Should we be offering clients a CMS?

[00:00:06] Nathan Wrigley: Hello there and welcome to the No Script Show. After a couple of YouTube only episodes, we are back with an audio chat.

And for those of you who are watching the video version, you will see that we've got the first ever guest for this show. And it's Paul Lacey. Paul is a good friend of ours from the world of WordPress. He is a UK designer with experience working with agencies and will be able to help us with today's topic.

And that topic is, should we be offering clients, a CMS. A CMS, of course stands for Content Management System. Paul, thanks for joining us. How you doing? I'm doing

[00:00:39] Paul Lacey: good, thank you. I'm not sure if I'm gonna help that much though. 'cause I'm probably more confused than the two of you. Oh, I think that's gonna be hard, Tom, but you, yeah, but you're right.

I do live in the world where this is. This is all going on as such. So I'm in the trenches with WordPress and CMSs and agencies and clients and all that sort of stuff, but I'm utterly confused about it all at the same time about where it's going and AI and should we be doing this? I'm definitely aware that we're, that, I mean think actually, I dunno if you know this, but yesterday was the an, the 25th anniversary of the.com boom collapse, when the stock market, collapsed and stuff.

and then obviously we've rebuilt the web from there, but I think we've still probably. Started off with some extremely bad habits compared to how the web started and, here we are 25 years later in another existential crisis.

[00:01:40] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, there certainly gonna be a lot to talk about. I should, before we get stuck into it though, firstly introduce David.

How are you doing, David? Yeah, I'm good.

[00:01:48] David Waumsley: I'll just come in and say why Paul is here because I was asking Paul because we know with the, history of the kind of episodes we've done here, I've, we've all worked in WordPress and we still use WordPress, but I've recently been trying to play around with static site generators and with WordPress you get this content management system anyway, so why not offer it to clients?

So I, hit a bit of a dilemma because now I started to play with a static site generator. If I wanna offer that same thing to clients, I have to add in. So it's really made me question again whether I need to. Going forward for my clients or not. So really that's why I went to Paul, because I know he is really looking after more clients than me and has more experience, particularly with the kind of agencies I'm thinking, should I just drop that all together with the CMSs for me, even though I was a big fan and it's created a lot of work for me, I'm actually thinking it would be extra work now.

So I, that was really how you came into it. It's a, an elaborate ruse really to get you on the show, Paul, but, so I'm pleased it works,

[00:02:57] Nathan Wrigley: yeah. Okay. So yeah, that's great. Paul, just give us a quick bio actually that would be quite useful. Just tell us what you're doing currently, even though it might not necessarily overlap with what you're gonna talk about.

Maybe you're in a transition period or something like that, but what are you doing right now? What kind of work do you largely have?

[00:03:13] Paul Lacey: Yeah, I'm probably a relatively typical, Fairly experienced web consultant, working mostly with WordPress, and I used to have an agency, a small one, like five people or something like that.

But I'm now just me prefer it like that. And probably my balance of skills is I'm a jack of all trades as such that I'll do design work, I'll do development work, I'll do consultancy. I don't do any of the marketing stuff. So none of the SEO, none of the pay per click, none of that sort of stuff.

So I'm all about creating the website. that's where I come in. And then in terms of my balance of what my work is, I probably, if I break it down by income percentage, for instance, I would say that half of my income is looking after. Around 60 or 70 websites on WordPress care plans and just being like a janitor or a gardener, picking out the weeds for those websites as such.

I'd say then another quar, another quarter would be, retainers working for a couple of, different companies. One of them is, beaver Builder, so I help them with design work and some of that sort of stuff. And then probably the final quarter is what would've been my a hundred percent, let's say five years ago, or a bit more, which is, a client comes along and wants a website and then you take them through and they come to you and you are apparently the answer to that.

So then you say, okay, and then, and they give you money and you make website, and then there's some kind of process that happens in between that is probably completely different depending on who's doing it and whether it's an agency or freelancer. What kind of things that agency or freelancer thinks about at the time?

as for me, I'm probably just trying to meet clients where they're at and trying to help guide them. And if I can see that they're completely delusional, then I'll just walk away before the project starts. If I can see that they're open to, and that, that they, what they want to do is communicate their brand and their product or whatever it might be.

Then I know I can help them. And I know that it's probably never gonna be perfect because there's so many different variables, but I'll do my best to take them from where they think they want to go and tweak them a little bit as we go along. So I think I'm, o I'm quite good. I think at what I do, I'm not the best.

but I've, my heart's in the right place and I've got some skills, so that's probably where I'm at.

[00:05:51] Nathan Wrigley: Nice. Yeah, this entire podcast really is aimed at the building bit. We don't get into the marketing or the pay click or any of that stuff. It's all about the, pixels on the page, the HTML, the CSS, the JavaScript, and and interestingly, largely moving away from A CMS.

So this is an interesting conversation. I guess maybe we should start with the whole, what even is a CMS. that's obviously a moving target because what was true 10 years ago obviously isn't true today. But can I just throw that question out there and let's just see if we can define what a CMS is?

should we, I don't know. Should I go David first? What do you think? I was just wondering if you should bring up our

[00:06:29] David Waumsley: show notes here. 'cause we've got a, an existing definition on here and I can read that out, which is according to IBM, and this is similar to other definitions. A content management system is software that helps users create, manage, store, and publish digital content.

