Reuben Hochstetler

Speed to build is irrelevant. The question is: are you building a site that can be properly maintained and scaled? Stop choosing tools that have totally upside down priorities.

<checks my #WordPress scorecard> - Pointed out the glaring issues with WP leadership years ago. - Called Gutenberg a trash can and said that WP should stop pouring resources into it. - Called for a shift of resources to wp-admin improvements and UI refresh/unification. - Called for a shift of resources to modernizing core CMS features. - Called for native CPTs and custom fields. - Called for a collective shift to professional page builders that facilitate proper, scalable, maintainable work. - Called for the end of theme directories and the adoption of a standardized framework for building on Wordpress. - Called for a rebuild of the Media Library. - Called for standards, best practices, and higher development/design quality across the ecosystem. - Called for a greater focus on agencies and freelancers as the core user avatar for self-hosted WP instead of the failed "everyone" avatar. - Called for a greater focus on quality WP content creation. - Called for a greater focus on recruiting talented designers to the ecosystem. Imagine where WP could be today instead of where it is and what's happening to it. Now cue the "where are your commits" bots...

*** THE TRUTH ABOUT SEO & WHY I STOPPED RELEASING SEO TRAININGS *** If you spend long enough in SEO, you should come to the realization that the best SEO for legitimate, long-term businesses is just brand building. And brand building is driven primarily by every other tactic/technique not named SEO. At the end of the day, “doing SEO” is the act of implementing specific techniques and tactics based on today’s best guesses of how an algorithm is operating, in an effort to circumvent the need for brand. I don’t think this is really debatable. You have to “do SEO” if you don’t have the brand power to rank naturally. If you have a top brand in a market, you don’t have to “do SEO.” The proof for this statement is that top brands get away with all the technical SEO “mistakes” because search engines still know they’re of top relevance and will serve them as a result anyway. Imagine you’re a local Italian restaurant. You can get to the #1 spot by: 1) Never “doing SEO” and instead focusing on all the things a best Italian restaurant would be, say, and do as a brand/business. 2) Doing a bunch of SEO tricks to rank for “Italian food near me” for however long you can last until Google realizes you’re not actually worthy of the top 3 spots. And if you are worthy, then you don’t need all the tricks/effort to rank in the first place. Now, I'm not saying that $10,000 invested in SEO is $10,000 wasted. You can move pixels on analytics charts. You can potentially expedite a company’s success, provided they do everything else right. You can also expand a company's digital footprint, which has solid payoffs. BUT, where that $10,000 used to pay off with 90% efficiency, it only pays off with 40% efficiency or less today. Organic SERP real estate is shrinking dramatically and will only continue to shrink and SERPs are only getting more and more competitive. The conclusion is: It’s becoming a poorer and poorer choice for where to invest those dollars, especially when you understand that BRAND always wins over SEO tactics. Any examples of this not being the case are temporary outliers. Now, here’s the kicker. What most “SEO experts” won’t admit or disclose to clients is that a business can get to the #1 spot without ever “doing SEO.” In other words, the $10,000 that’s only used at 40% efficiency could be spent on other things that will pay off with much greater efficiency, and more exponentially. This runs contrary to what most businesses think and are told. Companies are misled into believing that “doing SEO” is a requirement to rank well. It’s not. They can absolutely invest that money into other key areas of marketing and brand building and move the SEO needle in the absence of an SEO expert. (And no, you don’t need an SEO expert to make your H1 say “Italian Restaurant in Fucksville, Utah” instead of “Welcome.” That’s not doing SEO, that’s checking a very low-hanging, no-skill-needed box. So don’t come back at me with, “Basic on-page is still important!”). Again, this doesn’t mean SEO is useless or completely unproductive. But I’ve shifted my consulting recommendation away from SEO, to other means of marketing and brand building. And when I’m consulting agencies/freelancers on what to sell/focus on, I now recommend against SEO as primary offer. Businesses should be interested in playing the real game of … BUSINESS … and stop dumping so much money into the side quest of feeding algorithms. Search engines want to serve the best result. So … get this … hear me out … just cut to the fucking chase and BE THE BEST RESULT.

