Multisite: Ugly Stepchild or Hidden Unicorn of WordPress in 2025?

Discover the truth behind Multisite: a misunderstood feature or WordPress’s secret weapon?

Explore the pros and cons of this powerful tool.

In this insightful show, we explore the often-overlooked features and benefits of WordPress Multisite. Is it the ugly stepchild of website management or a hidden unicorn that can transform your online presence? We delve into the pros and cons, showcasing real-world applications and expert insights. Whether you’re a developer or a business owner, this video will illuminate the potential of Multisite.

With Special Guest Robert Windisch, CIO (Chief Information Officer) at Syde Europe’s Biggest WordPress Agency

#1 – Robert, can you give the audience a more detailed introduction on how you got involved in web design, development, and WordPress?

#2 – Robert, Can you give the audience a quick outline of what Multisite is and how it fits into the world of WordPress at the beginning of 2025?

#3 – Can you give real-world examples of how Multisite could or was a great solution?

#4 – What are Multisite’s most significant weaknesses at the beginning of 2025?

#5 – What do you think are some things you could share with our audience about Multisite that most developers don’t understand or generally know?

#5— What AI tools do you personally use to help you run your business?

#6—If you had your time machine (H. G. Wells) and could travel back to the beginning of your career, what advice would you give?

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The Show’s Main Transcript

[00:00:04.260] – Jonathan Denwood

Welcome back to the WP-Tonic Show this week in WordPress and Bootstrap SASS. It’s episode 952. We’ve got a great guest on the show. Robert Windisch, Chief Information Officer at Cid, says they are Europe’s biggest WordPress agency. I presume that’s correct. In this episode, we’re going to be talking about Multisite. What is it? Where is it at the beginning of 2025? Then we’re going to be talking also, maybe during the show, a concept around multisite, of multisite, and everything to do with Robert’s journey in the world of WordPress and being part of a large WordPress agency. What’s that like at the beginning of 2025? It should be a great show. Robert, can you give us a quick 10- 20-second intro of yourself? Then, when we go into the central part of the show, we’ll delve more into your background.

[00:01:25.380] – Robert Windisch

I’ve been an agency owner since 2005. We started our agency, and I have a developer background. We’re doing large agency-like clients, the biggest names on the planet, but NDA-wise, that’s all I can say about that. But it was a huge project, and we have been doing WordPress since dawn.

[00:01:49.060] – Jonathan Denwood

Where did you get the hack from?

[00:01:51.760] – Robert Windisch

That’s the CMS Garden, as you can see here. It’s a nonprofit organization for the other open-source CMS. That started 2012, 2013. People will recognize you for that if you keep at something for a decade, just as a hint.

[00:02:13.130] – Jonathan Denwood

I don’t need that. I’ve just got a very instinctive face. I am ugly. There, Kirk, would you like to introduce yourself to our new listeners and viewers?

[00:02:26.960] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah, thanks, Jonathan. My name is Kirk von Ahnen. I own an agency myself called Mañana Nomás. We focus primarily on membership and learning websites, working with tools like Lifter LMS and with the great folks at WP Tonic.

[00:02:39.180] – Jonathan Denwood

That’s fantastic. Before we go into the main part of this great interview, we’ve got a message on one of our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. Before we go into the main part of the interview, I also want to point out we’ve got a great resource for the power user and for the freelancer. We’ve got a created list of the best WordPress plugins and services. It will save you a ton of time. They’ve all been used by WP Tonic or they’re supplied by WP Tonic to our clients. Plus, we got some great special deals from the sponsors of the show. You can get all these goodies by going over to WP-tonic. Com/deals. Wp robert. Com/deals. What more could you ask for, my beloved tribe? Probably a lot more, but that’s all you’re going to get from that page. So, Robert, so Can you give us the intro, how you got into the semi-crazy world of web development and WordPress? What led you to this spot in your career, Robert?

 

[00:03:59.750] – Robert Windisch

So I started as a developer for a different CMS.

 

[00:04:03.920] – Jonathan Denwood

What? Oh, I will forgive you, Robert, but.

 

[00:04:08.340] – Robert Windisch

It’s a very European one, so nobody outside of Europe is really knowing that. Then I stumbled in the WordPress community. As you know, the saying, Come for the code, stay for the people, that’s exactly what happened with me. I then was using WordPress for my private website, got into the German community, asked two very, very, very, very, very, very stupid questions that were answered like thousands of times. I asked them again as a person, but definitely not do. They helped me. I was like, Oh, that’s interesting. They are nice here. I think I stay. With my developer knowledge and the helping other people syndrome I have, I quickly ranked up into the moderator status in German forum. Then with my developer skills, I could help them then also get better things and better websites for the German community. Then the leadership of the German community then came together, was like, What if we do a company? And time’s warp to now, that’s it.

 

[00:05:21.090] – Jonathan Denwood

So what was your development background before you got into the WordPress community then, Robert?

 

[00:05:28.930] – Robert Windisch

So I was a PHP developer. It was simply doing PHP and back-end stuff. Luckily me, CSS was not really that big at that time and I had front-end developers in our agency, in the old job I I was in a small- How did you get into the world of PHP?

 

[00:05:49.960] – Jonathan Denwood

If you don’t mind me asking.

 

[00:05:51.770] – Robert Windisch

That was 1999, it’s ages ago. Luckily, PHP 4 was still was already around. I simply was learning PHP by myself. There was so much documentation out there. I learned HTML in 1997. I had my first website up and running in 1997, which clearly shows my age right now. Then, simply, PHP and JavaScript was something that you then simply slowly run, curved into and evolved into. Doing that for a few years to then be in the agency, doing some CMS work and then stumbling privately into the job that makes more fun. Then from that, growing to be one of the biggest European agency in that regard. It’s still very privileged and very weird that I ended up to a job where I’m paid to fly to Manila to be at a word camp and speak there. It’s just like it’s still insane.

