Detailed Notes
In Part 2 of our conversation with Wes Towers, founder of Uplift 360, we dive into real-world strategies for WordPress SEO for developers—how to build leaner, faster, and smarter websites that rank in an AI-driven world.
Wes shares his practical tech stack (Kadence + Rank Math + Gravity Forms), explains why simpler designs convert better, and reveals how AI can boost content creation without losing authenticity.
💡 In this episode: • Practical WordPress SEO for developers who want results • Using AI to speed up drafting while keeping a human voice • The one-design rule that simplifies client projects • Caching, CDNs, and security tools that actually help • The best lightweight plugins for performance and ranking
🎧 Listen to all episodes: https://develpreneur.com/wordpress-seo-for-developers-tools-vs-building-your-own-with-wes-towers-part-2/ 🌐 Learn more about Wes: https://uplift360.com.au
📌 Connect with Us: * [email protected] * https://develpreneur.com/ * https://www.youtube.com/@develpreneur * https://facebook.com/Develpreneur * https://x.com/develpreneur * https://www.linkedin.com/company/develpreneur/
#WordPressSEOforDevelopers #WesTowers #BuildingBetterDevelopers #SEO #WordPress #Kadence #RankMath #AIMarketing #Uplift360 #Developers
Transcript Text
[music] [music] [music] [music] Well, hello and welcome back. We are continuing our season of building better foundations. we are almost building better interviews uh this time around that yes once again we are continuing this is part two of our interview with west towers and we are going to jump back into that fairly soon but first this is the building better developers podcast this is developer I am Robin a founder of said building better developers developer also the founder of RB consulting where we help you do technology better we sit down with you we walk through your business and how you do business. It is unique. It is custom. And within that, we help you craft a custom recipe for leveraging technology and improving your processes and integrating, simplifying, automating your business so that you can work in your on your business instead of in your business. We get you a road map. We help you execute that or we give you the instructions on how to execute that. Your choice. It is custom fit to your business and your needs. Check us out at rb-sns.com. Uh rb-sns.com product if you want to just jump right into a technology audit or if you want to try one out yourself, you can check out matrix.rb-sns.com and go spend, you know, maybe 5 to 10 minutes and get yourself a uh quick and dirty assessment, but also includes a nice little quick road map and things like that to help you out. Good things, bad things. Good thing is I'm looking out sunshine. I have not seen sun shine sunshine in like it feels like days and days and days. Uh finally, I guess the rains are are pushing through a little bit. Things like that. Uh it is that fall weather. It's gotten cooler. It's sort of it's it's sort of nice to have like, you know, you get that sort of warmish day and then a nice cool night. Those are some of my favorites. However, it brings some rain as well and so you just don't see the sun as much. So, the good news is, hey, at least we are getting a little bit of touch of sunlight and warmth. Uh, the bad news is that it's fall and like the summery stuff is going away. But on in line with all of that is we're about to stumble right into the holiday season of like we've got Halloween right around the corner and Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, that whole thing. Always fun. always flies by. This year, probably more so than it will in any previous years because of just all the things going on in the world. But more importantly, first you guys get to hear another introduction from Michael. So dive right in. >> Hey everyone, my name is Michael Malash. I'm one of the co-founders of Developer. I'm also the founder and owner of Envision QA where we help businesses take control of their software by focus focusing on what matters most and that is quality, reliability, and support you can count on. Whether you're building something new or trying to fix what's broken. We combine custom development with thorough testing to make sure that your systems actually work before you actually hand them off to your customer. At Envision QA, we don't just build software. We make sure it's solid, stable, and ready to support your business growth. Check us out at envisionqa.com. Good thing, bad thing. uh similar to you. I mine is with all the wonderful rain we've had since it is my allergy season, it has been miserable. I'm ready for it to dry out for a few days. Uh on the good side, my favorite holiday is actually right around the corner from this recording. Uh Halloween is one of my favorite times of the year and it actually falls on the day I can actually enjoy it this year. >> That is always rare but cool. Uh Wes has already he introduced himself last episode so you can check that out because we don't want to waste any time with an additional introduction. We are going to dive right back into our conversation with West Towers. Picking up right where we left off. So, does your company have any do you guys have like some customuilt tools for managing that to keep track of their SEO and make sure that hey, you're getting the hits that you need uh based on, you know, the particular categories or topics they're out there marketing for. Um, or are you out there like using thirdparty tools to kind of track and monitor that? Yeah, it's all it's all third party tools at this stage and it's um it's a it's an interesting step. I feel as though we should we should go down that path of customizing our own um and and we could probably do a lot of it with vibe coding, but it might not be perfect. And it feels to me I mean it feels to me it's only that stuff's only going to get better. So maybe waiting waiting it a couple of years. Um it can build really basic um as you guys know it can build really basic things but once you want to deviate and control it a little better um it's it's not so good and sort of the design well like cuz I'm a designer uh I don't really like the the styles it's pretty pretty bland uh often times. So um I I feel as though we'll bite the bullet on building our own. Um, at the moment it's really a a few pieces of software that we just purchase the rights to and and do it that way. >> So, since you're more of a designer, uh, when you go into um a new project for a new customer, do you kind of whiteboard uh or do like some static pages like just designs or do you just jump in there and start building the site to their needs? >> It's a interesting thing. So I've changed it dramatically over the years. And the the way I started initially was just how when I was employed, that's how they did it. So they always did three concepts for everything. That's just the way they pitched. They said, "We'll do your three design concepts. Didn't matter what it was, and then they would choose one or or cobble together a couple of them and and work down from there." I I stopped doing that because it created more confusion than anything else and just made things slower. I dropped it just to just to one one design. Um and uh we for the bigger websites, we'll do wireframes and we'll map it all out. Um but that's that's kind of rare. Uh it'll just be a simple uh understanding of the menu structure really. So the site map is all we probably need for most sites. And then we we get started on the design so they see um just one one design that's closely aligned. So we'll discuss other websites that they like. We won't copy them, but just to get an understanding of their styles and preferences and uh we find it's just so much better not not confusing them with too many options. It it it seems sort of counterintuitive, but it it they they seem to be happier with one. Um I think because their their life is easier because they haven't got to decide. >> Yeah, that makes sense. It's like the watch um advertisements in the magazines. If you want to sell watches, you really should have like one or two watches, not 20 watches because you're just going to confuse your brand essentially. So >> yeah, I like that. >> Yeah, I like the uh the the quote. I think it Henry Ford it was something like um you can have the Model T in any color you like as long as it's black. >> Yeah. >> So I [laughter] love that. Brilliant. >> Yeah. Sometimes simple simple is going to be much better. It's particularly something like that where they're not they just like we like we start out they want to get the job done. They're like all right I want to just get out there. I want to get this you know get the word out and and move forward with it. Um, I do want to ask because you and you actually sort of brought it up a little bit. Um, SEO and the whole search engine, you know, optimization and marketing and all that kind of stuff within the world of AI. Uh, because now, uh, this is one of those areas where it's it's I'm I'm a little bit sad for some people that are very, you know, SEO focused companies because it's so much it's been owned by Google for so long. And now you're very quickly, like literally within periods of months, you're starting to see people switch and they're using AI engines for their searches. I'm starting to see just even non-technical people on a regular basis. I'm starting to see like they'll just go hit, you know, perplexity or chat GPT or something like that and use that for their search instead. So now what are you how are you if you are how are you adjusting or maybe even trying to prepare for what's what's next as this becomes uh obviously it's going to be a different landscape and we're I don't think anybody necessarily knows exactly what it's going to look like. Yeah, it is really interesting and we had to have some difficult conversations with long-term clients who when Google and the new tools um sort of transformed a lot of things with SEO um everyone's getting less traffic to websites simply because the answer is in platform whether that be Google or um chatbt perplexity whatever you're using you're getting your answers elsewhere but the answers are being drawn from everything that's published on online on websites so the the the the goal is to publish quality content that has the potential to surface on all these platforms and all all the platforms are trying to do the same thing. They're trying to surface the very best information for whatever someone's having a query about. So, uh the long-term play, it doesn't matter how the tech changes, the long-term play will always be true to that. So, producing quality content that answers people's needs, that's closely aligned to your business um is is the key. It is challenging because you can't measure uh like you once did. So back in the day, you'd choose your half a dozen whatever it is or a dozen keywords that you want to rank for. Plumber Melbourne for example. And so you would track that and you would see the ranking improve and you could show a fancy report and you could see the you know the