Discover how AI will revolutionize WordPress development in 2025. Get ahead of the curve with new coding techniques that blend human creativity and AI power
With Special Guest Brian Messenlehner, Joint Founder & CEO of Apppresser
In this insightful video, we explore the transformative impact of artificial intelligence on WordPress development by 2025. Discover how AI tools will revolutionize coding practices, streamline workflows, and enhance user experiences. We explore emerging technologies that promise to transform the way developers approach website creation and management. Join us as we uncover the future of coding in the WordPress ecosystem.
Brian Messenlehner: Father of 5, US Marine, Software Developer, Author & Speaker. Co-Founder @AppPresser @SchoolPresser
#1 – Brian, how did you get into the world of web development and especially WordPress coding?
#2 – Brian, how do you personally see AI affecting how WordPress developers work and code in the next 18 months?
#3 – Do you see AI making it easier for WordPress developers to develop apps for iOS and Android using no-code platforms in the next 18 months?
#4 – Do you see WordPress’s market share dramatically falling in the next couple of years?
#5— Are there any AI tools or services you have been using remotely or regularly that you would like to share with the WP-Tonic tribe?
#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?
This Week’s Sponsors
Kinta: Kinta
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The Show’s Main Transcript
[00:00:22.000] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to the WP Tonic show. This is episode 966. We got a special guest. We’ve got Brian Messenlehner, with us.
[00:00:31.940] – Brian Messenlehner,
That was terrible.
[00:00:33.820] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, sorry. I got it wrong. I apologize, Brian. We’re going to be discussing all things AI, web development, app development. It should be a great show. Brian, would you like to give the tribe a quick intro, a 10, 15 second intro, and then when we go into the main part the show, we delve a bit more into your background, Brian.
[00:01:04.020] – Brian Messenlehner,
Cool. Yeah. My name is Brian Messenlehner. I’m the owner of App Presser. We’re basically a SaaS platform that allows people to build iOS and Android apps without having to know how to build iOS and Android apps. As long as you know how to WordPress it up, you could flex your WordPress skills as a WordPress user, not even touching any code, and build a really cool and interactive content-based mobile apps.
[00:01:33.160] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. I’ve got my co-host, Kurt. Kurt, would you like to introduce yourself?
[00:01:39.620] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, my name is Kurt von Ahnen. I own an agency called Manana No Mas and work directly with the great folks at WP Tonic.
[00:01:47.000] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. Like I said, it should be a great show. But before we go into the meat and potatoes, I’ve got a message from one of our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments.
[00:01:57.280] – Kurt von Ahnen
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[00:02:28.920] – Jonathan Denwood
Simply better We’re coming back, folks. Before we go into the main part of the interview, I also like to point out we got some great special offers from the sponsors, plus a created list aimed at the WordPress professional, best plugins and services that will help you be a more effective freelancer or small agency owner. You can get all these goodies by going over to wp-tonic. Com/deals, wp-tonic. Com/deals. What more my beloved tribe could you ask for? Probably a lot more, but that’s all you’re going to get on that page. Like I said, Brian, let’s delve into a bit of your background. How did you get into web development? I know you were in the Marines, and thank you for your service, Brian. But how did you get into web development and then into WordPress and then into this really interesting subsection of it.
[00:03:34.300] – Brian Messenlehner,
Sure. Back in 1999, I joined the Marine Corps, actually signed up to be a machine gunner. I did really good on the ASVAB test I guess that told them that I might be good at computer stuff. I was interested in that field. I thought maybe I could learn some cool stuff and get out and try to make some money. I went all in. I got sent to 29 Palms in California, and that’s where I first learned how to code. I was completely in love with it. I thought it was the coolest thing, how you could type in some characters and make it do something on a screen. I’d always like video games and stuff like that, but I was super into it, super intrigued, and I really went all in during my training. I was then stationed at a camp was due in North Carolina at my duty station. I worked for a service support group, a large logistics command. I built a lot of different systems It was like an armory management system for the base there that managed all the weapons on the base and who they were assigned to, crew-served weapons, stuff like that.
[00:04:54.420] – Brian Messenlehner,
I would say my best skill was definitely databases and relational databases. That was my thing. They had sent me back to the communications schools in 29 Palms multiple times to learn more advanced database stuff. But yeah, I was really into it. I was in charge of this small unit logistics system and a huge migration of the Marine Corps’s equipment. Everything from tanks to toothbrushes was all stored in this giant mainframe system. Me and this salty The old gunnery sergeant that was in charge of… Was like a cobalt lizard. We worked together on a migration script to migrate everything off the mainframe systems that they had into a giant Oracle database with a. Net, ASP. Net front-end. Actually, the first version of that was Cold Fusion, if you remember that one, when it was a layer cold Fusion. Remember CFLoop? Cfquery? Those were fun projects that I worked on. When Operation Iraqi Freedom happened, after 9/11, we got deployed over there, and I was in charge of this server that was basically like a giant e-commerce system where troops could order stuff from the field, whether it be weapons, food, equipment, whatever. It was coming into the main spot and all the different department heads could log in and get all their stuff together.