 

[00:07:08.390] – Jonathan Denwood

Right. Over to you, Kurt.

 

[00:07:11.860] – Kurt von Ahnen

Nice. Well, it’s serendipitous that we have you on the call today. Just this week, I’ve had multiple people ask me about using different tools in a multi-site environment. I’m always amazed at how people really don’t seem to understand even what it is or what they’re asking for as a business owner. If you could, could you give our audience just a quick outline of what a multi-site is and how it fits into WordPress, especially now?

 

[00:07:39.250] – Robert Windisch

Yes. The easiest explanation is that multi-site is having multiple instances on one installation. That is the easiest giveaway for that. There are good ways of using that. For example, if the plugins and the seams that you’re using, if they are the same, if you are reusing those things. The easiest explanation I always give is global brand management. Imagine if you have a company that wants to have multiple websites of the same content with you and you want to stay with the same plugins, with the same theme, you want to have different angles and you want to give different people access to different sites. What you should not do with multi-side is going like, I I can be a web hosting company and I can run WordPress on my own, can have customers use this, and I’m definitely be the one that cracks wordpress. Com as a way of earning money. I’m definitely will outperform them. That It’s like, good luck, get a time machine, get like 2005 or 2004, and try your idea there, and good luck with that. And otherwise, if you have, for example, universities are using multisite. If you have different Even departments being their own owner of content and plugins that they can activate from the realms of existing plugins in the multisite environment, then that’s also a good use.

 

[00:09:15.420] – Robert Windisch

I always work from the examples of the no-brainers of multisite use to explain people what multisite is.

 

[00:09:24.070] – Jonathan Denwood

But you can, it was pushed. I just want to see, I have got another business apart from WP That’s built on multi-site, and it’s based on a SaaS model. We provide marketing tools and email and text using API with a provider, Syngrid, and it’s aimed at a Pacific industry. That was pushed for a while as well, wasn’t it? Using multi-site as a I forgot what the WordPress term for it was, but they’re using a Pacific- WordPress as a service? Yes.

 

[00:10:05.640] – Robert Windisch

But that’s still a use case.

 

[00:10:08.090] – Jonathan Denwood

In your opinion, is that a legitimate use case?

 

[00:10:12.960] – Robert Windisch

Yeah, because you can install a WordPress and configure it right now very fast if you have zip files ready and you can… Hosting companies can do this now from a different angle. But if your sites are marketing sites with a clear cut out of content, with a clear cut out of like seams and plugins, multi-site, if you are ready to work with that, it’s faster. It’s simply faster. If you stay on the same server, if you want to run this up, otherwise, because then afterwards, if you have thousands of thousands of installations, basically, that are single installations that all need to be updated, that all need to be maintained, that all need to be checked. So if you If you have one multi-site installation and you, for example, update your SEO plugin, you have it updated everywhere at the same time. If you have a running business and you simply jump up every time a new installation of WordPress, that’s the thing later you need to maintain. So that’s why Multisite, if it’s just like a small website, like a landing page, for example, or a website with bigger stuff, but people care about that, then Multisite can give you this overview, this this managing benefit that you have, which you have plenty of installations, single installations you don’t have.

 

[00:11:39.090] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, we provide all the tools and a dashboard, and we provide a simple website as part of the package. But if they want a more customized website, we do it as a separate hosted solution, and we just link the dashboard to the back-end of their website if they want to edit their website. That’s how we deal with what you’ve outlined, because if they want to… It doesn’t deal… It’s not meant to have different websites that are highly customized, and it’s not suited for that. Just another quick follow-through question, and I’m going to let Kurt do the main question. In the world of Gutenberg and Gutenberg blocks and that, what you outlined, because of the reality of Gutenberg, has that reality of having one website, one theme with maybe some minor changes, maybe a selection of quasar child themes based on a theme in multi-site. In the world of Gutenberg and full-site editing, has that at Paradigm? Has that fundamentally changed at all?

 

[00:13:05.010] – Robert Windisch

No, but Multisite always gave you the benefit if you have interlocked things. For example, just imagine you have a branding website and then you have like 100 subbrands of the same brands, but they are locally different in all over the world. With a multi-site, you could have one content repository where you then change the content over the same content over all sites. For example, if you do a UI change, if you have 100 different installations, good luck rolling this out without problems to all of the 100 sites. If you have branding-wise 100 sites in the multisite, you can have the theme or you can have, let’s say, global blocks, and you simply can have content that is simply connected with each other all through your multisite.

 

[00:13:59.260] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, that’s what we’ve done. We’ve built a start of things using Cadence WP and implementing them into a multi-site environment, and it seems to be working quite well. They have a selection of child starter themes, and they also have a selection of landing pages based on those child themes, based on cadence. But that’s we’ve done. Over to you, Kurt, for the next main question.

 

[00:14:35.320] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah, I was just thinking of use cases. Our next real question is, can you give us a real-world example of how a multi-site could or was a great solution? But I was just thinking in my own repertoire, I remember I had a client that had a dating site, but they wanted a dating site that was a multi-site. So they wanted it to be an overarching site that was the dating site. And then they had a site for different lifestyles that they went after. So all of the different lifestyle sites, they were similar, to your point, similar themes, similar content, similar layouts, but each one was managed separately as its own entity. I thought that that worked really, really well. But in your use case, especially the size of your agency, can you give us a real world example of one that was really good?

