Building a WordPress Website with AI in 2026

What are the best options for building a WordPress website with AI in 2026 that save time, cut costs, and deliver stunning results — no coding skills required?

In this video, we explore the revolutionary advancements in AI technology and how they’re transforming the process of building a WordPress website in 2026. Discover step-by-step methods to leverage AI tools for design, optimization, and content creation. Learn how to create stunning, user-friendly websites faster and more efficiently than ever before.

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The Show’s Main Transcript

[00:00:17.020] – Jonathan Denwood

Welcome back, folks, to the Membership Show. This is episode 178. In this episode, we’re going to be talking about building your WordPress membership website using AI. There’s a number of tools on the market now to enable you to build your WordPress website using AI. There’s, there’s hosting providers, there’s page builders. At WP-Tonic, we offer one of the page builders in our package, but we are agnostic. You can utilize anything you like really, and we’re going to look at some of the leading solutions. Should be a great show. I’ve got my co-host with me, Kurt. So Kurt, would you like to introduce yourself to the new listeners and viewers?

[00:01:06.910] – Kurt von Ahnen

Sure thing, Jonathan. My name is Kurt von Ahnen. I own an agency called Mañana No Más, and we do a lot of work directly with the WP-Tonic team.

[00:01:15.310] – Jonathan Denwood

That’s fantastic. Um, so Kurt, Um, like I say, we’ll probably go for our beginner break first. We’ve got a couple of messages from our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments.

[00:01:32.550] – Kurt von Ahnen

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[00:02:06.170] – Jonathan Denwood

Coming back, folks, also wanna point out we got some special offers from the sponsors, plus we got a course done by Kirk, plus we got some other free stuff. You can get all these goodies by going over to wp-tonic.com/deals, wp-tonic.com/deals, and you’ll find all the goodies there, all the free goodies and the special offers. So Kurt, um, how do you think we should start this conversation?

[00:02:37.710] – Kurt von Ahnen

Well, I almost feel like maybe we give some of the magic away, but that’s, that’s all right. That’s what podcasting is for. I mean, we could talk about what we do, like what we prefer, you know, is there room for AI in website building? I believe that there absolutely is. But I see people that are trying to do the whole thing with AI like it’s some kind of a challenge. And I’m, and I’m always driven back to you. Well, especially if you’re an agency, you’re expected to be an expert in something. And so I use AI I use it, right? And even though people think I’m against AI, I’m not against AI. I use it. But there’s got to be like, it gets the start, right? Like maybe it’s where the placeholder text comes from, or maybe it’s where the format comes from, or, or maybe it sources me some placeholder images. So I have something to show a client, but knowing that I’m going to have to go back and take, you know, my client-provided images and factor those in or out, or I’m going to have to jump into, you know, some, some image software and modify something or trim something or optimize optimize it before I can put it back in the site.

[00:03:48.230] – Kurt von Ahnen

I just feel like, and I’m gonna feel like I’m picking on people, but I see people using this AI in Elementor. And even if you go to Elementor’s own page that’s talking about their AI tool, it’s so busy. There’s so much stuff flying in and out of the page and animations and things that work and then things that don’t work. And then you refresh the page and it works. And then it’s like, that’s too much. Like if, if, if they can’t get their own marketing page to work consistently, obviously there’s too much going on. And I think that’s one of the side effects of AI, Jonathan, is that they’re trying to put too much into too little of a space and they’re trying to accomplish too much. And in the end, I think a lot of people really just want simplicity, messaging, and content. And the key is the content. The AI overviews don’t give a crud about your fly-ins, your fly-outs, your, and your, your crazy tricks. They care about the content.

[00:04:45.560] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah. Um, I know exactly where you’re coming from. I just see it as a pathway that’s continuing, you know, uh, I think if you’re, if you’re a DIY individual that likes the flexibility of WordPress, um, all the benefits that come from it, it, you know, we started with themes, we moved on., um, to start a website. And you know, when I started in it, there were just themes and, um, Divi was just entering the market. But for a long time they just offered some base, a basic interface, and they used a lot of third-party themes. And you had this basic add-on that would give you a little bit more customization It was, it was a while before Divi came out on the market as, as you find it now. And basically there, for, there was just, you just had to kind of adapt PHP files to be able to move things around. And then, and then Elementor and Beaver Builder came on the market. And especially Elementor, it really changed the whole market. It brought in a whole new group of people into, into web development, web design, into the marketplace. But there’s always been themes and themes in Elementor, themes in all the major page builders.

[00:06:26.440] – Jonathan Denwood

Um, and then there’s been third-party marketplaces. For themes for specific page builders. And then you had Gutenberg, but then there’s third-party providers in the world of Gutenberg as well. So that— but I think with AI was that it enables you to make images, it enables you to make— put text, because there was only the dummy text in the starter themes. And then, and it, I think it’s just a continuous pathway, but obviously it’s a lot further on. And the ability, um, these AI solutions, especially for the DIY market, are on a different level than what we had a couple years ago. Um, but with all the, all that extra power and functionality comes some extra responsibility because you can end up with a real hot mess, um, a lot quicker than you could do beforehand. That’s where I think we are. Would you agree with that?