Now, under that definition, I'd probably call my computer or even my mobile, A CMS, because, it can help me do all those things. That's true. I think, and I've put some things down on the show notes here, is that. Perhaps it depends on the context, which we're CMS. So I've put a note here that some don't even consider WordPress A CMS because of how, they might compare it to other CMSs that give you more outta the box choices with your custom fields.

Some refer to the thing that I've been moving to, which is a static site generator levity in my case, or page builders as a CMS, which I guess they are, under the definition. And I think the one we're using today, which is what we're focusing on because we've become responsible for it, is, using it to indicate a no code, way to manage content.

Something that we might give to clients.

[00:07:50] Nathan Wrigley: yeah. Okay. Anything to add to that, Paul?

[00:07:54] Paul Lacey: yeah, I think that's a good definition. Just, it's just, you can see that. How CMS is, especially this, if we just say a word, a website, CMS, if we narrow it down to that, how there's been so many different iterations o of that over the last 20 years and you can find a problem with every different concept of how that was done.

It's funny because you can look back and see how certain things were done, let's say 10 years ago in something like WordPress and think there's such good aspects of that, but the way that you had to build it was clunky. So that, so it seems that, the focus with the CMS should be content, but in the last 20 years it's been the CMS is there, but the focus is on code, or the focus is on accessibility, or the focus is on speed, or the focus becomes on design, which is probably where we're at now, where there's too much of a design layer in mixed in with it, which is where we're the problems.

[00:08:53] David Waumsley: Can I ask you a question? Just at the start of this. So if you were starting afresh now, in a way, which is what I'm doing now, do you think you would be, if it wasn't already there in WordPress, do you think you would be offering clients A CMS just off the top of your head?

[00:09:11] Paul Lacey: so I guess if you could, the question to me, first of all, I'd be a plumber instead.

good answer. So if you remove the financial aspect, the financial pressure, yeah. Because essentially we are where we are with how, what people want as such. So if I was looking at what people want and I needed to make hay while the sun's shining, then I would probably do something similar to what I was doing now, if, I was looking ahead, I.

I would be focusing much more on the UX side of things, the more human side of things. And I'd be also probably looking at which sectors are, rocky at the moment. So I would, I know what you've been doing, David with, static site generations. I really envious that you are able to do that.

And I do feel stuck in WordPress. I'm institutionalized into WordPress, so if I could remove all the baggage, then I would want to reevaluate everything. And I may well come back to WordPress, but probably not for everything. And I would probably be able to, look at it as a tool that did a particular job very well in the right hands.

but it's definitely hugely problematic. And, the static site generators. To me, it feels like what WordPress was like before page builders without a database, with a CF page builder type scenario and stuff like that. That's what I've seen from systems like, sta I think it's called.

I'm not sure about the one that you use, the 11 t. Yeah. And, but yeah, no, I would, I want to do things differently actually. I do want to do things differently now, but it's so difficult to get out of lane. Yeah. Because there is a constant flow of, and the demand is to do things the way that everybody else is doing them.

That's what the clients seem to want as well. Yeah.

[00:11:18] Nathan Wrigley: But also, you've probably got a heritage of SEO and what have you and You paint yourself into a bit of a corner, don't you, with all of these things. Yeah. And you're not always in

[00:11:26] Paul Lacey: the driving seat as well. so being a website builder.

This isn't if you're a builder or a plumber or a, going back to that sort of trade or an electrician or sparky as they would be called. the plumber comes along and, or the, sparky, the electrician comes along and will point out issues that is wrong with your house that you, that a different person needs to solve, but they'll just tell you about it.

Whereas, a builder of a house tends to hire all of those people and pull 'em all together and they're running the show as such. So I find myself a lot of the time in the, I'm, I wasn't at the beginning of the conversation. I'm brought in and I just need to do the thing that I'm being told to do and then leave, and that's me done sort of thing.

So it's nice when you're not in that situation and you are leading, somebody comes to you and they're, ready for a clean slate. They say nothing has worked. And you can say, we do need marketing people, but I can definitely help you get this framework right from the beginning. But I find that to be a rarer, thing.

And I think that a lot of those people who have that good intent as a client get guled up by a bad agency. So that's the big problem for me. I think these are just tools that are being completely misused and corrupted. yeah.

[00:12:49] Nathan Wrigley: Can I just interject a couple of things? So the first thing is, your, point Paul, about being slightly jealous of David.

I think David's managed to unlock some sort of creative future in which he's not constrained by A CMS. And it doesn't matter which CMS you're using, it brings constraints. It's, it's got benefits on the one hand and it's got constraints on the other. And WordPress, just like anything else, will paint you into a corner in certain respects.

