Being One Step Ahead Of The WordPress Core - Interview With Jakob Trost

Being one step ahead of the WordPress core – Interview with Jakob Trost

Get a sneak peek with Maciej at what it’s like to work with the WordPress core team. With Jakob Trost from GREYD, they discuss the future of WP and the future of coding in the face of AI.

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Maciej: Hello everyone. My name is Maciej Nowak and welcome to another episode of Osom to Know podcast. My today’s guest is Jacob Trost, a full stack developer, at Great. We talk about his journey from building websites to building product, and about the details of full site editing in WordPress. We also discuss recent word comp Netherland and what AI can bring to the development of websites. Please enjoy my conversation with Jacob.

Jakob: Hey everyone, it’s good to have you here. We’re glad you decided to tune in for this episode of the Awesome to Know podcast. 

Maciej: Hello everyone. We are recording another episode of Osom to Know podcast. Today with me is, Jacob Trust. Hello Jacob 

Jakob:Hello nice to meet you. Hey, I’m glad to be here. 

Maciej: Yeah.I’m glad, you, you accepted the invite, so I’m, I’m really happy you can talk. Jacob is an developer at GREYD and maybe for starters, can you, uh, introduce yourself to our audience and to our listeners so they know you are a little bit better? 

Jakob:Yes, of course. Um, yeah, I’m Jacob. Um, I’m a developer at the company GREYD. We are based in Munich and I’m currently living in Munich as well. Yeah. I’ve, uh, studied, I actually studied Design first and then became a developer during university and yeah never looked back and I, I am a developer right now, but I have like the design background and I sometimes do like the concepts and stuff or, or yeah. Discussing things with the team. But, um, as of today, I’m a full stack web developer and Yeah. Handling a lot of things around WordPress and the block editor and things like that. And yeah, we develop a product ourselves as a company and that’s, that’s what I’m currently working on and we’re, yeah, really excited for the current state of work prison. What, there’s a lot to change in our opinion. 

Maciej: All right. That’s interesting. So we, we’ll dig into that. Um, alright, so, um, you’ve been, uh, freelance developer, started as a designer and now you are working at a product company. So what are you trying to solve with your product? , 

Jakob: We are trying to solve, so in the, in the first place, our idea was, or we saw the, the WordPress environment like a couple of years ago, um, where it was really separated into different third party solutions to basically get a premium good looking website that you can actually edit yourself as a marketing, um, marketing guy from a bigger company or like a non-tech guy. There were like solutions like Elementor, dv, but they’re all third party solutions. Um, and they’re really different in some kind of way and the actual core experience of WordPress was not that great. It was not visually editable and there were widgets, the customizer menu editing interface and a lot of different stuff were, wasn’t really possible to get, like, yeah, how are you editing a website actually was really fragmented. And that’s where we first started in trying to develop a, a solution that was based on the core to, um, yeah, get. , get everything inside your WordPress that makes you your, makes your web website editable. And what enabled us to do that was the block editor itself. So the block editor came around like a couple of years ago, was not fully ready and was not really loft Loft in the community, to be honest. And not, not by us as well. So, um, yeah, but we saw the opportunity to, yeah, have a core principle to make your website visually editable and to build really professional websites because that’s what the core. Kind of lacks as of today. And we are focusing on not having a website as like a one once a product that you build once and then you start, start from scratch the next time around. But as a complex thing that evolves with time and everything is pretty much dynamic and to separate, um, design and content from each other to Yeah. Have more dynamic process behind that. And that is like what we’re trying to solve and we think we solved it and we’re, but um, there’s still a lot of work to do. There’s always work to do because the block editor is evolving and so is our solution because at the end of the day, we don’t want to Yeah. Build a custom solution. We just want to build something on top of the core editor. 

Maciej: Okay. And. How are you looking at this? Because you were working as a freelance developer for some time and now inside the product company. How is it changing for you? Because from working from project to project, now we are building something that is lasting longer than, you know, a given project time. . 

Jakob: Yes. Actually, actually really exciting, to be honest. Um, because yeah, when I was a freelancer, I, yeah, had some typical things to do. For example, having a little plugin. Implementing a little plugin or yeah, building a cus uh, um, custom query to have like some kind of search, um, functionality that the customer wants or, yeah, completely developing or building websites based on elementary or DV or whatever the customer actually provided. It was not usually the, the, the one to decide which tool to, to use and. That was, yeah. How you like, just like you said, it was not really lasting long. It was just like some little implementation and now we’re actually, or I’m actually able, we are actually able to build something bigger and to kind of fix some problems we see, or some issues we having on, at the core, not at the core of WordPress. Yeah. We are trying to do that as well, contributing to WordPress. Um, but that’s a slow process. We can come, might come to that later. Um, but actually building a product that solves some problems at the core of the solution to have like some things that we think are missing, um, implementing as a core feature of our, of our product and to really shape that product into something that looks and feels nice and feels like one experience that is, uh, not separated and fragmented into very different steps and different UIs as well, like elementary for example.

Maciej: Okay. So, so what lies at the core of the problem that you’re trying to solve? Because, um, the block editor came, was released. It wasn’t, um, at the very beginning. So grade, but this is the time you were start. You, you, you were joining the company or, or, or the grade your, your company started to produce or code your the, the platform. And what lies at the core of the problem? What was the inspiration to start? 

Jakob: Great. That there was just so much missing. There was so much missing from the core. There was so much, like, for example, there. Great ideas and great blocks, for example, take patterns. Patterns are a great thing. And um, thinking like a couple of years back, we wouldn’t know that patterns are such a big part of WordPress today and they are actually really, really great. But, um, if you insert a pattern and then later on update that pattern, that content you already inserted into your page doesn’t change the pattern actually imported into the pa in the page, it stays the same. So to update that, actually that block of designs and layouts, you have to reimport the pattern and then retype your contents or manually update the contents. So for example, this is just an example and that was something we thought that was actually missing to have like something kind of dynamic inside WordPress. And not only when it comes to word. , um, core templates like for example, a single template or an archive template, which are of course, um, dynamic in some kind of way because they always display the current title of the post, the current featured image and everything. But not only do that with core templates, but to do that with basically every little part of your website. What about if you have like some small box that displays a headline and the image and a text and maybe a button. Um, if you could make that resource dynamic so it automatically adjusts to everything you want to import later, or do you want to insert later like your contents from the newest block ports, for example, or manually type content. But you also want to be, uh, able to reuse that little boxy asset on different websites and make it automatically adjust to your design. And that is like one of the things we thought that was really lacking to having continent assets made dynamic and. and that was one of the core ideas we had where we were like, there’s so much missing. There was so much that can be done quite a lot better. And that’s just an example. There are a lot of different blocks that are missing and features to really build professional websites, um, yeah. That have a lot of content and a lot of, uh, infrastructure that needs to be built and needs to be, uh, displayed in the front end UI as well. So yeah, that’s, um, I’m, not sure if that, um, entirely answers your question, but that’s like one of the things we’re just. Yeah. We just saw there was so much missing. 