[00:06:30.880] – Brian Messenlehner,
But it was essentially a giant e-commerce system back then, around 2002, probably. I fell in love with programming. I decided to get out of the Marine Corps. I got a job in New Jersey at a law firm. We specialized in insurance fraud litigation. Our biggest client was Allstate. We had some other big clients, too, like Encompass and Progressive. But I think Allstate was definitely our biggest client. They They would let me loose in their databases, and I would write all this code and algorithms to go and basically find database records that would basically be insurance fraud. That was very interesting work, very cool work. I was working on some cases with the FBI, going after some bad players that were stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from all Allstate. Within two or three years, and Allstate was only 20% of the market. I had to sign my name to all these affidavits that I was the technical expert that identified all the fraud. Which then enabled them to go after the bank accounts of these people and stuff like that, which I built other databases and systems that would take all that information and pull it in so that we could investigate the money because that was really what it was all about.
[00:07:59.620] – Brian Messenlehner,
It was a being able to file the money. These two people, for instance, could say, Hey, we have nothing to do with each other. We don’t know each other at all. We’re not connected. Well, why is there a check from you to this guy’s son for a $100,000 wedding gift? Obviously, that’s a payoff. But anyway, these systems that I built would help the attorneys be able to identify payments and stuff like that that they probably wouldn’t have been able to do without code going through and analyzing all the stuff and milliseconds and figuring all these connections that they might not have figured out. While I was doing that, I had started a small web development agency when I was in Marine Corps called WebDev Studios. I was the founding member of WebDev Studios when we first started it unofficially in 2001. Then I registered it in the state of Jersey, I think in, what was it, 2006 or something, 2007. I had always wanted to do my own thing. I was on the fence doing both working at the law firm and working for and building up WebDev studios. I had a partner that came and actually moved in with me, and that’s how serious we were about it.
[00:09:24.520] – Brian Messenlehner,
We started taking on small projects here and there. We were getting into Open source technologies. Wordpress was one of the big ones, obviously, but we were also at the time doing a lot of Drupal stuff, doing Magento, things like that. Wordpress, to me, was just very easy. Php is a very easy scripting language It’s JavaScript. It’s just a MySQL database. I love that it was open source. I love that there was plugins, themes, code that extended the functionalities. I always had my own resource libraries of code that I have written or gotten from other places and stuff like that. But The concept of open source when I was so used to closed source systems and especially Microsoft-based technologies, it’s completely different from that. I fell instantly in love with WordPress. It’s a great platform. I remember the moment we got our first big WordPress client, we were going to a word camp in San Francisco and we were flying out. I had one of my guys at one of our first hires with me on the plane. We’re on our plane just working on our laptops, burning up some code. And this woman sitting adjacent from me in the aisle keeps on looking at my screen.
[00:10:42.900] – Brian Messenlehner,
So at first, I’m like, turn my laptop like, mind your business. But then she taps me on the shoulder and she’s like, Hey, excuse me. I don’t mean to bother you, but I noticed that you’re working on WordPress. Are you going to the WordPress conference? I was like, Yeah, we’re heading out there. She was like, That’s cool. My company sending me out there to find developers to work on our websites. I was like, Oh, nice. I was like, Who do you work for? She’s like, Time magazine. I was like, Oh, you found us. You wouldn’t even have to go to the conference. You could just go home and hang out with your family. I got you, Krebel. Long story short, we talked a few times at the conference in San Francisco. Then when we got back to the East Coast about a week later, I got an email from her asking that we come and meet with her and her bosses at the time, like Manhattan. We went there. I sold the project, and we built Prime magazine’s Healthland website. We did their blog for them, a couple other type of local blogs like their Detroit blog and some other ones.
[00:11:50.320] – Brian Messenlehner,
Then from there, it was just like, Hey, we just use that for marketing. Like, Hey, have you ever heard of Time magazine? Time magazine? Yeah, we’re doing stuff for Time magazine. We started getting all these other big WordPress jobs in the door. Started speaking at a lot of WordPress events. Started the WordPress New Jersey meetup group and was pretty involved there for a while and having regular meetings around as in the very park area, if you know, where the area at all. Got more involved and started getting bigger clients and getting more work to the point where I needed to exit working for the law firm completely just so I take on WebDev Studios full-time. We did a lot of cool stuff there. I was the co founder and CTO there for many years. I exited the company and took over App Presser as part of my exit. I went from building all sorts of web applications to building mobile apps powered by WordPress. It seemed like a great fit for me, specifically because I have five children. Being the CTO of an agency, as you know, you’re never done putting out fires, and you never know what fires are going to pop up in the middle of the day.
[00:13:14.760] – Brian Messenlehner,
I had to walk a tight rope between keeping my staff happy and keeping my clients happy. That was always fun. I had to be available between 9: 00 to 5: 00. It started to feel like a job. Again, I have five kids, so I really enjoy spending my time with them. The thought of being able to push sales, push the needle on sales for our SaaS platform, for our apprease or SaaS platform, was a lot more appealing to me than being involved in the day-to-day stuff with a larger agency. Or a small agency in the world of software development, but I guess a decent-size agency in the WordPress world. I wanted to get away from it. I wanted to spend more time with my family, and that allowed me to do that.