And David's painting himself in the pixels on a page. Aspect of it. he can put anything anywhere and be led by, Figma can be his best friend. He doesn't have to worry about, what it will show. He can build that. But also, David, could you just scroll back up a little bit? I want to just address something inside the CMS thing, which I think we missed, which is the, helps users and I think that's, we'll come onto it in a minute, why we would use a CMS, but I think that's one of the big things about it, about using a CMS.

It's not the managing and storing of data. 'cause they all do that. They'll all store images, they'll store text, they'll lay out, with some templating engine, how it looks. But for me. The user bit is the crucial bit. It's the fact that it comes with all of that built in the authentication layer, the multi users, the permissions and all of that.

I think that's one of the crucial bits that kind of o often gets lost. And certainly on this show we ne we never talk about that 'cause we're all about the pixels on the page. But that's one of the nice things that WordPress brings out the box. Soon as you've installed it, you've got not the best implementation, but you've got a fairly decent implementation of users and permissions and roles and all of that kind of stuff.

So I just wanted to mention that. So with that being said, shall I, move us onto the next thing? So we've, I think we've explored what A CMS is. We've all stated our, case there. And then the next question that we were gonna raise was, why would we even offer it? And I think I've maybe just opened the door with that a little bit, talking about, Clients can log in. we're all familiar with that. Ev every client on earth has used some sort of social network where you go to a login page, you type in your password and username, and you can publish content in that way. And we're all familiar with that and we can share it and, all of that kind of stuff.

So maybe that's one of the reasons, is that, yeah, I mean

[00:15:01] David Waumsley: it's, whether they need it or not. And I guess this is the question I've been asking a lot. I gave it because I needed it personally to manage the content, to create the site as the person building the site and then offering that over to clients is the bit because.

I know all the bad things that can go wrong. The client, if you've set it up in the wrong way, the client can go and break things that can spoil your pay speed. SEO, responsiveness, accessibility can all get out the window. If you set this up wrong. They can even create security risks. They can even run off with something that's yours, like your licenses and a, WordPress set up and take it or invite other people in.

So I know all the things here. So it gets me back to that question, we'd offer it because they need it and yeah. I've been trying to think out with, most of my clients have come to the conclusion, the ones that I presently got, that not many of them actually need it. If I could offer that service to do the updates on their behalf, that would be a better situation from my experience.

But Paul, you've got wider experience than me with different people, so you might be able to come in with some kind of ideas where people really do need it,

[00:16:12] Paul Lacey: Yeah. you're right. You're absolutely right that there's. Like a question, does somebody need it or not? And some of the clients that you've got, you've right to assume that they don't and that, the, you're like a personal trainer nutritionist for them.

And you're, making sure that their online presence is healthy and you've identified that it can live in this kind of sphere where they don't, need that as such. And I think there's always gonna be a, segment of the market where that's the right thing. And the fact that those, if people like yourself can find those clients and give them that correct solution, means that you're probably saving them like from the next website failure that they were gonna have in WordPress, but let's say WordPress or something like that, because they didn't need it, and you guided them in the right direction.

I think why would we offer a CMS, so first of all, I think, If we just get rid of like a whole load of market segments in one quick moment, massive blue chip companies will need to manage content. So they have to have CMS, they've got, intranets and gigantic websites and multiple people managing stuff.

And then you've got a news website like the BBC that clearly needs A-C-A-C-M-S because you've got journalists and content creators just publishing content there. And then I think you've got the segment that we're probably all focused on, really, which is the SME small to medium enterprise or SMB, small to medium business, which typical businesses, I don't know, let's say anything between one and 200 members of staff, let's say is a, might come into that.

And that is probably where 90% or more of our clients have come from. they're also the. The clients who are under the most threat, I think, from both sides. So they're under threat from, let's say you've got a company with a hundred people. You are under threat from market disruptors with a, team of five from one side who are extremely agile.

Then you also are under threat from the massive corporations who are looking at that. You've got, you are making some money and they wanna make that money instead of you. Why? Why should you make that money? They can do it. And so what I wouldn't really want for that SEC sector who are already under threat as such would be to Have a situation where they can't communicate anymore. Whereas the Agile people can, because they can hire you David, for instance.

and just have you doing their website for them. And then the big corporates, they can spend whatever they like and have huge teams. And then the people in the middle are becoming less agile on the one side and on the other side, they're less able to communicate without CMS.

So to me, kinda and, it, the problem is it's just been done so badly for that sector. I feel sorry for that sector that, agencies, especially agencies. 'cause I see a lot of agencies and I see it, I, and I'll, talk about this in a minute, just the trend of. Dumbing down what the agency is offering and hiring, very young untrained people who are full of energy, but they are just trying to pay for their car insurance while they're living with their parents still.

And they'll do anything 'cause they need that money. But I think that, those SMBs and SMEs in the middle, those are the people who are struggling the most probably to be unique and get their voice out. And the CMS is a way that they can do that on the internet, on the web.

So that's why they need it.

The problem is, I think, as I say, the way that most of, the way that I'm seeing it implemented by agencies and freelancers is super problematic. And then also you get the other side that those SMEs often have kind of dictatorial type CEOs or. Heads of departments who are, even if they got the right person to hire, they decide that they're gonna power trip that person or that agency and just get them to magpie or copy something that they've seen one of their competitors do.