Maciej: Yeah, sure. So this the, this is a great starting point and, um, whenever I say great, I , I worry that our listeners will not know if I’m less excited or, or I’m quoting the name of your company. Cause this is GREYD. Right? So it’s, it’s the same case with os Awesome. When, when O No Os Awesome is os o, m and . And this is also the Wing to the, um, to the industry. And I wanted to, um, ask you like building a product company around missing features. In my opinion, it’s a, it’s, it’s a little bit tricky and dangerous because, for example, uh, you know, great case, you know, uh, companies that are building their products, relying on Toter api and then they are. The, the API got blocked or they are banned from, from, from using the api and the whole business is shutting down. Similar case, Elementor, uh, block editor, um, Gutenberg and was released and this is eating their business heavily. And how, how are you looking at this? Aren’t you at limit worry that what you are building might be replaced by native implementation inside WordPress core, for example?

Jakob: That is a very good question. Um, and that is a question. We are of course, tackling ourselves. So, um, To give you a better understanding. So first of all, we are at the core or at our hearts, we just want to make WordPress better and we don’t want to make it better because we think we can build it, uh, or our way to edit it better than the core way or something. We just want to make the experience more round it and give the users all the tool he needs. So what that means is we don’t, and that was one thing I was tackling early on, we don’t want to be a custom solution. Um, we don’t want that. We always want to. Have the most core user experience that you can have. To give you an example, we, uh, in the past before fault set editing, uh, came around and actually still as of today, because our faults set editing version is still in, in a beta phase, our customers are trying it right now. Um, we had a solution to, I mean, t editing, just to explain it a little bit. T editing enables you to, for example, have a global style system where you can update all your color, your color palette of your entire website at from one point globally, and to have the, yeah, templates, the single template archive, uh, templates I’ve talked about, um, editable. That’s basically what full set editing does, does a little bit more. But that’s the basic thing. And we had a feature for that as well. We used the customizer to do all the global styles and we actually generated, we actually technically pre did pretty much something really similar to the core. We generated CSS variables. It’s not a that crazy of a solution, it’s just what we did. And also for templates, we had a, the post type, that’s what’s called dynamic templates or still is called dynamic templates that lets you edit, um, single templates, archive templates and everything. So what I’m trying to say, we had a solution that the core now provides as well, but it was just not providing like years ago or actually last year. As of last year. And, but there was a need to, to be able to do that because a customer and, um, customers demanded it ki kind of, and we saw the need that Yeah, if you want to really build a dynamic website yourself and want to be able to edit everything yourself Yeah. You need to be able to edit that. So what we are doing right now is removing our old solution and actually stepping on and moving to editing and implementing the solution that WordPress built, because that’s what our philosophy is. We don’t want to be a customer solution. We kind of have to at some point. Yes. Um, but as soon as the core comes around, we always trying to update everything. Yeah. Of course. We have to make it some kind of backward comp compatible for our customers to migrate the website to the new version. Um, but as soon as the core comes around, we want to use that and that, um, is what our philosophy is. But that leaves Yeah, like you said, a lot of problems, or there is a high possibility that a lot of our features as of today will be implemented into the core at some point. There is a high possibility for that, and that is what we are awa aware of. And that’s, but we see it not as, not as something that, um, that removes our solution or yet, um, gives us a problem. We see it as a chance because we can as of today, give our customers their experience based on the most modern core principles. Like the block editor in the ful editing. They can actually use those features as of today to build really complex professional websites, which they usually cannot because they’re just some features missing, as I’ve told you. Um, and as soon as the core comes around, we give them a solution to migrate to the new features. So we see us in ki as kind of like a, yeah, like a little bit of a leader or one or two steps ahead of the core to give our customers the core experience as of today. And make them, yeah, building their websites based on the core. Because the problem is if you build on an entire custom solution, um, for example, like elementary, Then at some point, like if the API elementary is built on is removed, and I’m not believing it is, but if the customer wants to switch to the core experience, most of their contents has to be rebuilt entirely. They has have to rebuild the website if they’re doing it with us. Of course, there’s something that we provide us a third party solution. Yes, we are also a third party solution, but um, the difference is we are building so heavily on core principles that basically 80% of your website is still functioning as you expect. Of course there are some style sheet and, um, scripts missing from our solution. Yes, obviously there is, um, but you can reuse your continent. You don’t have to entirely rebuild your website, so you’re not as dependent on us as you are when you build a website in the, with elementary, and that was one of the things we saw was really a problem in WordPress because to build like some kind of website in the past that has complex stuff in it and needs to be edited visually. You have to use a third party solution and that makes you highly dependent on that solution. That is a bad thing for larger companies, for example. And yeah, and we trying to tackle that issue. But yeah, we are, right now, we are more focused on building more, more complex and more advanced features in those. Core things that we think that are missing. We think we are at a point where we build ev pretty much everything a customer needs to build a basic professional website. And now we are focusing more on the more advanced stuff, advanced stuff, how to manage hundreds of website and wants, how to distribute your content to hundreds of websites on completely different servers at once, how to manage those assets. I’ve talked, I’ve talked about how to manage them and synchronize them across different websites. So we are stepping into the process of yeah, building more complex features and focusing on that. So yeah, we are, we’re, we are leader, we are one, two, or we want to be one or two steps ahead of the core, but also focusing on more advanced features as. Yeah. 

Maciej: So you, you, you’re saying that what you already have is letting your customers do what they cannot do with the core yet, but this might come into the, into the core. So my question is, why not repair the direction and why not incorporate the part of the code that you have cre created into the core? So I’m not saying you do the, uh, you know, pro bono work, but, uh, but isn’t it, and so my question again is, I guess is, is like, , how fast your work can be recreated into the core. What timeframe are we looking at before you have to do something else to, in order to incorporate it back? Because I’m seeing this as I’m doing, uh, like, um, work that will let me sustain for half a year, and then it gets created into the, like, released into the core. And then I have to rework this back. So scratch everything and to use what I created previously, but from the core.

