Web creator helping visual thinkers build real things
Rotterdam, South Holland
Joined August 2009
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Another example of why the dream of vibe coding every single thing yourself is not really a dream, more like a nightmare.
For you and your client.
4 months ago I cloned Airtable for a client in 5 days because they refused to pay Airtable $500/mo
months later, I’m still maintaining it
every two weeks it’s another edge case, a UI tweak, or a "quick 10-minute request." They’ve easily spent 10x more in headaches than the $2,000 they would’ve paid Airtable
just proving that SaaS isn't dead. Cloning isn't enough, if you want it to be same quality as original it becomes a full time job
and at this point isn't it easier to just pay?
Rino retweeted
I have 98 plugins installed on @wpzoom. Everything runs fine.
Some plugins are literally a single PHP file.
A plugin count tells you absolutely nothing about performance, code quality, or security.
But I guess counting to 47 is easier than understanding how WordPress works.
"WordPress plugins are the past, Claude can do everything now"
Now that AI is here, so many people are against having a list of WordPress plugins. But it doesn't make a lot of sense.
A plugin is just a piece of code that adds functionality to your website, which you can activate or deactivate. When Claude generates that functionality, it's also code. There's not much of a difference.
The main difference is who maintains it. Plugins are often managed by companies that release security fixes and new features. Not always, of course. You can vibe code your own plugins too.
Those updates can cause problems, but so can your AI-generated code. Using Claude with another CMS, like Payload, doesn't make vulnerabilities disappear either. This screenshot shows vulnerabilities flagged in a Payload site's Node.js packages.
WordPress plugins have this reputation for being bad, but having code you can switch off, with a company maintaining it, is actually pretty useful. You can reasonably expect a good company to work on keeping its plugins secure and up to date. Especially when the plugins are paid tools.
Your vibe coded solution can quietly break in the middle of the night, leaving you to reschedule your morning to fix a client's website. With a maintained WordPress plugin, the fix might already be available.
You litterally click "Update", and you're done. How is that not better?
And yes, we're moving toward a time when we won't need plugins for every little thing, especially on the frontend. But using code from companies that keep it maintained still makes sense.
So plugin updates are a blessing, not a problem.
A big shout-out to the Fluent team for creating such a nice WordPress product suite.
Today, I sent my first email to a new list of 1,400 people who signed up on livingwithprompts.com using a @Fluent_Forms form. Their data was saved securely on my own website. I'm using their ToSend SMTP solution (also from fluent), and I designed and sent the campaign email via @FluentCRM. The whole process has been flawless.
Soon, my new community will be hosted on using @FluentCommunity and the payment wills be managed using @FluentCartWP with Stripe.
This is not a sponsored post.
I'm just becoming more convinced that keeping all of the data on your own website is a great idea for ownership, analyses and cost reduction. I'm going to save thousands of dollars this year by not having to pay big amounts for ConvertKit and Circle.
And could I have "vibe coded" these plugins myself? Sure, but why would I? Many of these plugins are a few hundred dollars LTD. If you vibe code them yourself, you're going to spent days prompting that you could use to work on something else, and then you have to maintain the software yourself.
It just doesn't make sense to generate everything just because it is possible. It's not cool to re-invent the wheel. That's why I still use plugins, especially for critical infrastructure.
For such complex websites it just makes so much sense to use WordPress, instead of going outside and bolting 10 different systems together just to use a newer system.
And having 1 company like Fluent who just builds a whole suite of products which work great together is blessing and saves me so many headaches.
I haven't had a video go this viral in a long time.
If you've missed it. I announced that I'm leaving Elementor, after teaching and using it for 7 years.
And its not just the dramatic title and thumbnail that did the job. If you actually read the comments you will see that many people have been questioning their web stack for a long time now. And it makes sense, in this time where everything is changing.
For me, it's the end of a chapter and the start of a new one, and I'm happy that I could reach many old subscribers with this video. But surprisingly, this video also reached a lot of new viewers as you can see in the second image.
I'm so happy I switched all of my websites to Hostinger.
Rino retweeted
Watching this video felt like seeing the last seven years of our own journey pass in front of our eyes.
@RinodeBoer, we’ve been following your work for years. Your tutorials and perspectives have helped us throughout our journey building The Plus Addons for Elementor. Even as product creators, we’ve learned a lot from how you explain things and approach real client work. That perspective has always been valuable to us.
We also got the chance to work together on @uichemy, back when our focus was Figma to Elementor. Now, as we expand into the AI era, it’s genuinely exciting to see our journeys heading in a similar direction again.