[00:07:44.080] – Kurt von Ahnen

Oh, I, I do agree. And, and, you know, going back to, to what you just said and I said, we both said kind of a similar thing, like getting some placeholder text, getting some format in, getting some— that’s what so many people— and I think there’s people in our space, Jonathan, that, that they’ve lost sight of where they came from or where they started from. The blank page is incredibly intimidating, and AI does wonderful things as far as like helping people break the ice with writing on a subject. Right? You know, hey, give me a subject, give me an intro paragraph, give me— and if you’re a writer, you still get to write, but now you’ve got this jumpstart that AI gave you, right? Which— and that’s okay, great. Website building to me is very similar. People look at websites and go, that’s a great looking website, but in their mind, they’re not seeing the rows and the containers and the blocks. Like someone like you and I, we’ve been around enough where we might look at a web page and go, okay, row, row, block, container. Like we can kind of figure out how it was made.

[00:08:48.290] – Kurt von Ahnen

But a lot of people coming into the space, they don’t know how it was made. So when they see a blank canvas and some tools in a sidebar, they just, they vapor lock, right? And so I think, I think the AI tools do a really great job of like, give me some placeholder content, get me a format, you know, get me something that, give me some structure on the page. But it’s so important that human in the loop comes in and double checks the copy and make sure that you’ve got something that’s conversion worthy. Because AI is not giving people great content for conversion.

[00:09:22.810] – Jonathan Denwood

No, definitely. Or in SEO, and SEO is still relevant and will do. But that’s a whole different subject for another episode. Maybe next week we discuss that. But yeah, but it does really help I feel if you used, but if you’ve got absolutely no experience and you think you’re just gonna use AI and there’s not gonna be some form of learning curve, I think you’re gonna be disappointed. I think that’s where it’s probably oversold, that it will make things a lot easier. I think that, well, I take that back a bit, back a little bit. It does make things a little bit easier, but there’s still things to know and, um, that’s not going away. So, um, let’s, let’s go on and look at some of the tools. Um, so, um, This, this podcast is more aimed at the power user, DIY person, but I’m also probably in the second half as we go through all these tools. I’ve also added some professional like Bricks, which I see as a more kind of professional tool. Um, because we had a bit of a discussion in our other podcast, the WP-Tonic Show, last yesterday about this.

[00:11:04.270] – Jonathan Denwood

Um, but let’s start off with one that you really like, and that’s ZipWP from Astra, Astra Themes. So what are, what attracts you about this particular page builder? And they’ve got, they separated, they seem to separate Astra from ZipWP, and I find that interesting as well. So how do they integrate? Maybe you can, because you’ve got a bit of experience here.

[00:11:36.010] – Kurt von Ahnen

I mean, this is one of my personal favorite tools, Jonathan. So, and I don’t want to do a whole show about what Kirk likes, right? So, so I’ll try to keep this fairly succinct. I, to this day, because I’ve never researched it, you probably have for the show. I don’t know if ZipWP and Astra are the same or if it’s like an interworking relationship. When you go in, because it’s kind of like, you know, Adam Preiser with all the Shore stuff, right? So like ShoreCart, ShoreForms, that all comes with installed on an Astra install as well, right? But it’s, they’re not necessarily the same people. They just, they have a working partnership. So, um, anyway, the ZipWP thing, uh, when you go to make an AI website with Astra, so I’m an Astra user, Astra Pro. So I have Astra Pro, Astra Starter Sites, Astra, uh, all the stuff, right? So when you do that, it’ll say, do you want to build a website? Yes. You know, do you want to use AI or do you want to use one of the old, like what we’re used to, starter template themes? So a starter template theme is like a pre-formatted, pre-contented, uh, content, um, site.

[00:12:48.480] – Kurt von Ahnen

And then you go in and change everything. AI is different. So when you use the ZipWP, it says, hey, tell us a little bit about your business. And you, you You write a paragraph and then it says, would you like to optimize that description with AI? And if you do, AI kind of cleans up what you wrote, right? And then you kind of review both and you pick which one you want to use. And then you go to the next one. What, you know, what’s the name of it? What industry are you in? What’s, um, it goes through and then says, hey, pick some pictures and it gives you royalty-free images to choose from. And those become your placeholder images inside the sample site. Notice I still call it a sample site because you might call it your website, but to me it’s a sample site. So Placeholder images. The next thing is the format of the, of the page. So it gives you like a layout and there’s a lot to choose from. So you pick a layout and when you pick the layout, the next thing is pick the fonts, pick the colors, pick the, you know, the global styling you want for this layout.

[00:13:44.630] – Kurt von Ahnen

And then it asks you, I think at the very beginning now they’ve added an SEO thing, like what are the keywords you want to focus on, which is kind of cool. Because Kadence had done that before. And, uh, and then you say, build my site. And 5 minutes later, it’s less than 5 minutes, but like it says, this will take a minute or 3. And, uh, boom, website. And what I really like about it, Jonathan, is like a starter template, like a starter template, you now have a fully populated multi-page website that’s pre-formatted with images and placeholder text and all that. But unlike a starter template, all of the placeholder text is based on that descriptive paragraph you gave, the industry you’re in, and those keywords. And so most of the stuff is kind of on point. So are you going to want to change the headings? Yes. Are you going to want to update the content in the paragraphs? Yes. But at least it’s on theme, right? And so, so you, you’re so much further along than if you just used a regular starter template. It’s one of my favorites. Now, your specific question was, it seems to be separate, and it is separate, because when you have a ZipWP account, you also get access to ZipWP’s, like, profile user dashboard thing.