[00:14:21.340] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, totally understandable. I’m going to… That’s a really interesting intro, Brian, to say that you know all the skeletons of WordPress, don’t you, Brian?
[00:14:34.600] – Brian Messenlehner,
I know quite a few.
[00:14:38.360] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m going to throw for the next question over to Kurt.
[00:14:43.180] – Kurt von Ahnen
I just feel like That was such an interesting introduction. I just got to ask, because people are going to hear the name WebDev Studios, and now we look at 10up WebDev Studios. We look at these as being top-tier agencies. But when you guys When you started that, would you describe the experience if you had to split it? Would you think of it as you fell into it, or you built it as you went, or you discovered it as you went along, or did you really go into it with an actual plan? Did you have a vision of a big agency and you had an architecture and a process that you were after, or did you stumble through it and build it as you go?
[00:15:29.720] – Brian Messenlehner,
Great question. I actually registered the domain name in 2001. When I was stationed at Camp Lejeune, and I was building stuff for the Marine Corps for them, like I mentioned earlier. But then I was also doing stuff for companies and businesses out in the town in Jacksonville, North Carolina, like a car dealership. We built a system for them so they could manage their inventory. We built a website for this popular radio station at of Myrtle Beach. I was always doing part-time work under the guise of WebDev Studios, the domain name. We had a very basic website set up at the time, back in 2001. But yeah, I always had dreamed about doing that full-time, building into something larger than just a one-man, two-man, three-man show. I think when my first partner moved out to New Jersey and we officially started the company, registered with the state in Jersey and went all in, that we were doing different websites on the side, doing different, like I said, Drupal stuff. We were still doing a lot of Microsoft stuff for different clients and stuff like that. But we really started getting into WordPress, and we became a We want to be dedicated to WordPress.
[00:17:02.460] – Brian Messenlehner,
We want to be the experts at WordPress. To me, like I mentioned before, WordPress was always easy because at the end of the day, it’s just code in a database. If you’re a developer, you know that you can make code in a database do anything that you want. We weren’t really limited to what was in the WordPress box. We were really always pushing the envelope as far as what we could do and what the capabilities of WordPress was. One One of my biggest strengths, like I mentioned, is databases, and with that is large-scale migrations. So platform migrations from other systems into WordPress. Those are probably the biggest price tags on most big projects is the data migration, depending on how much data that they have, where it’s located, where it needs to go into the new schema. But yeah, I I always knew that I want… I was a young guy in the Marines. I grew up really poor, and I was like, I’m learning how to code. This is awesome. This is the future. This is how I’m going to make it big. This is how I’m going to make a lot of money and be a good provider for my family.
[00:18:15.100] – Brian Messenlehner,
I’ve just always been at it. I had a kid really young when I was 20 years old, and that really changed my life and gave me the motivation and discipline, along with being in the Marine Corps, of course, but to really see it through.
[00:18:30.240] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, well, it’s different than machine gunning. Yeah.
[00:18:33.280] – Brian Messenlehner,
My life would probably be a lot different if I said, No, I’m just going to be a machine gunner.
[00:18:37.340] – Kurt von Ahnen
So that transitions us to the second question, and that’s because you’ve talked about developing in databases and all that stuff. But We always end up talking about AI at some level on these episodes. And so how do you see, like personally, your perspective, how do you personally see AI affecting how WordPress developers are working and coding? We already see it now, but how do you see it over the next year, year and a half progressing?
[00:19:06.260] – Brian Messenlehner,
Well, I’ll tell you what, I can’t wait to get my Optimus robot because I’m going to hook it up on my laptop. Supposedly, their hands are more agile than human hands now, and they can play guitars and piano and type faster than humans. That’s only going to get better. I’m really looking forward to that. As far as using it on a day-to-day, right now and over this foreseeable future, I have people on my team. We like to utilize it. I have some developers that are trying to push back. You have these old-school guys that don’t want to adapt to AI and, Oh, I could do that. I don’t need the AI’s assistance to do that. I’ll give you a scenario. I was working with this guy. He doesn’t actually work for me anymore, and this might be part of the reason. But I was asking him, we were going back and forth on how long it would take to build something, some specific functionality. He’s giving me all these answers about how it’s going to take weeks and we’re going to need to do this, and we’re going to need to do that. While he’s, it seems to me like he’s coming up with some excuses, he’s explaining this stuff to me and I’m just tapping in some prompts into ChatGPT about the exact stuff that I’m telling him and that we’re talking about, what we need to do.
[00:20:28.940] – Brian Messenlehner,
Chatgpt generates the code, and I’m looking through it, and I send it over to him, and I’m like, Look through this code, and we’re looking through it together. And he’s like, Yeah, this will work. This will work. The guy was trying to tell me that it was going to take him two, three weeks to build something. While we were on the phone, the rough draft of the code… I mean, you could generate code with AI, but you still need to review it and go through it and make sure it’s legit. I mean, you probably know, you asked AI, It’s something and it says some crazy shit sometimes. You got to make sure that that stuff is locked down. But basically, the AI in that instance, replaced the human developer for that specific functionality. Yeah.