Jakob: I think I get the question. So, um, what timeframe are we talking about? Of course, it would be nicer, um, for me as a developer to just implement those functions into the core and then, Don’t have to worry about compatibility later on and moving to that, but that’s actually kind of a slow process and not that easy. And obviously it, it shouldn’t be fast and really easy because then the valuable discussion around those features is not happening or not has on, is not having the same quality it it needs to have right now. So, um, yeah, we trying to, uh, um, work with the core team. We’re, we’re, we’re struggling with getting started and everything. Uh, we went to some meetings and discussions. We have to look at a lot of stuff and talk to some people, but we still kind of new and obviously we still have to earn some money, so we have to try to focus on features. We are, we’re actually earning money on, obviously. But yeah, apart from that, I think those features were like, um, you’re ahead of the core, but the core will implement it them at some point. Those are just like, I think they’re kind of smaller features. For example, a good, to give you an example, um, what we’re talking about, for example, now the core has margin and petting controls in a lot of the blocks. Um, for example, but it didn’t, didn’t, it hasn’t had them for like a couple of months. It, it came with the, one of the latest Gutenberg updates and it’s slowly coming to the other blocks. And we implemented an API or a solution that let you enable, it lets you, um, edit margins, um, on every block you wanted and paddings on every block you wanted and everything like that. So, But those are just minor features in our, in our, um, thought process or in what you need to do. But, um, we think the core or what we are, um, when we’re listening to the discussions that are happening on the core, the core wants to give you like a basic set of blocks to build a basic website, but to have like more dynamic things, animations and blocks that are having advanced functionality, that is probably nothing the core really wants to do. Um, so when you come to those advanced features, there’s what you value really is, so on the one hand, we having those features, People demand kind of like margin controls, petting controls, and some more advanced blocks. But we also having like the advanced functionality that in our opinion, will never be built into the core because yeah, it’s usually plug-in territory and we have like more advanced blocks I think. I hope that kind of answers your question. Um, so those are like minor features that the core will implement, but in our view, in our eyes, to really build professional website, there’s still some, um, advanced features missing that the core probably will not implement or a lot differently, like a lot different and with a lot less features and options.

Maciej: You touched on, you touched on an interesting topic. So you said that you are working with, uh, core team, right? So I wonder how is it. How does it look like to work with workers core team and what do you struggle with or maybe what are great, uh, like great things, um, in working with them? 

Jakob: Yeah, always. When you say GREYD and always thinking of the company as well. No, exactly. , no. Um, yeah, we as a, so as of today, we as a company are not contributing in form of code. We are contributing. Um, we talk to a lot of people from WordPress and we’ve just started, kind of started as a product. I mean, we, we still kind of new, we actually just launched our, our product, um, in October or November last year. Um, so we are like maybe our first birthday right around, uh, the corner. Um, But we’re still, we’re as of today, not contributing. Um, when it comes to code. We’ve been to some, uh, meetings from the core team where like they discuss some issues that are occurring and things like that. We talk to some people how we can, uh, contribute, uh, to the core development actually. So what we are right now starting is, um, taken apart in discussions because we have, yeah, we, like I told you, we implemented features that the core wants to implement at some point, but they need feedback from, um, yeah. End users and agencies that actually use those features. And we have. We have those feedbacks. We, we use them ourselves, but we have customers that are agencies that Yeah, use this solution so we could provide feedback. And that’s what we are doing today. And of course we are, um, yeah, we are, um, joining meetups, WordPress meetups and word camps and everything around that. But when it comes to core contribution in form of like coding and developing, we’re not there yet. We’re still a small company as well. Uh, so we have to kind of tackle Yeah. We have to kind of find out how many resources we can commit to this. Yeah. And how, how we Yeah. As a company, we still have to like yeah. Make money at the end of the day. And if we just core contributing all day, we would not make money. Yeah. This is 

Maciej: for for profit operations. So this is natural and you have to sustain the company from the paid activities. I wonder what’s in front of you and what’s in front of the, I mean, Great. In terms of the product development, what, what do we want to achieve in or build in one year time, let’s say. Let’s put this, let’s say like a short, uh, short term goal. What, what’s the short term goal for you?

Jakob:  Um, the short term goal, so the shortest term goal, , to frame it like that, is to get our full set editing feature ready. Um, I to, I told you, um, we’ve just, um, started, um, a couple of weeks ago we started our beta phase. So we have like the most, most of the solutions ready for our full cell editing, um, tool or full cell editing version of our product. And we are right now testing it internally with our team, but also externally we’re having some customers who are, who signed up for the beta phase and testing the product right now and giving us feedback. So we want to yeah, get that finished and uh, um, release that into the public. And, um, with that step as well, we’ve developed a full set editing theme, which is, yeah, kind of one of the things you have to do when you build upon full set editing. And we want to release that into the repository. Um, because we are, um, as of today, right now are not in the repository yet. Um, yeah, it was just not a, a good time and we didn’t have the resources to go there because you still have to tackle like all the tickets that come to you, otherwise you will be downloaded and everything. So we decided not to go to, into the repository too quick. Two fast, and we want to go into there. And then, um, yeah, I’ve talked, uh, I’ve told you we were focusing or we are focusing at the more complex and dynamic features to really manage entire websites and hundreds of website, um, at once. And we are not that heavy in the. Bling bling, fancy front and stuff, for example. So when it comes to, um, fancy animations in the front end to make your headline fade in from the side and b blink and whatever, and have, um, we have, um, a lot of, uh, animations at the core. We have perx effects and everything, but we’re not that fancy when it comes to those bling, bling, um, solutions. And yeah, we wanna, we wanna implement that as well because that’s one, one step we have to, um, still do to yeah, to be there where other solutions are as well, to be, I mean, Elementor, for example, or TV, lets you added like the content and to make it really shiny and, and everything. We wanted to focus on the functionality to, to be dynamic, to have a solid core. And now we’re building like those fancy features on top. That’s, yeah, that’s where we’re see us in one year time. So at the repository, full set editing, a hundred percent compatible with full set editing and having a lot of animations and fancy stuff as well.

Maciej: Sure. And for long-term goal, what’s, what’s the end game for great for the product? 

Jakob: That is a really good question. Uh, , you might speak to us. 

Maciej: Yeah, 

Jakob: I said the stage, you know, , um, no, the long-term solution, of course, it depends on where WordPress with the block editor is heading and where folks are editing is heading. Um, yeah. But I see us, I see us with a, as a solution that really bundles a lot of things. Um, Yeah, we, as I’ve told you, we, we are, um, yeah, we are having a lot of features. Um, we are having features that enable you to build everything dynamic. We’re having features that, um, en enhances the block editor. We are having features that lets you manage your websites across servers. We have features to build the app, other things like pop-ups forums and everything, and your own API and headless features. Um, where I see us in five on the long term goal is where we have, yeah, where we are one solution where you can implement all those features from there and kind of customize your, your great product, uh, on the, on the, on the go. So what I mean with that, to just choose what you want to use from us and what you don’t want to use from us, for example. Um, yeah, those management solutions maybe just. Um, collect them from us and implement them into your WordPress site and don’t have to worry about the block stuff, for example, or the form stuff or everything. So we kind of want to model modelize or, um, yeah, to build everything in little blocks and, um, yeah, but it heavily depends on where WordPress is going. Um, but yeah, maybe, um, I see some ways into a little bit of a hatless state. I think that’s really interesting. And bringing react to the front end is something. Kind of dreamed off, but, um, as soon as the block editor came around. But that will be, uh, kind of dependent of what WordPress is trying to do. Um, yeah. But basically just evolving and building those solution solutions that I’ve talked about. Um, building better, better user experience to really make it, uh, even easier to, to manage all those hundreds of websites and distribute your content. Yeah, those are like, just some things, but you could talk to my CEO or, um, about the longtime vision. Um, I’m not a hundred percent sure what I, what I’m allowed to do as of today. 