[00:15:05.940] – Kurt von Ahnen

And so you can open that up, and it’ll— if you’re an agency, it’ll show you all the sites that you’ve made on that account. And you can create sites in ZipWP and then import them to a WordPress website. And so it really does behave like its own entity, but it’s integrated really well into like the single site build with an Astra theme. It’s one of my favorites.

[00:15:30.800] – Jonathan Denwood

Right. So on their website, they seem to be offering hosting, you know, they seem to be hosting and you can buy a domain through it, but they also offer backend solution where You can build the website and then import it to any hosting arrangement. Is that what you’re saying, Kurt?

[00:15:52.570] – Speaker 1

Yeah.

[00:15:53.010] – Kurt von Ahnen

So I probably didn’t say it right. It’s force-fed to you through Astra. So like if you’re building a single site, you’ll see like you’re in your own website, you’re in the backend of your own website and ZipWP is the tool that populates that site. But if you follow through and go to your ZipWP account that you created while building that site, You get access to all kinds of other features and pricing and resources. When I first started using ZipWP, I’m not sure that it offered the hosting and stuff like that. I think they’ve expanded that. But yeah, it’s, it’s like its whole separate thing. So you can build a website in zipwp.com and then export that whatever you built in zipwp.com directly to any hosted WordPress atmosphere.

[00:16:38.430] – Jonathan Denwood

Oh yeah.

[00:16:39.850] – Kurt von Ahnen

It’s a pretty powerful tool. I really like it.

[00:16:42.960] – Jonathan Denwood

Is there any key thing that— one key thing that really sticks out that you really like about it?

[00:16:49.510] – Kurt von Ahnen

Oh, it’s— I’m a process-driven person, so I like that it— I like that it lends itself to process. So another thing that I really like about it is I— we have a— we have a startup package at our agency. It’s kind of similar to what WP-Tonic does, but it’s Sometimes we give customers the ability to use these tools, right? So because it’s a process-oriented deal, it’s easy for us as an agency to say, yeah, here’s your, you know, here’s your, your hosting package. We’ve already got WordPress in it. We’ve already put your theme and your other tools in place. Click here, click there. Like real simple, 30, 45-second video that says, click here, that opens up your AI website builder. Fill in, you know, fill in the details, click build my site. And then if you have any questions or problems, get back to us. You know what I mean? Like, it’s just a very simple thing to pass down to customers. So as you had mentioned at the beginning of the show, this is for like mid-level DIY, you know, type folks. We’re not necessarily in the agent space for this conversation. And this tool is wonderful for people in that space.

[00:17:58.700] – Jonathan Denwood

Right. Let’s talk about Elementor, a major player in the WordPress space. So they’ve got Elementor AI, you know, in our preamble, you kind of mentioned that you didn’t like the public interface page. Um, so what’s your initial thoughts about Elementor AI?

[00:18:26.030] – Kurt von Ahnen

I think my initial thoughts about Elementor AI stem from my thoughts about Elementor in general. I was a big Elementor user for years. I felt like at the time it gave me the ability to do things at a deeper level than I was getting in the, in the WordPress editing space. You know, there were things I could do. I could have an animation come up. I could have, you know, gradient backgrounds because back in the, back in the day, if you want to make a gradient background, it was an arduous task unless you had Elementor, it would have made it much easier. There were so many things that like when Elementor came on the market, it just seemed to unlock some things for us. But, but here’s what I feel has happened over time, Jonathan, and that is people are just doing too much, you know, and I don’t think I’m the only one in this space. Like, I can remember Kevin Geary doing lives and being like, you know, that’s not professional. Like, we’re not going to do animations and, and, you know, weird tricks on our website because that’s not professional. We want to have professional websites.

[00:19:33.070] – Kurt von Ahnen

And I feel like there’s— I feel like design needs to be more clean, more simple, and more focused on content. And I know that there’s other people that have different opinions, and that’s okay. But I think Elementor gives people the ability to do too much, and they do too much all the time. Like when you go to— like when I go to their website builder page just to look at how they’re marketing the tools, The page is so stinking busy, you can’t even figure out how to navigate the page because as you’re scrolling up and down, things are popping up, moving over, going up, going sideways. And people are seeing that as the example. And then they’re trying to duplicate that in their own projects. And people are building some real visual junk. And it makes it really hard to focus on the content when you’re focused on fly-in, fly-out videos and, and sliders and things like that.

[00:20:28.860] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, I think, I think they’ve got— and I’m not saying this is easy and it’s not an attack— I think they’ve got a little bit— and I think this affects us all who are providing services to a broad audience— is they’ve got a bit of an identity crisis. Um, maybe that’s why Astra set up WP-Zip or ZipWP. Um, maybe that’s why they set it up as a separate product, because is Elementor aimed at, at, at the web designer, the kind of web professional, or is it aimed at the beginner? Um, I know it’s kind of, it’s straddled all those worlds anyway. So you could argue that I’ve been unfair here, but I think with their— they seem to be trying to go into two directions at the same time because with, with version 4 of Elementor, they’ve tried to adopt some of the most advanced website technologies and they’ve had a few problems with it. I’m not actively using it. I’m just going by, um, what other people who are very active in the Elementor community have said. But there’s other people in that community that says it’s fine, but there’s other people that have been quite critical.

