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00:07 A quarter after midnight and I’m watching the wall.
00:14 Sometimes I feel so uptight. I just can’t sleep at all.
00:20 Every day doing the same old thing. We’re losing time.
00:27 The weekend comes. We got to have some fun and rewind.
00:34 These are the days of thunder. We’re going to make time stand still. We
00:41 got to feel the hunger. Hanging over the edge just to taste the thrill.
00:55 I feel the rope tightening. choking off our air.
01:02 We need to grab some lightning. Friday’s almost here.
01:08 Caught in a web. We need to cut this thread. We’re hanging by.
01:15 Where is it said you have to be half dead to survive?
01:22 These are the days of thunder. We’re going to make time stand still. We
01:29 got to feel the hunger hanging over the edge just to taste the thrill.
01:50 These are the days of thunder. We’re going to make time stand still. We
01:57 got to feel the hunger. Hanging over the edge just to taste the thrill. These are
02:04 the days of thunder. But we’re going to make time stand
02:09 still. We got to feel the hunger. Hanging over the edge just to taste the
02:16 thrill.
02:22 These are the days of thunder.
02:34 There we go. All right, it is time.
02:40 Ladies and gentlemen, it is time for WordPress plugins A to Zed, not Z.
02:49 It’s interview 77 and we have Corey Moss from Gel Form talking about AI in
02:55 plug-in creation, marketing strategies, and the evolution of WordPress products and more. All coming up on
03:07 WordPress, the king of content management systems, powering the web with over 80,000 plugins to choose from.
03:14 How do you sort the junk from the gems? Welcome to WP Plugins A to Zed, where
03:20 we’ve been keeping the pulse of WordPress alive for over 16 incredible years. Join us every week for an
03:27 unrehearsed real talk breakdowns of the latest and greatest plugins, developer, and community member interviews. Some
03:34 weeks, Amber and I team up to dig in. Others, I’m flying solo, unpacking WordPress news, demoing a standout
03:42 plugin, or sharing tips to power up your site. No scripts, no fluff, just the
03:48 good stuff from A to Z. So, plug in and let’s get rolling.
03:54 Well, good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you happen to be out there in the globe today. Coming to you direct from the brewery overlooking
03:60 beautiful southern Vancouver Island. I’m John Ool and welcome to interview 77 on
04:06 WP Plugins A to Z where we dive deep into the world of WordPress with innovators who are public or pushing the
04:12 boundaries of what is possible. Today we’re thrilled to have Corey Moss from Gel Form, a full stack developer who’s
04:19 been crafting websites since the late 90s and specializing in advanced WordPress magic since 2012 with a
04:26 portfolio that includes premium plugins like JMA image for image optimization,
04:31 Kaban WP for admin task management, and the AI built post calendar for
04:37 effortless postchuling. Corey brings a startup mindset to solving real world problems for agencies, businesses, and
04:44 fellow developers. He’s built and sold two plug-in businesses, collaborated with big names like Optin Monster and
04:50 Post Status, and even weaves in his love for music and dad jokes along the way.
04:55 Join us as we explore AI and plug-in creation, marketing strategies, and the evolution of WordPress products fueled
05:01 by York Gold tea. Of course, let’s get into it. Welcome to the show, Corey. for
05:07 that. That’s my computer. I forgot to turn off my um my announcement.
05:13 Thank you very much. I seem to do that every show at least once. So, it’s got to be something. Well, there there’s so many things I I
05:21 check I did a checklist right on my screen. That would make it all challenging. But thanks for joining me
05:27 on this show, Corey. I greatly appreciate you being here. My pleasure.
05:32 All right. So, well, as we mentioned here in your brief bio there, you’ve been building websites since the late
05:38 90s or so. Tell us a little bit about your journey into WordPress and how you
05:44 what drew you to it and how has that platform evolved in your eyes?
05:49 Yeah, the uh I started back in the 90s to promote myself as a musician um
05:57 producing making dance music. uh still do that on the side. If you Google me
06:02 carefully, you’ll find me. Uh DJ and still DJ and and make dance music. But
06:08 that was, you know, early 90s. I had a a college roommate who was like, “Have you checked out this internet thing? You can
06:13 find out more about your favorite bands.” And I did. And I was like, “Oh, that’s cool. How do I do that?” You know, because I was always a nerd and
06:20 wanted to make uh learn to make things. So that turned into a career. Nice
06:27 coincidence. uh because back then you couldn’t exactly major in web design,
06:32 web development. Uh and then along the way I wound up working for an agency. Of
06:38 course I kept hearing about this thing called WordPress, but um it was not
06:44 terribly reliable. The originally the and this is way way back in the day. I’m saying the original uh what was it? The
06:51 five minute install never took five minutes. No. Uh all that kind of stuff. But I wound
06:56 up working for an agency that dove deep into So if you’ve heard of um tough
07:04 mutter um it’s like a lot of people are more familiar with the Spartan races. So
07:10 the you know the crazy cross country races where you carry logs and stuff like that. I’ve run a tough
07:17 Okay. So, uh, tough mutter. Way back in the day, uh, I worked for an agency that was building basically an internet for
07:24 them to manage all of their events. Uh, and the agency chose to do it on WordPress. And I wound up to my elbows
07:33 in in WordPress, hacking and slashing. This was I think plugins maybe existed
07:39 at that point. But anyway, um a lot of custom code, a lot of again hacking and
07:44 slashing, but I real I saw the potential. Um and and pretty quickly
07:50 after that, almost every uh client I got as a freelancer and a
07:55 bunch of companies that I worked for all were WordPress. was just kind of an an
08:00 easy uh option because there was it was it was growing so quickly and so many
08:07 people were using it. Um my background up to that point I had I had gone from
08:12 being a designer and just sort of a site builder to actually trying to build SAS apps um and and actual software using
08:20 the web as an interface. And so pretty early on, WordPress became pretty
08:26 obvious for me, especially if you’re building apps that are consumer-based,
08:31 BTOC, um, that WordPress actually works great because it’s already it already does
08:38 user management. I was like, “Oh, I never have to build a password reset flow again. This is amazing.” It’s got a
08:45 built-in router, so if you’ve got different URLs, you know, it’ll automatically figure out what to do with
08:50 them or serve a 404 page. all this kind of stuff. So, I honestly still build a lot of SAS apps. Um, and in fact, behind
08:57 the window where I’m talking to you, I’ve got two uh in progress um in addition to all the
09:05 plugins that I build and and everything else. So, so that kind of got me into into WordPress and and I’ve been
09:11 building for it ever since. Both both apps and sites and plugins and community
09:16 and kind of every aspect of it I could get into. I even have a banner back there that somebody gave me. I’m that
09:23 cool. Well, that’s always a nice journey into WordPress.