 

[00:15:25.780] – Robert Windisch

I cannot give you a URL, but what are you describing describing to have a global brand and simply have different solutions for different countries. For example, the benefit that Multisight gives you is to also have different custom solutions for different sites. For example, the Japanese website or a German. It’s stay on privacy stuff. European have different laws, so you could have plugins installed on the European websites that that are not installed in the US websites. That’s a benefit of having the same but then different solutions for different sites. In the global brand management world, that is the easiest thing where, for example, we compete with Sitecore and Adobe Experience Manager, where we simply offer the same solutions that those big brands need and that they have from global sporting brands, merchandise brands, all of those things, they have a global view of the world, and then they have local differences and local specifications that they need to match. That’s where a multisite is an easy way for them, for example, to have an overview of what URLs are used. Because that’s one of the biggest security thing that they are having is being able to know where exactly their branding, their CI, their CD is shown what URLs they are using and not have, for example, a branding agency in Brazil, for example, starting a website that they need for two months, and then they forget it afterwards because it’s paid for a year and the campaign, but the campaign is done after two months.

 

[00:17:26.430] – Robert Windisch

Nobody of the people who rank the site up is caring about the site three months later, but they’re still pointing a URL of the global brand to this WordPress installation. Having that on a central spot, on a central URL spot, and to have overview over that and user access, onboarding, offboarding, all of those things to have it in a central repository that is simply helping those big brands.

 

[00:17:55.660] – Kurt von Ahnen

Nice. As you were talking, I was thinking our work in the eLearning space. I can see how a lot of people want to have training that’s in different languages. We end up having a lot of conversations about translation models for sites. But to your point, some of those language requirements might have different content needs based on the laws and stuff. So maybe the multisite is a more apropos choice. It’s interesting to think through. Jonathan?

 

[00:18:27.610] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, in the title of this interview, Robert, I multi-multisite. I’ve redone the title Multisite: The ugly Stepchild or the Hidden Unicorn of WordPress. The reason I used that title, Robert, I thought it was quite flippant, but I also thought it was quite aimed because there was a time where multisite seemed to be the flavor of the month in WordPress, and Automatic seem to be pushing it. It’s not only multi-site. I’ve been involved in WordPress not quite as long as you, but almost. I’ve seen this with automatic and WordPress in general. There’s been other elements of WordPress that seem to be the flavor of the month, the flavor of the year, and then they’re not. It seemed to be hinted that multisite wasn’t going to be developed anymore. It wasn’t going to be killed, or it seemed to be hinted that it was no longer really going to be pushed in that. Where do you see it at the beginning? Is it still updated? Is it still actively improved? Or where is it? Because I think a few people shied away from it because they didn’t know if it was just going to be killed and died off, if you know what I mean, Robert.

 

[00:20:12.190] – Robert Windisch

Yeah. So the problem with Multisight is that, it sounds weird, it’s like feature-ready, feature done. So it’s simply it’s working while we’re speaking. For example, the last White House was a multisite because poor translations. You have big universities, really, really huge universities using multisite to simply use this possibility of the department stuff. It’s simply been used, but there is not that much improvement in the development of that. There’s currently something like 170 issues in the track for WordPress call for Multisite. The topics are very niche. Some of them, if you use an old ticket that was solved, a few releases back was, if you have multi-site installed on a port, it will create a problem if you create a site on that because then the port number will crash something. As you both going like, oh, yeah, that’s a problem I constantly run into. Not. That’s why it’s not really that much of a of a hassle to have code updates for that. We had in the version five something, we had like domains. I think it was even the four, the version 4, where we have domains as a standard now in. Before that, you needed to have a special plugins to have domains overriding the domains in that.

 

[00:21:54.330] – Robert Windisch

That was solved like ages ago. Even multi-site was merged in version 3. 0, and it got updated along the way because we have component maintainers who still care, and you have still people who care about the code. I think for the next release, we have three feature or three track tickets that are up for merging for multi-side. But it’s not that shiny object because it’s something that simply works. For the most people, when I For example, I’m at WordCams and I speak with people and ask them, Okay, what do you have that bugs you with Multisite? The first answer everybody gets like, Yeah, nothing. And then you go like, Okay, what is the code you have running that works around something in multi-side. You ask a follow-up question, ask a follow-up question, then you go like, Yeah, there is this small thing that bothers me, but I’ve solved it already for two years in WordPress core. The thing that I currently plan is to simply get more of those weird workarounds out of people and if it’s useful into core. But I think it’s like you have some weird workarounds there that it’s not really needed for the majority of multisite users.

 

[00:23:20.620] – Robert Windisch

It’s more for their special needs, for their special workflows that they are having. Again, with now WordPress Where’s Multisight been in core since WordPress 3. 0, which is like 2010-ish, 2011, if you now change something in Multisight that was behaving one way in the past and you change it now, you also break workflows that people are having because they simply built on a weird workflow or a weird bug that Multisight is having. That’s why it’s such a long running smooth move running solution that is not that… It doesn’t get that much attention, but many people are using it very quietly.

 

[00:24:10.350] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, a lot of people would like that same case that you’ve outlined for the main WordPress. Do you think what I outlined to you was in some way linked to this term using WordPress as a service, a WASP, this whole use in WordPress as a SaaS that was pushed very heavily by certain people in the WordPress community. It still is there, but it lost traction. Do you think that’s part of what I outlined, which you have answered that? It gets the impression it’s a semi-dead corner of WordPress, but the reality is it works so well that there isn’t much that needs to be done to it.