So you have all these terrible forces working against the SMEs, I think. And so I dunno where we go from there, but I think that's why I think they need them because you can't, if you take it away from them, then you've taken away the opportunity for them to do it. So really I would prefer that they have a CMS, but the entire sector becomes better educated on what, how they should be using that tool.

Because a tool like WordPress is a design tool and a CMS now. So it's both, and a lead capture tool. It's doing everything and, that's probably where the problem is that I. The, you have lots of smaller agencies as well offering cheap solutions and lying about what the result of using these cheap solutions is gonna be.

So there's, I think it's, I don't really like the term disinformation, but I think there's, it's, we're full, of that, that in this sector. Yeah. That's a big problem.

[00:21:34] Nathan Wrigley: David, can I ask, because you've obviously stepped away from doing a CMS, what are the things that you, that, that have be called your calling into question?

So we're not moving on to why not to offer, but it's somewhere in between. what are the things that you, have questioned more recently about the need for A CMS? 'cause I know in my case, a lot of the use of A CMS was really. Came down to my convenience. It was a tool that I understood. I could implement it with one click of a button.

there's hosting companies that you just press one button and look, there's WordPress. We had amazing tools like, page builders and things, which allowed me to just forget about HDML and CSS and become de-skilled in that way. plugins that whole architecture plugins, that meant that, if it's been, if it can, be done, probably somebody's done it and I didn't have to worry about that.

why, are you dissuaded recently? So it's not the what, why do we not offer it? But just what are the things that you've called into Question.

[00:22:33] David Waumsley: it's, with a lot of my clients, I've never really thought about the process of when the people who are updating the content themselves on their own, that staff changes.

And there's usually nothing in place for when that happens. So you might train somebody for the first time to manage their own CMS. But as Paul was talking, I think I need to throw this in. It reminded me that. When I'm saying, not offering clients, a CMS, what's the reason why we might offer it?

In effect, I still am offering them a CMS. So the recent site I've done is You are the cms. Yeah. but yes, but actually 11 T has been the cms, which is replicating what I would've done in WordPress for a blog. So I have content managed the, layout of their content in an easy way. They've got it.

The only difference in this case is I haven't given them access to it. You're the gatekeeper in a No. so in a way, my, my own question is a bit of a silly one because effectively I have given the clients a CMS. What I haven't done is offer them a no code way to interact with it.

[00:23:46] Nathan Wrigley: There's no URL where they can log in.

It's more sending David an email with the new content that we want to be. Yeah. So I

[00:23:52] David Waumsley: have to update it, which is, so yeah, my, I, guess my concern, which I'll, I mean I did put some bullet points in here is, but that if you are trying to set up a CMS is that, it can be, WordPress makes this easy.

It can be costly to set up, and then you have to maintain the thing, which is an extra cost and you have to support it. You have to make sure that it's updated and secure. And then the issue that I've run into before is the kind of extra cost in training somebody to be able to use the CMS that you've set up, assuming that we're setting it up for them to use in a sort of no code way, and then manage those staff changes.

And that, this big argument that I've seen a lot in the WordPress space recently, which is seems ironic to me, is that argument that is well. you shouldn't be giving clients any access to WordPress. That's for you to do. You use it for this one? This would only be handled by web professionals.

Anything going on the web needs somebody who's trained to understand SEO, the consequences of it to know. And I do think, there is, there's that fear of dependencies is a reason why not to offer it. You're dependent on the CMS that you've set up. If you can do it yourself manually, but,

[00:25:06] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, that's definitely a hot topic at the moment, isn't it? The idea of becoming a professional again, because I wonder if people feel their cake is being eaten by the platform itself, if it's so easy to use. Why do we need a professional? I, what you've done in gatekeeping, your access in that you've inoculated yourself from the, the clients basically, they're either gonna move away from you or keep going with you, and there's much less, we can do this blog post ourselves.

We can, add a page here and a page there and what have you. Everything has to go through you. So I think, I know that you are not doing it for those cynical reasons, but I think there is something quite neat about that model. I think it's quite nice.

[00:25:47] David Waumsley: Yeah, it's a, it's one that I've still got to test that and that really, because what I've had to do is, I've had to say in the same way that Paul has already said like 50% of his kind of income is through managing and hosting ing after these things.

That was really, that was going to be my passive income. It didn't turn out to be quite so passive 'cause you had to keep updating it all the time. Now what I'm trying to do is, a way of avoid is, some of the issues I have by giving the client a code free access to the website is to say, okay, I still need the retainer.

You still need me to be around. so what I'm gonna do is charge you pretty much the same as what I did if it was WordPress. I don't have to do the security and the updates that went with it. I don't have to pay the same for the hosted. So what I'm going to supplement that with is the fact that I will do your updates as part of that.

So I will go put the code up when you need those updates. But it's untested at the moment because I don't know. I don't know if somebody might just see that as a way of abusing it, and every day they want a new update on their website because I've offered this as part of their yearly package.