Maciej: Yeah sure. This is, yeah, , you have to feel like it’s, it’s not, uh, like revealing too much too early. 

Jakob: Yeah. Yeah. I’m, I’m just, I’m just, um, placing some breadcrumbs, um, here, but yeah, that’s, that’s like kind of where we, where we see the long term goal, but it depends on where press heavily because Yeah. as I’ve told you, your philosophy is to always be as close to the court as possible. But yeah, that means we’re pretty dependent on what the court does, um, which is a good thing. At the end of the day. We are of, of course, obviously dependent on WordPress as a WordPress, um, product, but yeah. 

Maciej: And, um, you mentioned that, um, the full site editing from WordPress is nearly like in dta. In dta, and this is part of a couple of steps that WordPress is going through, and Gutenberg was previous one. Uh, could you explain for our listeners what, what are the steps which are already executed and which are, uh, coming, coming. Most early and what’s still in front 

Jakob: of us. So you mean, um, for the WordPress ful set editing version or our own full set, our own beta version 

Maciej: of, no, no.I’m referring to the, to the WordPress core. So what, what’s, uh, what’s the bigger strategy that you are also have to monitor closely to be as close as possible. 

Jakob: Yeah, the, I think the, or the goal from, I mean, I can only talk to you about what I know because I’m not, obviously not , um, from workers itself. So I can just assume that this is the way or just depended on the discussions, depending on the discussions we’re following. Um, yeah, the, the TED editing is still tagged as a beta version and, um, the current status that you’re as a developer are not really allowed to filter or to manipulate a lot of stuff. Um, and that is by design, and we’re chose to do it because they’re still not a hundred percent sure how they want to implement some of the features. And what they’re trying to do is, yeah, refine that global style system and refine full set editing to make pretty much every aspect of your website editable globally. So, as of today, Just to, to go back to an example, as of today, you’re, um, allowed to edit the topography of your headlines, links and your entire website. You’re allowed to edit your colors, of your links, headlines and everything. And you’re also allowed to edit your colors of your buttons, but only the background color and the text color In one state. You are not allowed to edit the hover state, active state, uh, different types of buttons and everything. So, um, they’re trying to go in that direction. And if you think ahead, um, and think about what they’re trying, actually trying to do with the global style system. The global style system, ba and filtered editing itself, I mean actually to when you think one or two steps ahead, global Styles makes. Um, edit everything around the design of your website and your template editor makes you edit every layout aspect of your website, and the Block printer does as well. When you think back of what themes are trying to do, a theme is providing you with the solution that yeah, pretty much defines the design of your site and defines the layout of your templates and of the different types of pages. For example, like your single page, archive page, search page and everything. And they may be giving you a lot of presets, um, for those different types of contents. They’re giving you patterns when you talk about classic, uh, about block themes. And they’re giving you different, uh, templates for your pages when you talk about classic themes. But with the full set editing feature in global style and a template editor, actually the user can build this all himself so he can edit everything. When it comes to the design with global sites, he can edit every asset inside the website, um, with the template editor. So when you think about that, actually the user, some kind of a theme author itself, and what need is there for a theme inside WordPress, um, when full set editing is ready to I to actually edit everything about your website, because then themes will be kind of irrelevant. Or when you think about the thing they’re trying to do. I mean, I’m not saying that themes will get, or WordPress will get rid of themes, but when you think about what a theme actually does, you can do that with the global style system. So what that means is every theme theme could actually rebuild every other theme. So you don’t need a different theme to build a different look in website. You just need one. And build everything with that. And that is what we are actually trying to do already. And I think WordPress is heading in that same direction. And then there’s a question, what is happening to themes? Will there only be one theme? Will there be no theme? Will there be like, Just a couple, a handful of themes that gives you a starting point. But from then on you can just implement, um, a style preset or a style variation because that’s what Global Styles enables you to do. So those are the things that I’m really curious about, and I think WordPress is heading in that direction to kind of get rid of themes. in the way we think about themes today, because there’s still of course, and obviously and it’s really important, there’s still, um, a niche or still, um, the need for a professional design designer to build a beautiful looking website. I’m not saying that there will be no use for that. I’m not saying the user, it is best to give everything in the hands of the user. I think that is usually not the best solution when it comes to. Big projects. Um, but themes as we think of them today will be changing, maybe will be irrelevant and themes maybe will only be style variations of the same theme. Um, I’m not, I’m not sure how that will shape out, but that is the thing where I think WordPress is heading. Um, that is one reason as well why we try to get on full set editing as soon as possible too. Yeah. We have a theme already, but with our theme in full set editing, you can actually rebuild every theme, pretty much every theme around there. So, um, what uses there for theme if Yeah. One theme enables you to build everything you want. And that is like, 

Maciej: and, and that one, just to dig, dig a little bit deeper into this, that one team would be starting point to move around elements and so on. Or why would you even meet the team? Because if, if, if this is one to roll mane, I mean want to rule them all , it’s like, uh, just a starting point to, to, to move into the direction of, um, No code or low-code, uh, approach for, for WordPress?

Jakob: Yes. This is, this is a really good step into the no-code or low-code approach. Um, yeah, what I’m, what I’m trying to say is I, I, I, I don’t know what they’re trying to do with themes. I don’t know if they want to get rid of themes. They want to keep them as like a repository starting point. I’m not sure but from a technical standpoint, if you think ahead, you wouldn’t need a theme. You would not need it. It’s just a, a style variation of the theme of the same theme, Jason, at the same, um, basic template PHP files. So you wouldn’t need a theme. I think WordPress will probably keep themes around for quite a long time because they kind of have to, to be backwards compatible and everything. But from a technical standpoint, you wouldn’t need because. would not really profit from that. And when I think about themes in the future, I think themes will be like a style variation as, as of today. Like, I mean, style variation is also already implemented into global styles. When you have a theme that supports style variations, you can browse some style variations. For example, having no red, uh, looking website, a blue website, a black website with a edgy buttons or a, a red website with rounded buttons. This are style, those are style variations. Actually style variations is very close to what classic themes actually provided. Um, just a variation, a different look in website. So, Themes in the future might be just really well created style variations that really look very nice and very professional because that’s what designers do best and what theme authors do best and but from a technical standpoint, I mean, theme authors wouldn’t need to be able to write code. They would just create a really beautiful look and style variation and post that as a theme basically. Um, and from a technical theme standpoint, we wouldn’t even need one. Yeah. 