 

[00:25:06.040] – Robert Windisch

Just to jump in there for a second. What we need for Multisight, what’s the thing that is really dear to our heart as an agency is when the new relaunch of the back-end interface comes. That is the point where, oh, my God, yes, we need help for multi-side because the interface is complicated. It can be very complicated for who easily stumble into this, and they are overwhelmed with the sheer features of the possibilities there. Because that’s the thing that I have for conversations with people at events, that for them, multi-side that can be too big. And it’s simply because they still, for example, multilingual. Just take multilingual as an example. We’re using multilingual with our plugin as a multi-side solution. We need to help people unlearnt multilingual workarounds that they’re having with other plugins by simply using core multisite feature. We need to help them unlearnt and stepping back and rethinking how core would do things. That’s why for us, having an easier interface for the whole multi-site management, having a streamlined interface once we are touching the new back-end redesign and having easy easier data exposure to them, helping them easier navigate all these things.

 

[00:26:36.430] – Robert Windisch

That is something that once we are getting there with WordPress to have the new interface and to talk about the new back-end interface and new data structure, that we really can improve the usability of multi-site.

 

[00:26:51.510] – Jonathan Denwood

I think one of its strengths is that you do have a super admin, which is one of the things I really find frustrating with non-multisite is you do have this super admin ability of a multisite that you can have admin, but then you can have one or whoever is classified as super admin. Do you agree with that? Because I always thought that was that editor roles, and it’s always a painful part, especially when it comes learning management systems that we’re involved in or a page building plugin. Editor role is never powerful enough to do a Pacific field, so then you have to give the individual admin. You want them to have a certain level admin, but you don’t want them really to be able to delete the web or do really crazy things. Am I making sense for a bit.

 

[00:28:01.200] – Robert Windisch

Yes, but that’s where the capability system of WordPress, and you can have custom roles, you can have the abilities there to give people custom roles. The problem is you need to have for a plugin or you need to write some code with that. That’s why it’s harder to do this. There are so many possibilities. Just imagine the phase three stuff with collaboration and workflows. This could revamp revamp the way how editors are working in WordPress by simply working on the whole website or working on more things where they right now just need the… It’s easier for them to have admin rights because we do not have a real workflow system inside of WordPress to revamp things on this website and then simply be like, Okay, that’s now my pitch. And then someone with a higher level of rights can go through that and go like, Yes, It’s possible because right now, if you change something, you need to unpublish your website because then it’s really the capability system needs an overhaul for having more sophisticated workflows. That’s why currently phase three is exactly touching that and the backend interface. So I would just say to you, just wait.

 

[00:29:25.080] – Robert Windisch

Yes, it’s not a fast pace of all the changing a at the same time because we are currently talking about data and visibility in the back-end and new features of the back-end interface. But I think with the workflows, we will getting there to have more real-world solutions of changing of websites that feels more like 2025 than right now.

 

[00:29:49.960] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, it really is necessary. It’s one of the major weaknesses of non-multisite WordPress. It’s very frustrating. I have to give a load of people admin. It’s a nightmare. It’s such a security problem. Well, I think we’ve had a great chat with Robert so far. Robert seems up for it. We’re going to go for our middle break, folks. We’ll be back in a few moments. Three, two, one. We’re coming back. We’ve had a feast, a feast of multi-site. Robert seems get my humor. He’s not crying. But before we go into the second part of the show, I just want to point out, if you’re a freelancer, if you’re a power user, and you’re looking to build a complicated WordPress website, And you don’t want any arguments with your clients about utilizing that expensive WordPress plugin, and you’ve been forced to use just a free plugin which isn’t good enough. Wouldn’t it be great to have a WordPress hosting partner that can provide all the best WordPress technology to you in one plan level? That’s what you get at WP Tonic. We specialize in membership and community large websites, but any large project, we’re probably a great partner, and we can provide all this technology so you can avoid those ugly conversations with your clients.

 

[00:31:25.330] – Jonathan Denwood

If that sounds interesting, go over to WP-Tonic. Comwp-tonic. Com/partners, wp-tonic. Com/partners, and let’s build something special together. Back over to you, Kurt.

 

[00:31:43.600] – Kurt von Ahnen

I’m just going to be honest. I was listening to you guys talk and I felt a little bit lost on some of the phrases.

 

[00:31:50.030] – Jonathan Denwood

So I just wanted to-Am I impressing you, Kirk? Am I technical knowledge?

 

[00:31:54.350] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah, I just want to put it out there. I’m thinking-I’m not impressing Robert, I can assure you, I’m thinking about our listeners, listeners and followers. What do you think some things that you could share with our audience about multi-site that developers don’t understand or generally we know, and I feel like you guys were bantering on that already, but if I were to switch the mode of that question and say, Hey, Robert, to developers or freelancers or startup agencies that are looking to get involved involved in multi-site, what direction or pathway might you point them towards? Maybe that gives people an idea of how to get started so they would understand the conversation that you guys were just having.

 

[00:32:43.080] – Robert Windisch

I would recommend simply putting it up for a spin. And now comes a very weird angle with that. If you are currently listening to that and you’re not using WPCli on managing websites. Welcome to the big world. Please, please, please look into WP CLI. I know it’s a totally different angle that, Kurt, that you are looking for.

 

[00:33:09.630] – Jonathan Denwood

Can you explain to normal people, Robert, what that is?

 

[00:33:14.950] – Robert Windisch

Yes, sorry. Developer background. I’m very sorry for that.

 

[00:33:19.760] – Jonathan Denwood

Me and more tools, Robert. Can you explain to me and more tools what that is?

 

[00:33:24.540] – Robert Windisch

Wp CLI is a CLI tool, which is a command line tool for WordPress, that if you have shell access to your server, I know that sounds big words, just take them in, just breathe them in, and just feel that. The next time you click very often in your back-end doing the same task, the same to change 20 users in your WordPress back-end and to give them a different role. The enterprise people in WordPress are not doing that and not clicking around in a WordPress back-end. They’re simply writing a line of code, a line of commands in the comment line. The beauty with using that on a Linux server, for example, that most hosting companies have, is you can connect commands with each other. You can say, give me all users that have the role author. And now, as Jonathan said, that give all of them admin. Again, bad idea, very bad idea to do this.