ranking improved therefore the traffic improved and therefore the return on investment could be easily measured. But now they're getting their answer on platforms that you can't track a click because there is no click. So, um it can be challenging. Uh we had a client uh who won a $140,000 just $140,000 uh project just recently and he was found on chatbt as the very best person in Australia for his field. Um he only he only knew where they came from because he was asking the question of them. They were having a large conversation with Chachib and and they said, "Hey, who's the very best in Australia?" And he according to Chach he he was. So, that's kind of where it's at. But that's really difficult for people like me to to measure to I wouldn't never have been able to track that. He had to have the conversation uh to find that out and realize, hey, that the work we did, I did for them and our team did for them um paid off dividends really quickly. That was that was within a couple of months of working together. >> Yeah, it's a it's definitely it's a it's a whole different challenge, I guess. And that actually goes back to again the the customers you're dealing with is you know part of it goes back to yeah you can generate AI content all day long and and do stuff like that. But when you're to get the real valuable content that that you want to really help distinguish you from everybody else that means then you have to invest in your case your your customers you have to invest some time too. They have to be part of generating that content or doing the things to distinguish themselves. How do those how do those conversations go? Is it is it something they typically are like, "Okay, yeah, we get it. We're going to have to do part of this." Or is it more like, "No, you guys, you guys are the tech guys, you guys figure it out." >> Yeah. So, we we'll do a lot of the drafting of content for them. But it it really is just a draft, but once they've got that better down, the goal is for them to massage in their own unique stories and case studies, examples, everything that only they can bring to the table that I I or my team simply wouldn't know. And that's the unique parts that are really important. There's a lot of um concern and fear about uh AI written content not doing very well. Um but I think it's a little bit of a myth. I don't think AI is going to penalize AI so much and and certainly the websites we're working with, we haven't seen anything like that. What's going to happen is if there's nothing new, um it's not going to surface because they're sophisticated and realize this is just all generic content that's published elsewhere. Why should we um mention this brand? So yeah, so I think creating using it as a tool to create the first draft, first dirty draft and then working in your own messaging is really important. And and the and the great thing about the content production is you can create really great prompts, really sophisticated prompts to make sure it's on style and brand. It's in the voice and and the style that they like. That was always part of the challenge with having a copywriter uh uh work on material because I mean some of the big companies, they'll have a massive style guide document. So the copywriter would read through it and go, "Yeah, I get it. Get started on the work." but it will be soon forgotten because it's just so hard to remember all that stuff. But, you know, AI is so cool at remembering a pretty lengthy piece of I know we discussed earlier it can get things wrong a little bit too, but for the most part, it'll it'll keep things on on track and on brand. So that's kind of how we're working it for clients or even so we had a website recently who had just changed gears um from being a businessto business solution and a business to consumer. He wanted to drop the business to consumer because they were headaches and a whole bunch of other concerns and just less profitable. So AI was really great at just reworking, tinkering with his content um really fast to remove the BTOC nuance in there and and just to tighten up some things super fast and easy and and just quickly aligned him his website to to where he is right now. Yeah, that does make it easy to to pivot as a business is I found that that it is really good about you know saying okay take this and shift the you know tweak the the the content or the target audience a little bit. It's you know things like take out these kinds of references or add those kinds of references and it can get that work done very quickly and and tends to be pretty thorough about it. >> Yeah, 100%. I mean, so that's the that's the way we we're using it mostly for content production um for the for the to attract search uh search engines and and large language models as well uh and first drafts and so on. There I did speak to another podcast guy who's really heavily involved in um the vibe coding. He's he's it's almost a side hustle for him. It's probably not a a a venture I would go down as a as a service, but um you can kind of see where things are headed. It's um it's exciting and terrifying I I find. >> So with the tools, so you mentioned AI and we've talked about you know GPT copilot things of that. Are you using any specific like coding AI tools like codeweaver or anything like that within uh your tool set for building the WordPress sites? >> No, we don't we don't really have much need for any of that. Uh the developers do the yeah co-pilot chatbt. It does. So basically what we're mostly doing is taking a bunch of plugins and we're trying to keep them as lean, you know, keep the plugins as minimal as possible because it just makes things easier to deal with. Um, but yeah, they're putting them together and then they're then they're basically troubleshooting most of the time through the through the tools to find the solutions quicker and getting it getting it done. So, um, yeah, it's it's not we don't have re really complex websites very often. So, yeah, that it's more the troubleshooting aspect, which as you guys know that can that can be a nightmare sometimes. The most what seems to be the most simple thing might take half a day to deal with, but you just these days you might have it within a a prompt or two. Yeah, I know we've also been talking a lot about the SEO uh pieces of this as well. Kind of want to throw something out there that I've run into over the years as well deal with WordPress sites or websites in general, but u the CDN's always trying to like offsource all that static content to load your pages faster to make your site, you know, score higher on Google. um what are some of the challenges you've had with dealing with that as well uh with these pages and that that you're building? >> Yeah, cing's always been just cing in general, let alone CDNs, but cing in general is always been a bit of a challenge, particularly with the the people we're working with who are less techsavvy because as you know, some of the cases can sometimes be uh pretty stubborn um to to clear. So, uh there's that side of it, the the browser based on their local PC. Uh but yeah, the CDN's there's um there's a great one from security standpoint security um which is a a firewall more than a CDN, but it has a CDN side as well. Um, so when we inherit a website that's really really old and it's going to be a pain um to to deal with, we we put the firewall on there um because it's a it's a a simpler solution to get them through till they till they do a new website. So we did that for a a Jumla site, an archaic Jumla site that we took on. The intention was to build them a new site, but he's just delayed on that a little bit. So get them out of trouble with with the CDN. So the um yeah, so but yeah, everyone's sort of wanting to get the site as fast as they possibly can. The the real important thing is the quality of the hosting as well. So when you when you get a cheap host, it's just not worth it. Get a quality host. It's only a few extra dollars realistically, and it's going to be far more reliable usually. Sometimes you just get unlucky and get on a bad server. I'm sure you've all had that scenario. >> Yeah. run into that quite often and that's a bit of a pain. Um, one other thing uh I'll touch on um with your site. So, I know you probably don't want to give away your t too many of your uh you know, you know, tools of your toolbox, but um static images or images in general, you know, Adobe's usually pretty good, you know, um Photoshop. What are some of the more, I guess, current tools that you might be using, especially with AI around to uh get some of these images up there, refine them and make them smaller and that so they load faster uh or are better images for your pages. >> Yeah. So, we ideally get real photos as much as we possibly can, but that to optimize them, Imageify is really great. It it can go through and and crunch them really nicely. There's there's uh the other one that's free Smash, but we we don't use that anymore. That was a few years ago that we were dabbling with that. Just had too many headaches with it. Um breaking things and so on. So the Smash system see it's it's low cost. Um and it does it does it really well. In terms of uh stock photos in WordPress these days, you'll see uh pixels, however you say it, pixels. Pixels. Um, for us it's sometimes a bit of a challenge because partic particularly for the construction uh the the style of buildings aren't necessarily the same here in Australia as they might be uh internationally. So sometimes it's a bit of a challenge finding suitable images uh in those circumstances. Now do you have uh I guess that actually just brings up a a sort of a random question. So are your customers are they tend to be international? They tend to be more Australia based or >> Yeah, mostly mostly Australian. We've got we've got a few international um you know just dealing with a a real estate agent who um so it's kind of construction but not really. He does a bit of development and and real estate and so on. So he's in the UK and got a a few steel companies internationally [snorts] for some reason. We've we've done a heap of steel so building materials uh steel companies. I think what what happens is people could the advantage of doing what we do, we have our little link in the footer, which is which is great because people always check out the competitors and so on and they they follow the link and they find our business. So that's nice. We've only had a couple of people say we we don't want your link in the footer. Most people uh are really fine with it. Yeah, it seems like that's sort of the I [clears throat] think that like that's the accepted practice is if you're going to have somebody build your website, then you're going to have to essentially advertise for that company a little bit by saying, "Hey, this was designed by these guys." If you know, if you like it, >> you know, point it that way, which I would >> I guess it just makes sort of sense. It's like, you know, you figure normally if you find somebody that does any kind of job for you well, like if you found somebody that did construction