[00:21:20.000] – Kurt von Ahnen
In your own experience, how much, I hate to say value, but someone’s got to oversee the output. I was reading an article that was being pretty critical of AI, and I was saying, out of 570,000 sample pieces of code that they had AI create, 23% of it was erroneous. And out of that 23%, much of it was sourced from malware. I always say, I’m a hypocrite because I use AI almost every day in my life, but I know what the output is supposed to be or I know what I’m looking for. It speeds my process and I oversee it and then publish it. But if you don’t have an understanding from the core of what it’s supposed to do or what the output should be, you run the risk of putting out some heinous material
[00:22:10.340] – Brian Messenlehner,
Oh, yeah, absolutely. And there’s no way that I would ever just say, hey, build me a plugin that does this. And then, here it is. And speaking of that, I like to really break it down. I think about it as, how would I build it myself? Here’s the pieces that I need to build. Here’s the hooks that we need to access. Here’s the functions we need to write. Then just go through them one at a time and use AI as an enhancer, not an absolute replacement. Then you need to QA that code, take a look at it, have human eyeballs on it, or have the AI go back or another AI look at it, check it out, see what problems there could be with it. But yeah, you’re right. Absolutely. You really need to know what the output is going to be, what the expected output is going to be, and how to work with it, and how to go back and forth Because I’m sure you know, too, there’s probably been things that you’ve built with AI that probably took way longer than they were supposed to because you’re going back and forth, arguing with it and stuff.
[00:23:25.200] – Brian Messenlehner,
I always like to do it in little steps. Then once I got that one function done that I would have wrote myself or my guys would have wrote, then cross that one-off the list. Once it’s validated and embedded that, it’s working.
[00:23:39.660] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, work your way through. Jonathan, over to you.
[00:23:44.640] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, So there’s a few people that have said, Brian, that, now, do you think a lot of the work that a developer is doing now in 18 months time is going to be replaced. I agree with your position because what I think you’re saying is that you do need the knowledge For the foreseeable future, I think if we push it any further than 18 months, it’s so speculative that it doesn’t really… None of us know what these labs, these AI labs are developing. But for the next 18 months, at the end, let’s say at the end of 2026, do you think a lot of the freelance work that’s out there is going to dry up considerably? Or what’s your own gut feeling about this, Brian?
[00:24:54.960] – Brian Messenlehner,
I don’t think the freelance work is going to dry up. People are always going to need things. But yeah, there could be less people using WordPress and more people using these other services like Wix or Squarespace or whatever new AI-generated code builders are coming out every day. Ai is going to probably push some market share away from WordPress, I would imagine, and it probably already has been. But WordPress is still, I think, the best tool out there and is also being enhanced with AI. But As far as freelancers not having work, as long as they’re integrating with AI and adapting to AI, I think it’s going to make everybody’s jobs a little bit easier. Maybe the very junior developer that’s getting in there and writing, just giving basic tasks. I need a function that does this, this, and that. Those types of tasks are going to be replaced by AI. But you still need to have somebody, people with the knowledge of the overall architecture of what actually is being built, how it needs to be built, how it needs to be integrated with other systems. But as far as cranking out the code, which used to be the hard part, that’s going to become easier and easier over time.
[00:26:34.600] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think I agree with every word of that, Brian, but you got a lot more industry experience than I do. I think we’re going to go for our middle break, folks. Got a couple of other messages from our sponsors that are much appreciated. Help with the costs of running the show. We’ll be back in a few moments with this fascinating discussion with Brian. We’ll be back in a few moments.
[00:28:10.700] – Jonathan Denwood
We’re coming back. We’ve had, I I think a really interesting discussion with Brian. He’s got enormous amount of experience in WordPress and coding. I think he showed it. But before we go into the second half of the show, just want to point out that we got another great resource. You can watch these interviews live on video, plus a load of other content. You can get all this by going over to the WP tonic YouTube channel. And support the show by subscribing. It’s a great resource. We got a ton, I could say, I think got over 1700 videos on all subjects around WordPress and marketing. You should find it a great resource. Over to you, Kurt.
[00:29:04.380] – Kurt von Ahnen
Thanks, John. When I think of App Presser, the offer, and the idea of mobile apps, we run into, Jonathan and I, customers that are either absolutely resolute that they must have a mobile app, or we run into people that are like, no, I have no interest in having a mobile app. I find it incredibly interesting how that works. And I’ve looked at your offer, and it’s super, super attractive, right? Obviously, you said that you’re all in on WordPress, and your product is associated with WordPress. But our next question leads to, especially considering the politics that have happened at the higher end of WordPress over the last year, how do you feel like the market share is working towards WordPress? Do you think we’re actually going to see light at the end of the tunnel and continued growth in market share in WordPress? Or do you think, Hey, we’re over 40% of the Internet. We’re there, and now Wix and Squarespace and Webflow and everyone else is going to start growing and doing their thing?