09:28 You’ve built in What were some lessons you
09:42 Sure. Well, I was real happy that I had some experience building SAS apps and I
09:48 sold one um before I got into WordPress years ago. Um or right around the time I
09:54 was getting into WordPress, I should say. Um and so lots of lots of reading
09:59 about software outside of WordPress helped me along the way. Um, little
10:06 things like, uh, keeping good records, uh, thinking about like I I actually
10:13 just told a buddy of mine about a pretty classic business book called, uh, the
10:18 E-Myth Revisited. There’s an E-Myth and then there’s an E-Myth Revisited. And kind of for me, I don’t know, now 20
10:24 years ago or something, that book came out and it was the hot book that everybody was reading. Um, but one of
10:30 the the little lessons in it, uh, it’s still totally worth reading. It’ll feel a little dated, but lots of still still
10:38 lots of good stuff to learn. Um, one of the big lessons in that was run a business like you’re going to franchise
10:44 it. Um, or I think more relevant to us is run a business like you’re going to sell it like from day one. So, I always
10:51 have a separate Stripe account, a separate business account, separate everything. And so, it’s pretty easy to
10:57 flip a switch, hand the keys to somebody else, and off you go. Um, so little
11:03 things like that make it easy to uh to think about selling. Um the other big
11:08 thing for me was um both times that I sold my well I think all three
11:15 businesses that I’ve sold um came from very hard selfreflection
11:24 um and realizing that these were just things that I couldn’t they were either products that I couldn’t take far
11:29 further um either financially for me it’s always marketing I’m a developer so marketing is always a sore spot um of
11:37 understand that and right um and so being turning around
11:43 and realizing oh there’s somebody else that could take this and run with it um was was a huge burden off my shoulders
11:50 frankly because it you feel like you’re uh abandoning a product and and you know
11:56 doing it a disservice but if you’re giving it to somebody else who can do better things with it even better.
12:03 That is a good that’s some good points. I never thought about those points of uh running any business as if you’re planning to sell it. That is a really
12:10 great thought. Now, we’re going to be talking a bit further down the line here about gel form. You’re uh and the most
12:17 recent plugin you’ve created with gel form. Um but gel form it at that company
12:25 yourself there, you work with a diverse range of clients from focus features to optin monster. How do you adapt your
12:31 WordPress expertise to handle pro products of varying clients and scales?
12:37 Yeah, it really it really just kind of depends on them, right? Like the there there are times when I’m in control and
12:44 there are times when I’m not. I often end up selling myself uh especially these days as something like a CTO for
12:51 hire. And so I will walk in and say, “Look, you know, I’ve got now 12 15
12:58 years of of WordPress experience um and have benefited from working from uh
13:05 working with some big big companies. Optin Monster, Ali, um are two that come to mind that that thankfully emphasize
13:12 doing things the WordPressy way.” And so I’ve I’ve benefited from that because I I came in like most developers who if
13:20 they don’t start with WordPress, they go this is crazy. This is not uh MVC or
13:26 this is not using the latest frameworks or you know back in the day this is not using namespacing and all all these sins
13:34 that we we think. Um but once you learn to do things the WordPressy way and kind of stop fighting it and realize that
13:41 it’s this is actually pretty okay. It’s pretty logical. It makes it a lot easier to walk into somebody else’s code or
13:48 somebody else to inherit code from you. All that kind of stuff. So, so for me
13:53 now, it’s it’s usually that it’s it’s walking in and kind of going, I’m I I
13:59 have this experience. Do you want to do you want to learn from it? And um and most people say yes.
14:05 Well, let’s see how that goes. Um sorry. I know, right? Well, I’m listening to
14:10 you, but I’ve also got a minor technical glitch flowing here in the background. I’ve been notified that my volume is is
14:17 down while yours is up. So, I’ve been checking a few settings here and there just to make sure. So, hopefully I’ll
14:23 get some feedback here while I chat for a moment to make sure it’s all working. Excellent. Your your volume’s about even
14:30 equal for me. Well, the the interesting part is because I use so many different plugins, Microsoft has a problem with my
14:38 settings and it thinks it suggestions for my settings should be changed. So, periodically it goes in there and goes,
14:45 you know what? I don’t think you should be using this microphone. You should be using this one over here that doesn’t really work very well because I
14:51 have a microphone on my camera. I have another microphone elsewhere. Or my favorite is when it goes in and goes,
14:56 “You know what? We don’t like the volume settings what you chose for your microphone. We’re gonna readjust them
15:02 down for you because they’re just too loud for us.
15:07 So, Gee, thanks. This is the whole problem of Microsoft
15:12 thinking that it knows better than you do on how your system should work. They always have. They always will.
15:18 Yeah. So, it annoys me to no end. Yeah. There it is. Right now. Now, when I go look, I see that Microsoft chose my
15:26 other microphone. Even though I have programs, I can choose separate microphones. All right,
15:31 let’s go take this continuing down the line. Welcome to Live the Tape Show. Don’t worry, I’ll edit this all out in
15:37 post. All right. Absolutely not. Yeah. No, I’ve been doing the show for a
15:43 long time now, 16 years, and I’ve I tried in the beginning to do post
15:48 editing, and I’m like, you know what? This is not worth the time. Nope. All right. Well, let’s talk
15:54 as a former musician and performance a person who used to perform a lot and DJ
16:00 and all that. You know, part of the fun maybe sometimes part of the challenge anyway is always this kind of stuff.
16:07 Something always goes wrong. You just got to roll with it. You you roll with it. Especially when it’s live and live to tape.
16:13 I learned live to tape back in my in my college days when I was taking a course on all this stuff.
16:20 Let’s talk a little bit about plug-in development and tools. Okay. Now, you built Post Calendar and is it a recent
16:28 build? I didn’t know if it was a recent build or not. Yeah, it’s brand new. That’s kind of why I wanted to jump on here and promote it.