for you well and you're like, "Hey, they built this building great." you're going to want, you know, you'll you'll refer them on to, you know, other people to them. So, I would think the website thing. >> Absolutely. Because >> Yeah. Go ahead. >> I was tell Speaking of that, um, it made me think, so when you're building these websites for your customers, are you using are you custom building the themes for them or are you just modifying most of the common themes that are already out there? Yeah, it was fully customized for a long time. Uh, and now we're building on cadence, which is which is fantastic. Um, so it's blocks and, uh, so super simple to do really fast. And that's that's really important because we're going for one design, we need to be able to adapt it fairly quickly, otherwise it'll be a nightmare. So because we're jumping straight into that design and development process all at once, it just gives us a capability of moving things around fast. Um, so we're finding it's the best right now. It's it's fast loading, it's lightweight, it's simple to use. So when the client takes over the website to to edit things and so on, they can do it pretty easily. And they are they are spruing their AI um version which so you can press a few buttons and it'll try to build a a WordPress website for you. It's not it's not great but they're trying and some people are probably using it for for low-level websites. We're not but you can see kind of in the future maybe it's to a level in which we will start to use some of those tools. They they're a pretty big player. They're very popular. So I think they'll be one of the leaders who get get it right from WordPress uh AI building. Um so that's kind of why we went down that path. So yeah, it's it's really good. So anyone can jump in with a little bit of technical knowhow and they'll be able to uh evolve a website. So following that thought uh for those uh of our viewers in that if you know a lot of us have played with WordPress in the past or currently build WordPress sites today um for those watching or listening what is some advice you can give to those wanting to get into building a WordPress site or maintaining one? What are what is your advice to them? Yeah. So, I would definitely avoid some of the page builders like Elementor or so on, Divvy, uh just because it's it's heavyweight and it bloats the site and it's it's completely unnecessary. There was a time back in the day where there was advantage for it because it's more closely you see what you get as you're editing it. But these days with Cadence, you you see what you get, but it's lightweight, so it's faster and everything's better. So often times we're inheriting websites which are built in some sort of page builder and they're always slower loading than they need to be and and doing basic things. If you want to do some sort of style change throughout the site, it's a bit of a nightmare because you got to go in and edit each page because it's built with this crazy page builder. Um yeah, so those sorts of things, stay away from those complicated page builders. They might feel enticing because um you know they've got their advantages, but once you start trying to change things and edit things and and you want it to perform perform well, fast and fast loading, good user experience, you'll run into headaches. So, so the stack I would always recommend is Cadence as the as the theme to build upon. But for SEO, RankMath in my opinion is the best. I know um lots of people were using Yoast for a long long time and and still it's it's still pretty good, but um you needed to get the upgrade the pro version to to unlock some of the local SEO and so on. But with RankMath, it comes straight out of the box, a lot of those features. It also has the AI capabilities to write all your titles and descriptions with a click of a button and does a really good job. So it'll just work out what's on the page and then write something that's meaningful for the page to the right length and everything like that. Um so they're the they're the core things. Uh security uh uh Word Fence is is a free one which is really good if it needs a higher level of security. Um security the website firewall that's that's a paid for service. Um the what else? Uh in terms of forms, I think Gravity Forms is the best because it um it just has so many integrations uh built in. You can you can buy a higher level and and it can uh integrate into whatever CRM you you like pretty much or or do whatever you need it to do, take payments, etc. So, um they're some of the core um stack that we would typically use, but there's always a nuance. There's always something unique in in every website, but that's a good starting point. That's excellent. So, I want to thank you so much for your time and for for hanging out with us. Uh, in the the pre-show, I talked a little bit and said that, you know, we've never had a a bad guest, so I put a lot of pressure on him and yet he just like has shined and we continue to have never had a bad guest. >> Uh, at any rate, so this is a great conversation. Uh this is a um it was one of those I was hoping to get into some of these things which we did about like having a presence and and really talking like outside a little bit of the technical side of just like a website and what you're what you're getting there and what you know some of the things that you want to do and and being consistent and things of that nature. So this was excellent. Um I'm sure that a lot of people in the audience would love to you know have been uh intrigued by this. What's the best way for them to get a hold of you if they want to if they have a construction company or some other where they want to make use of your services? >> Yeah, sure. So, uplift 360.com.au is the website and you can book a meeting directly with me if there's something people want to discuss. I'm happy to chat. There's no obligation with that, but all the social media you would typically find uh is on the website as well. It's the easiest place to find everything there. >> Excellent. And we'll make sure we've got links in the show notes for uh all of that as well. Uh just in case they don't understand your Aussie accent there a little bit or something. >> Okay. Yeah. Sorry [laughter] about Uplift. Let's try it again. The main thing is the website uplift 360.com.au. >> Don't forget the AU being Australia. >> Yes. Uh I'm just joking. That's uh it's always fun to have. [laughter] It's like people get caught up on those things sometimes when they it's like it's really not that hard. But that being said, I really do appreciate the time. It's been a great conversation. Uh, everybody's listening, uh, feel free to, you know, reach out. Obviously, he's a very accessible guy, great guy to talk to. Um, and so, you know, again, appreciate your time. Thanks for being here. And, sign off and let you get back to your day. >> Thanks, Rob. Thanks, Michael. It's been fantastic. >> Thanks, L. You have a good one. >> Take care. >> And that wraps up our conversation. Now, uh you may get to see a little bonus material with Wes. Uh maybe not depending on how you look at this. But, uh this wraps up our conversations, I guess, with him. Two episodes. Uh again, as always, I just want to thank Wes for his time. Appreciate all that he has brought to the table. You guys have got as you know from that, you can reach out to him if you want to have a conversation with him. I think he'll be more than glad to do so. We'll have all of those even don't forget the AU on the end of the website. uh we'll have those links there and you can go check his site out and see uh see what he does and and see where you can help out or maybe learn a little bit in that industry. Uh or if you happen to be in construction uh and you need a website, that might be exactly the guy to talk to. If you want a better podcast, you need to talk to us via email [email protected]. You can check us out on developer.com, the developer channel on YouTube. Uh again, I was I was poking around on that the other day doing some updates and some stuff and got back into some of the older stuff. We have got a lot a lot a lot of stuff out on YouTube as well as the site itself. There's well over a thousand articles, posts, and stuff like that on the website. There's hundreds on YouTube. Uh there's just a there's a ton of content and it whether you want to learn about building a business, whether you want to learn about building a website, whether you want to worry about building your career, learning how to do certain languages and things better. We've got all sorts of that stuff out there. So go check it out and on any of it, even the oldest oldest stuff, if you leave us a comment, we will send something back. We'll let you know if you have questions, however we can help you. uh if you have suggestions of whatever we can do maybe in future articles, future podcasts, newsletters, you name it, we are happy to help you because we're here to serve you to make you better developers through the content we provide, not simply make ourselves better by the content that we're working our way through. That being said, as always, appreciate your time. Go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week, and we will talk to you next time. All right. And so that was uh that's the wrapping up the conversation here. Uh Wes again, thank you so much. Is that uh hopefully that went well with you? Everything was good. >> Yeah, I felt I felt it went well. You happy? Obviously, you felt it was all right. Good. >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like I said, we're >> It's a challenge when sometimes when we don't, you know, we don't give you the questions ahead of the time or anything. So, it's just sort of like here you go and let's see where it goes. And it was, >> you know, like I said, you did not disappoint. I and I told you like you've been doing this long enough. I had a feeling that you were going to be able to just like knock those out of the park and you did. That's where great conversation. Cool. >> A lot of little great great uh thought points in there as well. I took a couple notes along the way and >> got a few things there I'll have to go back and think about a little bit with our uh some of the how we approach our website and some of our messaging and such. >> Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Thanks. Thanks, guys. We'll uh we'll uh once it's published, I'll share it through the socials. >> Yep. We'll get it out. It'll probably out in the next week or two. I'll get you the Yeah, we'll do probably like on a Tuesday and then a Thursday. So, I'll get you the one link when that goes and then follow up the second one when that comes available. >> And feel free to share it out wherever you want. And uh let us know if there's anything we can do to help you. Uh let us know and we'll be happy to be there and be of service. >> Awesome. Thanks, guys. >> All right. Have a good one, Wes. >> Okay. Thanks. Take care. Bye. >> And now that Wes is gone, we can talk about him. So, u I'll we'll go with our uh