 

[00:34:32.430] – Jonathan Denwood

But if you need to- Maybe a hacker would like to do that.

 

[00:34:37.920] – Robert Windisch

But if you need to ramp up the admin level of that, yes, you can click in the back And now think about multi-side. You need to do this throughout many sites, to three or four sites, to 10 sites, to 20 sites to change users’ access rights. You can simply write Write a comment for that to connect all these comments with each other, and then you can run this on WordPress, and simply all of those people are changing all of those sites. So it really is something that can help you work faster. And for the multisite perspective, as I said, simply give it a try. Whatever problem you run into, lucky you, you’re doing this in 2025. So it’s over like 15 years of multisite is in WordPress. It’s very, very weird if you find a problem that someone did not solve a decade ago or like five years ago. Whatever problem you run into in multisite, just ask at LLM, just ask ChatGPT questions. It’s so much content out there that you might, if you feel weird with the answer, just check if the answer is outdated Because, again, the LLMs and all of that stuff, they can maybe know not the current version of WordPress or the current version of multi-site in WordPress.

 

[00:36:10.570] – Robert Windisch

I just give you, just try it and feel very empowered by it’s simply being used while we are speaking right now. It’s serving universities. It’s serving global brands. If you start with that and you bump into something, someone probably has already solved it.

 

[00:36:32.120] – Jonathan Denwood

Are there some really great community, Slack groups, other groups out there that you would recommend to freelancers or people that we’ve triggered their interest in multi-site, but they want to join some online communities. Are there any resources like that you could recommend, Robert?

 

[00:36:54.840] – Robert Windisch

It’s hard because, again, it’s done by It’s not really a public thing where we have a central place and go like, Everybody, multi-side, go there. It’s the normal ways of doing that. There’s one community that It’s not your typical community, and it’s not really that everybody could sworn into this, but there is WP Campus, which is the community for higher education, which some of them are using multi-side as I said. I’m not saying everybody go there because they are not built for like, Hey, I have a random question about multisite. You can ping me. You can ping people as a normal WordPress forums, they can help you. You are surprised how many people know multisite, and there’s not that much. As I said, we have this now for over 15 years. There’s not that much people going Hey, I have this problem. There still will be those people, and the answers are already there. If you ask a question, you will be surprised how many people know Multisight and can help you.

 

[00:38:13.860] – Jonathan Denwood

Sorry, go on, Kurt. Sorry.

 

[00:38:16.550] – Kurt von Ahnen

I just wanted to say as a follow-up to how to get started, I’ve run into this in my own experiments with multi-site, and it’s not one of the questions, so I’m blindsiding you here. But how important is the hosting that you’re using to a multi-site example? And I’m throwing it out there like, I was on one and it said it was multi-site capable. I wanted to launch this really cool project. This was years ago. And then it just horribly failed. But it could not sustain what we were trying to do. Then I moved over to a more premium host and voila, magic. Everything started to work. As people listen to this and they get intrigued or they think, Hey, maybe multi-site It is a pathway for me, how important is it for them to consider a better hosting platform?

 

[00:39:06.350] – Robert Windisch

Yeah, sorry. That’s the blind spot I’m having as an enterprise agency. With premium hosts, our normal language. Totally thank you for this question. The problem with that is that being a core feature and there is even some plugins that were coded by having pics run over a keyboard, they also have problems with Multiset just touch this. If you have a cheap plugin that was like five bucks on wherever, it could have problems with multisite. But most plugins that are written good enough, sorry, enterprise agency perspective, good enough that can run on multisite. The hosting part is that they’re still, because of the niche function of multisite and the people who use it as your prime example of that, were prime An example of that, we’re running into issue going like, meh, maybe the wrong hosting company. Some website as a service or WordPress as a service hosting companies, they can be surprised by multisite. That means that they are just around for a few years now because normally, after a while, they all got one or two or 20 requests for multi-side, and then they look into this feature and they simply get out of their own way of limiting WordPress.

 

[00:40:33.130] – Robert Windisch

And once they do this, it works. So normally it’s simply they’re overthinking it. They want to control this. There are some people as I said in the beginning, that I do hosting and Then hosting companies go like, Yeah, but please, I want to charge you for all sites you have on your server. They then limit multi-side, and then they charge you extra multisite, and then they want to make sure that you don’t wiggle your way around multi-side. So That really a premium hosting company or a hosting company who gives you a good vanilla hosting experience, these two can be the ones that don’t stand in your way with Multisight.

 

[00:41:16.480] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, I want to chirp in there actually, Kirk, because I think it’s very similar, Kirk, to if you’re using a learning management system, especially if you’re using Budibos. I think you can get away with spinning it up and trying it. But as soon as you get a user base and people are really using the back-end and If you’re using substandard hosting, and it’s like Robert said, it’s totally relying also on the plugin mix, and if somebody knows how to set it up. But even with those quantifiers, if you’re not on really good hosting, it seems okay until you get those first users, and then it just falls the bit, Kurt. It It just descends into a hot mess. People blame multi-site, but it’s a very similar situation to Budgie Boss or a mixture when you’re using it for marketing, email, text messages, and you got tens of thousands of emails going out, whatever. It’s that scenario. Back over to you, Kirk. Sorry, I interrupted there.

 

[00:42:40.260] – Kurt von Ahnen

No, it’s okay. Then, again, I know it took us off path a little bit in the questions, but I- I would never do that, would I, Kirk?