Maciej: So I, I wanted also to ask you about this low code. No, no code world, because with more and more tools that are doing heavy lifting for you, you as the end user, whether this is like a, let’s say, content, writer or content editor that has the job of also uploading the content, or a marketer who wants to move elements on the landing page, or a blog owner that wants to, for example, build, um, block from scratch for their own purpose. Um, we, we are moving into the world where this is done by the framework, by the environment, and of course, to some extent you are able to do this on your own. I wonder, is it something that will get m much more market share or it’s like it’ll always fluctuate around what we have, what, what we have right now, where a lot of, um, customers are building something out of like a ready package or ready team or buying teams and like adapting elements or rather, in a way that. You will be designing inside of a WordPress, uh, editor inside WordPress, you know, admin panel, let’s say. , 

Jakob: um, this is a really good question. It’s hard to answer. So, um, yeah, let’s give you my opinion on that. Um, I think, um, tools like Elementor or even if you look outside of WordPress, or in the past in the WordPress tools, there were like dv, there was even before there was WP Bakery. But if you even look outside of WordPress, for example, when it comes to webflow, when it comes to other tools that breaking those, uh, code barriers, that’s 

Maciej: what I’m, that’s what I was getting at.

Jakob: yeah. I mean, they’re really successful at the moment and for a reason because they, yeah, break the code barrier. They enable pretty much everybody around there, uh, in the world to build, um, Code-based solutions to build websites with you. In the past, you could only build website if you knew some kind of code to some degree. And, um, there wouldn’t be as successful if there’s not a really huge demand on the market for that. So I think we will be heavily leaning towards no-code solutions. I think that will be, um, that is the way WordPress will look in inside the, in the future. I, I really believe that. But, um, there are some problems when you think about that, or I mean, some issues to still have to tackle. And that’s what I, when I talked about themes and how we could get rid of themes, I’m, I’m, I’m aiming at. Because if you open up, um, building websites for everybody, of course there will be, if there are more people who are building websites or who are able to build websites, there will be more creative and more creative solutions. There. There will be just the amount of website that are really good and have a really good idea at its core will be bigger. But on the, so on the one hand, but on the other hand, there will be a lot of crappy websites as well because you’re giving all those tools in the hand of non-professional users, which is Yeah, kind of like the idea. And it’s a good thing, but the quality will lack a lot in some, some cases. Um, yeah, because there’s just not a professional. For example, someone who studied design or studied, um, marketing, um, not a professional building the website. I’m not saying that this person is not good at this. It could be a great designer, even if he hasn’t, hasn’t he or she hasn’t studied it, but there will be some fails as well. Maybe a lot of, so, and what I think, um, WordPress kind of needs to tackle or what will be a really good way to tackle this and the issues to solve is like, um, controlling which user and which user group has access to all those tools. I think this will be a real, really, really valuable step inside this whole no-code. Process because when you have a really good system that can actually, um, customize which users able to edit this and able to edit this, um, then you have a really good no-code tool that it can actually, um, yeah, bring all those strength of all the people together and not have, I mean, if everybody can edit everything, it will be kind of Yeah. Mixed and really Yeah, not, not, um, as a straight solution that really, um, tries to tackle one thing in one way. So we have many different styles, many different variations, because you have many different people in the project. So that is one thing that WordPress kind of has to do, or that will be probably really, really valuable. Valuable. And you actually already seeing things like that. You, you’re now as a developer can declare some plugs, non-editable or non mu movable or non deletable and yeah, that is, those are the first steps when you think about, yeah. Going, going back where actually users cannot edit everything about across your websites because a lot of the user groups actually don’t want that because of course you want to be edited, uh, you want to build your website your own as a designer without coding. But to give it to a, your customer who actually has no idea about design and about code, he can destroy a lot of things if you not prevent him from him or her from doing that. So that, I think that will be really interesting how we, how we manage to do that and, yeah. 

Maciej: Yeah. And, and I notice out of initiative products and, and companies, um, around no code movement. And this doesn’t necessarily mean building websites in a no-code or low-code version, but also organizing, um, data or working with data. Uh, integr working with integrations and organi organizing their business in a way that they are using, um, software tools without necessarily understanding how to code. And they are achieving great results with automations of different source to like power your, your business. If you want to set up the business, you can use a number of low code tools in order to integrate your, like, uh, build one pager website in one tool. Integrate this with your crm, integrate your CRM with some kind of. Newsletter, for example, and you, you don’t code where you, a couple of years ago you had to code in order to use API and, and uh, and use your api. One thing to fire up another thing. So this is, I also find this very interesting to see what future, uh, will bring us also with, uh, very far into the future, what AI will change for, for the life of developers, uh, or low code, um, low code tools as well. 

Jakob: Yeah that is, that is really something to think about. Yeah. Um, . Yeah, it’s a, I think it’s really a great thing that you today can, can kind of, um, start a startup that is a tech-based startup and you don’t even have to write a single line of code because you have all those no code solution that do that for you. And to build a, a company based on those solutions, you really shouldn’t be able to write code. I mean, um, if you, if you are really good at something that enables you to build a, a company out of that, you shouldn’t be necessarily be able to write code. I mean, it shouldn’t even be a thing, um, um, to start with. But, but it always was, and now we’re actually kind of getting rid of this. Um, and I think that’s, that’s really a good thing. And when you think about themes as well, Um, just to go back to the example, if you’re a really good theme author, you basically kind of are a really good web designer and you don’t necessarily have to be able to write code. Actually, that’s probably what you, what you teach yourself to be a really good theme author because you had to, but actually, if you were just a really, really great designer without the ability to write code, then you should be in the future. And that’s actually where, where will be, I think, a lot stronger. You should be a great team model because you’ll have actually all the tools and all the, uh, things that you are, yeah, all the things you need for that.

Maciej: But also I think it’ll be easier to be a great, uh, team designer. Not necessarily a great designer per se, but. Great website designer working on preexisting, uh, elements or style guides or how to say, uh, prerequisites that are already there and, and you making use of them. 