[00:26:55] Nathan Wrigley: It's interesting.

the honest truth from my experience anyway was that most clients that wanted a blog or some kind of functionality like that basically wanted it on paper only. they had this idea that they were gonna write this incredibly influential and powerful blog, and you go back two years later and there's the first post which was published exactly two years earlier, and then nothing got added in after that.

yeah. It's interesting. just on the last bullet point there, you've got under the, why would we not offer Clients to CMS? You've got fear of dependencies, and we spoke about this in a previous episode. My position was a little bit like, haven't you just swapped one set of dependencies for another though?

So instead of WordPress, you've got 11. Exactly. so you've not entirely, inoculated yourself against that, but it's definitely different. No, it's a different dependency

[00:27:44] David Waumsley: in the sense that, Your dependency on something that's live and dynamic. Yeah. It means that your site can break. Yeah. Where when it's on a static, it's, already there.

So if 11 D disappears, actually the site isn't gonna, the site is still there. That's a good point. And you'll just have to replace it. So it's a site you have lessened your dependency, if you like, or, the impact of having a dependency. Yeah.

[00:28:08] Nathan Wrigley: And it's a single dependency as well. Whereas WordPress tends to be a dependency itself and then a series of other dependencies called plugins, which you've obviously got to then maintain and what have you.

okay. Interesting trade offs. Are we ready to move on? Are we gonna move on to the, what's included in a client cs? yeah, that's, no, I think Paul wants to chime in. No,

[00:28:29] Paul Lacey: it was just making me think. 'cause I, a lot of my clients in that last 25% of work that I do wear is.

Building websites for people are agencies, but I don't really have any clients anymore that are a design agency or a web agency. They tend to be a marketing agency. So the website will just be one part of a wider solution. But, so it's feels like where you put the gatekeeper as such.

'cause they tend to be the gatekeeper for their client and they are gatekeeping all aspects of the online stuff. the pay per click, the SEO, the website content, the blogging. So I'm thinking about one particular agency that I do a lot of stuff for, and they tend to roll out the same solution for this particular niche and they will write the blog posts for the client.

One or two of those clients wanna do it themselves, but it's rare actually. but they'll also be doing the SEO quite heavily. They'll also be doing, analytical things and. Putting kind of popups in different places and then creating sudden out of nowhere, webinar pages or sign up for a brochure pages.

They're constantly creating new landing pages. Not necessarily that they're doing it particularly like really well. For instance, a lot of the time, like for instance, if they gave me every, and I tend to hand over a, solution to them that they then do that. And I know that when I see them creating the landing pages, in my humble opinion, I could have done the landing pages that they tend to then go after I have left the scene much better than they have.

And that's probably, that's because they're not, they're doing everything. They're doing landing pages, SEO, all sorts of things, and they, just haven't read, Yakob, Nielsen's books for instance. They're literally straight out of college or apprenticeship. Yes. And they're just learning.

They're just doing what they're told as such, or copying other things that they've seen on the internet. but I, with how you are doing it, David, you become the gatekeeper as such. I know for a fact that wouldn't work with any of those clients unless there was some change to how it was done.

Because the changing of the content is, let's say just one quarter of the things that they're managing and they're doing SEO on the site, they're doing AdWords, they're creating, they're optimizing landing pages to get a better score on the pay per click so that the cost of the pay per click goes down.

There's so many different aspects that seem to be, going on a search with some of those, whereas I have other clients that would fit. the concept that you are talking about, David, really perfectly, I even have two clients that I've got in my mind that do the same thing. That one would be perfect for how you do it and one would be simply not work.

And that's simply because one of those clients has an internal marketing team. And they're cons and they're more sales focused, even though they essentially have the same product. The other client has the product but is more of an advocate for the concept of the product. And then so, for instance, I remember years ago Tesco is a, big supermarket and they started selling insurance.

I used to work for a dog magazine, online dog magazine at the time. This is going back over 20 years. And they wouldn't advertise in our dog magazine. they were more interested in writing an article for the dog magazine that just, I. Educated con people who had dogs that insurance was a good idea and then they were confident that people would find them as such.

And whereas the other client that I'm talking about that as the marketing person is getting ads here, doing landing pages here and, is just, and, they, and one of those people, pays me 75 pounds a month and the ever pays me 400 and the one who pays me 400 is the one that is doing more stuff themselves that needs me to help them.

Interesting. Whereas the other person who's paying 75 is. Paying for these problems as such, they're paying for the fact that the website is in WordPress and needs security patches and stuff like that. So that's in a way where I envy David's position and think, I wish I could have given them that solution, but I don't know how to do it.

[00:32:47] David Waumsley: Paul, what you said really, made me think again about the page. So I'm thinking about the pages in its entirety, but you've just made me realize that page could have different people who need to be involved in that page, say in the metadata for, for just the SEO or maybe even for adding in ads.

they need to add because they've got some sort of campaign. I haven't really thought about it. The thing that I. What's mostly thinking is that even when it comes to a blog post, which is a fairly easy thing to do in say something like WordPress, now as I've learned a little bit more about the Semantic web, there are lots of things that can go in that blog post that I would mark up better than the client because it's just not available to put things in the correct tags, say a blog quote to be in there and the citation under the site.