The people who already know me and my products already know what's up, so this is for the people who are new here... The core philosophy of good product ideation and marketing is: find a meaningful need and fill it and aim to be uniquely transformative in the process. In 1997, Netflix established a new era in media where movies no longer had to be physically rented in person and returned in person. In 2007, they introduced the concept of streaming and eliminated the need for physical DVDs altogether. In the process, they absolutely murdered a huge player named Blockbuster, who had the chance to make moves, but whose execs were asleep at the wheel. Now, I don't know how many people might have said, "That's just marketing hype" about Netflix's initiatives when it was all happening in real time, but those people sound pretty dumb when we look back now. Is it true that some marketers invent needs where there are none and manufacture controversy and urgency just to get attention? Of course. And I don't like those marketers any more than you do. This is where context is very important. 1. Has the person in question done "marketing bullshit" with their previous products, or are those products 100% legitimate, very successful, well supported, and innovative? 2. Has the person in question spelled out real problems, principles, and ideas that TONS of people agree with, feel, see, and damn near taste? 3. Is there a real need? Is there a real team? Are there really hundreds of hours of free, valuable content published consistently for years? Are there really weekly livestreams where all this stuff been talked about relentlessly with a core tribe of agency and freelancer OGs? Is this actually someone who deeply knows the ecosystem, what's wrong, and how to fix it? This is why we often refer to such things as "context CLUES." So, here are two takeaways that are not critically important to publish, but are fun to point out at this moment in time: 1. Etch has the potential to be as impactful as I've said it is - not a single thing has been embellished or fluffed. It's 100% what I believe to the core of my being, based on things I've been saying for years. And the early-adopters who participate in the active development process with us are going to help ensure that it is an absolute home run while simultaneously setting themselves up to win big. 2. By the time we're done, the Blockbusters of WordPress who are all stuck in the mud of Era 1, Era 2, and Era 3 thinking, will only be able to look back on their comments and beliefs about "marketing" and "hype" and "bullshit" with super super sad face, longing for the pre-Etch days when they were still relevant. So, you can: 1. Choose get high off all the "marketing" and "hype" copium attacks peddled by the Blockbusters and establishmentarians of WP. OR 2. Sober up and realize that this is all 100% real, legitimate, and impactful, and attend one of the livestreams next week with an open mind and a willingness to hear the details. If you truly want a better WP, this is worth a listen. #Era4FTW