[00:30:11.540] – Brian Messenlehner,
Yeah, it’s interesting. Everybody knows about all the beef that’s been going on and stuff. But yeah, it probably had all that stuff and it’s going back and forth about all these things. Personally, my opinion around Gutenberg, that slowed down a lot of things that could have made WordPress better. My biggest gripe with WordPress has always been that it’s not a true relational database. It’s great for a cat blog or something with cache content. But when you have an enterprise web application and you need real-time data all the time, all these inner joins that are happening with every piece of post meta or user meta really slows down the database and creates a debacle and why WordPress needs overcompensation with caching and stuff like that to begin with. I like Gutenberg. I think it’s great. I have customers, I’m like, Gutenberg, they don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. A lot of customers, they don’t care what WordPress is. They just want something that’s easy for them to use and that they could their content. Even some of those people, they’re still emailing us saying, Hey, can you update this content? Well, we’re a development company, but if you want to pay us developer rates to update some content, sure, I guess we could do that for you.
[00:31:42.820] – Brian Messenlehner,
But yeah, as long as there’s these easier systems that are coming out that are very easy to do, build a basic services website, brochure type website, WordPress really can’t compete with that stuff. The small stuff anymore, I think. Where WordPress is good is these middle-tier applications where You could use all the plugins to do different things. You could use Woocommerce to set up an e-commerce shop. You want to use Buddy Press to build a community. You want to tie App Presser on top of that stuff. Then now you have your e-commerce shop in the app stores or your social community in the app stores. The flexibility of WordPress, the extensibility of it, the fact that it’s open source and so many people are contributing to it, you can make it do whatever you want, that’s really the sex appeal to me and I think a lot of other people that you could really build whatever you want. You’re not limited. We said before, it’s code in a database, integrated with all these other systems to just about anything. If you have a small powerwashing company and you have a five-page website, is WordPress the best solution for you?
[00:33:08.680] – Brian Messenlehner,
Maybe not. Maybe you’re messing around with Gutenberg and you’re like, what the heck is going on here when you could easily just use Wix and build a page and be done with it. I hope to see everybody squash their beef in the WordPress world and get back to building cool stuff and working together and making WordPress better than it is now. If that doesn’t happen, there’s people talking about forking WordPress and stuff like that. It’s going to hurt everybody, I think. That stuff. I think if everybody gets back to work them together, making WordPress better, not just building Things like page builders to compete. Gutenberg is basically a core WordPress feature. Wordpress has a core page builder now. Was that the purpose of it? To knock the other page builders out of the box? All those other page builders are doing great, by the way. My personal favorite. Like I already said, I like Gutenberg a lot. I do. I think It’s very powerful and extensible, but it’s not as easy to use as like, BeaverBuilder. I have another company, School Presser, that we do a lot of school websites. Our biggest public school client is Newark, New Jersey.
[00:34:45.820] – Brian Messenlehner,
They have about 80 schools in a district. It’s a large multi-site network. Wordpress is a perfect solution for them. We use Beaver Builder for those sites because the school staff staff that are updating those pages and stuff, we don’t even want to send them to the back end of WordPress. They don’t care what WordPress is. They just want to be able to log in to the site that looks like and be able to see what’s being shown on the screen and drag and drop things, click on it, change the content. That’s what’s important to them. I would say out of all the page builders out there, Beaver Builder is probably one of my favorites because it’s so easy to use from a person that’s not very technical.
[00:35:32.940] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, all of what you said is super interesting. When all the stuff was happening, I thought, oh, I haven’t tried Drupal in a while, and I installed Drupal on a test site, and I couldn’t wait to get out of that site. I was like, This is a nightmare. I’m getting back to WordPress as quick as I can. But then you mentioned the power washer. And I think to myself, well, I could throw something together in Dreamweaver and HTML and have that up in an afternoon. But is that really the best thing? And so I weigh things back and forth, too. I think I’m a WordPress convert for sure. But when I think about new people coming into our space, what really attracts them? And from an agency side, I think if we were to create more of a community atmosphere where new people could come in and build a business and make revenue out of it, I think they would see more opportunity.
[00:36:24.840] – Brian Messenlehner,
Absolutely.
[00:36:25.940] – Kurt von Ahnen
Jonathan?
[00:36:27.760] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s a really tricky one, Brian, because I was listening and I watch or I have it as I’m working. It’s in the background, a lot of YouTube, stroke podcasts. A lot of people, there’s adverts on this week in startups. There was an advert where they were talking about a platform and they’re pitching it as a middle ground to total bestoke building of a total web application and all the costs and not getting something that really works. They were pitching it as utilizing AI so you could get this bestoke without the total costs and possible risk of a total bestoke. And in some ways, it sounded to me they were talking about WordPress. But they were talking about… Because to me, the problem with this, I forgot the name of the company, but it was advertising, is that, yeah, It reduces the costs, and they were pitching it as this middle solution. But you still got all the risks that you’re using a priority platform, and if that company If somebody goes bust or something, you’re stuck. Where with WordPress, you’re not so dependent on anybody. I’m not going to underestimate. If you’re building something really complicated, moving to another agency or another freelancer, it’s not going to be totally easy, but you’re not totally stuck either.