16:34 Okay. It’s it’s free. I have no intention of selling it at the moment. Um, uh, but I
16:41 think that it’s a a really good product and am surprised that there isn’t more
16:47 that it doesn’t already exist, frankly. I mean, there’s a couple that do similar things. Yeah, there always are. Right.
16:52 But, um, I So, I want to I want to shine some light on it. I think it deserves it.
16:58 Yeah. Well, that’s for sure. And the thing is is that I I hadn’t heard about
17:03 it till you sent it to me and I did I did go through and test it out and it does work pretty nice. I’ve loaded it up
17:09 on a couple of different sites already to see how it goes. We’ll see if we can get you more than the 10 plus active
17:14 installs that it currently has according to well this is I mean the conundrum. I
17:19 know that it exists on more than 10 sites so who knows where yeah well automatic is getting their stats as
17:25 usual. Well, automatic and their stats are their stats, but the thing is is it’s it’s hard to find. And we’ve had a
17:31 lot of discussions in and around on Twitter recently about finding the the unknown gems. And this is nice. I’ve
17:39 tried different post calendars over the years because I’ve always wanted to get a nice easy post calendar to manage my
17:46 posts and to tell me what I’ve got upcoming, what’s going, and also because I like to bring in people from time to
17:52 time to manage my posts for me. and I’m notorious for I’ll start a post and then
17:58 it’ll sit there and draft and get forgotten. So you you have some really nice functionalities on it. Now tell us a bit
18:05 about why you built it aside from the little brief you just mentioned and how does it solve pain points for creators
18:11 in the WordPress admin. So two two pain or two came out of two
18:17 specific websites. One is I run a music blog that’s um gone a little dormant at
18:24 the moment, but uh in especially during COVID, I was trying to write about a lot
18:30 of music that was coming out uh and had writers writing about music that was coming out because these creators were
18:37 now not able to go out and DJ and promote their music. Uh and so I wanted
18:42 to again shine some light on on the work they were doing. So, we had at least two music reviews coming out every week,
18:48 which meant uh just as you said, articles in in progress. In pro, yeah,
18:54 articles in progress. Um, and once you’ve got, you know, all the assets and
18:59 you’ve got the tweets lined up and you’ve got all, you know, everything ready to go, you want to make sure that they’re scheduled for the right time.
19:05 Um, and that was always kind of a hassle. And then I also my primary client is two has two online magazines.
19:15 Um and so they’ve got stories that are coming out often more than one a day.
19:22 And so it there’s a huge benefit of seeing all of the stories on a calendar so that you know which ones are coming
19:29 out when and how many you have stacked on a regular on a page or on a day. um
19:35 and that they’re not gonna both come out 20 minutes apart because then you’re they’re not going to get the attention that they’re due um and all that kind of
19:42 stuff. So, um, I tried to I tried really there was only one other plugin that I found that did something similar, but,
19:49 um, kept having issues with it. And so, I, uh, combined that with coming into
19:54 the age of AI development and said, okay, here’s like a really good
20:00 instance, a really good idea of something that I want to have built um, and and let me have let me use AI to to
20:08 help me build it. So, um, thus postcalar was born.
20:14 Well, it’s a very nice calendar and you you touched briefly on being that I thought I would promote one of my
20:20 clients here, uh, Music Insider magazine, in case you don’t know who they are. Nice. So, another place where you can find out
20:27 information for your music site. Um, love it.
20:32 Uh, I have a very diverse selection of clients in my business for my for my
20:38 business. a lot of us do is is wild sometimes what the stuff I’m
20:43 always I’m differently working on now when you were building out the uh post
20:49 calendar you made mention that you used AI for building it was it exclusively built or AI or did you have how what
20:56 processes did you use to have the AI help you or build this for you
21:02 right so for me I this came out uh last updated a month ago it says I’ve
21:08 launched it a couple of months ago at this point. Um for me large at at that
21:14 point largely um code being written uh and me working with AI. Um I think
21:21 primarily cursor for this one. Um basically me acting as the project
21:27 manager and lead developer and then having cursor generate the code. Um,
21:34 I’ve actually just in the last couple months come quite a bit uh further where
21:39 I’m acting now more just as project manager. Um, and I’m doing code reviews
21:45 and stuff like that, but largely just letting AI do its thing, build, writing all the code, organizing it, all that
21:52 kind of stuff. Um, so slowly slowly I think like you know we have auto automatic driving cars and all that
21:58 stuff. Little by little, you take your hands farther and farther away from the steering wheel.
22:04 Yeah. Um, you know, but like I said, so this was a I was like, this is this is relatively safe um functionality. Planes
22:12 are not going to fall out of the sky. Um, it does not interfere with your posts or anything like that. And so I
22:18 was like, this is a great candidate for kind of my first experiment, my fora and first fora into actually publishing
22:25 something written by AI. Um so um lots of opinion still um I think one that
22:33 well sorry and that was the other big role that I think I play is project is product designer
22:38 um so I’ve because I’ve got 20 plus years in involved in that so uh hoping
22:45 that the UI is is as intuited intuitive as it can be um easy to use all that
22:51 kind of stuff well um I have found the AI pretty intuitive on it for it um
22:57 playing around with it. It’s going to get another nice review when I do our do my show next week of uh with my daughter
23:04 Amber. So, you’ll hear more about this promotion next week and my rundown in
23:09 the back end of it. But yeah, I found it very nice in that as in the aspects of use. The AI is nice and simple. I did
23:15 like the one aspect in your AI where you can go in there and adjust the colors for your published and your waiting
23:21 posts. There you go. That was a very useful thing because the colors you chose
23:26 weren’t very good for my eyes. They don’t pop. Right. Well, and that’s that’s something else that I’ve been
23:32 trying to like I I do a lot of work with um Michelle Fchett who a lot of people
23:37 know, very involved in the community. Um she and I launched um WP Wiki uh this
23:43 year as well. So, everybody should go check that out. another free project where we’re just trying to get kind of get our arms around everything and
23:50 everything we can in the WordPress world. Um, and so that’s been a fun project. Um, but she’s also done a lot
23:58 of educating of educating me about accessibility and I won’t say that the
24:03 the plugin is accessible, but I’m trying. Um, and so a lot of it is
24:08 thinking about things like um color, color contrast, stuff like that.