our bonus material here. Um my thoughts on this just uh briefly I'll go and throw this out first is uh this is back to I'm getting back into the rhythm of uh interviews being a guest and a host and doing this. I've been on I don't know four or five podcasts in the last week or at least I guess recorded. I don't know how many of them actually gone out. uh starting get back into those being a guest having people come on like this who I've like I had never really spoken with Wes before this show uh but got like you know a little bit of his background and stuff like that. I'm just like it people are awesome. I'm just like like people that I that are in this uh circuit or whatever it is. It's just like I'm always amazed at how much fun I have having conversations with these people and what their businesses are and especially the niche or niche depending on how you want to pronounce it that you get into. Uh the fact that you got somebody that is has decided that we're going to build websites for construction companies. You know, some people would be like that's crazy and yet they've been doing it for a while and they're not doing too bad. So, uh there's a lot of great insights too that uh we got out of this as somebody that has built a business and uh particularly I love the the little part about uh the evaluation and being surprised because you know what you've done it really is literally like what you've done does not actually show what you may be able to do in the future and sometimes uh technology changes really quick and you need to be ready to zigg or you know when everybody's zagging or whatever it needs to be to keep your business relevant and up-to-date and new. Technology probably more so than anything is it just even like he mentioned you need to do your regular website updates and stuff like that. just whoever you are, wherever you're at, don't get too comfortable because things change so quick and it's always good to just like have a couple of things out there, be playing around with some of the new technologies and understanding what's going on so that if something happens and you know, somebody sweeps the legs out from underneath you, you can go dive, you know, cling on to another technology or another platform or another approach, pivot and move on and survive. Uh, bonus material from you. Yeah. So, I I really liked the conversation we had with him. Um, one of the I'm glad I asked a question about the tools and that because he threw out some plugins and things that I had not heard of and I'm going to go check those out. Uh, like the Gravity Forms. Forms has always been hard to find a good plugin to throw a form on a WordPress site. They almost always break within a few months. Like, you have to stay on that plugin and always stay up to date. Um it rankmath that was another one cadence I'd heard of. Um I heard that was an up andcoming so definitely want to check that out. Um but the image fi you know we we use what image analyzer years ago to compress all of our images and they got pricey uh kind of got away from them. But that that's one of the biggest problems with WordPress sites I find is your images have to you have to make sure that things are compressed well but also not too badly because they need to be um either you need to create images for each platform you know phone web um tablet whatever but if you compress them too much they look crappy or they don't show up at all. So that was uh an interesting one. The other thing too though it's just amazing here we are again talking to another another company where AI is really disrupting things. Um it's going to be interesting to see where this is all heading in the next not even years now. I mean it things are just really speeding up in the next few months. It's like every month something new and every week it's like, "Oh, hey, here's something else." And it's like we're really going fast, but no one's really stopping to see what are we really running to. It's like, you know, we're we're going so fast. Things are falling off. And are we g getting quality or are we just getting something that looks like quality that is essentially going to be this big AI bubble that's going to burst and yes it's disrupted everything but now we're all the people that AI got rid of that we need back to fix the problems. >> Well there's always that I mean you have to evolve or you know evolve or be lost basically. And so there's going to be it's going to be a lot of like a lot of things there are going to be jobs that are going to disappear uh because of it. I' I've had a conversation yesterday with some people and I don't I think uh the virtual assistant industry is I think I would declare it dead. Um I I have you know I'm one of those that although never a heavy user of virtual assistants or anything. Uh I definitely have dealt with several people talked to a lot of people that have worked in that you know worked with that to some extent and I see absolutely no reason for it. If you can spend a little time, if you understand a little bit about AI, then practically anything that you would have a VA do for you, other than like direct phone calls to human beings, and even then um AI's got some really good voice stuff there. It it is frustrating. Uh I just was on a complete AI uh support call today and wanted to yell and scream at the AI, but couldn't because it doesn't do you any good. Uh, and it just it's just stubborn like that, too. It's like, well, I can't do that. It's like, well, you need to do that or you're going to lose a customer. And they're like, well, that's just too bad. I'm like, okay, well, too bad. And, you know, we had to we had to part way, so I won't deal with that company anymore. Um, but I think it's it's fun. It's it's always it's fun and scary to be in a situation where you've got things changing so fast and it it's it is very much um, you know, the search engines and things like that are changing dramatically. We've a lot of us have used uh you know searches and stuff like that to help their development efforts and to help build things and craft things for a while and now AI has just like put a turbo boost on that and then uh with some of these conversations now like he said which is which is really uh it's a really interesting conundrum is that now you've got these AI engines that are uh sort of sitting on top of content. And so if you want your content to stick out and to be able to like get people to uh via using your content actually connect into you now you've got a whole different set of challenges be because like I don't know how long it's going to be before your website actually becomes sort of a thing of the past because people are going to be already people talk to you know use all these voice boxes and stuff like that to talk to technology. They're going to have chats with stuff where they're never going to see your website. And so what do you do there? How do you, you know, that's going to change stuff. How do you navigate, you know, as these things get better? I think mouse, you know, a mouse and a, you know, maybe even a keyboard are going to go away. Um, because it's like you don't need to navigate that thing. You don't need that sort of clunky thing. You just start asking questions and the computer there will start doing stuff for you. Uh, and it's getting pretty darn good at that. Um, like I said, I think the the future that Star Trek promised us basically is very rapidly getting to that point. Um, I think we're getting a point we're going to see some uh a lot of interface changes and things like that. So, this will be cool. It's like it's always it's exciting times which are also uh often a little bit scary times. So, >> just got to make sure the uh AI button is on unlike the uh worldwide outage that happened just recently. That was a fun day. >> Yeah. Yeah, I mean you got to watch out for that kind of stuff is uh sometimes those things uh you know technology can also disappear really quickly. So make sure you still know how to like start a fire and eat food without having the technology create it for you. All the the important things, you know, don't forget to breathe, stuff like that. That being said, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for hanging out with us and uh being a part of this. If you know somebody's a guest, if you want to be a guest, let us know because we are, you know, we're I I really have like I don't know, we're probably a hundred people that I've I've interviewed or more now and they've just all different walks of life and they've always found like I literally I whenever I say that I think there was one person I was like really didn't need to have that conversation. That was like one person and it wasn't that bad. It was just like not I don't think it was a great day for when we had that conversation. But other than that, and I've had several that are like highly memorable conversations that will stick with me the rest of the my life as always. If you got half out of this, as I did, then this was more than you got more than the value for your your time spent. Especially if you listen to this at like 1.25 speed, as I often do with podcasts. All of that being said, thank you so much for hanging out with us. Uh we're not done yet. We're going to keep on chugging along. This is going to be an interesting one. This may be just like the last time I introduced interviews, we may just like blow right into like, you know, cross multiple seasons or have like some mega season. We'll have to see how it goes. You know, Michael's a little bit more of a like got to have the right number of se episodes per season. Um, you know, he's a little more like be he's a he's a rule follower, you know, one of those kinds of people. I'm more on the chaotic good side, I guess, or something like that. But maybe >> evil be a little evil. But that being said, >> evil, >> thank you and your you and your however you are aligned self, go out there and have a great one. We will talk to you next time around. [music]
Transcript Segments
[music]
[music]
[music]
[music]
Well, hello and welcome back. We are
continuing our season of building better
foundations. we are almost building
better interviews uh this time around
that yes once again we are continuing
this is part two of our interview with
west towers and we are going to jump
back into that fairly soon but first
this is the building better developers
podcast this is developer I am Robin a
founder of said building better
developers developer also the founder of
RB consulting where we help you do
technology better we sit down with you
we walk through your business and how
you do business. It is unique. It is
custom. And within that, we help you
craft a custom recipe for leveraging
technology and improving your processes
and integrating, simplifying, automating
your business so that you can work in
your on your business instead of in your
business. We get you a road map. We help
you execute that or we give you the
instructions on how to execute that.
Your choice. It is custom fit to your
business and your needs. Check us out at
rb-sns.com.