Rapid-fire thoughts on Jamie's video about #Wix vs #WordPress (from a 19-year WP veteran and exclusive WP user)... - It brings up some very valid points and I'm glad he published it. Kudos to him. It gets an important conversation started. - The chart showing the [relatively low] number or percent of new projects being started with WP is what I've suspected for quite some time now. Harping on "43%" or "market share," as most WordPressers do, is just a self-unaware celebration of lagging indicators. The future isn't bright when people aren't using the platform to start new projects. All real indicators point to "43%" becoming a dramatically lower number in the near future. - The video title is definitely sensationalist and misses the real mark. There isn't some "master plan" by Wix to take down WordPress, at least not using any of the tactics outlined in that video. The reality is that Wix is just way better at marketing and advertising and building a cohesive product than WordPress is. And... - ...The same is true of most other similar platforms. @Wix , @squarespace, @webflow, @framer, etc. are all lightyears better at marketing, advertising, education, and cohesive product development than WordPress is. They're literally just playing the BASICS of the game way better, but a top WordPress creator thinks this is some "secret takedown plan." That's either because he's never seen basic marketing get executed consistently or his channel thrives on sensationalism, idk. Since you can't build a website in 10 minutes, I'd lean toward the latter explanation. - If you're keeping score without blinders on, WordPress is losing in every meaningful category except one... ❌ Advertising ❌ Marketing ❌ Education ❌ Product Design ❌ Product Development ❌ Product Onboarding ❌ Ecosystem Cohesiveness ❌ Product Vision ❌ Product-Market-Fit ❌ Talent Acquisition (Creators) ❌ Thought Leadership & Innovation ❌ Storytelling ✅ Open Source They win in ONE area and one area only. Granted, it's a huge area (and the only reason we're still alive). Here's a quick recap of where WordPress is in 2024 in case you're out of the loop: 😟 The product has two completely different admin UIs. 😟 The product has four completely different fundamental interfaces (classic blocks, block themes, site editor, and third party page builders), none of which play nice together. And just within the page builder ecosystem and block ecosystem, that quickly expands out to dozens of different interfaces, option sets, and methodologies, with varying degrees of output quality. 😟 There's no real communication of standards or best practices. WordPress is the wild west of web design, which has some upsides, but ultimately fails to attract new talent and completely turns off beginners. 😟 The product has a theme ecosystem with tens of thousands of variant takes on how a website should be built (not just designed), all randomly spread out over the four possible interfaces (because themes aren't just design, they're linked with opinionated architecture, which is a fundamental flaw of the theme ecosystem when considering the platform from a Wixesque user perspective). 😟 The primary interface, the block editor, has two completely different rendering modes (iframe vs no iframe) depending on whether a random non-v3 block is available or not available, with wildly problematic implications for anyone who wants to interact with the canvas' styling output. This is logistically outrageous. 😟 The product has an archaic CMS that's been all but abandoned in favor of committing resources to a flailing page building experience. Twenty years in and we just got the ability to duplicate a page and we still can't natively organize media (the ultra-basics are still missing). The CMS is literally the best part of WP, but they abandoned it a decade ago. 😟 Consider the concept of pages vs posts vs post types. Okay? Now stop considering it, because it makes no sense and is a waste of time. These are areas of the architecture that desperately need thought leadership. The fact that WP in 2024 is still a glorified blogging platform is not due to technological limitations or the need for backward compatibility. WP is architecturally emaciated because it's spent too many years starving for thought leadership. There isn't a single WordPress website built in 2024 that is thriving because of WPs architecture -- every single one of them either has poor content architecture or is a patchwork of workarounds designed to escape the 2005 blogging model of content management and content relationships. 😟 The product has no onboarding to speak of and onboarding is nearly impossible to design given the lack of a cohesive building experience. Again, the theme ecosystem is a major roadblock that none of the other platforms suffer from (and hardly anyone in WP seems to understand this from my previous discussions). 😟 Gutenberg makes development MORE technical, not less. And the block editor still feels and behaves like a half-baked experiment after 8 years of development. Compare it to ANY other modern page building interface and it feels like a cheap plastic toy. This has mentally and emotionally beaten down devs so much that they fangirl over the addition of insanely basic features like negative margin. 😟 The narrative around WP in the larger ecosystem of web design and business is shifting heavily in favor of alternatives. 😟 I could keep going, but it's all too much for a tweet. What is the conclusion of all this? Here's my direct and forewarning opinion: WordPress is a glorious, but severely wounded elephant, surrounded by hungry wolves who have shown a strong ability to HUNT and KILL. It's not fatally wounded, and it can retain market dominance and turn things around, but it needs better leadership, better vision, and a much stronger and more serious commitment to marketing and education. And it needs those things NOW. There's more to say, more "solutions" to offer, and more valuable insights that I'm happy to share, but it's all too much for a tweet. As everyone should know by now, I'm more than happy to discuss on a podcast, youtube channel, livestream, whatever. If we don't start having more serious conversations about this, we're gonna get feasted on. And just so we're clear: I'm a HUGE fan of WP. I love [the vast majority] of the community 😅. I love OWNING MY CONTENT. I love the FREEDOM TO PUBLISH. But I'm not in the business of getting feasted on, so I feel a real need to discuss these things publicly. Not to harp or attack or blame any one person, but so these very real issues can be IDENTIFIED and FIXED and so WP can survive and thrive. We don't have nearly as much time as some people seem to think we do.

Gutenberg is absolute madness. Get this... We need to apply a bunch of rules for how Automatic.css works in the block editor... I get everything working on my install and a few other installs (doing things I shouldn't have to do, but that's neither here nor there). All good! Next, I spin up a site with @insta_wp to start prepping for a new tutorial. This tutorial involves WS Form from the great @westguard, so I install it. Suddenly, all the code previously working in Gutenberg is broken. Why? Because WS Form offers a WS Form Gutenberg block as an option for users to put a form in the block editor. I'm not using this block, but it exists. And, since it exists, the block editor no longer loads in an iframe. No WS Form = Gutenberg loads in iframe. WS Form = Gutenberg doesn't load in iframe. Whether 👏 you're 👏 using 👏 the 👏 block 👏 or 👏 not. The existence of a random third party plugin completely changes how the block editor renders and has extreme consequences (re: breakage) for any CSS designed to affect the block editor. This is literal insanity. And it fully explains why people keep reporting completely different behavior from what we designed ACSS to do in the block editor. And now what? I have to write duplicate CSS and find a way to use that CSS to check for the existence of the iframe? Are we really okay with this?

I tried building a fairly simple layout with the WordPress block editor and Twenty Twenty-Four theme. It didn't go well. Full video and write-up: geary.co/wordpress-block-edi…