 

[00:42:48.210] – Jonathan Denwood

No.

 

[00:42:48.940] – Kurt von Ahnen

I believe that we’re coming up to the easy one for us, Robert, is what AI tools are you personally using in your day-to-day? We ask this with almost everybody because there’s this ubiquitous adoption of AI. What do you find yourself leaning on the most?

 

[00:43:07.230] – Robert Windisch

My day job is mostly dealing with people. Ai cannot help me with that fully of communicating with people and reading compliance stuff. You cannot simply throw a 200 question there at an AI with like, Yeah, sure. Here’s my data and please have fun with that. It’s really something that is not the day-to-day stuff that I really need to work with, but I have local running AI stuff the AIs of the possibilities and have a good machine that simply can run an AI. I have LLaMA and other things running locally. Sorry, European here. Compliance is a thing with us. Otherwise, I peaked into Claude, peaked into ChatGPT and the others to simply play with that and to have a view of what is coming and keeping up to date with that.

 

[00:44:21.760] – Jonathan Denwood

I’ve got a quick follow-through question. When it comes to actual development and AI and WordPress, the point of views where we might be in 18 months or two years time, the gap, the gulf between different people’s views in the WordPress community seem to be enormous. You seem to have a group of people that suggests that it may not be the best time to spend an enormous amount of time to become a WordPress developer if you’re in your early stages because you’d be able to put verbal commands and it will just make whatever you want. That seems to be pushed very strongly. Then there’s others that say, AI, it’s nonsense. You shouldn’t be doing it. You shouldn’t be using AI as a coding tool, or you can, but it’s got really limited. What’s your own views about this, or have you got any views about this?

 

[00:45:43.510] – Robert Windisch

About AI, the survive coding, for example. Just take the person that have no skills in software writing can create code and can create things. There’s still a need for architecture. If you go over the first hub of a prototype, there’s still a use for someone who knows, who understands architecture that survives future iterations of what you currently try to do. They are still a use for developers because people can really hard describe what this will be leading to. Ai will help them get a float, get started. But in terms of architecture of long-standing things that even they can evolve and not break over the long term data migration and all of those things, this can be factored in by a senior developer that AI currently is not. Those leverages of enabling those people. On the content side, WordPress will not go away because people still need a way to express themselves. I know we all talk about business websites and all of that, but we still have a huge number of WordPress installations that are normal end users that want to publish their ideas and to have this on their own website and not on some social media platform that will simply can disable them in a WIM idea, going like, No, we don’t.

 

[00:47:34.580] – Robert Windisch

Everybody starting their first name with a C is now bad. They can simply do this. Being on the open web, that is something where WordPress still has a saying and still is the most used CMS. From a developer perspective, just to round this up, from a business perspective, having someone writing you 100% custom code from a big enterprise perspective, that is a danger. Because if this person goes away or if this person will leave you, then you have a problem that… Congratulations, you have 100% custom code. When you go to the next person and going like, yes, I have all this code, I have all this installation. Can you change something? They will go like, yes, we can rewrite that what you’re currently having, and this will cost you the same amount of money you already spent to get this to a reusable and standard-based system. I’m not saying that the frameworks are not good with that. I’m just saying from an enterprise perspective, custom code is best served if they build on a very generic and code-based where people can coming in and going out, and you then have your ownership over your data and not being fully vendor-locked in into someone.

 

[00:49:03.280] – Jonathan Denwood

I think you put that so well, and I’m not going to name names or where, but there’s people spewing out. I had conversations with Kirk about this, and I despise them, Robert. I’m not going to go into it because it might be identified, but I think what you’ve outlined is such common sense, but sometimes common sense is lacking, isn’t it, Robert? To say the least. So I’m going to do the last question, and then maybe you can stay on. Do you think you can stay on for another 10 minutes for some bonus? Yes, sure. But Kurt’s got to leave really quick, give him a break. But my last question is, if you had your own time machine and you could go back to the beginning of your career, is there one tip, one insight you’d like to share with yourself? Apart from Apart from not coming on this show.

 

[00:50:02.390] – Robert Windisch

I think the focus more on people, because in my beginning, I was focusing on code, and I always have this explanation of I developed code in the past, and now I develop people because they scale better. It’s from a term of like, that’s a thing I needed to understand to accept inefficiency, which is the human experience. In my young age, I was like, yes, I know this better. I can do this. I came to realize to simply give people leeway, give people enough room to breathe and to come to the conclusion that I might already saw. But it’s really making sure that they can be the best of themselves, and how can I enable them to become that? One One of the solutions is to get out of their way.

 

[00:51:04.770] – Jonathan Denwood

That’s fantastic. We’re going to wrap up the podcast part of the show. We’re going to have some bonus content. I’m going to be asking Robert, in the beginning of 2025, how strong is WordPress in Europe? I’m going to ask him about his journey with his agency. What were some of the key points that led to growth and some of the struggles that the agency had to grow to the size that it’s had. It should be a great bonus and bonus content. Robert, what’s the best way for people to find out more about you and your agency and what you’re up to?

 

[00:51:46.000] – Robert Windisch

Our agency is called Site, and we are site. Com. We renamed last year. That’s why if you find a different word and different sounded agency and it sounds weird, that’s our old name. We spend money to get a better name. If you write my name in some search and you see a picture like that, then you find the right person. I’m everywhere on Twitter, on LinkedIn, on whatever on the open web. I’m everywhere and I’m looking always like that.

 

[00:52:22.580] – Jonathan Denwood

I just love it. You said Twitter, I say Twitter. I’m not going to use the other.

 

[00:52:27.140] – Robert Windisch

Is there a different name?