[00:22:01.790] – Jonathan Denwood

And a couple of those people, like Paul from WP-Tuts, um, he’s been critical of version 4, but to be fair to him, he said he hasn’t used, used the, uh, Alimator for quite a while, um, but he’s just going by his connections that he has with people that use it quite a lot. Um, he, I think he’s a Bricks person. I might be wrong there.

[00:22:32.120] – Kurt von Ahnen

Um, I, I, well, I think it’s super important to, to be fair and objective as we talk about these things. Um, you and I, you know, we’ve both interviewed Imran Siddique. Uh, multiple times. He’s, as far as I’m concerned, he’s a genius. He’s, he’s one of the people I love. I follow him all the time. Um, him and I have exchanged, you know, some messages back and forth. I just think he’s great. And he is in on the Elementor. He’s, you know, he’s made, he’s made courses. So for those that are listening or watching this show, um, if you want to dive down the rabbit hole on Elementor, I would go look up Imran Siddiq. What is it, Web Squadron or Web Design Squadron or something?

[00:23:12.560] – Speaker 4

Go, go.

[00:23:13.460] – Kurt von Ahnen

And he’s got a whole course on it. My problem— and I go back to this again, like, does Elementor work? Yeah, most cases it works. Sometimes the updates are a nightmare, but just be smart, you know? My problem is it does a lot and people don’t seem to know when to stop. They just make—

[00:23:33.080] – Jonathan Denwood

well, that’s in general. That’s in general with all these solutions.

[00:23:37.350] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah, but it just makes it way too way too glittery, man. There’s, there’s just simple— pick a couple of like, pick an animation you like, something slides in and slides out and that’s it. But it’s— people want to slide in, slide out, spin around sideways and explode. And it’s like, it’s just too much. It’s too much for the user to try and track what you’re trying to communicate on the page.

[00:23:59.060] – Jonathan Denwood

And then that doesn’t just affect WordPress, that affects all, all these page website builders, the AI, the pure AI. But the beauty with a lot of these integrations that we are talking, they’re specifically— they’re specifically, um, designed for WordPress and they give you ability to build the website and then have a, a way of it visually editing, um, what you have initially divert through AI, through prompts. It then gives you the visual editor and a lot of the other solutions, sure it will come, don’t basically, you just have to go back into the prompts and change stuff. So that’s the beauty of a lot of the systems we’re talking about. Now let’s move on to Divi AI. Now like, um, like what we’ve discussed with Animator, and Kirk pointed out that we got friends, um, off the show that been on the show, um, that are big into Animator. It’s an enormous community. We’re, um, there’s a couple other people that do great training and they’re totally dedicated to Animator, and it It’s got millions and millions of people using it. So, um, but that’s what you get, different opinions and their honest opinions, aren’t they?

[00:25:32.960] – Jonathan Denwood

But let’s go on to Divi. You know, Divi, I think Divi’s been in flux, hasn’t it? Because they’ve, they’ve got their new Divi, haven’t they? It’s like Elementor. It’s a massive community though that I’ve never been that active in. Myself, but it’s not the size of Alimator, but it’s a sizable community of people. And a lot of those people just love it, don’t they?

[00:26:01.550] – Kurt von Ahnen

The buy-in that their users have for their product is astonishing. I mean, it truly is like astonishing. You know, it’s like people that drink Budweiser Light, you know, if you drink Bud Light, you’re in for Bud Light all the time. I can’t stand the stuff, but people that drink it, oh my goodness. Divi’s like that. It’s— and I find, so like, you know, the difference between like PC and Mac people, a lot of times Mac people tend to be a little more artistic, um, a little more, a little more design-oriented. I feel like Divi’s that space. Everyone that I deal with in Divi, because I have customers that use Divi, everyone that I deal with that’s in Divi is really concerned about overall design consistency and design. I mean, like the spacing, the pixel spacing between the headings at a level that’s, that’s a lot more deep than the average consumer at our agency. And so, so when someone’s in Divi, someone says, oh, we have a website in Divi. I don’t want to make this sound bad. I just know it’s going to be more work for me design side to make that customer happy.

[00:27:12.090] – Kurt von Ahnen

So it’s not unusual for me to actually factor you know, a higher value for that work. Cause I know the extra work it’s going to take to meet their expectations.

[00:27:21.230] – Jonathan Denwood

And I think it’s, I think reason why people are so passionate in that community is the team, the owner, I forgot his name. Maybe you can remember. No, no, no. He keeps a low profile. But the team at Dippy, they’ve always been I think they’ve always offered excellent support. That’s my impression. And they’re very approachable in the kind of WordPress community and to the user base. I think they’ve always had a reputation of great support. Would you agree with that?