24:15 There you go. Well, color and color contrast are very important to many people. Uh especially myself when I’m looking on and in
24:22 particular like my daughter is really really big about different color contrasts of things.
24:28 Yeah. Good. When she’s uh pulling everything out um and developing it. So,
24:36 let’s see where I was going with this. Um all right. on postcal back back to we’re
24:42 talking about the the using the AI for development and one of the aspects I found of it are you going in and
24:49 reviewing the code and making sure the code is good and solid as it’s done through what do you use for
24:55 double-checking the security issues that the code may or may not have I know this is a pretty simple plugin like I’ve done
25:03 three plugins now using AI to help me write them because my biggest problem with code is that while I understood to
25:09 code I could write the code. It takes me hours to write it because my typing skills suck. Exactly.
25:14 And the AI helps me do all that and it helps me dig down into the code. And
25:20 when like I the one I’ve most recently that people have started picking up here and there and I’ve heard good reports is
25:26 I wrote an LL LL actually I forked I shouldn’t say I wrote I forked an LL
25:31 LLMS text file plugin and added some functionality to it that nobody else was
25:38 using yet. So I see that functionality being picked up other places, but that’s the way it that’s the way it goes. You
25:44 come up with something, somebody else is going to come up with it, too. There are there are no original ideas, just who’s
25:49 first to market with them, right? Well, and and these days it’s moving faster and faster, especially
25:55 when AI is involved. Um, but yeah, uh, so to answer your question, I mean, the
26:02 this is I I’ve been seeing more conversations about this uh on X on
26:07 Twitter. Um I can’t I still can’t call call it X. Um yeah and and elsewhere uh
26:13 Facebook groups and such I I can still call it Facebook. Um but the uh you know
26:19 it’s the on on one end of the spectrum. So you know there’s there’s
26:24 a lot of discussion often facitiously about vibe coding um
26:31 truly hands off the steering wheel. you know, shouting from the back seat, “Hey, this is what I want,” and hoping you
26:38 don’t hit a wall. Yeah. Um the the truth of that, I think, is still pretty sparse or few and far
26:45 between. Um unless it’s tiny, tiny, tiny, right? Like there’s there’s definitely
26:51 instances where I mean, I’m still glancing at the code, but I trusted to write a uh a threeline function that,
26:59 you know, adds a column to your admin or something, you know, dead simple WordPress stuff. But um but I the the
27:07 truth is I most of I think where most of us are at however we are arriving at AI
27:14 generating bigger and bigger products bigger and bigger code bases um is you
27:20 know benefiting from years and years of development. So I the you know the phrase that keeps coming up is you don’t
27:26 know what you don’t know. Mhm. So, uh, people talking about having AI
27:32 generate something and then turns out that it it’s easily hackable and they’re like, well, how how was I supposed to
27:38 know, you know, that I needed to make my passwords more secure or whatever? Um,
27:45 and the truth is I’m the way that I phrased it back to them was, you know,
27:50 you’re essentially a first generation developer. like when I started the doing all learning actually learn really
27:56 learning how to program back in the uh you know 2003 or whatever it was
28:02 um I had to learn all this stuff too and I was reading tutorials and whatnot and so it’s um it’s just comes down to the
28:08 expectation I think that AI is being promoted as this thing where and you and you even see ads on TV now
28:16 and online where they’re like you know whatever your idea is one sentence and
28:21 and the next day you’ll have an app on your phone and and it maybe it’s
28:26 technically possible but probably not. Um unless that app is does you hit press
28:32 a button and hear a fart noise or something like the early days of of mobile apps, right? But we all have to
28:37 start somewhere. Yeah. Um, so but for me it’s it’s still kind of a mix between um uh knowing, you
28:47 know, I know I a bit of trust and also I I know what to look for. I know what
28:53 questions to ask. And so I think we’re just going to get to the point where more of us, even if we are not
28:58 developers, we at least know what questions to ask. Or you’ve you’ve got an agent that’s babysitting an agent who
29:05 does also knows what questions to ask. And at some point, we’re actually going to trust that process.
29:11 Well, that’s definitely the way. I don’t think we’re there yet. No, no, we’re a long way. We’re a long ways from that, but at least we’ve
29:16 advanced from the uh the apps that were created at the beginning of this year.
29:23 So because there were looking at that too like so I’ve I’ve got an online game called
29:30 Mexican trainonline which is an online version of Mexico train you’ll be shocked to to hear um but the uh I I am
29:39 at a point where I want to rebuild it um for largely for performance but also
29:46 using new frame frameworks that will let it be not only web- based but also using the same codebase, I can generate actual
29:54 mobile apps. So, that’s what I’m walking towards. Um, and six months ago, I to
30:01 the best of my ability started the brain dump process of uh this is, you know,
30:07 here’s the whole spec, here’s what we want to build. Um, and got, I don’t
30:13 know, quarter of the way into the build and just got completely tangled in the weeds.
30:19 Yeah. because I didn’t know yet how to wrangle AI. Um, and I still don’t, but
30:26 uh, I know a lot better. Um, and so now, so I wound up just kind of going, h, let’s abandon that for a while. Let’s
30:33 let time go by. And then at this point, I’m back in the throws of it. And we’re
30:39 more than halfway through, and I have every confidence that I’m actually going to finish. So, you know, we’re all we’re
30:45 all learning as we go. Absolutely. Uh, we got a we got a small comment here from the peanut gallery
30:51 from world’s worst web developer. Use peanuts. Use use the WordPress plug-in teams
30:57 plugin. Uh, checker also PHP stand. PHPS stand. PHP stand.
31:04 PHP stand. Yeah. Yeah. These are these are great codebased tools. Yeah.
31:10 Um, for doing some common sense checks. Um,
31:16 I I find that they they catch they catch lots and lots of stuff. Um, they catch
31:21 some things that aren’t actually logical, but that’s fine. They’re it’s it’s doing what it’s supposed to. Um,
31:28 and then I there’s also stuff that it it can’t catch because it’s um, you know,
31:35 purely reax based and and function based and and all that kind of stuff. So, I’m
31:40 actually looking forward to when those kinds of tools get integrated with AI. So, you’ve got hard searches,
31:49 you know, dollar sign underscore get Yeah. must be escaped kind of things, right?
