are some of the other things?
[00:53:31.460] – Benjamin Ritner 1
Fluent CRM, I think I’ve really used that on side projects and things like that. I love it. I would say automate woo, and this would be a little bit like the DOP Fusion, AutomateWO has been a product that I found a number of years ago, and it keeps delighting in terms of just making things really easy when I need to do custom automations using WordPress and WooCommerce. I find myself needing to do that frequently. Because I’m a developer, it’s pretty easy to be like, I want to create this custom functionality. But then to get to trigger that easily through Automate woo, I found that that’s a tool I use a lot on a lot of websites. I’m trying to think of, outside of your big, obviously I use WooCommerce. Just recently, I started using Verify Customer, which is a woocommerce extension.
[00:54:39.850] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, what does that do?
[00:54:41.320] – Benjamin Ritner 1
Just verifies their email before they get access to their account. All right. If they register on your registration page. And it’s a nice way to just safeguard your account page. And even if you’ve got stuff that you want to prevent someone from accessing without first creating an account.
[00:55:03.850] – Jonathan Denwood
Can I ask you this before the last question? I frame this one, it wasn’t in our list, but what do you think is going on with WooCommas? Because I think it’s linked to how long Gutenberg’s taken, really, because I just feel that WUD is just leaving a lot of money on the table. And the reason why is that it’s not going to make me any money, but what benefits WordPress in general, I feel will benefit me in the end, Carma. I just feel that automatic, because of the length of Gutenberg, WooCommerce hasn’t moved on. I think they just said that you’re going to utilize some of the blocks, but Shopify has just made a ton of money. I was about six, seven years ago that the last large Shopify project I got involved and it was a nightmare. The idea, Shopify like all these SaaS, it’s fine if you’re just going to stay with what they offer, but when you extend it, it gets really complicated. You think WordPress could get complicated, and I lost a lot of my hair through that project.
[00:56:29.500] – Benjamin Ritner 1
Yeah, for sure.
[00:56:32.090] – Jonathan Denwood
It just seems that… Where do you think WU Coms is going? Would you agree what I’m hinting? That it seems to be a giant and it needs a lot more love and it needs to be pushed. I think the reason why it hasn’t is around Gutenberg to some extent. Or do you think I’m totally.
[00:56:51.110] – Benjamin Ritner 1
Wrong there? No, I think you’re right. I think they haven’t known how to move forward with GutenbergKutenberg, I don’t know who made some of the decisions that were made, and I don’t want to rip on anyone, but I’ve been very confused as a developer of why they created two separate template systems, two separate CSS structures, one for Kutenberg and one for Classic, when both are needed all the time. It just means you’re loading multiple things. Right now they’re using React to render out a basic reviews widget on the front end. There’s just some interesting and strange decisions in some of the way that they’re going about their Kutenberg stuff. I just think like a lot of people, they’ve been having to wait as Kutenberg matured to be able to say, this is how we’re going to tackle this problem. I’m hopeful of the future. I know one of my colleagues just went and took a job at Automatic. So James Kemp, who used to run Iconic, he just took a job with WooCommerce to go and help them with that project. I think in particular, think about how they’re working with third-party developers, how WooCommerce is working with third-party developers.
[00:58:13.530] – Benjamin Ritner 1
But he’s a wealth of knowledge, and I’m hopeful that that leads to good changes of the way that they created their block structure was so unfriendly to third-party developers that it was just really weird. It was just strange. I mean, a lot of WooCommerce’s strength has been this stability and this ability to extend it. They did a lot of work to do optimizing the database tables and things like that for orders, and that’s all great work. Their work on cart and checkout took a really long time, but it’s coming along. You can see some things are moving. There’s some good progress in certain areas, but it does miss the where people have the hardest time with WooCommerce is in the product editing screen. It gets overwhelming, it’s confusing. That should have been reactified and just a much smoother and better experience a long time ago. Hopefully they’ll bring in the UX talent to make that happen and make that product editing screen amazing.
[00:59:19.510] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, they just got a golden opportunity, if it was done right, to really hurt Shopify where it really hurts, haven’t they? Yep, they do. I’m not the smartest tool in the toolbox. I’ve lost more money. I’ve made a lot of money in my life, but my problem has been keeping it. I’m not the bluntest tool in the toolbox, and I’m not the sharpest either. But it just seems obvious that there’s just enormous opportunities there if it’s done in the right way for automatic. It’s a clear they can have their woo commas and they can make tons of money and they can pay back all their investors and everybody’s happy and they can still support the rest of us. There’s just a ton of money there, isn’t it?
[01:00:17.310] – Benjamin Ritner 1
Yeah. I think they’ve made some decent strides with woopay, creating their own payment gateway essentially, and with wooexpress, they’redefinitely trying to capture more of that lucrative audience. But there’s some things that could be done to core to just take away that woocommerce is hard, woocommerce is messy, I’m going to Shopify is so much easier. In a lot of ways it’s not. It’s just.
[01:00:51.380] – Jonathan Denwood
There’s the- Well, it really does need a fully… You get the best of both worlds. You offer a fully hosted solution, but then you offer… But you have the ability people can move to their self-hosted solution when they’ve got requirements that necessitates that. It’s a win-win. One of those rare things is a win-win for everybody is a win-ful. Right, got a couple more minutes because you’ve got to be off coding. He’s got a very large… He’s got a lot. He’s got to make a success of this. He’s got a very large family of males to be. Honestly, the sound of it keeps on growing. Are you going to talk to any dogs, cats as well?
[01:01:40.000] – Benjamin Ritner 1
No, we’ve been able to say no to that right now. We have four young kids, but they do ask for dogs and cats and we’re like, No, not right now.