Uh rb-sns.com
product if you want to just jump right
into a technology audit or if you want
to try one out yourself, you can check
out matrix.rb-sns.com
and go spend, you know, maybe 5 to 10
minutes and get yourself a uh quick and
dirty assessment, but also includes a
nice little quick road map and things
like that to help you out. Good things,
bad things.
Good thing is I'm looking out sunshine.
I have not seen sun shine sunshine in
like it feels like days and days and
days. Uh finally, I guess the rains are
are pushing through a little bit. Things
like that. Uh it is that fall weather.
It's gotten cooler. It's sort of it's
it's sort of nice to have like, you
know, you get that sort of warmish day
and then a nice cool night. Those are
some of my favorites. However, it brings
some rain as well and so you just don't
see the sun as much. So, the good news
is, hey, at least we are getting a
little bit of touch of sunlight and
warmth. Uh, the bad news is that it's
fall and like the summery stuff is going
away. But on in line with all of that is
we're about to stumble right into the
holiday season of like we've got
Halloween right around the corner and
Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's,
that whole thing. Always fun. always
flies by. This year, probably more so
than it will in any previous years
because of just all the things going on
in the world. But more importantly,
first you guys get to hear another
introduction from Michael. So dive right
in.
>> Hey everyone, my name is Michael Malash.
I'm one of the co-founders of Developer.
I'm also the founder and owner of
Envision QA where we help businesses
take control of their software by focus
focusing on what matters most and that
is quality, reliability, and support you
can count on. Whether you're building
something new or trying to fix what's
broken. We combine custom development
with thorough testing to make sure that
your systems actually work before you
actually hand them off to your customer.
At Envision QA, we don't just build
software. We make sure it's solid,
stable, and ready to support your
business growth. Check us out at
envisionqa.com.
Good thing, bad thing. uh similar to
you. I mine is with all the wonderful
rain we've had since it is my allergy
season, it has been miserable. I'm ready
for it to dry out for a few days. Uh on
the good side, my favorite holiday is
actually right around the corner from
this recording. Uh Halloween is one of
my favorite times of the year and it
actually falls on the day I can actually
enjoy it this year.
>> That is always rare but cool. Uh Wes has
already he introduced himself last
episode so you can check that out
because we don't want to waste any time
with an additional introduction. We are
going to dive right back into our
conversation with West Towers. Picking
up right where we left off.
So, does your company have any do you
guys have like some customuilt tools for
managing that to keep track of their SEO
and make sure that hey, you're getting
the hits that you need uh based on, you
know, the particular categories or
topics they're out there marketing for.
Um, or are you out there like using
thirdparty tools to kind of track and
monitor that?
Yeah, it's all it's all third party
tools at this stage and
it's um it's a it's an interesting step.
I feel as though we should we should go
down that path of customizing our own um
and and we could probably do a lot of it
with vibe coding, but it might not be
perfect. And it feels to me I mean
it feels to me it's only that stuff's
only going to get better. So maybe
waiting waiting it a couple of years. Um
it can build really basic um as you guys
know it can build really basic things
but once you want to deviate and control
it a little better um it's it's not so
good and sort of the design well like
cuz I'm a designer uh I don't really
like the the styles it's pretty pretty
bland uh often times. So um I I feel as
though we'll bite the bullet on building
our own. Um, at the moment it's really a
a few pieces of software that we just
purchase the rights to and and do it
that way.
>> So, since you're more of a designer, uh,
when you go into um a new project for a
new customer, do you kind of whiteboard
uh or do like some static pages like
just designs or do you just jump in
there and start building the site to
their needs?
>> It's a interesting thing. So I've
changed it dramatically over the years.
And the the way I started initially was
just how when I was employed, that's how
they did it. So they always did three
concepts for everything. That's just the
way they pitched. They said, "We'll do
your three design concepts. Didn't
matter what it was, and then they would
choose one or or cobble together a
couple of them and and work down from
there."
I I stopped doing that because
it created more confusion than anything
else and just made things slower. I
dropped it just to just to one one
design. Um and uh we for the bigger
websites, we'll do wireframes and we'll
map it all out. Um but that's that's
kind of rare. Uh it'll just be a simple
uh understanding of the menu structure
really. So the site map is all we
probably need for most sites. And then
we we get started on the design so they
see um just one one design that's
closely aligned. So we'll discuss other
websites that they like. We won't copy
them, but just to get an understanding
of their styles and preferences and uh
we find it's just so much better not not
confusing them with too many options. It
it it seems sort of counterintuitive,
but it it they they seem to be happier
with one. Um I think because their their
life is easier because they haven't got
to decide.
>> Yeah, that makes sense. It's like the
watch um advertisements in the
magazines. If you want to sell watches,
you really should have like one or two
watches, not 20 watches because you're
just going to confuse your brand
essentially. So
>> yeah, I like that.
>> Yeah, I like the uh the the quote. I
think it Henry Ford it was something
like um you can have the Model T in any
color you like as long as it's black.
>> Yeah.
>> So I [laughter] love that.
Brilliant.
>> Yeah. Sometimes simple simple is going
to be much better. It's particularly
something like that where they're not
they just like we like we start out they
want to get the job done. They're like
all right I want to just get out there.
I want to get this you know get the word
out and and move forward with it. Um, I
do want to ask because you and you
actually sort of brought it up a little
bit. Um, SEO and the whole search
engine, you know, optimization and
marketing and all that kind of stuff
within the world of AI. Uh, because now,
uh, this is one of those areas where
it's it's I'm I'm a little bit sad for
some people that are very, you know, SEO
focused companies because it's so much
it's been owned by Google for so long.
And now you're very quickly, like
literally within periods of months,
you're starting to see people switch and
they're using AI engines for their
searches. I'm starting to see just even
non-technical people on a regular basis.
I'm starting to see like they'll just go
hit, you know, perplexity or chat GPT or
something like that and use that for
their search instead. So now what are
you how are you if you are how are you
adjusting or maybe even trying to
prepare for what's what's next as this
becomes uh obviously it's going to be a
different landscape and we're I don't
think anybody necessarily knows exactly
what it's going to look like. Yeah, it
is really interesting and we had to have
some difficult conversations with
long-term clients who when Google and
the new tools um sort of transformed a
lot of things with SEO um everyone's
getting less traffic to websites simply
because the answer is in platform
whether that be Google or um chatbt
perplexity whatever you're using you're
getting your answers elsewhere but the
answers are being drawn from everything
that's published on online on websites
so the the the the goal is to publish
quality content that has the potential
to surface on all these platforms and
all all the platforms are trying to do
the same thing. They're trying to
surface the very best information for
whatever someone's having a query about.
So, uh the long-term play, it doesn't
matter how the tech changes, the
long-term play will always be true to
that. So, producing quality content that
answers people's needs, that's closely
aligned to your business um is is the
key.
It is challenging because you can't
measure uh like you once did. So back in
the day, you'd choose your half a dozen
whatever it is or a dozen keywords that
you want to rank for. Plumber Melbourne
for example. And so you would track that
and you would see the ranking improve
and you could show a fancy report and
you could see the you know the ranking
improved therefore the traffic improved
and therefore the return on investment
could be easily measured. But now
they're getting their answer on
platforms that you can't track a click
because there is no click. So, um it can
be challenging. Uh we had a client uh
who won a $140,000 just $140,000
uh project just recently and he was
found on chatbt as the very best person
in Australia for his field. Um he only
he only knew where they came from
because he was asking the question of
them. They were having a large
conversation with Chachib and and they
said, "Hey, who's the very best in
Australia?" And he according to Chach he
he was. So, that's kind of where it's
at. But that's really difficult for
people like me to to measure to I
wouldn't never have been able to track
that. He had to have the conversation uh
to find that out and realize, hey, that
the work we did, I did for them and our
team did for them um paid off dividends
really quickly. That was that was within
a couple of months of working together.
>> Yeah, it's a it's definitely it's a it's
a whole different challenge, I guess.
And that actually goes back to again the
the customers you're dealing with is you
know part of it goes back to yeah you
can generate AI content all day long and
and do stuff like that. But when you're
to get the real valuable content that
that you want to really help distinguish
you from everybody else that means then
you have to invest in your case your
your customers you have to invest some
time too. They have to be part of
generating that content or doing the
things to distinguish themselves. How do
those how do those conversations go? Is
it is it something they typically are
like, "Okay, yeah, we get it. We're
going to have to do part of this." Or is
it more like, "No, you guys, you guys
are the tech guys, you guys figure it
out."