31:54 Um, but then you’ve got more like fuzzy LLM based searches that are like if I
32:00 click on this, what happens? And is that what I want to happen? uh and could
32:06 somebody who is not signed in possibly click on this thing that I don’t want to
32:11 happen or whatever, you know. So, um I think I think it’s it’s all going to
32:16 again can as time goes by these tools are going to get better and better. Well, they are and they’ve just this
32:22 last year there’s been exponential growth because this time last year was when people were first starting to think
32:28 about using the AI for for for codew writing. By January, February, it came
32:34 into full force and now we’re back in October and so much has been done in
32:40 just this last year. It’s been an exponential growth. I’ve found it really quite interesting to watch and to
32:47 be part of along the way. Now, be beyond postcal, how else are you
32:53 using AI in WordPress development? Any experiments or warnings for the community that you’re playing with?
32:60 Uh, it’s addictive. Yeah, it is. It can eat up a lot of
33:06 time. And yeah, the you you make you made me
33:11 reflect for a minute. So, in March of this year, I went to Thailand and that was where while I was there, I actually
33:18 launched my first app. I rewrote um I have a a productivity timer that I’ve
33:24 had online for 15 years now or something called Timer Duro. Um, and that was due
33:30 for an update. And that is a a tool that I have never figured out how to monetize, so I’ve given up. Uh, and so
33:38 basically I just use it as an excuse to rewrite anytime I want to learn something new. Uh, so I had cursor help
33:45 me get that online and I was blown away. Um, now I would find the process that I
33:52 went through with that archaic and slow. Um the the
33:59 continuing my journey I I’ve got my the um just now I actually have my first
34:05 full client build uh I’m building a SAS app a platform essentially for for a
34:11 client um with their full knowledge. Uh I went to them and was like hey look
34:16 you’re going to be I now believe that I have this process down well enough. Um
34:22 you know I’m I’m using AI. I mean, I’m still using So, the the the secret sauce
34:28 really to a lot of the the concerns and questions that come up is Git,
34:35 right, is version control. Yeah. So, AI makes changes. Here’s how you see what what has changed and then you
34:42 decide how that whether it’s okay or not. Um, again, thankfully I worked at a
34:47 couple of these big companies and because they’re big, they they were had a really good process of um doing full
34:54 pull requests and doing full code reviews and everybody had to do code
34:59 reviews even of code that was in languages they didn’t understand. Um, so you had to follow the logic, you
35:06 had to decide whether the requirements were met, you had to do the QA testing, all that kind of stuff. and it was um
35:14 nerve-wracking sometimes, but it was extremely valuable. So, that’s kind of what’s now been built into my process
35:20 and and the process of the people who I’m looking to who are a step ahead of me with with AI development.
35:28 Um, but the the biggest I think the the only like warning is is that and I don’t
35:36 it’s not a warning but I think a thing that a lot of us are struggling with is that again just as you said this is this
35:42 is such new territory and when you get fairly far down the path of building
35:49 something it’s really easy to get tangled. It’s really easy for AI to run away. Um, people talk a lot about
35:57 hallucination. I don’t see a lot of that, but um, but it does get to a point where it’s like it’s it it might you
36:04 once in a while you can have the one step forward, two step back kind of scenario. Um, and all that kind of
36:09 stuff. So, it’s it’s for me I’m finding it a a lot of it’s about meta thinking
36:14 and meta planning. Um, but we also have the benefit of like this week, uh, I was
36:21 again working on a project and I’m like, this is how how do I track the the tasks
36:26 that I want it to do? Um, so I alt tabbed, opened a new window and 45
36:32 minutes later AI had generated a task manager um, the way that I wanted it to
36:38 be built that I’m now using. So, I’m now building products in order to build products. Um, because you can you can
36:45 just work that fast. Um, and and so I,
36:50 you know, we’re I think we’re going to see more and more custom products. I think we’re going to see fewer and fewer
36:58 um products that are uh little products that are that are
37:04 commercially viable because I think people are are going to start rolling their own. Mhm.
37:09 Um uh I think it’s going to be it’s going to be continue to be fascinating to watch.
37:15 Well, you briefly mentioned AI hallucinations. I’ve seen a few in what I’m writing. Usually what it does is it
37:21 makes random stray typos. Mhm. Um but with AI and it’s advancing so
37:28 rapidly and you just mentioning that um some of the advances that that it allows you to
37:35 do with like if your brain works very fast, you can open up several tabs with different a with a different AI and
37:40 start having the different AIs doing different things for you. All same AI but still different different
37:46 conversations with the AI going. Now, how do you think and in particular in
37:52 and around the products and as you mentioned some of the simple products
37:58 out there are people are just going to roll their own such as um trying to think of well even something
38:04 as simple as what you’ve got here with the postcal you know um simpler ones but
38:10 how other ways what other ways do you think the AI with its rapid advances are going to disrupt the traditional
38:17 WordPress development velment process or is it just going to be a continual collaborator for for those? Are we
38:25 looking at a future of of just big plug-in type things that are
38:32 multi-level use such as a big membership site or a specific membership site or
38:39 other more code intensive stuff which will be viable products versus the
38:44 simple stuff. the so one of the things that WordPress as a concept
38:54 uh involving software involving community involving policy involving software I
38:60 already said that involving everything um has struggled with as my dogs
39:05 yeah that’s all right decide to start barking dog has an opinion on it we just can’t understand it definitely oh he does um but we’ve seen
39:13 WordPress go upstream clients are getting bigger and bigger. The developers are getting more and more
39:19 expensive. Um, software is getting more expensive. So, people talk about like, you know, Woo Commerce is free, but if
39:26 you want it to actually work, you need to spend $1,000 in in a on on plugins, right? There’s nothing there’s nothing
39:32 wrong with that. You’re still in theory, you could you could make, you know, way
39:38 more money by spending $1,000. $1,000 is not a big investment um for for starting a business, but it’s
39:44 but it’s also not free anymore. Um I think we also saw a shift like I
39:50 years ago when I launched my first um commercial plug-in uh conbon board
39:57 project management um within WordPress like the first comment I got sorry hold
40:03 on just a second. Yeah, it’s all right. Um, the first comment I got was, uh,
40:11 “How dare you charge for this?” Um, and and a one-star review. I was like,
40:16 “That’s that’s awesome. That’s the way you want to start, you know, a new commercial venture.” Um, but that was
40:23 that was, I think, more of the ethos. and and we’ve even seen um WordPress
40:28 leadership shift a bit to where you know there’s an at least a an understanding
40:36 that commercial uh commercial ventures need to exist.