Those kind of things, even the way that you might, add in numbers or whether you'd use an ordered or a numbered list, all that kind of semantic stuff is stuff that I've taken care of. So really, you've made me think about, yeah, it probably wouldn't work even for some of my existing clients for me to say, okay, I'll do it all for you, because they will just need to be in two different

[00:33:56] Nathan Wrigley: aspects of the same page.

Yeah, you've definitely honed down on a type of client that it works for though, haven't you? Yeah. So it definitely, it works in the scenario that you've described, but in the wider world, the scenario that Paul's describing, I don't know, SME or something like that. Yeah. It's not really up for negotiation, isn't it?

The, fact that it's David, I know. No. Okay. Interesting.

[00:34:16] Paul Lacey: I think it might be solvable. it is just the, tide is so powerful with WordPress at the moment, I think. Yeah. And which might not be the case forever because I. It is WordPress is rather self emulating at the moment to a certain extent.

How, how much damage happens from what's going on with WordPress, is left to be decided as such. But, a few things. First of all, I think looking at the future, the way that I'm describing people want things to be done. I don't think that is actually sustainable. I don't think that will survive AI properly.

I don't think, I, don't mean like AI building websites. AI being the way that people inquire about information. And when instead of googling now, people will type something into an AI tool and then it will present almost like a custom made. Content, which includes bits of stuff from other people's websites and citations and videos and that sort of thing, and this kind of total mess of how, let's say agencies I find are doing it with WordPress where the, all the tools are in that one tool I don't think will survive because I don't think that semantically it's good enough.

And David, what you are talking about when you've got these blog posts and that you can properly on behalf of that client semantically structure that in the correct way. And let's say even tag on to regular editorial, semantically connected advert type things and marketing things that then get pulled in.

So if you are looking for a new bathroom designer or something, then yes it can then the AI tool in the future might go out and grab that information, about what you want. But it might also semantically know to pull along with it, these particular providers. That have correctly semantically described their tool outside of things like AdWords and Google AdWords and stuff like that.

And I think it is fixable because it's just a case of it's, let's say if we take SEO and doing meta tags and stuff like that, and David, you don't want to be doing that because some other SEO person is just constantly hassling you every day to change stuff. It surely is fixable that there is some kind of script, an external tool that just gets slotted into the header of the head tag of your static websites.

And he is able to do that as a kind of headless way of injecting a SEO stuff into pages. Yes. Yeah. I'm sure that's a thing. So I don't think that any of the things that are a concern in the way you are wanting to do it, David, is, not unsolvable. I think the biggest unsolvable part of it is this kind of, the direction of travel.

And but, I think we were talking earlier about just general society before the call about will, at some point everybody say we've had enough and we're pulling ourselves out of the matrix. And I think at some point having seen SME businesses getting, finding it harder and harder to succeed on the internet at some point.

that's gonna, that's gonna implode and get to a point where change is forced and people are saying, why isn't this working for us? We're going to an agency. They're telling us that this is how we should do it, and we are not getting the results we need. What are we doing wrong? And then slowly people will start, realizing that every aspect that, of the thing that this company wants to do online needs to be done much more professionally.

So the blog needs to be added professionally. The blog needs to have semantics. The SEO needs to have a proper strategy and that these things shouldn't be constrained by. They all have to live in WordPress or Jula, or Drupal. They different professionals who are all good at what they do, have their tool that isn't constrained to one platform.

I think that's where it has to be in the future. so I think, I wouldn't say. give up on what you're doing there because that's why I'm saying I'm envious that it feels like you are in the right direction. You're just, and I've always felt this way about you, David, that you've always been ahead of the curve, even though you won't perhaps think that you are, whether it's page builders, genesis in WordPress or something, you're always, ahead and being a thought leader on these things.

So when I see you talking about this stuff, it makes me think I need to listen to what you're saying because it'll probably be reality sooner than we know.

[00:38:54] David Waumsley: so that's so kind. I'm sorry. I You're the right different

[00:38:58] Paul Lacey: David. I was thinking of somebody else. Absolutely. I didn't recognize I was

[00:39:01] Nathan Wrigley: questioning every word of that last paragraph.

Honest, but

[00:39:04] Paul Lacey: you know what I'm saying. Yeah. you are thinking outside the box when people like me are stuck in the trenches and just trying to get some sleep and survive the next day and see whether, see where the direction of travel is, and then aligning myself to that and doing my best.

But you are thinking outside the box and you've dragged yourself out of that and saying, I, I'm now thinking intellectually about how this should be done. there's an aspect of your lifestyle that wants to contribute to that as well. But I think you are not constrained in the same way.

An agency with let's say 20 staff who's struggling to, pay the staff bill, they've forced themselves into bad practice. unfortunately,

[00:39:47] David Waumsley: you said something that I thought was fascinating in that really, 'cause it just made me think, maybe I'm misreading it, but it sounded like you people needed a content management 'cause they needed to keep changing their content because they needed to appease Google and send more traffic to their site.