>> Yeah. So, we we'll do a lot of the
drafting of content for them. But it it
really is just a draft, but once they've
got that better down, the goal is for
them to massage in their own unique
stories and case studies, examples,
everything that only they can bring to
the table that I I or my team simply
wouldn't know. And that's the unique
parts that are really important. There's
a lot of um concern and fear about uh AI
written content not doing very well. Um
but I think it's a little bit of a myth.
I don't think AI is going to penalize AI
so much and and certainly the websites
we're working with, we haven't seen
anything like that. What's going to
happen is if there's nothing new, um
it's not going to surface because
they're sophisticated and realize this
is just all generic content that's
published elsewhere. Why should we um
mention this brand? So yeah, so I think
creating using it as a tool to create
the first draft, first dirty draft and
then working in your own messaging is
really important. And and the and the
great thing about the content production
is you can create really great prompts,
really sophisticated prompts to make
sure it's on style and brand. It's in
the voice and and the style that they
like. That was always part of the
challenge with having a copywriter uh uh
work on material because I mean some of
the big companies, they'll have a
massive style guide document. So the
copywriter would read through it and go,
"Yeah, I get it. Get started on the
work." but it will be soon forgotten
because it's just so hard to remember
all that stuff. But, you know, AI is so
cool at remembering a pretty lengthy
piece of I know we discussed earlier it
can get things wrong a little bit too,
but for the most part, it'll it'll keep
things on on track and on brand. So
that's kind of how we're working it for
clients or even so we had a website
recently who had just changed gears um
from being a businessto business
solution and a business to consumer. He
wanted to drop the business to consumer
because they were headaches and a whole
bunch of other concerns and just less
profitable. So AI was really great at
just reworking, tinkering with his
content um really fast to remove the
BTOC nuance in there and and just to
tighten up some things super fast and
easy and and just quickly aligned him
his website to to where he is right now.
Yeah, that does make it easy to to pivot
as a business is I found that that it is
really good about you know saying okay
take this and shift the you know tweak
the the the content or the target
audience a little bit. It's you know
things like take out these kinds of
references or add those kinds of
references and it can get that work done
very quickly and and tends to be pretty
thorough about it.
>> Yeah, 100%. I mean, so that's the that's
the way we we're using it mostly for
content production um for the for the to
attract search uh search engines and and
large language models as well uh and
first drafts and so on. There I did
speak to another podcast guy who's
really heavily involved in um the vibe
coding. He's he's it's almost a side
hustle for him. It's probably not a a a
venture I would go down as a as a
service, but um you can kind of see
where things are headed. It's um it's
exciting and terrifying I I find.
>> So with the tools, so you mentioned AI
and we've talked about you know GPT
copilot things of that. Are you using
any specific like coding AI tools like
codeweaver or anything like that within
uh your tool set for building the
WordPress sites?
>> No, we don't we don't really have much
need for any of that. Uh the developers
do the yeah co-pilot chatbt. It does. So
basically what we're mostly doing is
taking a bunch of plugins and we're
trying to keep them as lean, you know,
keep the plugins as minimal as possible
because it just makes things easier to
deal with. Um, but yeah, they're putting
them together and then they're then
they're basically troubleshooting most
of the time through the through the
tools to find the solutions quicker and
getting it getting it done. So, um,
yeah, it's it's not we don't have re
really complex websites very often. So,
yeah, that it's more the troubleshooting
aspect, which as you guys know that can
that can be a nightmare sometimes. The
most what seems to be the most simple
thing might take half a day to deal
with, but you just these days you might
have it within a a prompt or two.
Yeah, I know we've also been talking a
lot about the SEO uh pieces of this as
well. Kind of want to throw something
out there that I've run into over the
years as well deal with WordPress sites
or websites in general, but u the CDN's
always trying to like offsource all that
static content to load your pages faster
to make your site, you know, score
higher on Google. um what are some of
the challenges you've had with dealing
with that as well uh with these pages
and that that you're building?
>> Yeah, cing's always been just cing in
general, let alone CDNs, but cing in
general is always been a bit of a
challenge, particularly with the the
people we're working with who are less
techsavvy because as you know, some of
the cases can sometimes be uh pretty
stubborn um to to clear. So, uh there's
that side of it, the the browser based
on their local PC. Uh but yeah, the
CDN's there's um there's a great one
from security standpoint security um
which is a
a firewall more than a CDN, but it has a
CDN side as well. Um, so when we inherit
a website that's really really old and
it's going to be a pain um to to deal
with, we we put the firewall on there um
because it's a it's a a simpler solution
to get them through till they till they
do a new website. So we did that for a a
Jumla site, an archaic Jumla site that
we took on. The intention was to build
them a new site, but he's just delayed
on that a little bit. So get them out of
trouble with with the CDN. So the um
yeah, so but yeah, everyone's sort of
wanting to get the site as fast as they
possibly can. The the real important
thing is the quality of the hosting as
well. So when you when you get a cheap
host, it's just not worth it. Get a
quality host. It's only a few extra
dollars realistically, and it's going to
be far more reliable usually. Sometimes
you just get unlucky and get on a bad
server. I'm sure you've all had that
scenario.
>> Yeah. run into that quite often and
that's a bit of a pain. Um, one other
thing uh I'll touch on um with your
site. So,
I know you probably don't want to give
away your t too many of your uh you
know, you know, tools of your toolbox,
but um
static images or images in general, you
know, Adobe's usually pretty good, you
know, um Photoshop. What are some
of the more, I guess, current tools that
you might be using, especially with AI
around to uh get some of these images up
there, refine them and make them smaller
and that so they load faster uh or are
better images for your pages.
>> Yeah. So, we ideally get real photos as
much as we possibly can, but that to
optimize them, Imageify is really great.
It it can go through and and crunch them
really nicely. There's there's uh the
other one that's free Smash, but we we
don't use that anymore. That was a few
years ago that we were dabbling with
that. Just had too many headaches with
it. Um breaking things and so on. So the
Smash system see it's it's low cost. Um
and it does it does it really well. In
terms of uh stock photos in WordPress
these days, you'll see uh pixels,
however you say it, pixels. Pixels. Um,
for us it's sometimes a bit of a
challenge because partic particularly
for the construction
uh the the style of buildings aren't
necessarily the same here in Australia
as they might be uh internationally. So
sometimes it's a bit of a challenge
finding suitable images uh in those
circumstances.
Now do you have uh I guess that actually
just brings up a a sort of a random
question. So are your customers are they
tend to be international? They tend to
be more Australia based or
>> Yeah, mostly mostly Australian. We've
got we've got a few international um you
know just dealing with a a real estate
agent who um so it's kind of
construction but not really. He does a
bit of development and and real estate
and so on. So he's in the UK and got a a
few steel companies internationally
[snorts] for some reason. We've we've
done a heap of steel so building
materials uh steel companies. I think
what what happens is people could the
advantage of doing what we do, we have
our little link in the footer, which is
which is great because people always
check out the competitors and so on and
they they follow the link and they find
our business. So that's nice. We've only
had a couple of people say we we don't
want your link in the footer. Most
people uh are really fine with it.
Yeah, it seems like that's sort of the I
[clears throat] think that like that's
the accepted practice is if you're going
to have somebody build your website,
then you're going to have to essentially
advertise for that company a little bit
by saying, "Hey, this was designed by
these guys." If you know, if you like
it,
>> you know, point it that way, which I
would
>> I guess it just makes sort of sense.
It's like, you know, you figure normally
if you find somebody that does any kind
of job for you well, like if you found
somebody that did construction for you
well and you're like, "Hey, they built
this building great." you're going to
want, you know, you'll you'll refer them
on to, you know, other people to them.
So, I would think the website thing.
>> Absolutely. Because
>> Yeah. Go ahead.
>> I was tell Speaking of that, um, it made
me think, so when you're building these
websites for your customers, are you
using are you custom building the themes
for them or are you just modifying most
of the common themes that are already
out there?
Yeah, it was fully customized for a long
time. Uh, and now we're building on
cadence, which is which is fantastic.