[00:38:27.930] – Jonathan Denwood
What’s your own views about what I’m saying here, Brian?
[00:38:32.040] – Brian Messenlehner,
I think my biggest selling point to people that are on the fence about WordPress. And by the way, those are the customers that I’d… I’d rather have customers that come to me and know exactly what they want with WordPress, then me trying to sell somebody like, Hey, you really need to use WordPress. But yeah, you’re absolutely right. Wordpress is great for putting together prototypes and stuff like that. You could easily They put together something very cool with very cost-effective. Wordpress is always my go-to for that. As far as… I’m sorry, what This is the tail end of…
[00:39:16.550] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think it’s like what I’m notorious for this, Brian. But there seems to be these AI platforms where they’re saying, We’ll be able to to have a stop solution for you. But then that just sounds like WordPress on steroids, I wouldn’t say on steroids, but it’s the same argument that you would utilize yourself It’s a bit of stuff about utilizing WordPress, isn’t it?
[00:39:47.960] – Brian Messenlehner,
Yes, specifically for security. People always say, How secure is WordPress? Well, there’s thousands of developers working on it. There’s millions of websites using it. So it needs to be secure. As long as you’re updating your plugins and core WordPress and not making your password, password, and maybe using some security enhancement plugins and stuff like that, it’s going to be super secure. The biggest argument is with these smaller companies that have this proprietary web solutions or CMSes or using AI to build websites is, how big is that team? What are they Are they sacrificing for features? Are they sacrificing security to roll out new features? Because that happens a lot. What happens if this company goes belly up? You’re done. You’re not getting any more support. What is the technology stack that behind the scenes that the AI is building is there. If you need to hire third-party developers, how expensive is that? I always tell customers like, Hey, if it doesn’t work out between us, there’s thousands of WordPress developers out there. You could find anybody to work on this With the proprietary solution, then people that get locked into companies that build proprietary stuff, I think, is a bad idea because if they need to go somewhere else, what are they going to do?
[00:41:14.680] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, and just before I give it back to Kurt, I don’t know how this is all going to pan out, Brian, because I don’t think any of us know. But I was listening to other developer-type freelancer video podcasting shows. They were pushing, we could build this brochure website using AI and find a host, some host for it, and sell it to somebody with this AI integration. It could be just as much a threat to Squarespace and Wix as to WordPress, could it not? Do you need a WordPress? But do you need a Squarespace? Do you need a Wix? Do you need any? You could just produce it in AI and find a host for it, and you don’t need any of this. It could be just as big a threat to these other established platforms as to WordPress. What do you reckon?
[00:42:31.540] – Brian Messenlehner,
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, somebody could go in there with AI, put in some prompts and build a really cool website. Like you said, just find a host, pay for hosting, put it up, boom, it’s done. They don’t need to really update the content. It’s just some information about their business, their services, and pictures, and stuff like that. That’s an easy solution, a very inexpensive solution. It’s hard to compete with that for those really smaller sites. I think the bigger web applications, it would be harder to duplicate that. But then there’s also hosting companies that are working with AI that are building exactly that, and it’s integrated with their hosting platform already. Well, they are.
[00:43:17.040] – Jonathan Denwood
People like Bluehost, GoDaddy, they’re all looking at this, aren’t they? Well, even wordpress. Com, aren’t they? They’ve got their AI solution now, haven’t they? Yeah.
[00:43:28.300] – Brian Messenlehner,
And the page builders as well. They’re all competing to be able to offer that really easy to put together solution at, I guess, the cheapest price.
[00:43:43.460] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. Over to you, Kurt.
[00:43:47.120] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, I’m going to bump us back to the AI questions again, Brian. Really, you already gave up the ghost that you said use ChatGPT, but you also mentioned that you’ll run it through another filter AI or something. If you feel comfortable sharing, what are your go-to two or three tools that you really leverage day-to-day?
[00:44:09.860] – Brian Messenlehner,
Chatgpt, I mentioned already. But I really… And I’ve tried the new ones that seem to come out from every other day. There’s new ones coming out. I like to give them a try and stuff. But my favorite of all is Grok. Cool. Yeah, I mean, a lot of… This may be controversial. I mean, a lot of people don’t like Elon Musk, but I don’t think anybody really does it better than how he’s doing it. I mean, Groch is amazing. Tesla, it’s not really a car company. It’s a robotics and AI company. There’s nobody doing it like that. I I have a cyber truck with a full self-driving supervised or whatever, and it’s amazing. I don’t even drive myself around anymore. The robot drives me around. I feel the same way about a lot of his other stuff. Groch For instance, it’s great. It’s really cool. The voice stuff, how you could talk to it about problems, and it’ll generate all the code. Their new… The Groch, I forget what it’s called off the top of my head, but their where it connects to Google Drive, so you can get your Google Docs and access that stuff.