So you almost get into this cycle. Is that kind of a truth of it? They feel like they need to be constantly changing the content, perhaps more than they actually need to do. If they may be did less of that and did it better, it might be just as successful.

[00:40:21] Paul Lacey: It's probably also a numbers game to a certain extent that yeah, there is just not enough people with the skills that you will now have to make all the websites that need to be made just in that one sector alone of SMEs, There just simply isn't the, knowledge and the training. So for the time being, the, while people still want to make a brochure site that is lead generating. the only way to meet that demand is to have people who are semi-skilled, yeah. Taking control of these tools like WordPress and pushing out solutions on mass and trying to make that be done cheaper.

So I wonder, it makes me wonder in the future that this problem gets solved with ai whereby we, where the, this current design layer that we've, I think we're stuck in, we have this design layer, which is page builders have en enabled everybody to be a designer. The products themselves tell the end users that they, Hey, you got this, you can do this, use our templates or, whatever.

And Then it creates like a false sense of security that this is all doable. And really, this, we're talking CMS content management system. So I think it has to go back some point to content being the important thing created semantically using, as little dependency, a small amount of security, problems as possible.

And that at some point you'll just use some kind of device to query the internet. And you will need to be able to define that probably through a professional who now is no longer just stuck moving pixels around the screen, but he's taking an equivalent of a blog post. And let's move that to a landing page.

Let's take a blog post and move that to a landing page, right? And say, okay, here's a landing page. here is my most important message. this is the priority of my landing page. And then you are guided through the process of ensuring that you create a semantically correct landing page.

That only has a certain way of presenting itself on the tool that you use to query the internet. So there isn't any more kind of, should we have a red button or a purple button or something like that? You put the brand JSO file into it. I don't want to talk, talk like I'm talking about Gutenberg here, there'd be like a brand js o file that these tools have, and then it'll be a case of semantically presenting your content to something that becomes, again, a content management system.

The only problem with that is it feels like we are then talking about tools that are created by Facebook and these gigantic, yeah. It's also, what we probably need in the future, ideally, which is what I imagine that the W three C will be moving or advocating for would be tools that allow you to create.

Content that is static and security doesn't, isn't a problem. But somehow that we are encouraged to create this semantic content without the big corporations being the gate, the gatekeepers to that. But the AI tools that are controlled by the gatekeepers and the big corporations are able to query us and whoever does it best, whoever presents their content, whoever manages their content best, ends up being at the top of the ai.

Queries getting presented to people with products and stuff like that. So I think, content, they say content is king, don't they? And I think that's, we've lost sight of that. I think most, a lot of my clients have totally lost sight of that. It's just, I would class it as chaos. It's king chaos.

It's chaos. and you just sit and look at it and think, this doesn't feel like how we should be doing it.

[00:44:13] David Waumsley: Can I just ask you, 'cause I put some notes on here, which just, I'll just read through them quickly, those listening to it, which is, what's included in, client CMS is that the ability, as you were mentioning before, to redesign existing pages with say, a page builder, which you've got that option now.

Is it just the ability to add blog posts and perhaps create a landing page? Is it only to be able to change text and media without altering any of the html? So you're Actually really nailing that down as you were talking about, And also do we give them access to, they can add in their own software, plugins in the case of, a WordPress or even change the theme or invite extra contributors without it say we're managing it.

That could be a quite a concern if they're allowed to just invite anybody in. And you don't, you haven't vetted them to

[00:45:01] Paul Lacey: Oh, that, that's another part of the KSIC all the time. Yeah, totally.

[00:45:08] David Waumsley: Yeah, I, that's my experience. it's quite limited with people who might invite, generally I'm dealing with the business owner directly, but, there are certainly plenty of clients I've had and almost anyone who's got a larger organization, I, I'm suddenly getting an email saying, we've got this new user in the WordPress site that I'm still managing, and I think I, I've given all these people an admin access so they can give them an admin access.

Yeah. I dunno what that means. Yeah. It's quite a scary thing for me.

[00:45:38] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Okay. I, how do we feel we're doing in terms of time? I guess in order for this podcast to come to an end, we need to draw a line at some point. Is there any points on that, document that we're looking at, if you're watching it on YouTube that we haven't yet covered off?

Or is there something that we ought to discuss before we wrap it up?

[00:46:00] Paul Lacey: I've only got one, one thing that's on my mind, and that's probably like what I'm scared about and what I'm optimistic about. So I'm scared for my own job in the future with AI and all that sort of stuff. I'm scared for that sector.

I'm talking about the SME sector because without them I probably don't have a job. that's my, that's the source of my, pipeline as such, whether it's direct or through agencies and stuff like that. So that's, what makes me nervous. And I wasn't nervous five years ago, but, I see the tools that are out now and I, dunno if I'm nervous because I just can't see what the future is.

But the thing I am optimistic about is that I do think that, that AI will solve a lot of the poor, poor skills in the industry or the bad advice, those sort of things. I think it will. I think that you will need professionals who are more like a orchestra conductor kind of thing. Oh, interesting.

And, like a technologist as such, and, which is what I did at university. My, my university course trained us to be technological managers of anything, whether it was sustainable energy or websites. I went into website stuff. Some of my friends went into different things. But essentially it's understanding where things are going and then being, a, an advisor and a, kind of guiding light for the people who are downstream of what's happening as such.