 

[00:52:28.120] – Jonathan Denwood

I refuse. I I refuse to use that term. I’m never going to use it again. Over to you, Kirk.. I am also on that. I am sorry, Kirk. So, Kirk, what’s the best way for people to find you?

 

[00:52:48.250] – Kurt von Ahnen

For business, anything Manana Nomas leads to me, manananomas. Com or manananomas on X. But if you want to reach out just to make a connection, the best way to find me is on LinkedIn. I’m the only Kurt von Ammen on LinkedIn, so when you find me, you know you’ve got the right one.

 

[00:53:05.200] – Jonathan Denwood

Like I say, we’re going to do some bonus content. You can listen and watch and see all the hats that have been worn during this episode by going over to the WP Tonic YouTube channel. Like I said, we’re going to be having some bonus content, so you’ll be able to view and listen the whole interview on YouTube. We’re going to be back next week with another great guest. I’ve managed to rattle up, like Robert, some fantastic WordPress and SaaS business guests for March. I’m sure you’re going to find some great knowledge by listening to these great interviews. We will be back next week. See you soon. Bye. Bye. He has to go off, see. He’s got to do something with Lifter LMS online. Where Where do you think WordPress… Obviously, I’m English, but I’ve lived in America for about 18 years, and I live on the West Coast. The show has an emphasis around North America, but I go back to Europe almost every couple of years to see my family, and I normally also hit Europe as well. Where do you think WordPress is in in the wider development community in Europe? Is it still attracting developers’ interest?

 

[00:54:38.530] – Jonathan Denwood

Or is it growing? Or is it just stable? Or is it declining as attracting new talent, new people, new interest, Robert?

 

[00:54:51.330] – Robert Windisch

I know. For example, someone reached out to me if I will be in an open-source conference in March because they want to use WordPress and they have questions. This sounds very specific, but the users are still looking for WordPress to solve their problems. You have so much content out there for WordPress that WordPress still solves so many problems that people have with whatever page you want to have, whatever solution you want to have with the sheer size of our ecosystem, it’s the easiest way to simply onboard yourself to content and to be able to manage them very fast. Because the other way would be to have a content repository of a Markdown file and whatever. But end users and marketing people, for example, still use WordPress to simply get their site up and running.

 

[00:56:00.140] – Jonathan Denwood

Where do you see the main competition to WordPress? Because I think, obviously, because of your agency, you’re in the middle to higher level of quasar government with private or nonprofit, educational. In my mind, I get a picture of the clients you’re dealing with. How do you think on the slightly higher level than the small to meet, lower, medium business attitude, which is more about getting leads. Where do you think… Because you got some very expensive corporate CRMs that you’re competing with on the open source. They used to be in IT departments, in corporate-level enterprises. I got the impression there was a bit of a dislike to WordPress around security, around it being open open source? Is this changed or has this changed? Where does it compete, you feel, with some of these large enclosed CRM systems aimed at corporate-level clients?

 

[00:57:30.710] – Robert Windisch

The closed source system have an advantage over us. They can say their source code or their code is safe, which is, again, hilarious. If your code is closed and you’re saying you are secure, sure. That’s the first time I hear this in decades.

 

[00:57:53.180] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, they’re very good at saying it, though.

 

[00:57:55.810] – Robert Windisch

Yeah, exactly. From a selling point, I totally get that. If If your IT department believes that, congratulations for being totally reasonable to be laid off. Because if you do not can prove where is your stuff coming from, who is What source code is in there, and all of these things. Keep in mind, open source one. Tell me the web server where this solution is running on. Tell me all the solutions, even big closed source companies will definitely on their internal systems use open source because, again, I repeat, open source one. So we for decades now being the level of minimum quality that someone needs to have. The other way is just marketing saying it’s not secure. We have people looking into, for example, WordPress, looking into the code of WordPress and all the plugins constantly because security researchers need to constantly prove that they are security researching. So that’s the thing that they need to do. So WordPress, and because with our usage, we are constantly reviewed. Code is reviewed. Some people, for example, PatchDec is doing like fuzzing and other things to just make sure if there is source code that breaks. So From a sales perspective, from a pitch perspective, having an open source system brings you no vendor login because you can differently use things.

 

[00:59:44.530] – Robert Windisch

With the The size of WordPress, it brings you the ability of whatever tool you want to connect to WordPress, your CRM, your product management system, your data, your damn, your document management system, whatever you want to use, they probably already have a WordPress connection because you are not the first person that asked them to do this. So that’s the benefit of the size of the WordPress ecosystem that everybody who does content publishing and all of those things already bumped into WordPress and already has a solution or a roadmap item for solving something in the WordPress space.

 

[01:00:30.590] – Jonathan Denwood

We touched upon this, or I touched upon it. I think you semi-agreed what I was outlining about. There’s certain trends, there’s certain things that get hot in the WordPress community. I’ll probably use the wrong term because I could come across as a bit as I was playing it down a bit. They get hot, and then they seem to die down, and I seem to suggest that what happened to Multisite. Another area that seemed to be really hot, but now it’s still there strong, is headless WordPress. It seemed to be banded around that. It’s a solution for everything, if you know what I mean. Do you see where I’m coming from? I’ve just outlined. What’s your own thoughts around this That’s the whole concept of headless WordPress?