[00:45:39.430] – Brian Messenlehner,
I mean, that’s great for helping to build proposals and stuff like that and generating code, looking at code. I like to have them get the output of one and put it into the other and see, have them analyze the output. But yeah, I really like I really like Rock. I was joking around about the Optimus robot, but not really. I really can’t wait to get one of those. I’m going to have it doing all sorts of cool stuff and just working on a laptop 24/7. That stuff’s amazing. Eventually, I think the Optimus robots are going to be able to drive cars, too. Everybody’s going to have a self-driving car if they have one of these robots. But yeah, I like Rock. Then working with their APIs because they’re using the prompt, working back and forth with it, but then there’s integrating with the AI through their APIs to do all sorts of cool stuff. Right now, we’re building an agent for our help tickets. When a new support ticket comes in, basically the AI agent goes through prior support tickets and looks for similar answers, goes through our documentation, and we We’re even getting into having it look through the code for stuff and formulate a response.
[00:47:07.340] – Brian Messenlehner,
Like I was saying before, you need a human eyes on it. You can’t just send out a response automatically because sometimes the AI will say some crazy stuff. But the amount of time that automated process will save support staff, not just for me, but there’s other companies doing that stuff, too. The amount of time that it saves them from having a person go and build an email from scratch or even if they have Cans responses set up, just to have the email already laid out all the links to everything that they need, and you just have to review it and hit the send button. I mean, that’s going to save 90% of their time.
[00:47:48.720] – Kurt von Ahnen
I’ve been using a AI, I’m going to call it a pre-write tool for someone that I do support for subcontracted. I would say it’s probably knocked out 70% of the time I spend doing support for them. On one hand, yeah, I lost 70% of my revenue because AI is doing the job. But I’m able to respond to a higher volume people. To your point, I got to change the links. It links to weird stuff, but it’ll say, check this, check this link, and then I look at the link, well, that link’s wrong. I just correct the link. The rest of the content looks great. I put my name on it and send it.
[00:48:26.900] – Brian Messenlehner,
Over time, that stuff is only going to get better. Yeah. There’s going to be less issues and the links will be correct and integrate with more systems. It’s crazy how fast this is all advancing and unfolding.
[00:48:42.060] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. Then I think the message to people there is, like I just said, well, that took 80 % of my revenue or 70 % of my revenue because it does that. But what it really does is it frees up my time on things I’m more efficient and profitable with. Let’s face facts. I mean, we’re not making a lot of revenue doing support tickets, right? So if I can spend my available time doing site development or consulting work, I’m going to make a higher margin. I think people that are worried about AI taking their jobs and stuff, they just need to expand their perspective and go, well, what would I… Okay, great. What would I do at that time if I had it? I might go mountain biking.
[00:49:25.700] – Jonathan Denwood
When it comes to actually coding, I think we already seeing Brian, that some of the large learning models like Perplexity, Copilot for Microsoft, they’re really positioning themselves in code, aren’t to where chat and what that you said you like. They’re more… They do do code, but they’re not positioning themselves. Do you see that as a continuing trend that we’re going to have more and more narrow tools aimed at coding?
[00:50:08.400] – Brian Messenlehner,
Yeah, absolutely. They’re all competing with each other to write better code. But yeah, I was just Then, Rock just had some updates for around better coding and stuff, too.
[00:50:19.440] – Jonathan Denwood
Right. How much of the code do you think in 18 months time, it’s going to be producing rather than a coder actually doing it?
[00:50:35.600] – Brian Messenlehner,
I guess it all depends on who’s using it, what companies are utilizing this stuff and setting it up and automating it, automating the prompts. Just through API integration, stuff like that. Just the workflow, automating every step of the workflow from when the lead comes in the door to your launch on the website. There’s all sorts of stuff that happens in between there, automating all that stuff in between. The code being a huge part of that, absolutely. But it’s not the main part of it. But the code is just going to get better and better and better and better with all these tools. I like Copilot, but I have this thing about Microsoft. I refuse to be on with Skype and stuff. Actually, Microsoft is one of our biggest clients as far as name goes. Probably my second biggest data migration was for Microsoft, my first one being the one, the big logistics one for the Marine Corps. But we did a large scale migration for their MSDN and tech networks that were on a proprietary. Net solution built by Microsoft with a SQL Server back-end. We migrated all that stuff to this huge WordPress multi-site network with It was millions of millions of posts, hundreds of thousands of sites on the multi-site network.
[00:52:06.580] – Brian Messenlehner,
That was really large scale. But we also got a… We did the Bing blog, we did NewsCenter blog, we did a lot of their stuff in Skype’s blog. That was cool working with them. But just from working with Microsoft technologies in the past, I refused to… People would be like, Hey, when Skype was still big, I guess, or was it ever? But I would people say, Hey, can we jump on Skype? And I said, No, you can’t. You’re going to have to use something else. I like Copilot. I think it’s cool. I mess around with it, but it’s just like I have it embedded in my brain or something. I don’t like Microsoft products anymore.
[00:52:56.000] – Jonathan Denwood
Totally understandable. Before we Can I wrap it up, are you okay? Because Kurt’s got to go in a couple of minutes because he’s got a prior engagement. Are you okay to do a bit of bonus content or do you have to leave at the hour? No, it’s fine.