[00:27:57.380] – Kurt von Ahnen

Well, I ended up hanging around with Raquel when she was with Elegant Themes, you know, at one of the WordCamps. And her and her team and the energy was phenomenal. Like, I was just like, wow, these are great people. And I feel that way about their clientele too. They just seem to breed a really good culture as far as people go. And that’s— it sounds so weird because on one hand we’re talking about a digital technical product, but it is related to who’s involved, what the culture is, right? And there’s a lot of positivity there. It’s such a hard thing to talk about, Jonathan, because I personally am not a fan of the Builder or how to use it or its interface. Um, but the people that like it, they’re, they’re committed to it. And the people that run it and the people that have worked there— because I’m not sure if Raquel works for them anymore, um, you know, because she does the, the new meetup thing and that was in Arizona— but, um, Press Conf. That was the name of it, Press Conf. But, um, great team, great culture, great support. Um, their Facebook page is super active.

[00:29:08.400] – Kurt von Ahnen

I follow that. I’m a member of that group, so I can go in there and kind of see what’s going on. And they’re super respectful. Like, I don’t see in their space where they ever, like, look at somebody publicly and go, well, that’s because you’re an idiot. Whereas there’s, there’s other page builder support systems that are more like, well, don’t be an idiot, right? Divi’s not like that. They’re like, you’ve got a problem, you’ve got something you’re trying to build, we’re going to help you find success. Uh, so if this is your cup of tea, um, and their AI tool works, I mean, we were supposed to be talking about AI rather than just the page builder, right? So their AI element of their page builder works really, really well for the people that like using this interface.

[00:29:49.320] – Jonathan Denwood

Yes. And unlike, it seems to me, unlike Elementor and ZipWP, they’re not, they’re offering a cloud asset holder where you can store pages or patterns or elements in the cloud, but they’re not actually offering direct hosting as part, as part of the, they seem to have 2 levels on their AI page and they’re offering like a— it’s like a Divi Dropbox area where you can store elements that you’ve built and then import them, but they’re not actually offering the actual hosting. Unlike the other 2, I think it’s a good— you’re going— sorry.

[00:30:39.800] – Kurt von Ahnen

Oh, I was just going to jump in there for, for people that are used to like Adobe Creative Cloud and how you would store stuff in your digital account in Adobe Creative Cloud, it works just like that.

[00:30:52.470] – Jonathan Denwood

Right. That’s fantastic. Thanks for that, Kurt. No worries. Um, so I think it’s a good place for us to go for our middle break. When we come back, we’re going to be talking about some hosting providers that are offering their own AI website builders, and may— if we have time, also a couple of using more professional tools and utilizing Claude. But that’s really cutting-edge stuff. But we will be back in a few moments, folks.

[00:31:30.080] – Speaker 4

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[00:32:07.750] – Jonathan Denwood

We’re coming back, folks. Um, I want to point out that if you’re looking for a great host and you’re looking to build a membership, a community-focused website, if you’re an individual entrepreneur or your organization, a nonprofit association, a school, why don’t you have a look at what WP-Tonic’s got to offer? We specialize in membership community-focused websites for individuals and organizations. Um, we’ve all got over 8 years experience in the area, so you’ve got any questions, go to the WP-Tonic website and me and Kirk would love to help you. Um, so Hostinger, um, they’re big in the hosting in the, in the lower lower to middle end. They would dispute that with me, but, um, that’s how I place them. Um, they’re how AI places them. Um, but they’re, they’re in the AI market as well, aren’t they? Um, I think it’s, it’s using WordPress, isn’t it? Um, but they’ve, they’ve gone big into, um, the AI, the vibe coding website market. What’s your thoughts about them, Kurt?

[00:33:29.550] – Kurt von Ahnen

Uh, gotta be— I gotta lay it out real quick. I’ve never ever used this, so my opinion comes from research and, you know, being on the outside looking in. It feels to me— and correct me if I’m wrong, Jonathan— but isn’t this like a, like, like a like a Pressable, kind of like a Pressable WordPress.com AI tool, or is this something that is completely separate on their own?

[00:34:00.000] – Jonathan Denwood

What do you mean by Pressable? What do you mean by that? Sorry.

[00:34:03.800] – Kurt von Ahnen

So Pressable is the hosting with WordPress, right? And then, or with— help me, help me, the name. Oh my God. Automatic. And then WordPress.com has that AI builder. Help me with the name of that one because there’s so many things I keep forgetting what’s what.

[00:34:21.090] – Jonathan Denwood

It’s moving at a steam, innit?

[00:34:23.410] – Speaker 4

Yeah.

[00:34:23.960] – Kurt von Ahnen

And so if you’re in WordPress.com, there’s an AI page builder in there. And I thought, and I could be completely wrong here, I thought Hostinger was kind of like plugged into that as their tool.

[00:34:39.830] – Jonathan Denwood

It was like— that’s a, that’s a great point, which we need to cover. And it was a gaping hole in my show notes is that we, we really need to talk about WordPress.com and I totally escaped me. So WordPress.com, thanks for that, Kirk, because it was a gaping hole really. Um, so WordPress. .com, and it’s a bit confusing. WordPress.com is the fully hosted solution, and they’ve gone into AI big themselves, haven’t they? And it’s totally separate to WordPress.org, which is the downloadable version of WordPress. So they’ve got their own AI builder, and some of the hosting providers are using it and not. So I haven’t really looked at this at all. And I should have done really for, and I’m being honest with the audience, but I get the impression you’ve looked at this a little bit more than me. Cause I haven’t looked at it at all. So what, how would you put what WordPress.com is doing, Kurt?