Um, so it's blocks and, uh, so super
simple to do really fast. And that's
that's really important because we're
going for one design, we need to be able
to adapt it fairly quickly, otherwise
it'll be a nightmare. So because we're
jumping straight into that design and
development process all at once, it just
gives us a capability of moving things
around fast. Um, so we're finding it's
the best right now. It's it's fast
loading, it's lightweight, it's simple
to use. So when the client takes over
the website to to edit things and so on,
they can do it pretty easily. And they
are they are spruing their AI um version
which so you can press a few buttons and
it'll try to build a a WordPress website
for you. It's not it's not great but
they're trying and some people are
probably using it for for low-level
websites. We're not but you can see kind
of in the future maybe it's to a level
in which we will start to use some of
those tools. They they're a pretty big
player. They're very popular. So I think
they'll be one of the leaders who get
get it right from WordPress uh AI
building. Um so that's kind of why we
went down that path. So yeah, it's it's
really good. So anyone can jump in with
a little bit of technical knowhow and
they'll be able to uh evolve a website.
So following that thought uh for those
uh of our viewers in that if you know a
lot of us have played with WordPress in
the past or currently build WordPress
sites today um for those watching or
listening what is some advice you can
give to those wanting to get into
building a WordPress site or maintaining
one? What are what is your advice to
them?
Yeah. So, I would definitely avoid some
of the page builders like Elementor or
so on, Divvy, uh just because it's it's
heavyweight and it bloats the site and
it's it's completely unnecessary. There
was a time back in the day where there
was advantage for it because it's more
closely you see what you get as you're
editing it. But these days with Cadence,
you you see what you get, but it's
lightweight, so it's faster and
everything's better. So often times
we're inheriting websites which are
built in some sort of page builder and
they're always slower loading than they
need to be and and doing basic things.
If you want to do some sort of style
change throughout the site, it's a bit
of a nightmare because you got to go in
and edit each page because it's built
with this crazy page builder. Um yeah,
so those sorts of things, stay away from
those complicated page builders. They
might feel enticing because um you know
they've got their advantages, but once
you start trying to change things and
edit things and and you want it to
perform perform well, fast and fast
loading, good user experience, you'll
run into headaches. So, so the stack I
would always recommend is Cadence as the
as the theme to build upon. But for SEO,
RankMath in my opinion is the best. I
know um lots of people were using Yoast
for a long long time and and still it's
it's still pretty good, but um you
needed to get the upgrade the pro
version to to unlock some of the local
SEO and so on. But with RankMath, it
comes straight out of the box, a lot of
those features. It also has the AI
capabilities to write all your titles
and descriptions with a click of a
button and does a really good job. So
it'll just work out what's on the page
and then write something that's
meaningful for the page to the right
length and everything like that. Um so
they're the they're the core things. Uh
security uh uh Word Fence is is a free
one which is really good if it needs a
higher level of security. Um security
the website firewall that's that's a
paid for service. Um the what else? Uh
in terms of forms, I think Gravity Forms
is the best because it um it just has so
many integrations uh built in. You can
you can buy a higher level and and it
can uh integrate into whatever CRM you
you like pretty much or or do whatever
you need it to do, take payments, etc.
So, um they're some of the core
um
stack that we would typically use, but
there's always a nuance. There's always
something unique in in every website,
but that's a good starting point.
That's excellent. So, I want to thank
you so much for your time and for for
hanging out with us. Uh, in the the
pre-show, I talked a little bit and said
that, you know, we've never had a a bad
guest, so I put a lot of pressure on him
and yet he just like has shined and we
continue to have never had a bad guest.
>> Uh, at any rate, so this is a great
conversation. Uh this is a um it was one
of those I was hoping to get into some
of these things which we did about like
having a presence and and really talking
like outside a little bit of the
technical side of just like a website
and what you're what you're getting
there and what you know some of the
things that you want to do and and being
consistent and things of that nature. So
this was excellent. Um I'm sure that a
lot of people in the audience would love
to you know have been uh intrigued by
this. What's the best way for them to
get a hold of you if they want to if
they have a construction company or some
other where they want to make use of
your services?
>> Yeah, sure. So, uplift 360.com.au is the
website and you can book a meeting
directly with me if there's something
people want to discuss. I'm happy to
chat. There's no obligation with that,
but all the social media you would
typically find uh is on the website as
well. It's the easiest place to find
everything there.
>> Excellent. And we'll make sure we've got
links in the show notes for uh all of
that as well. Uh just in case they don't
understand your Aussie accent there a
little bit or something.
>> Okay. Yeah. Sorry [laughter] about
Uplift. Let's try it again. The main
thing is the website uplift 360.com.au.
>> Don't forget the AU being Australia.
>> Yes. Uh I'm just joking. That's uh it's
always fun to have. [laughter]
It's like people get caught up on those
things sometimes when they it's like
it's really not that hard. But that
being said, I really do appreciate the
time. It's been a great conversation.
Uh, everybody's listening, uh, feel free
to, you know, reach out. Obviously, he's
a very accessible guy, great guy to talk
to. Um, and so, you know, again,
appreciate your time. Thanks for being
here. And, sign off and let you get back
to your day.
>> Thanks, Rob. Thanks, Michael. It's been
fantastic.
>> Thanks, L. You have a good one.
>> Take care.
>> And that wraps up our conversation. Now,
uh you may get to see a little bonus
material with Wes. Uh maybe not
depending on how you look at this. But,
uh this wraps up our conversations, I
guess, with him. Two episodes. Uh again,
as always, I just want to thank Wes for
his time. Appreciate all that he has
brought to the table. You guys have got
as you know from that, you can reach out
to him if you want to have a
conversation with him. I think he'll be
more than glad to do so. We'll have all
of those even don't forget the AU on the
end of the website. uh we'll have those
links there and you can go check his
site out and see uh see what he does and
and see where you can help out or maybe
learn a little bit in that industry. Uh
or if you happen to be in construction
uh and you need a website, that might be
exactly the guy to talk to.
If you want a better podcast, you need
to talk to us via email
You can check us out on developer.com,
the developer channel on YouTube. Uh
again, I was I was poking around on that
the other day doing some updates and
some stuff and got back into some of the
older stuff. We have got a lot a lot a
lot of stuff out on YouTube as well as
the site itself. There's well over a
thousand articles, posts, and stuff like
that on the website. There's hundreds on
YouTube. Uh there's just a there's a ton
of content and it whether you want to
learn about building a business, whether
you want to learn about building a
website, whether you want to worry about
building your career, learning how to do
certain languages and things better.
We've got all sorts of that stuff out
there. So go check it out and on any of
it, even the oldest oldest stuff, if you
leave us a comment, we will send
something back. We'll let you know if
you have questions, however we can help
you. uh if you have suggestions of
whatever we can do maybe in future
articles, future podcasts, newsletters,
you name it, we are happy to help you
because we're here to serve you to make
you better developers through the
content we provide, not simply make
ourselves better by the content that
we're working our way through. That
being said, as always, appreciate your
time. Go out there and have yourself a
great day, a great week, and we will
talk to you next time.
All right. And so that was uh that's the
wrapping up the conversation here. Uh
Wes again, thank you so much. Is that uh
hopefully that went well with you?
Everything was good.
>> Yeah, I felt I felt it went well. You
happy? Obviously, you felt it was all
right. Good.
>> Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like I said, we're
>> It's a challenge when sometimes when we
don't, you know, we don't give you the
questions ahead of the time or anything.
So, it's just sort of like here you go
and let's see where it goes. And it was,
>> you know, like I said, you did not
disappoint. I and I told you like you've
been doing this long enough. I had a
feeling that you were going to be able
to just like knock those out of the park
and you did. That's where great
conversation. Cool.
>> A lot of little great great uh thought
points in there as well. I took a couple
notes along the way and
>> got a few things there I'll have to go
back and think about a little bit with
our uh some of the how we approach our
website and some of our messaging and
such.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Thanks. Thanks,
guys. We'll uh we'll uh once it's
published, I'll share it through the
socials.
>> Yep. We'll get it out. It'll probably
out in the next week or two. I'll get
you the Yeah, we'll do probably like on
a Tuesday and then a Thursday. So, I'll
get you the one link when that goes and
then follow up the second one when that
comes available.