Jakob: Yeah. And when you think about it actually will be, uh, better for most of the people because, because you can actually focus on what you’re really good at and don’t have to Yeah. Think about all the stuff that you need to do to be getting there. So you don’t need to write any code, you don’t need to worry about those, uh, implementations and everything. You just can do what you’re really good at. Design websites or design themes, design assets and everything. So no code en enables you to do that without worrying about all the Yeah. Implementation and the technical part, because that’s what the tools are doing for you. Yeah. And the, the, the topic you mentioned, I mean ai, um, what that does for developers as well. I mean, we, we are seeing today how an ai, I mean, you’ve probably seen those image generators where you write a prompt and you get really great illustrations and images from that prompt alone. I mean, that will kind of reshape or that would really reshape the illustration business. Um, I mean, not really an expert in those. And all those businesses around there. But, um, just when you think about it, if it’s, if it’s, uh, if everybody’s able just by writing a prompt and maybe a style, he wants to have the illustrations in, um, and already have an illustration or thousands of illustrations just with one click and you can just select them and building Yeah. Website with it or, um, entire illustrations and, um, cover flows for movies and everything. I mean, it kind of asks the questions, what do we need, illustrators and everybody, um, now, um, if you really think one or two steps further, but that’s a dangerous, and then really, it’s a dangerous question. It’s kind of like, is as a, as an illustrator, if I were an illustrator as of today, I would be a bit afraid of what the software is doing.

And I think, um, yeah, we are, we’re seeing it with illustrations as of today. But even with, uh, code and development, I mean, we’re not that far away. I think from AI actually overtaking humans in writing code and being better than humans in writing code and implementing solutions. So maybe, 

Maciej: yeah. Yeah. In, there’s already, uh, GitHub co-pilot for example, for, yeah, not for WordPress. Maybe it be, we were testing this by the way, but it wasn’t working great for WordPress, but for the, um, it’s the basis for. It’s usefulness is the great, uh, code base and not so many WordPress developers are hosting on GitHub. Don’t know why, but they are not . But other technologies that are heavily reliant on, uh, GitHub are, are, are working, uh, better than, than WordPress. So it isn’t also like the code is written for you, but you are the, like, you are the guide for, for, for, for the co-pilot to fill in the blanks, for example, or do the, uh, boiler plate for you, the code that is written over and over and is boring and not, you know? 

Jakob: Yeah I mean, yeah. Actually, as a developers of today, you are not doing all the stuff on your own anymore. I mean, usually you shouldn’t, um, you using frameworks for pretty much everything. You’re using compilers, you’re using. , yeah. Um, yeah, beautify us, whatever. You are, using every tool that is out there to enhance your workflow, and you are only focusing on building the, the advance or more complex, um, functions and build, bringing everything together, because yeah, there the chances are there’s probably a framework out there that does exactly what you trying to do to achieve. You just have to bring it together with what you, what you already have. So, yeah, a actually, as of today, um, pretty much automatic. Coding is . Yeah, we, we are already doing it. So it’s not that far away from AI actually doing a lot of the things for us. Um, but yeah, will be kind of, uh, kind of scary to see what AI will be able to do in a couple of, it actually is able to do a lot of things. You just mentioned it, but I think there are still some steps until AI really takes over and writes better code than most humans. I mean, there, there will be a point, I think, but we’re not yet, not there yet. So as of today, but. 

Maciej: I have read today in one of the newsletters that one of the jobs that is already emerging and will be in a very high demand in a couple of years time in the future, is that prompt writer. So if you write, type this dog’s prompt of, you know, I want this picture. We’ve heard that hanging over an old man or whatever those kind of prompts will, it’ll be a job really to, to, to, and, and at least a skill. Sorry, not a job, a skill.

Jakob: Yeah, true.

Maciej: You have to master because this is exactly like, uh, being able to quickly search something in the Google and the whole, um, idea of our like, uh, like teenagers that are mobile natives and so on, but being able to do everything with their phones and this is what our, let’s say, parents are saying, amazed what they’re able to do. I am not sure they are. So, um, for example, able to so quickly find stuff on Google because this is not, not, not the same thing to be, uh, spending time on the phone versus making use of it, uh, very fast for example. 

Jakob: Yeah. So what you mean is like we’re, we are a lot better at writing prompts into Google than our parents were. Um, yeah. And when you think about the skill of writing prompts for, uh, ai Yeah, we are, we are not that familiar or we are definitely not growing up. I mean, we, we too, as people are not growing up with that technology already there. But our children might grow up with that technology and they will be, maybe they will be able to write really good prompts really easily because they grow, grew up with it. And yeah, that’s actually a really interesting skill to be able to write really good prompts for.

Maciej: This is very close to programming. This is very close to programming. Yeah. True. Replicate this idea like, Set of, uh, of steps and you have to recreate this in a synthetic way so that this is easily understandable and repeatable, repeatable, uh, for the algorithm. But enough about ai. We have digressed so far from more wordpress. Uh, sorry about this. or maybe not. Sorry. I enjoyed it. It’s really, really interesting. 

Jakob: Yeah. Yeah, me too. It’s really interesting when you think about all those things going on around WordPress, outside of WordPress. I mean, it’s not the only thing.

Maciej: Jacob, I have also a couple of quick questions. This is an experiment for, for the podcast, and, uh, there is, uh, so far nine of them, and this is this or that. So I will ask them and see what happens. So, are you ready? 

Jakob: Okay, I’m ready. Yes. Yeah. 

Maciej: Let’s see. Let’s see what happens. Alright, question number one, hosting or cloud.

Jakob: Mm. Cloud.

Maciej: Meet up online or offline?

Jakob: Online. 

Maciej: LinkedIn or Twitter? 

Jakob: Twitter.

Maciej: Podcast or books? 

Jakob: Podcast.

Maciej: Freelancers or agency?

Jakob: Freelancer. Oh, that’s, I mean, there, there’s no context in those questions, but I would say, um, probably freelancer.

Maciej: Yeah, you can elaborate if you want. 

Jakob: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Sure. Sorry. Uh, uh, um, yeah, I can elaborate. Yeah, it’s really hard to answer those questions because all the context is missing. Yeah. For some context. Um, I was thinking a lot about the first question as well. Cloud or hosting, I mean, depends on what you’re trying to do and what you’re trying to build as well. Freelancer agency, I mean, I think the future will be a lot of more freelance based and I think it’s great to be a freelancer, but it also has a lot of risks. Um, we had had a pandemic or still having a pandemic and um, a global crisis and everything, and it is probably good to be in an agency as of today and was as of two years ago. Um, yeah, and, and on the other hand I was really struggling with my answer, answer podcasts or books because podcasts are great for like everyday use, but I really enjoy reading books. And if I, um, sit down in the evening, maybe read a book, I would not. Change that for podcasts, um, because that’s an entire different experience. But if I’m on a, on a suburban train or wherever, um, on my way to work or whatever, I would always listen to podcasts. But, or when you, when you think about vacation where I really want to get everything that is digital out of my way and just having like a really laid back experience, I will always switch back to books as well. So yeah. , I mean, all the questions are, it kind of depends, but this is like what I’m leaning towards. Okay.  So that’s fine. 

Maciej: That’s fine. That’s fine. Uh, okay. Uh, far more to go, uh, using plugins or avoiding plug plugins. 