[00:35:47.960] – Kurt von Ahnen

Well, when they first launched it, it was at the time. And what was it? A year, 18 months. I don’t know. It was something like that. Cutting edge, man. Like, uh, had like a standard chat window. It looks a lot like the chat window in hostinger.com. And so it’s like, hey, you know, write a paragraph, let’s, let’s build your website. Let’s boom, let’s build your website. And you kind of vibe code it through what looks like an LLM standard chat. Uh, when it first launched, everybody was like blown away, right? I remember every, like, I remember, um, Tuts did a review on it and, and thought it was awesome, right? Everyone thought it was great. Uh, but you know, for those in the self-hosted market, you know, you were in WordPress.com to use it. And so, you know, it didn’t exactly have tremendous buy-in, right? Because it wasn’t in a self-hosted arena. And, and so I saw that go away, but then I saw some hosting providers pull up very similar operational environments. So I didn’t know if they were white labeling like the WordPress.com WordPress builder or, you know, leveraging that somehow, or if they had somehow forked and duplicated the code themselves.

[00:37:01.380] – Kurt von Ahnen

I don’t know. But it works very, very similar to— they’re like the same thing. There’s another one on your list that we’re going to talk about soon, and that one actually is different. Like, it looks the same, but it is actually different, and it’s worth pointing out that there’s a difference.

[00:37:19.720] – Jonathan Denwood

Right. So that’s interesting. So, um, we don’t know. It looks like Hostinger is utilizing the technology for WordPress.com. Let’s look at another one, 10Web AI. Um, they’re— would you say that they’re using— I don’t think they are.

[00:37:40.680] – Kurt von Ahnen

I think they’re using their own Um, 10Web is very, very interesting to me, Jonathan. This, this to me is, um, this is more cutting edge than I almost want to give them credit for. I obviously, obviously they’re, they’re, what would you call this, foundational in the market, right? They’re, they’re, they’re a big, a big group. If you look at their tool, it allows you to import Figma files. And one of the biggest issues And this is— we were talking about DIY. Now I think we’re at enterprise-level discussions. At the enterprise-level discussion, when you make a website, typically they say, like, you know, you run into people who say, I’m a website designer. And then you’re like, okay, well, what tool do you build your websites in? They go, I don’t build websites. I’m just a designer. That means they’re a graphic artist, right? They build stuff in Figma that doesn’t work, that doesn’t function, that doesn’t do CRUD. And then they give it to a developer to make the functioning representation of that visual product. And so this was a mind bend for me when I started doing enterprise-level work because I started dealing with customers that were like, we have this Figma file and we want you to duplicate this.

[00:38:52.240] – Kurt von Ahnen

And I was like, why don’t we just make a website?

[00:38:54.650] – Jonathan Denwood

What do we do?

[00:38:55.130] – Kurt von Ahnen

Why are we doing this? But that’s like the corporate process. And so the battle is always, you know, what’s a simple, quick, fast, easy way to take a really well-designed Figma file and convert it into a website. And there’s plugins to help with this and there’s, there’s different tools, but it always comes down to like expense versus outcome because when you use those tools, you don’t always get a full functional website. You still have to go in and be like, make the button work, make this go to a, you know, an internal link, make this go to an external link, but all that stuff. And so when, when they have the import Figma feature with 10Web. That’s, that’s telling us that we can take one of these Figma files, we can have it use the AI to build a functional website out of that, and then use AI to kind of be like, you know, this button goes to this link, da da da da da, and presumably we’re going to get a more complete product and require less manual adjustment.

[00:39:58.580] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, they do seem to be on the cutting edge. Of things, really. They’ve been on my radar for a while, actually. I was going to interview the founder, but it was a few— it was probably 3, 4 years ago. Um, what they did, and they are giving credit— I think they’re based in, um, one of the Baltic— Baltic— one of the, um, I’ve just gone I’ve just gone blank there, but they’re based— it was a Russian state, part of the, um, USSR, and it— I mean Armenia, I think, um, the country, um, and they got on my radar because they did a lifetime deal on AppSumo around hosting. You bought— you could buy a hosting package and you got it at a massive discount. It was a lifetime hosting and that caused a bit, that was at the time a bit controversial. Um, but they moved into this and, um, it does look very interesting. Um, let’s look at, um, a big daddy as I call it, GoDaddy. And Aero. This is because they’re big, they’re one of the biggest hosting providers in the world, and they’re definitely the biggest domain purchasing interfaces in the world as well.

[00:41:38.490] – Jonathan Denwood

Or one of them. I don’t think they’re top tier. I think they could be though, might be wrong there, but for domains So they have really— this isn’t WordPress, is it? This is their own technology, isn’t it? Am I— do you think I’m correct about that?