So much of your reflection felt familiar: the early days, the momentum during COVID, and now the changes around V4 and AI. We’re grateful for the role Elementor has played in our journey too. At the same time, we’ve spent months learning, experimenting, and figuring out how we can keep creating value as things change.
What I’m especially glad to see is that your focus on helping agencies is still there. The tools are changing, but your ability to make new workflows understandable and useful still matters just as much.
What excites us about AI is the opportunity to go beyond building the frontend. From understanding a client’s business to connecting analytics, testing ideas, improving CTAs, and learning what actually brings results, there’s so much more agencies can help with.
A finished website alone is becoming harder to differentiate on. Helping clients turn that website into something that works better for their business is where I see a real opportunity. We’re exploring that direction too, and I’m excited to see what you build with Living from Prompts.
Thank you for sharing such an honest reflection. We share that same mix of gratitude for the journey so far and excitement for what comes next.
This hasn’t been an easy decision. But I’m leaving Elementor.
After 7 years of teaching it and using it almost every single day for client work, I’m moving on.
It all started back in 2014 when I wanted my own creative business. There were no page builders yet, so I sold graphic design and paid developers to build the websites. Then Elementor came along and I could finally sell the whole process myself.
It shaped my career, my channel and a big part of my life. But the way I design and build websites has completely changed. AI made me excited about web development again, and I don’t need a page builder for my client work anymore.
So I’m closing this chapter, and starting a new one: LivingWithPixels is becoming LivingWithPrompts. From moving pixels to prompting.
Join the new era: livingwithprompts.com/
Full story in the video 👇
This hasn’t been an easy decision. But I’m leaving Elementor.
After 7 years of teaching it and using it almost every single day for client work, I’m moving on.
It all started back in 2014 when I wanted my own creative business. There were no page builders yet, so I sold graphic design and paid developers to build the websites. Then Elementor came along and I could finally sell the whole process myself.
It shaped my career, my channel and a big part of my life. But the way I design and build websites has completely changed. AI made me excited about web development again, and I don’t need a page builder for my client work anymore.
So I’m closing this chapter, and starting a new one: LivingWithPixels is becoming LivingWithPrompts. From moving pixels to prompting.
Join the new era: livingwithprompts.com/
Full story in the video 👇
Rino retweeted
"Software development is dead" they said.
Last month a client paid me $20,000 for an app. My cost was $200 for Claude Code.
It's a kiosk mode app for android tablets in taxis. Ads for partner companies, tipping the driver, admin, backend, the whole thing. Now live in production.
I didn't write a single line of code. Still took 1 month of constant work.
The best part? The client came to me with a vibecoded version first. It was horrendous.
He paid $20k because he needed someone who has done this before, professional design, real assurance, and 12 months of support.
You can't vibe code that.
Without AI it would have taken 3 months and cost him 2-3x more.
Developers using AI will always win. Stop listening to people who say software is dead for views.
Why AI makes WordPress more valuable (Chat with Milan) xitter.cf/i/broadcasts/1dGYlanEj…
I thought AI would make WordPress irrelevant. After testing the alternatives, I changed my mind.
We’re talking about why we’re staying with WordPress, and how we’re using AI to build with it. Come join us live. We start in 10 minutes 🍿
(link will turn into a replay)
youtube.com/live/EqRb-8zhhZE…
I tried to make myself in 3D with Three.js on ChatGPT-6 Astra and Claude Opus 5.5, but they couldn't pull it off. So then I connected to the Higgsfield MCP and got something that looks a lot more presentable (not sponsored in any way)
It still doesn't look exactly like me, even though I gave it reference pictures, but I think this shows perfectly that these models often need to connect to other services to get something great. It's not that LLM’s by itself did this.
There’s actually no such thing as an “AI website”
There are only websites made with the help of AI.
Platforms like Lovable know this, but they make it feel like “their AI” does all of the magic.
But behind the scenes, there’s a bunch of smart, existing systems connected together, making it all feel like one experience.
That's why it feels AI is taking over everything.
But once you understand these separate pieces, the AI space starts to feel a lot less overwhelming.
Rino retweeted
If this were a @WordPress site, would the replies be “WordPress is slow”?
But it's @webflow's official website.
Are Lighthouse scores important, or only when we're judging a platform we don't like?
Claude just came up with a way to surpass the SVG blockage by converting it to a TXT file first, then converting it back to SVG 🤣 😨