Jakob: Using plugins. 

Maciej: multi-site or multiple sites? 

Jakob: Multi-site. 

Maciej: Headless or not?

Jakob: Hmm. , I mean, headless or not? Um, today not, um, I mean, yeah. Okay. Not okay. I mean, it really, it is really hard to, yeah, I’m, I’m, I’m loving the headless aspect and, but headless aspect, it’s basically just an API and then the fronts to fetch everything. And if I’m really a developer and want to build like the, um, best solution out there, I would choose the headless approach. But it depends on the company size as well. If you’re really a big newspaper company, for example, it is really go to go headless because you can just, you read your content everywhere. If, if you’re just a small, um, company with just a simple ending page, you would not go to headless because the overhead you create is like really, really hard. And it depends on your resources as well. If you are really tech heavy and had a lot, have a lot of developers, actually Headless is a really good way to work with that. But if you are not having developers, then you will struggle with Headless because basically for everything you want to change, uh, on your website, on your head, You kind of have to use a developer. Um, yeah, so true. Yeah. I’m, I’m loving the headless approach. Um, WordPress is not headless, obviously, you can make it into a headless solution. Um, yeah. From a, from a business perspective, I would not go to headless, but from a, from a developer, I would, I, I’d really like headless because yeah. I can use the framework I am most comfortable with. And, um, the, the person or the people providing the content can use. Yeah, headless cms, that really is good at providing content. Perfect. 

Maciej: Okay, and last one, uh, Gutenberg or classic editor? 

Jakob: Gutenberg.  That was an easy one. 

Maciej: Yeah, that was, I knew the answer. 

Jakob: That was, that was the, that was the best of the questions. No, that was the, I didn’t really have to think about that. 

Maciej: Sure. Yeah. And, uh, we met last time a week ago on Word Camp, um, the round. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And, uh, just to shortly rub the, the, the conversation app, uh, maybe you can touch on the, on the word camp. So how, how did you like. 

Jakob: Oh, the word camp. Uh, it was really nice. It was actually, I mean, we’ve been to, uh, well, I’ve personally been to three word comps today, as of today. I’ve been to Vienna, um, um, earlier this year. Then I’ve been to the Word Camp Europe in Porto which was yeah, a really big event. Um, not really comparable to Comparable to the Netherland one. Yeah. Same as me.

Maciej: I mean, I’ve been to the, the, the same word comes this year. 

Jakob: Yeah. And so those are all the workings I’ve ever been to. Um, and this one was really nice. It was really like a small, um, community based thing. I mean, the location was great inside the zoo. Um, I really liked Arnheim as well as a, as a city and really a green city, really refreshing if you kind of not in a, you’re not really in a big city. Like I’m come, I’m coming from Munich. It’s really car heavy and yeah, that’s, that’s like kind of a refreshing city. But when it comes to work camp, yeah, it was really nice because there was like, , um, pretty much only professionals around there. It was kind of like a Com community vibe and you, everybody you talked to was kind of deep into WordPress and I liked the event. Um, I wasn’t able to be at that much talks as I like plan to do because yeah, usually just, um, starting to chat, hallway track, ki kind of, kind of, uh, yeah, hallway track. You kind of lose, lose track of time and then you staying in the hallway and talking to people. So yeah, I cannot really say that much about the, about the talks, um, because I haven’t been to that many, actually, just three. Um, yeah, but it was like, and like a nice community feeling and it was, it was nice not being so crowded as, for example, Porto, which is, which is a really cool event too, but it’s like entirely different. Yeah. All right. Alright. Yeah. What, what was your feeling about the workplace world camp in Netherlands? What is it? 

Maciej: Very good. I was surprised of course, by the venue and there was, it, it was interesting because. No matter to, to which, how do you call it? Like auditorium? We went, there was always this, uh, very subtle animal aroma, which is, which was per very like, like, like, uh, like, like there every time you, wherever you went. So this, this was interesting. I couldn’t be on the second day unfortunately because of the bus driver’s strike that was announced on the first day. And I had flight next day, uh, in the evening. So I had to go back, you know, more than two and a half hour to do ski ball and then wait in the queue. So for me, it. , it wasn’t viable to stay on the second day, which, which I regret. And I was a bit surprised by the agenda and the main topic for it, which was sustainability. And it, it surprised me because I counted afterwards, I counted, there were five topics, I mean five presentations regarding sustainability. And this is, this is surprising. I mean, there, there were four tracks and today’s times four tracks, so there was a lot of presentations obviously. So this is also very, very nice that there were so many, there was so much content available. But it surprised me that this was so heavy on sustain.

Jakob: I mean, yeah, I was kind of surprised. Not surprised because we have like, um, we have a, um, yeah, a friend of us we working close with, she comes from the Netherlands as well and she’s like really heavy on accessibility and sustainability and she already told us that. Yeah. Especially in the Netherlands and everybody around that kind of the com, that part of the community is really focused on those things and I think that’s really a trend that. As of now is emerging inside. Yeah, the web, the entire web. Uh, actually not only WordPress, but yeah, it’s, it’s a, it’s a way to make money, I think, at first because Yeah. To like, provide sustainable solutions and more accessible solutions. Um, first of all, I think most people think of it like, you know, okay, a way to market ourselves or brand ourselves to make some kind of money. But I think it’s a really important topic to talk about for, I mean, accessibly obviously is, um, obviously we have to make like, or we will all profit from making our content and our websites and all the information we provide for the web to make them accessible for everybody. Um, but also sustainability. I mean, sustainability is not really a thing that is talked a lot, was talked a lot about in the recent years and it’s just right now emerging because yeah, we, as a, as a tech industry, we’re not. , um, producing products that are wrapped in plastics. Obviously we’re not, but at the end of the day, we are. Yeah. Creating resources at a, as a, at a hosting company or Yeah, we are some kind of help. Yeah, we are, yeah. We are kind of accountable for that. Hosting companies get bigger and having more hosting centers and maybe those servers stand like in the middle of Africa and have to be, um, cooled down, um, by electricity and Yeah, so we, we kind of have to think about how to be more sustainable as a. As a whole business, but it’s a really hard thing to be, to, to think about as an individual because just by you not having like one, or having like three megabytes less on your website, um, of data, it’s like not really changing a lot. But yeah, that’s what, when you talk about sustainability, you as an individual have like not really lot of power. But yeah, it was interesting that so many talks were, were talking about this topic. Um, yeah, because I think the people that are at the work camp don’t really have the power to change a lot when it comes to sustainability, except from marketing themselves as a more sustainable product or something. Um, but I think it’s a really important thing to talk about and to of obviously think about because we have some influence. Obviously our, our footprint is not zero. Um, we have to kind of think about what, what, how we can more be more sustainable. Mm. Yeah, 

Maciej: I’m, but I have a problem that in order to make the website sustainable, which you more or less cannot because it will always consume resources. And the only resources is are it’s electricity and you have no control over what’s elec what electricity, the, the, the warehouse or not the warehouse. The, the data center is using, you can, um, 

Jakob: you can select your whole, but that’s pretty much the end of it. Yeah. 