[00:41:56.510] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah. And the thing that’s difficult about this is that a lot of the DIY clients that use the tool thought they built in WordPress. And so then they come along and they go, oh, I want to just move this website over and then they can’t get their stuff out. Um, it’s almost, it’s more like using SaaS than, than we want to say, right? It’s, it’s that SaaS-like experience. So, um, and it’s so weird, right? Because we, we’ve met so many great people that have worked at GoDaddy between WordCamps and interviews and, and, you know, people that we’ve seen come and go through, through the company. GoDaddy has some of the most talented, uh, awesome, friendly people, but using their systems, it’s It’s Google-like to me. It is. It’s— there’s always a layer of complication or, or, you know, ineffective product that comes with, with that, that just that set, that brand. And it’s so weird because there are customer jobs I’ve done, you know, in the GoDaddy atmosphere and they’ve gone flawless. And I, and I’m always surprised when that happens. But there’s like just a cloud that hangs over that brand for people that are agencies and freelancers in the space.

[00:43:11.480] – Kurt von Ahnen

It’s so weird because it’s like great people, the product seems to work right, but it’s just like using it and dealing with it and, and working within it always seems to have some added struggle or complexity.

[00:43:25.030] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, if you go to the website and the websites, they’ve got AI Builder, they’ve got two options now. They’ve got Aero AI Builder Aero for WordPress.

[00:43:36.510] – Speaker 4

Nice.

[00:43:37.310] – Jonathan Denwood

So create a WordPress site in minutes with AI. And then they’ve got Aero AI Builder above Aero for WordPress. Your conventional business companion that builds customized sites and web apps in minutes.

[00:43:57.710] – Kurt von Ahnen

So it’s not confusing at all.

[00:43:59.110] – Jonathan Denwood

That’s not confusing. It’s not confusing at all, is it? Um, but, um, yeah, so yeah, I think everybody trying to explain what you’re selling and what you’re providing, um, I think from the top to a small company like WP-Tonic, we’re all— we all got our problems, haven’t we?

[00:44:24.000] – Kurt von Ahnen

I— and I’m going in the Wayback Machine, uh, and, and It, it makes a dent because it wasn’t just dealing with GoDaddy, but it was the absolute worst customer we’ve ever had. We’ve only had one chargeback in our, in our entire two decades of doing business, and it was this woman. Um, but she thought she had a WordPress website, and she had one of these Google-built websites— not Google, uh, GoDaddy. See, I’m so confused. Had one of these GoDaddy-built websites, and I had to go in and manually download all of images to be able to bring them over to the WordPress site that we were creating for her. And, and she was totally disconnected. She didn’t understand, you know, anything about what we had to do. It was just, it was a nightmare experience. And the two-factor authorizations and the emails and everything back and forth just to get in and do the job as an agency was an absolute nightmare. And I don’t want to go on and on about it. It’s just there were difficulties that didn’t need to be there. It was like, why is this more complicated than it needs to be?

[00:45:32.320] – Kurt von Ahnen

There’s certain security and complications that, that are required, that are common sense. But it just seemed like there was a layer of complexity that didn’t need to be there. And it really held our project up.

[00:45:44.900] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah. Let’s look, we discussed this a little bit in our other show. That we, um, like I say, it’s called the WP-Tonic, um, podcast. If you do— if you’re in Apple Podcasts or Spotify, you’ll be able to find that show as well. It’s me and Kirk. We normally do an interview. Yesterday, um, we just did an internal show where we had a discussion, but it kind of overlapped this because, uh, we’re going to discuss a kind of quasar pro solution now, folks, just to finish off the show. Um, if this is interesting, I must emphasize, you, you mustn’t do this on your production website. Do it on a staging website. Um, do not in any shape or form utilize what we’re going to outline now on your production website. Um, so there’s been a lot of people, like we mentioned Paul, Paul from WP-Tonic, a friend of the show. And also I was influenced by a great educator in the WordPress space, Dave Fry. Um, I always butcher his second name, but I think Dave Fry, is that roughly it? Or Roy? I’ll get in there. Uh, Roy, Roy, Dave Roy. Yeah.

[00:47:03.770] – Kurt von Ahnen

Okay.

[00:47:05.040] – Jonathan Denwood

All right. Um, Um, so, um, a really— a power user can use this builder, or, you know, if you’re really into— you’re a real DIY power user, um, I like it a lot. It’s, it’s a page website builder called Bricks. Um, Tom the founder is a great guy. I think they’re based in Germany. I’m not sure about that, but a great team. They give the same vibe as the Divi people. They just seem really great people in general. And they’ve got a really good website builder and people in the WordPress space have been linking. It’s reported that Bricks are going to be provided their own MCP. And what is MCP? It’s a kind of additional hosted service. It’s, it enables different AI platforms to communicate with other platforms. Its official title is a Module Context Protocol, but most people say MCP server. And it’s reported that Bricks are going to have their own one. But most hosting, a lot of hosting providers are at extra charge or offering an MCP. And then there’s, I’m going to talk about a specific third-party plugin, but there, there’s about 3 or 4 out there. But one that’s been pushed quite a lot is the Nova Media Pro, and you need Nova Media Pro with MCP plus Bricks.