 

[01:01:33.020] – Robert Windisch

Yeah, it sounds shiny. I totally get that. It’s the headless is the benefit for developers to not be able, not needing to touch WordPress. Let’s say it that way. So I see where- They don’t have to get dirty, do they, Robert? They don’t have to touch any PHP. They can play in their JavaScript world and never touch one line of back-end WordPress code. The problem is with headless, you need to reinvent the wheel. Everything front-end that WordPress already solves, you need to reinvent or the error states or just imagine, like rebuild building a VU commerce checkout with headless. Have fun with all different things. And now someone adds a new plugin to your WordPress that is on the headless and you need to then check, Okay, where is the state of that? How can I get all the error messages that can disappear? How do I get them out of the system and show them in my very fast headless way? Our solution to that is simply, don’t run slow code. The one big thing with headless is it’s fast. I can tell you our sites are also fast because we do not simply run slow plugins.

 

[01:02:57.180] – Robert Windisch

The other solution, the other thing that we’re headless is also a way is like a security. If you handshake every line of code that you send onto the application, which is not the normal way, not an end user cannot do this, but from an enterprise perspective, that’s simply a security way of doing that is by reviewing and auditing everything that goes into the application, you can simply have fast and secure installations. That gives you almost all of the big shiny bullet point items of headless. Then the only way is if your content repository is something completely non-wordpress, then headless, there is still a chance out of there. But the major companies, they just want to have fast websites, no vendor lock in, and want to have security and scalability, and all of those things can be done with WordPress if you know what what you’re doing.

 

[01:04:00.920] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, I think you put that really well because it’s obviously a case-to-case. I just got this impression it was pushed. I think the same thing applies for APIs because I call it API detitus. That’s how I call it. Obviously, there’s a place for it, but if there’s a certain… It really applies, in my own mind, to situation to some extent with headless, this idea that you can just call endlessly external APIs. There’s a balance, exactly the same balance as you outlined around headless. But there’s this doctrine, that’s the only word I can utilize, where calling APIs and more APIs, more APIs in the end is not helpful. Am I making any sense here, Robert?

 

[01:05:07.770] – Robert Windisch

It really depends. From an enterprise perspective, you have code or you have content that is not on WordPress. So it depends on a ticker of something, like content, like images and all of that. That’s all APIs somewhere. If you need to connect that to the WordPress space. For us, an API connection to a WordPress, to a managing system that’s a normal daily business. You don’t overuse that by simply using caching, all the paradigms of you writing good software. For us, headless is more like a marketing thing, but connecting APIs out outbound and inbound is something that is very useful for our audience.

 

[01:06:05.840] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah. I think you’re saying that the business necessity is a lot more there than… Yeah, I was a little bit given the wrong impression there. I do agree with what you just outlined there, Robert. But I’ve just been involved in some projects where the client seemed… Because you are relying on these external services, I suppose if the type of clients you’re dealing with they have enterprise-written agreements and enterprise-level support. It’s just a different environment when you’re pulling these APIs in. I’ve just dealt with a smaller clientele, which is still reasonably large. It came from their internal developer team, which thought you could keep collecting data from these different sources. If one of them breaks, it can turn a bit nasty pretty quickly, if you know what I mean.

Regarding the business side with your agency journey, I don’t know if you’re prepared to. I’m not asking for specifics, but on the journey of growing this with your other cofounders, have there been one or two crucial turning points that you faced some significant internal or external changes? And broadly, maybe you come to mind because we remember our disasters, overcoming problems, and successes.

 

[01:08:01.480] – Jonathan Denwood

Or maybe it’s just me, but that’s what I remember. Perhaps you can point out one or two on your journey with your founders, how you dealt with them, and how you overcame and found them.

[01:08:16.290] – Robert Windisch

Yeah. One of the biggest learnings we had in the early beginnings was something very counterintuitive. We raised prices, and that was a scary thing in the beginning. We were slowly growing as an agency, and then we were like, Okay, we need to jump here in pricing because we’re underselling right now. I’m not saying over overarching your clients. I’m just saying when you look in the mirror and go, do I undersell myself right now? Do I not factor in things I take for granted, and do I overcommit to hours I should not do? So that was the first thing with us, what was scary to raise prices. We had C clients, smaller clients that were eating all our hours, and we were committing to them, so they left us. We had bigger clients coming to us and finally trusting our pricing because before, they were like, I’m not sure. They do so many things, but they are charging that price. Something is off with them. Once we had our higher pricing as in the past, those clients came, and they stayed because our whole experience matched.

[01:09:53.090] – Robert Windisch

We simply then were being the same at all times. They said, ” Okay, understand that you, we charge, you charge what you’re doing there. The other thing was we signed a Fortune 500 at the beginning of the pandemic. As a 100% remote company, the pandemic was not acting, changing what we are doing. With this more prominent client, we had a growth spurt during the pandemic. We needed them to unlearn in 2023, for example, that we allowed siloing during the pandemic because the goal was to deliver value to our clients. We let them to work together as separate entities in our company. But if you need to provide, go ahead and give that. What we then had to bring everybody on board was to lower the barriers between those silos, those agents. It was the same agency and the same teams, but they hadn’t the pandemic; they had not had that much of an exchange with each other. There was some exchange, but not really like, Hey, let’s work together. Let’s make more standards and move this forward. That was where, after the pandemic, we made sure that we, with our growth spur, could bring back the collaboration inside a company.

 

[01:11:40.130] – Robert Windisch

We had collaboration in the past, but hone in to, Hey, talk with your buddies, talk with your colleagues in the company, and exchange ideas and make the company and the stuff that we deliver to our customers make that better by collaborating more with each other.

[01:12:00.530] – Jonathan Denwood

I think that was fantastic. I think we’re going to end the conversation there. Robert’s got to go and do some more work, but it’s been a great discussion, Robert. I think we’ve covered a ton of great stuff. You have to come back later in the year, and we have another conversation because I’ve enjoyed this. We’re going to end it now, folks. We will be back next week with another fabulous guest. We’ll see you soon. Bye. Bye.

 

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