Maciej: Or, or build a pressure by, uh, creating a, creating whole set of incentives, like green stickers, big green stickers and certificates, which, which is industry in itself and, uh, prone to be like skewed. Uh, and this is, this is something I have a problem with because in order to make a. To produce less, uh, to use less electricity, you have to optimize the website. And it’s already known science, how to optimize the website or, uh, do the cro. So it’s like rein, reinventing the wheel under the, the under different label. And, and  I have a more problem with it. Like, this is not why people are optimizing their websites. They are optimizing their websites because they want to have higher revenue, higher conversion rates and everything, everything that’s known for years of, uh, using websites and doing, uh, growth initiatives by marketing and sales teams of different companies. And if you are an owner of a blog, that’s not so very often read. Your whole week effort of making your website’s website more sustainable is reduced or notified by you watching one more episode on Netflix. So I, I really, I, I’m not really buying the whole concept. I’m buying the fact that this is a side effect of making website websites more performance, which is the good. It’s in itself because you will have better experience as the end user. So this is what we were hearing three years ago, and now we are hearing it’s not only this, but also carbon footprint, which I don’t buy. I don’t buy this really . So I have this problem, uh, which I raise on one of the, um, um, uh, presentations there.

Jakob: So, yeah.. It’s  kind of a rebranding, um, of the, of the same thing. I mean, we’ve talked about page speed for the last couple of years because of Yeah. The reasons you’ve, you’ve just mentioned. Um, and now actually the only thing you can really do to make your website more sustainable is optimizing page speed and the resources that are consumed. So to have like less or like, um, less file size and less resources to be consumed by the visitors of the website. Yeah. And I think the, the thing or the power we have to change things or it’s not really huge. We cannot really change a lot. Yeah. As you said, as as soon as you watch one episode of Netflix, I mean, that consumes a lot more data than your website probably does because your website is just a couple. Kilobytes mega megabytes when you count all the images. But um, yeah, a movie on Netflix is a lot more, um, yeah. But I think, I think it’s an important task to at least talk about or think about maybe when you, when it comes to selecting your hoster and Yeah, look at having a look into where your host is actually having all the servers and their data centers. And maybe that’s something you have actually, you have control about, but you can control of. But yeah, everything else, yeah, you could maybe, yeah, reduce the amount of resources you are using, building a website, but that’s not really changing a lot. And it’s kind of a rebranding of the same topic in some kind of way. It’s just now we are just now talking about sustainable and we were talking about page HP before. Yeah.

Maciej: And I don’t, I don’t, uh, say this is a problem that we are using less resources. What I, what I have a problem with is that by. it, it’s like losing the focus and, um, thinking that you are doing something when you are doing nothing. So if, if you get a green sticker, it won’t change, um, much, but you will think that you, you accomplished something whereas you didn’t really accomplish anything just because you slightly reduced your, uh, your, your carbon footprint. And, uh, because I think this is either going into the millions of websites so that the millions of websites should be, um, optimized by a couple of percent and number big numbers will make the, the change or big, big websites, which aren’t so many, that are hand handling million of users on a monthly basis of traffic. And then it would mean regulating them. So making, uh, enforcing some kind of regulations to make, um, uh, to make them passing like, uh, dishwashers, uh, like energy certificates, like dishwashers or cars or, or, or other electronic equipment that has to pass certain, um, certain grade. And this, this would be highly like limiting possibilities for expressing of the, of the, of, you know, of the companies or business freedom of what you want to do on the website. So I, I have this mixed feelings because, um, this is very important topic to reduce carbon footprint. and I, I agree wholeheartedly. What I resent is the narrative that you can do a couple of tweaks and fix, fix the problem. So yeah, it’s, I agree. It’s really diverting the, diverting the attention and letting you think there are shortcuts to do some important stuff. There are no shortcuts. No. And this is this, this, this, the narration. It’s not something I can agree with. 

Jakob: I agree. Agree with you. Yeah. That’s really your problem. I mean, yeah, it’s a really important topic, but to like give you idea of having shortcuts to actually reduce your footprint significantly is Yeah. It’s not working that way. Yeah. 

Maciej: All right. So, uh, I think, um, with, with the World camp, uh, short World Camp info, uh, relation, we, we can, uh, wrap this up and, uh, Jacob, is there anything you’d like to add or we didn’t touch, uh, upon during our conversation? So is there anything you would like to add or say something I didn’t, uh, ask you about out?

Jakob: Oh, no. Mm, let me think. Um, no, I just, I would just recommend everybody to think about how they’re using their website and what tools they’re using to, um, build their website and how dependent they are on their. Tools they’re using because, um, yeah, I, I see some changes in the whole business of WordPress and we see Elementor with products like Elementor Cloud and we see, we probably all know that at some point elementary is forking WordPress and moving. Away from WordPress. So I, I would encourage everybody to think about what kind of solutions you’re using to building your website. How dependent are you on that, on those solutions and yeah. How you are planning to be ready for Yeah. Whatever comes to WordPress. I mean, we’ve talked a lot about different pathways. WordPress could probably go, but we are not sure. Cannot know. Um, yeah. But I would just encourage of, yeah, thinking about how you build your website at its core and how you planning on maybe rebuilding a website or not rebuilding, just tweaking a little thing, something about your website. I was just encouraging everybody to think about that. And yeah, maybe go to a website and try our beta version of filtered editing. I mean, , it’s, it’s really a lot of things going on there as well. Um, yeah. But all, yeah, that’s some closing thoughts. Yep. From myself. 

Maciej: Alright. Thank you then. Thank you very much, Jacob, for having the time to record today and for very interesting conversation with you and good luck with building GREYD. 

Jacob: Yeah. Uh, thank you, thank you a lot as well for having me here. I hope I was not too technical. Uh, I I might be at some point, but yeah, I hope that’s, that’s fine. I hope everybody could follow me and or at least, uh, to some degree. Yeah. And I hope it maybe gives you a little thought process of what maybe to do a bit differently and Yeah, I was really glad being here and yeah, hope to see you around at the next work camp, probably, I guess.

Maciej: Exactly. Yeah. Italian this time, I guess. Yeah. All right. So we’ll see you then, see you.

Intro: If you like  what you’ve just heard, don’t forget to subscribe for more episodes. On the other hand, if you’ve got a question we haven’t answered yet, feel free to reach out to us directly. Just go to www.osomstudio.com/contact.Thanks for listening and see you in the next episode of the Osom To Know podcast.

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