[00:49:01.260] – Jonathan Denwood

It does work with Elementor, but I would recommend Bricks. And then, um, basically Claude, I recommend Claude. So you could use Claude and its website builder module and knock up a whole website. Um, then through MCP and Nova Media, you can import it into your WordPress instance and the whole website will be there. Um, and then you can edit it in Bricks or Elementor. I would suggest Bricks as a solution. Um, I think you can see this is, this is, this is only for the real hardcore DIY Um, or they, or somebody that builds a few websites as a sideline or is a freelancer, professional freelancer, or the small agency or larger agency. It’s really in a different level to the other products that we’ve, the other services builders that we’ve talked about. What do you reckon, Kurt?

[00:50:15.930] – Kurt von Ahnen

Well, I was a user of Bricks for a couple of years, and it took me a while, Jonathan. I think if you remember, we did an episode 2 and a half, 3 years ago, and I was like, I tried Bricks, it didn’t work, you know, I got all frustrated with it. Um, and then I took a break, and then I went back to it, um, a little calmer, right, a little more open-minded. And then I was like, wow, this works really good. And then, uh, you know, I do a lot of work in the e-learning space, and it didn’t really integrate well with LifterLMS. I had to do shortcodes and stuff. Oh, right. But then Lifter built like the, not the integration, right? But the compliance with Bricks where, so now the main Lifter components are in the, you know, the component library now for Bricks and makes it a lot easier in the e-learning space. And so Bricks became kind of like a foundational tool at our agency for a couple of years. And we built some really good products in it. I have not done what we’ve been seeing these influencers talk about with, you know, with loading the MCP and, you know, this other building tool into it.

[00:51:25.610] – Kurt von Ahnen

I’m curious to see— I’m curious to see how I could really leverage that from an agency perspective. How could I leverage it? But I think it’s important, like what you said. I feel like the conversation is definitely more in the professional space when we talk about these tools. I don’t see this as being like hobbyists or DIY people diving in at this level.

[00:51:48.810] – Jonathan Denwood

No, it’s, it is really the cutting edge. It, it definitely functions. There are some bugs, um, in, um, Nova Mia. It, it’s a newish product. It, it’s been, well, I say it’s been out probably 6, 9 months, I don’t know. And it comes from experienced team. Um, but, and there’s other solutions, but it does seem where things are going basically in the quasar more professional sector, doesn’t it? Uh, you, you do see that it’s, you know, Claude, you know, Claude at the present moment, you, I think they seem to dominate now the more the coding. You have some other competitors as well, don’t you? That could change dramatically. Some people say that ChatGPT’s latest model is cheaper and it’s just as good when it comes to coding, but it’s a very dynamic, fluid scenario. So it’s really difficult just to keep up to date really, isn’t it? But this set of tools At the present moment, I think is where WordPress and the kind of professional market is going to, to some extent, but who knows? Um, we know people that got very successful agencies that are using, like, we know a really great agency that uses Beaver Builder and they’re totally happy, aren’t they?

[00:53:30.650] – Speaker 4

Yeah.

[00:53:31.050] – Kurt von Ahnen

And that’s kind of what I wanted to touch on is kind of like in my summary, right, my summary opinion is I want to go back to what I said at the very beginning of the show, and that is I am not— I don’t object to the use of AI. A lot of people are mishearing what I’m saying sometimes because I’m not always 100% positive, right? I don’t object to the use of AI. What I object to is this idea that with AI everything’s quick, easy, and automatic, and I put in a paragraph and boom, I got a website, Bob’s your uncle, I’m good. Oh, and by the way, give me $10,000 because I’m expert. Like, I really struggle with that mentality, and I feel some of that bubbling up. The idea that you don’t have to be an expert, that you don’t have to be the human in the loop, that you don’t need to know how these things work and operate internally, I think is just a lie. And I think people that don’t— people that don’t force themselves to, to learn the basics and become those experts, to become the, the human in the loop that is the expert You might build stuff and sell it successfully now, but when it comes time to maintain, make changes, or do things down the road, you’re going to look foolish if you haven’t done your homework.

[00:54:42.250] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, totally agree. So let’s end the show, Kurt. I think it’s been a pretty good show. I’ve enjoyed it. I’ve enjoyed the discussion.

[00:54:50.530] – Kurt von Ahnen

I think it was a good time today.

[00:54:52.530] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, it’s been a good discussion. So what’s the best way for people to find out more about you and what you’re up to?

[00:54:58.070] – Kurt von Ahnen

Oh, LinkedIn. I’m the only Curt Von Ahn in there, so I’m easy to find on LinkedIn and I, and I make connections. So hit the connect option there. Uh, and then for business, I’m Mañana No Más, or you can reach me directly by getting in touch with Jonathan at WP-Tonic.

[00:55:13.790] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, we work together. Um, Curt’s got his own agency, but it’s more higher end that Curt deals with. Um, we, he helps us with our higher end as well. All, all our clients Kirk helps in some way. Um, but we have a much broader customer base. Um, but it’s been a great show. If you’ve got any questions, you can leave a comment on the video or you can go to the WP-Tonic website and you can book a chat with either me or Kirk, and we will be back next week with another insightful subject that will enable you to build a membership or community-focused website. We’ll see you soon, folks.

[00:56:01.560] – Speaker 4

Bye.

[00:56:02.620] – Speaker 1

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