40:41 Yes, they’re they’re it’s okay that there’s money that isn’t just going into core
40:48 basically um and all that kind of stuff. But anyway, all that to say there’s one of my little rants but but the point is
40:53 is things are going upstream. things are getting more expensive, things are getting more devel um more deeply
40:58 developed. Um and so I think we’re going to see this this is another instance where we’re going to see fewer and
41:04 fewer, you know, little you used to be able to to um write little one feature plugins and
41:12 have a whole suite of one feature plugins. Um and they now need to be very
41:18 well thought out complex solve bigger problems um type of products because you
41:24 know again people are going to be like oh just you know I don’t it it used to I
41:29 think we went from developers writing simple functions or you you’d install a simple plugin that would do a simple
41:35 thing um to developers writing a simple function or going simply going to Stack Overflow uh or GitHub and finding a gist
41:44 a guest, whatever, you know, code snippet, um, whatever they’re called. Um, and you just drop that in your
41:50 function and and you pray. It’s like what we used to do with JavaScript back in the, uh, late 90s. You just kind like
41:56 we didn’t really or CGI scripts. You didn’t really understand what it was doing. You just kind of hope that it didn’t break anything. Um, and uh, you
42:04 know, and I think we’re we’re going to see that again now with with AI where it just like, hey, here’s here’s 90% of the
42:11 little things, the little um, tweaks or, you know, you know, hide the appearance
42:18 uh, menu item from uh, the clients, you know, if based on their user role so that they won’t in go in and
42:24 accidentally change the theme, which I’ve had them do before. Um, you know, protect them from themselves kind of
42:30 stuff. Uh, and and for me it’s gone. I’ve over the years I’ve written those plugins and then I’ve bought those
42:37 plugins, but at this point I’m largely just going to hand AI a list and say here’s all the little, you know, the
42:44 little massages that I want on this site to help protect a client from themselves. Yeah. Um,
42:50 but at the same time, like even today, I was uh again, I’m I’m starting to build
42:55 this site or this platform for this client. Um, and so all of the, you know,
43:02 the code to generate, uh, uh, custom post types and all that stuff takes seconds now. Awesome. Um, but when we
43:09 got to where I’m trying to do some customization in Gutenberg,
43:15 um, it it absolutely failed. Uh, and and we got into the the loop that you never
43:21 want to get into where you’re like, you know, try it this way, try it this way.
43:27 And it’s like I this sounds ridiculous, but I’m glad I’m a developer because I
43:32 know I could I know more suggestions I can make rather than just like it’s still not working. Please try something
43:38 else. Um but ultimately I said forget it. I grabbed uh advanced custom fields,
43:44 dropped that in and it works a dream, right? And and I already know that. And
43:50 so, okay, I guess then the the platform, at least for now, um, in order to get it out the door reliably and quickly, uh,
43:57 is going to use ACF for at least some of this stuff. Yeah. Um, and that’s okay, you know, but, um,
44:05 again, I think we’re, uh, you know, we’re we’re still in this very, you know, middle ground and and
44:12 man, it’s moving fast. So, um, you know, we’ll see where we land. Oh, yeah. Well, it’s going to be
44:18 interesting. And I’m rather enjoying the ride with AI along the ways and what it’s
44:23 what it’s bringing. I mean right now uh me and another another fellow are collaborating on a big plugin we’ve been
44:31 working on for quite some time and AI has allowed us to make some major jumps in it in the last few months.
44:37 So because it was and what’s that my hope is I was just saying my
44:44 like it’s again it’s fun to to to think bigger because because at this point we
44:49 can and what I’m what I’m intrigued by is um you know we’re again to I I still
44:56 love the analogy of like your hands are maybe not touching the steering wheel but they’re still right there. Mhm.
45:01 Um uh I’m I’m also uh you know a dude in a room um talking
45:08 to other dudes and dudetss in rooms um and we’re we’re talking about you know
45:15 building WordPress plugins. Um I’m excited to see what NASA’s doing with
45:20 this stuff or you know whoever. Um because I think this is if if it’s going
45:25 to 10x me my ability to make cool little websites or cool little web apps or cool
45:31 little plugins like who else is at 10xing when they are already 10x past me. Um and I’m I’m excited and
45:39 fascinated. I also fully expect um to be out of a job at some point or that’s not
45:46 true but my job will change uh drastically and and I’m up for it. Um
45:51 but this it it’s all like you say it’s it’s all pretty fascinating um and what
45:57 we’re able to do and it and it kind of enables or it um sparks the imagination
46:03 that it does and uh it’s been uh thoroughly enjoyable. Now off on a
46:09 different tangent here now you’ve been guests on different podcasts like WP Tavern post status sessions and you’ve
46:16 done some marketing and whatnot. What piece of marketing advice for WordPress product creators would you give based on
46:23 your experiences doing all that? And that’s what we probably should have spent the the hour talking about because
46:29 this is still the the nut that not many people can crack. Um, and AI can only
46:36 help you so much. Uh, WordPress is a hard hard ecosystem.