[01:01:48.920] – Jonathan Denwood
You look very relaxed on somebody that’s got four small children. I’ve got to say, you’re right. I come from England. I’ve been living here almost 20 years in the blessed… I am a joint citizen. I love America, I love Britain. People say, Which one do you like the most? I say, They’re just different. I’ve got an American friend that’s just moved to London, and he’s been there three years. He said, I love England, but the weather is awful. I just grim. He said, I never knew the winters were so awful in London. He said, It only lightens up around 11:00 AM and then it gets dark around 2:30. That’s right. He said, It’s gray for about five months. I said, Yeah, that’s it. That’s why I don’t want to go back. It’s not because I don’t love the country, but I just can’t stand it. I’m into Dr. Who and The TARDIS. If you had your own TARDIS and yougo back earlier. I gave you that year, if you knew a couple of things. But if you could go back earlier, I gave you that year, if you knew a couple of things, but if you could go back to the early start of your career, is there one thing that you would, if you could consult yourself, give a little tip, you would love to be able to tell yourself.
[01:03:20.380] – Benjamin Ritner 1
Man, it’s so hard.
[01:03:22.700] – Jonathan Denwood
I tell you… Just go. I’ll just tell myself, don’t these negative messages that other people have told you, don’t let it go and just go for it.
[01:03:40.900] – Benjamin Ritner 1
Yeah. That’s super powerful. I think there’s that and I think you can get stressed about the demands that customers are making on your product. You create something- I don’t know how you.
[01:03:58.220] – Jonathan Denwood
Do it. I know because I run this small hosting company. I know the crazy supporting, the craziness of a lot of people.
[01:04:10.250] – Benjamin Ritner 1
Yeah. You got to be able to take it in stride and I think you got to give yourself the slack of saying, It will be impossible for me to serve everyone as much as I want everyone to have a.
[01:04:24.030] – Jonathan Denwood
Good experience. I know you got your family. Are you still living in Montana? Yeah. Beautiful. He’s good country. I know it’s cliché, but it’s true, isn’t it? How do you manage to take these switch off? Do you manage to take these switch off?
[01:04:42.870] – Benjamin Ritner 1
Yeah. My wife would tell you I do a pretty good job. I think part of it is the space I’m in. This is actually my neighbor’s basement. I’m just like three houses away from my house. By leaving this, I can just leave it all when I walk out the door. That helps a lot. I go home and do not have to take on all that pressure. That’s not always been the case. Certainly, in the early days, that’s been a learned thing. There’s no arriving.
[01:05:14.540] – Jonathan Denwood
You won’t get to. This is the highlight of your career, Ben, ending up in a neighbor’s basement.
[01:05:19.710] – Benjamin Ritner 1
Yes, exactly. It’s a daylight basement. I have a.
[01:05:25.030] – Jonathan Denwood
View out there. That was English humor, Ben. That was English humor at the end.
[01:05:28.870] – Benjamin Ritner 1
But yeah, I think that’s a big part. You will not arrive in the product. There will always be something else to build. There will always be a new demand and a new feature request or, Hey, your thing isn’t as good, you’ll always, always hear that. You just have to take, do what you can do the best you can, and make sure that you’re being transparent with your customers, This is what I’m able to accomplish. I think that’s like, yeah, you just save so much of your mental space of, like, I can remember many, many days early on just being very stressed out by the demands and being like, I have to get this out because people are wanting this and you have to.
[01:06:18.070] – Jonathan Denwood
Be able to. Sometimes you do need to push yourself. It’s just- Yes. But you tend to listen at the beginning of your career to those who shout the loudest, don’t they? And they tend to be the most unrealistic. It takes a little bit of experience to see if somebody generally needs something or they just tried it on, and it’s a judgment call every time. Ben, what’s the best way for people to find out what you’re up to and some of your faults, Ben?
[01:06:58.340] – Benjamin Ritner 1
Yeah. We have a Facebook group at Cadence. There are links on our website. It’s just an excellent community.
[01:07:07.030] – Jonathan Denwood
Please, help a member.
[01:07:08.370] – Benjamin Ritner 1
Yeah, we have almost 13,000 people in it, and it’s very active, mainly with Cadence. How do I do this in Cadence? And things like that. But I would say that is a great way to hear what’s going on in our community. And then also, I’ve been posting more in there, and I would intend to post more as we go forward with videos. I’m like, hey, here’s what we’re up to. But that’s a great place. We post about our podcasts and release them and things like that. So that’s where you’ll get stuff. But you can always go to our website and subscribe to our newsletter as well. We usually send out something on Thursdays like, Here’s what’s going on with Cadence and anything that a new YouTube video that I did or something, it’ll all show up there.
[01:07:55.340] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, that’s great. And folks, we recalled this on Thursdays around 9:00 AM Pacific Standard Time. The live show is always up there. We would love for you to join us and ask some questions for our guests. That would be great. Remember that at 9:00 AM Pacific Standard Time, join us if you’ve got any questions. I’ve got some fabulous guests. I have a couple more weeks before my Christmas New Year break. I’ve got some great guests coming up, and we’ve got some great guests for January as well. Ben, it’s been a pleasure talking to you. Absolutely. I think we’ve covered a load of stuff. I’ve interrupted a little bit, but not too much. I can be a bugger for that. But I think we’ve really covered a lot of ground, actually, a ton of stuff in the hour. Hopefully, you’re… I know you’re busy, but hopefully, you’ll come back sometime in the new year, and we can have another chat. That would be great, Ben.
[01:08:52.990] – Benjamin Ritner 1
Sounds great. I always enjoy it.
[01:08:55.320] – Jonathan Denwood
Thanks, Ben. We will be back soon, folks. See you soon. Bye.
[01:08:59.320] – Benjamin Ritner 1
All right. Bye. Bye.
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