>> And feel free to share it out wherever
you want. And uh let us know if there's
anything we can do to help you. Uh let
us know and we'll be happy to be there
and be of service.
>> Awesome. Thanks, guys.
>> All right. Have a good one, Wes.
>> Okay. Thanks. Take care. Bye.
>> And now that Wes is gone, we can talk
about him. So, u I'll we'll go with our
uh our bonus material here. Um
my thoughts on this just uh briefly I'll
go and throw this out first is uh this
is back to I'm getting back into the
rhythm of uh interviews being a guest
and a host and doing this. I've been on
I don't know four or five podcasts in
the last week or at least I guess
recorded. I don't know how many of them
actually gone out. uh starting get back
into those being a guest having people
come on like this who I've like I had
never really spoken with Wes before this
show uh but got like you know a little
bit of his background and stuff like
that. I'm just like it people are
awesome. I'm just like like people that
I that are in this uh circuit or
whatever it is. It's just like I'm
always amazed at how much fun I have
having conversations with these people
and what their businesses are and
especially the niche or niche depending
on how you want to pronounce it that you
get into. Uh the fact that you got
somebody that is has decided that we're
going to build websites for construction
companies. You know, some people would
be like that's crazy and yet they've
been doing it for a while and they're
not doing too bad. So, uh there's a lot
of great insights too that uh we got out
of this as somebody that has built a
business and uh particularly I love the
the little part about uh the evaluation
and being surprised because you know
what you've done it really is literally
like what you've done does not actually
show what you may be able to do in the
future and sometimes uh technology
changes really quick and you need to be
ready to zigg or you know when
everybody's zagging or whatever it needs
to be to keep your business relevant and
up-to-date and new. Technology probably
more so than anything is it just even
like he mentioned you need to do your
regular website updates and stuff like
that. just whoever you are, wherever
you're at, don't get too comfortable
because things change so quick and it's
always good to just like have a couple
of things out there, be playing around
with some of the new technologies and
understanding what's going on so that if
something happens and you know, somebody
sweeps the legs out from underneath you,
you can go dive, you know, cling on to
another technology or another platform
or another approach, pivot and move on
and survive. Uh, bonus material from
you. Yeah. So, I I really liked the
conversation we had with him. Um, one of
the
I'm glad I asked a question about the
tools and that because he threw out some
plugins and things that I had not heard
of and I'm going to go check those out.
Uh, like the Gravity Forms. Forms has
always been hard to find a good plugin
to throw a form on a WordPress site.
They almost always break within a few
months. Like, you have to stay on that
plugin and always stay up to date. Um it
rankmath that was another one cadence
I'd heard of. Um I heard that was an up
andcoming so definitely want to check
that out. Um but the image fi you know
we we use what image analyzer years ago
to compress all of our images and
they got pricey uh kind of got away from
them. But that that's one of the biggest
problems with WordPress sites I find is
your images have to you have to make
sure that things are compressed well but
also not too badly because they need to
be um either you need to create images
for each platform you know phone web um
tablet whatever but if you compress them
too much they look crappy or they don't
show up at all. So that was uh an
interesting one. The other thing too
though it's just amazing here we are
again talking to another another company
where AI is really disrupting things. Um
it's going to be interesting to see
where this is all heading in the next
not even years now. I mean it things are
just really speeding up in the next few
months. It's like every month something
new and every week it's like, "Oh, hey,
here's something else." And it's like
we're really going fast,
but no one's really stopping to see what
are we really running to. It's like, you
know, we're we're going so fast. Things
are falling off. And are we g getting
quality or are we just getting something
that looks like quality that is
essentially going to be this big AI
bubble that's going to burst and yes
it's disrupted everything but now we're
all the people that AI got rid of that
we need back to fix the problems.
>> Well there's always that I mean you have
to evolve or you know evolve or be lost
basically. And so there's going to be
it's going to be a lot of like a lot of
things there are going to be jobs that
are going to disappear uh because of it.
I' I've had a conversation yesterday
with some people and I don't I think uh
the virtual assistant industry is I
think I would declare it dead. Um I I
have you know I'm one of those that
although never a heavy user of virtual
assistants or anything. Uh I definitely
have dealt with several people talked to
a lot of people that have worked in that
you know worked with that to some extent
and I see absolutely no reason for it.
If you can spend a little time, if you
understand a little bit about AI, then
practically anything that you would have
a VA do for you, other than like direct
phone calls to human beings, and even
then um AI's got some really good voice
stuff there. It it is frustrating. Uh I
just was on a complete AI uh support
call today and wanted to yell and scream
at the AI, but couldn't because it
doesn't do you any good. Uh, and it just
it's just stubborn like that, too. It's
like, well, I can't do that. It's like,
well, you need to do that or you're
going to lose a customer. And they're
like, well, that's just too bad. I'm
like, okay, well, too bad. And, you
know, we had to we had to part way, so I
won't deal with that company anymore.
Um, but I think it's it's fun. It's it's
always it's fun and scary to be in a
situation where you've got things
changing so fast and it it's it is very
much um, you know, the search engines
and things like that are changing
dramatically. We've a lot of us have
used uh you know searches and stuff like
that to help their development efforts
and to help build things and craft
things for a while and now AI has just
like put a turbo boost on that and then
uh with some of these conversations now
like he said which is which is really uh
it's a really interesting conundrum is
that now you've got these AI engines
that are uh sort of sitting on top of
content. And so if you want your content
to stick out and to be able to like get
people to uh via using your content
actually connect into you now you've got
a whole different set of challenges be
because like I don't know how long it's
going to be before your website actually
becomes sort of a thing of the past
because people are going to be already
people talk to you know use all these
voice boxes and stuff like that to talk
to technology. They're going to have
chats with stuff where they're never
going to see your website. And so what
do you do there? How do you, you know,
that's going to change stuff. How do you
navigate, you know, as these things get
better? I think mouse, you know, a mouse
and a, you know, maybe even a keyboard
are going to go away. Um, because it's
like you don't need to navigate that
thing. You don't need that sort of
clunky thing. You just start asking
questions and the computer there will
start doing stuff for you. Uh, and it's
getting pretty darn good at that. Um,
like I said, I think the the future that
Star Trek promised us basically is very
rapidly getting to that point. Um, I
think we're getting a point we're going
to see some uh a lot of interface
changes and things like that. So, this
will be cool. It's like it's always it's
exciting times which are also uh often a
little bit scary times. So,
>> just got to make sure the uh AI button
is on unlike the uh worldwide outage
that happened just recently. That was a
fun day.
>> Yeah. Yeah, I mean you got to watch out
for that kind of stuff is uh sometimes
those things uh you know technology can
also disappear really quickly. So make
sure you still know how to like start a
fire and eat food without having the
technology create it for you. All the
the important things, you know, don't
forget to breathe, stuff like that. That
being said, thank you so much for your
time. Thank you for hanging out with us
and uh being a part of this. If you know
somebody's a guest, if you want to be a
guest, let us know because we are, you
know, we're I I really have like I don't
know, we're probably a hundred people
that I've I've interviewed or more now
and they've just all different walks of
life and they've always found like I
literally I whenever I say that I think
there was one person I was like really
didn't need to have that conversation.
That was like one person and it wasn't
that bad. It was just like not I don't
think it was a great day for when we had
that conversation. But other than that,
and I've had several that are like
highly memorable conversations that will
stick with me the rest of the my life as
always. If you got half out of this, as
I did, then this was more than you got
more than the value for your your time
spent. Especially if you listen to this
at like 1.25 speed, as I often do with
podcasts.
All of that being said, thank you so
much for hanging out with us. Uh we're
not done yet. We're going to keep on
chugging along. This is going to be an
interesting one. This may be just like
the last time I introduced interviews,
we may just like blow right into like,
you know, cross multiple seasons or have
like some mega season. We'll have to see
how it goes. You know, Michael's a
little bit more of a like got to have
the right number of se episodes per
season. Um, you know, he's a little more
like be he's a he's a rule follower, you
know, one of those kinds of people. I'm
more on the chaotic good side, I guess,
or something like that. But maybe
>> evil be a little evil. But that being
said,
>> evil,
>> thank you and your you and your however
you are aligned self, go out there and
have a great one. We will talk to you
next time around.
[music]