46:43 There’s I I still love it um for the fact that it’s a walled garden, but it’s
46:51 a walled garden that’s much easier to get into than like the app store. Um but the
46:59 we all we’re in a bubble. Um, and I don’t mean like economic bubble, but a a
47:04 walled garden again like or that’s that’s not the analogy. Like Post Status is a this phenomenal community of
47:12 essentially WordPress insiders. Uh, and and not everybody is and and
47:18 there’s a thousand different roles involved in it. Um, but uh we are all
47:24 talking to each other. Um, and then when I
47:30 talk to I have a client who’s a locksmith, I have a client who’s runs a food truck. Um, they have no concept of
47:39 any of the stuff that I’m talking about in WordPress. It’s it’s a it’s it’s like installing, you know, Excel. You talked
47:46 about Microsoft earlier, you know, it’s like it’s just a piece of software that gets installed. Um, and and that’s true. Um, but so then
47:55 the question of is, you know, Microsoft, Microsoft is Microsoft. If you were
48:00 trying to be the new Microsoft now, how on earth would you get the word out? I’m
48:06 I’m not sure. Right. Yeah. Um, and it’s the same with WordPress where like I can sell my
48:12 plugins to other plug-in developers um or maybe agencies uh and and site
48:21 developers. But, uh, you know, how do I get to the actual end user? I don’t
48:27 know. And this is I mean, it’s it’s literally the million-dollar question. Uh, if you’ve got a product that people
48:33 want to buy, which is a whole other thing, but um, so all that to say, the
48:39 only thing that I see right now that I think works, but I don’t I’m not particularly taking advantage of it, I
48:46 don’t really have a product that I’m pushing hard on at the moment. Um, but I still think that um newsletters and
48:53 podcasts are the big uh probably the big winners right now. So, um paying uh people like John
49:00 Overall, whoever he is um lots of money to talk about your plugin, your product
49:06 or whatever. Um sponsoring podcasts. Um and then the newsletter still wins.
49:12 The the in people still like their inbox. Yeah. Um, I like
49:17 getting news from their inbox. I get at least a dozen different WordPress
49:22 newsletters just because I want to stay on top of everything. Yeah. Um, they all have sponsored sections and
49:28 then I think there’s a a lot of strength in um there’s these these lovely random
49:35 people people have little little empires, you know, tiny tiny tiny
49:41 or big. Um the one I always love just um promoting is I there’s a newsletter,
49:47 weekly newsletter called Dense Discovery that I just absolutely love. I look
49:52 forward to it every week. Um and down at the bottom there’s a handful of uh
49:58 sponsored uh you know little classifides basically. So at various points when I’ve been promoting products um I’ve
50:06 paid them money reasonable uh reasonable amounts to you know to promote my uh my
50:14 products. I’ I’ve never I’ve never heard dense den e dense
50:20 d ns e Oh, d nse e. Okay. Yeah, I forget. You’re seeing the screen. That’s not what’s going out to
50:26 the uh other Oh, okay. Um dense discovery. Okay,
50:32 there you go. Yeah, dense discovery. Thoughtful curated links and whatnot. Never never heard of it, but uh that’s
50:38 one for me to check out after the show. And yeah, 30 37,000 people also have
50:44 never heard of it or something. Um, and that’s one of these that’s what I mean like it’s it’s one person I maybe
50:50 they’ve got help, but um one person just
50:56 making doing lovely things online. They curate this this beautifully designed
51:02 uh newsletter that’s some some thoughtful writing at the top and they
51:08 do a little profile of somebody interesting who’s promoting other wonderful things, good books, good
51:13 artwork, all that kind of stuff. Um so to me and and they and it’s not WordPress specific.
51:19 Yeah. Well, that’s that’s always useful. you’ll find other things that are not WordPress specific because as you
51:25 mentioned it’s really hard when you bring out a new plugin. I know that I’m
51:30 working on the plugin that I’m hoping to launch next year.
51:36 It’s going to be something that’s completely different and I have to reach an audience that is outside the
51:42 developers because most of the website clients there small groups and organizations that manage it themselves
51:50 and that’s the whole problem is you’ve got yeah you’ve got a lot of developers, you’ve got a lot of agencies that manage
51:56 a lot of websites but there’s a lot of small groups, organizations, people who do it on their own and they’re trying to
52:04 find the things that they need for their site along the way. And yeah, you’re right.
52:09 How do you reach them? And yeah, newsletters, they are fantastic. I haven’t revived mine yet. That’s been on
52:15 on my agenda to do, but with so many things I do, I just it’s like that one there takes a backseat at the time
52:21 being. It’s enough just to get this show out every week, right? And it’s, you know, and and so
52:27 you have to look at like um a BTOC app that I’ve wanted to build for years. So,
52:33 I’m I’m finally, again, most of the way through a build. Um, caters to bedroom
52:41 producers, bedroom DJs, uh, music producers, hobby music
52:46 producers, or professional, but not full-time. Um, and
52:52 so I’m I’m building that for them, but it’s, you know, they don’t care if it’s has WordPress in the back end or not.
52:58 You know, it’s not that’s that’s not important. So, I and it’s been a long time since I’ve tried to market outside
53:05 of the WordPress ecosystem. Um, and I’m looking forward to it.
53:10 Oh, it’ll definitely be a challenging one there. All right. Well, let’s wrap this up with a few things here. Um, you
53:17 know, as we mentioned in your intro, you’re powered by Yorker Yorkshshire Gold Tea. How does that fuel your
53:24 creativity and any other routines that help you keep you sharp and working on your daily dev work?
53:31 Well, you’ve you’ve got to have your favorite things, right? Like I’ve got like every dev, I’ve got a shelf full of toys behind me. Um uh but they make me
53:39 smile all the time. Uh and as as I look around the rest of the room, you know,
53:44 I’ve got little knickknacks um from travel and and whatnot. Um Yorkshire Gold for me was uh I’m an
53:52 angophile. I listen to because I’m such a fan of dance music. Of course, I’m a fan of uh a lot of music that comes out
53:58 of England and they drink tea even though it’s terrible. Uh
54:04 I don’t know. I was a tea drinker for years. Only in the last year have I started drinking coffee.