[00:53:11.960] – Brian Messenlehner,
We can get for a while.
[00:53:13.460] – Jonathan Denwood
We have to continue because I like to talk about WordPress and applications a bit more because obviously you’ve got a tremendous degree of knowledge and how you see that developing. I just want a quick bit of advice because it doesn’t I respect you because I get the impression you’re dealing with larger clients and more established relationships. But I’m hearing from a lot of freelancers that dealing with small, medium-sized clients, but they’re getting a lot of clients coming up and saying, Well, we want this, this, this. Can’t you just build this plugin using AI tomorrow? This This is going to be easy to build this. In some ways, we’ve confirmed that because I’m not totally… You said you had this discussion with a former employee that no longer works with you because you can knock up a prototype quicker. But on the other hand, how do you deal with this client, this possible client that says, I want these things It ends, and I want it in the next few days or the end of the week, and you should be able to do it using AI.
[00:54:37.840] – Kurt von Ahnen
It just knocked that up.
[00:54:39.160] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. I would probably say, Well, try it out.
[00:54:43.560] – Brian Messenlehner,
Go ahead, try it.
[00:54:45.840] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, that’s what Kirk says. Let me try it out.
[00:54:49.420] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, I have changed my answer a little bit, at least for my own agency, because now, instead of just telling people no, I say, Hey, no problem. I always tell them, No We can do that for you. Here’s the deal. We’re going to take the code that you’re going to provide to us. We’re going to run it through our tech team and just oversee the code, make sure things are good. We’re going to create a staging site. We’re going to test it in staging for you first. And then if everything goes well and there’s no on Flix and you take responsibility for what you’ve created, we’ll put it into production for you. That should only run about nine or 10 hours at our agency rate. Is this plugin worth $1,200 to you? And then that’s when we find out how much value there is in coding something yourself on AI.
[00:55:35.400] – Jonathan Denwood
Have you got any insights about where do you think the middle ground is? Because I don’t honestly know, Brian, and you’ve got a lot more experience, Brian.
[00:55:47.640] – Brian Messenlehner,
I mean, if anybody came to me and said, Hey, we want you to build this ride tomorrow, I would say you’re going to have to pay a super premium rate for that. It’s not going to be tomorrow. It’s probably going to be next week or something. When customers come to you and tell you, I can get this cheaper somewhere else, or why can’t we just use AI to build this so it doesn’t cost anything? Or can you do this right now? Those usually are a recipe for disaster unless you slow them down, hold their hand. I don’t want to say put up some roadblocks, but they need to know that that’s not how it works. Like you said, Kurt, so you have the That’s great. But there’s still a process of implementing that code, testing that code, and launching that code, which all needs to happen anyway, regardless whether the code is generated with AI or not. I mean, yes, it’s definitely a helpful shortcut. But if a client ever wanted to do something like that, that would be the same, basically, It’s basically the same process, the review process. Then, oh, we find something that’s wrong.
[00:57:18.500] – Brian Messenlehner,
You mentioned malware. What if all of a sudden there’s some weird thing in the code? Yeah. Or it could introduce other issues using AI as well, which That will hopefully be remediated over time.
[00:57:32.180] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, we need to wrap it up now, and then we can continue the discussion in the bonus cost section, Brian. So, Kurt, what’s the best way for people to find out more about you and what you’re up to?
[00:57:43.760] – Kurt von Ahnen
Personally, I’m available on LinkedIn, Kurt von Annen. I’m the only one on LinkedIn that’s called Kurt von Annen. So when you find me, you know you got me. And then for business, mañana nomás.
[00:57:52.760] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. And, Brian, what’s the best way for people to find out more about you?
[00:57:58.740] – Brian Messenlehner,
Brian Messerlaner Brian at apppresser. Com. I’m on all the social medias, a lot of them as B-Mess. I have a book, Building Web Apps with WordPress. I probably need to do a third edition soon. It would be with all the new Gutenberg stuff and AI stuff. But yeah, Brian Messerlaner, I believe I’m the only one.
[00:58:24.860] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I butchered your surname, but I butchered everybody’s surname, Brian, so don’t take it personally. It’s been a great discussion. If you want to support the show, think about leaving a review on Spotify or iTunes. It does really help the show. It introduces the show to new people. So if you could do that, it would be much appreciated. We’re growing, we’re getting more listeners lately, which is much appreciated. We’ve had some fantastic discussions lately, like what we’ve had with Brian. Like I say, we’re going to close the podcast part of the show, but we’re going to have some bonus content, and you’ll be able to watch the podcast and the bonus content on the WP Tonic YouTube channel, and subscribe there. That also is a great way of supporting the show. We’ll be back next week, folks. Bye. Hey, thanks for listening. We really do appreciate it.
[00:59:26.860] – Brian Messenlehner,
Why not visit the Mastermind Facebook group?
[00:59:29.950] – Jonathan Denwood
And also to keep up with the latest news, click WP-tonic.
[00:59:35.130] – Brian Messenlehner,
Com/newsletter. We’ll see you next time.
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