54:10 Um but I got I got hooked on on Yorkshire Gold and uh and have built up
54:16 quite a habit and and I just love it. And they are actually it’s a nice coincidence. They everybody should go
54:23 follow them on Twitter. Even if you are not a Yorkshire Gold drinker. Um
54:29 they have I I have no idea what their marketing team looks like. It might just be somebody’s grandmother, but um they
54:36 put out just funny cute little things. They promote fun cute stuff. um you
54:44 know, they uh make fun of um other brands or or people or circumstances in
54:51 really fun and funny ways that doesn’t really step on any any toes. Um and it
54:57 it’s just a delight. And so it’s it’s a great product and a and a great brand. Um and I happen to drink multiple cups
55:05 of it every day. Um, it’s also an excuse to uh I I live in a a quite small house
55:14 and so like my water bottle does not fit under the faucet upstairs so I have to walk downstairs to fill my water bottle
55:21 which is not a bad thing. Get my butt out of the seat, you know, and uh and also go drink more water. But I also
55:28 often will go and make a cup of tea because I’ve got to wait, you know, five minutes for the water to heat up and
55:33 five minutes for it to steep. So I’ve got to spend 10 minutes just staring into space thinking away from away from
55:39 the computer and I try not to bring my phone with me. So it’s also a bit of uh
55:45 it affords me a bit of meditation or at least you know get get let me do some clean and clear
55:51 thinking a few times a day. That’s that’s where my dog helps me. He drags me out of my He drags me out of my
55:57 computer my computer chair at least every three hours to go for a walk because I I currently live in an
56:03 apartment. So I can’t just say open the door and say go play. No, I have to take him out. Right. And it’s a minimum 15 20 minutes of time
56:11 to get away from the computer, think, stretch the eyes and the legs, you know. Exactly. And I’m I’m It’s was just about
56:18 to say and and Yeah. And to go pet my dogs. My as as this one stands here and just stares at me. He’s like, he’s like,
56:24 “Remember me. I’m important, man.” Hello. Well, with the time change, right? Like, it’s dinner time even
56:30 though it’s it’s now only four. Um, so he’s a little pissed. The dog the dogs don’t understand the
56:37 clocks. Although, I’m certain my dog does cuz, you know, sometimes he’ll come whining at me. I’ll look at the clock. I said, “Really?” Right. Exactly. At this
56:44 time every day. Okay. But yeah, the time changes definitely messed him up a little bit. He’s whining for his dinner
56:49 earlier. It’s like, well, exactly. Yeah. Okay. All right. Now, one last thing here.
56:55 Now, you’re a musician. You just you mentioned your brief love of the music from Britain and uh you’re on Twitter
57:03 under secret agent gel. Is that what I got? There you go.
57:08 There we go. Secret agent gel. I want to call it secretariat gentle. Um it’s
57:14 it’s I’ve definitely been called it’s it’s a it’s a fun weird name that I came up with a hundred years ago. Yeah. that has
57:20 definitely been massacred in in un uncountable number of ways. But um
57:26 that’s half the fun of it. There there’s so many um usernames and uh domain names like that where you if
57:33 you see them you’ll you’ll see all them sled together because they’re all lowercase and you see a word that is
57:39 made in the middle of what they were trying to make. There’s companies that I can’t remember them now. There’s some of them that really had a poor choice when
57:46 their when their name was slid together as one word. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. So yeah, Secret Agent Gel, Gel with a G
57:54 is uh as me as a dance music producer. Uh and I’ve got a bunch of mixes up
57:59 there. It’s if if nothing else, it it might not be your cup of tea, but I promise you it’s good music to code by.
58:04 So uh you know, hit play and and see what you think. Well, give it a give it a shot. I went and checked it out, but I didn’t play
58:11 anything. But uh you’re also a dad joke enthusiast. You got a good dad joke for us before we uh close this out? Oh, no.
58:18 It’s all about context. So, there’s, you know, you I can usually just say
58:23 something stupid in response to uh to whatever other people are talking about and get some groans and and eye rolls.
58:30 I don’t know. My my my youngest son seems to be a dad joke enthusiast already. He comes to me and he tells me
58:36 these dad jokes. I’m like, really? Oh, dear. He he just pops them off. All
58:41 right. Well, that’s awesome. with these creative with these creative influences, how do they how do they improve your WordPress
58:47 development? Oh, for sure. I mean, ideas, like I said
58:54 even even a minute ago, the an app that I’m building is caters to these other
58:59 interests. Um, anything to get you out, you know, out of the
59:05 circular discussion that is WordPress and and software and all that kind of stuff. You never know what where ide
59:12 good ideas are going to come from. Um there was um I’m gonna blank on the
59:17 name, but the podcast is called Tech Zing. Um that I used to listen to
59:23 regularly. Um and one of the concepts that it’s two two nerds talking about
59:28 nerd things. Um they’ve been going for decades, but they at one point talked a
59:34 lot about the concept of luck surface area. So basically the more you the more
59:39 you get out in the world, the more things you get involved with, the more you read, the more you write, all that kind of stuff. Basically, you’re
59:45 spreading a wider and wider net, more likely that like is like light lightning is going to strike that you’re going to,
59:51 you know, get lucky in in life and ideas and all that kind of stuff, you know.
59:57 Um, put a different way like having a a a broad interest, a broad network, all
60:03 that kind of stuff. You only benefit from it. So Oh, absolutely. Um, the more stuff you’re Nothing else you can’t only write code.
60:10 No, the more stuff you’re involved in, the more opportunities come your way. All right. And thinking of opportunities, this is the point here
60:16 where you get to tell everyone where they can find you. And of course, all the links to all these things will be found in the show notes when we publish
60:22 the show. And uh, fire away. Sure. The uh, the place where I am most
60:29 active for this kind of stuff is uh, Corey Moss. Spelled the way it sounds.
60:35 Just kidding. Not at all. Um but uh on Twitter um tweet at me there if you have
60:42 questions or interests or you know uh gelform.com is really my resume site.
60:48 But you know if um always interested in helping other people out, getting involved in the community, uh
60:55 collaborating, all that kind of stuff. So if anybody wants to get in touch, by all means send me an email through uh
61:01 gel forum.com. Again, gel with a G. All right. All right. Well, thank you very much. Don’t run away. We got a
61:07 outro here and a little bit of music for people. And I’ll be right back with you. Thanks, John.
61:12 Reminders for the show. All the show notes can be found at WP Plugins Az.com.
61:18 And while you’re there, subscribe to the newsletter for more useful information delivered directly to your inbox. WP
61:25 Plugins A to Z is a show that offers honest and unbiased reviews of plugins created by you, the developers, because
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61:53 And remember to subscribe and hit the bell to get notifications of all new videos. You can also follow the show on
61:59 X at WP Plugins A to Z. John can be reached directly through the website
62:05 wppproadz.com or email him at johnwpro.ca.
62:12 Amber can also be contacted through the website at wproz.com
62:18 or email her directly amberwpro.ca.
62:24 Thanks for joining us. Have a great day and we’ll see you next week.
62:35 All righty, folks. That’s all we got. Take care now. Byebye. Oh my god, that is amazing.
62:42 Oh no. Obviously, we just lost the satellite feed. That sucks.