I'm exci, I'm excited about a much more semantic web. I'm excited about, getting some of the churn and burn, mindset out of the industry as well. But yeah, I'm definitely nervous for my own, wellbeing. What I'm hoping is that I can. What I've always done is, tweak what I do every daily and yearly as such and, see what's coming.

The only problem I have right now, which I've never really had before to this extent, is I really do not know what the future looks like. I, don't just mean, nuclear war, there's that obviously as well, but I, honestly can't fully understand where the web is going. One day I wake up and I think I've solved it.

The next day I'll wake up and I've had a terrible dream about it and everything. I'm completely irrelevant. It doesn't matter, I can just, I guess I can retrain as a plumber, but, as, I'm saying. Those are my fears and, my hopes and fears as such.

[00:48:39] Nathan Wrigley: I think it's a really interesting time.

I think confused. I think everything's been, yeah, everything's been driven by humans and they're such measurable things. Although on mass we can be innovative. The pace of change has been fairly pedestrian. you can, predict largely what's gonna happen in the next year. I think now in this era of reliance on, let's just call it ai, basically you speak to a machine and it gives you something back.

I do think we're in for some seismic change. And also all of us are on the on the, one side of life, let's put it that way. We're no longer spring chickens are we, so we have that against it. Probably a good thing. We don't have to

[00:49:16] Paul Lacey: be here for the apocalypse of the That's right. we,

[00:49:19] Nathan Wrigley: bring a different level of experience, but at the same time, we also don't have that sort of vim and vigor that the, Utes do.

And now that I've said the word Utes, I think we should probably draw this episode to a close. yeah. do you know, can I just throw in something at the end there? Of course. Just to follow on from Paul, because, I think all the things that you said about me kindly apply to you. It's just about questioning and, it takes me full circle with this whole thing that we're doing with the No Script show.

[00:49:48] David Waumsley: We started with a vision of the future for web design that we borrowed from The Talk by Jen Simmons on Intrinsic Design. And I think this is having a big impact. And for those people who like the craftsmanship of web designs, it's a big change because we're going from this period where web design has always been about copying what print design did, and then the tools came in to allow us not even to have to deal with the web material.

We didn't need to know HD ML and CSS and how browsers worked. And I think what's. Now happening, and that's this movement which has started this show, is the fact that we're moving towards this period where we do need to understand the web. The semantics are important. We actually exclude a whole bunch of people who can't see the web and the web is going on.

More devices that we get back to the craftsmanship of understanding how the web works and get into HT ML than CSS are fresh because it's more powerful and more flexible. Than the tools that we previously had. So I think there's a, my optimism is that changing role, this move to the web being on everything for everybody.

And I think that's a new audience. It can meet people who previously couldn't access the web in the way that we want them to do, which is similar to print. So yeah, that's how I tied this up. really agree with that. Yeah.

[00:51:09] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. I'm gonna just throw a sort of spanner in the works a little bit there and say that I, have no idea that even websites will be a thing because I, can see a future where the device is just completely just built in order to service you as an individual.

And you'll talk to it and it will talk back to you and, when was the last time you sat with somebody that you know closely and per perused together a magazine. you just don't do that thing. You have a conversation. Can you recommend a plumber? Yeah. What's their name? Oh, his name's Pete.

What's his number? Okay, there's the number off you go, talk to Pete. That kind of thing. I don't know, I'm not entirely sure that the HTML, the CSS, the static screen that we all sit down to, or the thing that we hold in our hand, I'm not sure that's even gonna be the divis of choice.

and when I say I'm not sure, I literally don't know. I'm not prophesying that I have some insight. It's that I just don't know that the flat rectangle that we hold or the flat screen that we stare at, or the TV or whatever it may be, I, don't even know that's gonna be the medium that we consume.

the, yes, Pete future. Pete needs

[00:52:20] David Waumsley: Pete, he's getting word of mouth, but he needs this C-S-S-H-T-M-L unit, which can go out to the hold of the web in different forms. So he needs us.

[00:52:31] Nathan Wrigley: I'll talk to Pete urgently and, can I add one thing? What you said, Nathan? Yeah.

[00:52:36] Paul Lacey: Because I, honestly, one day I wake up and I'm like, we don't need web websites anymore whatsoever.

And then the next day, of course, we need web websites, but I'm wondering if you know what a website just becomes is, because essentially if you look at X ML and HML, it's structured content. At the end of the day, it's essentially a static database. So I can't see a situation where we don't need a static database of information online.

And it just so happens that the way that tends to be presented, and I can't see, I can't see how it won't ever be presented in this way, is through HTML and websites. I just think we'll just go back to what the web started as, but with structured content, and we will still need some presentation layer to it.

I just think that the, this kind of very designed website, I. Concept that we're, we know at the moment will start giving way to this kind of flat database of information structured with HML and XML, with a presentation layer of JS and CSS, so it makes me wonder what point of JavaScripts will be in the future other than, Creating applications that query things. I can't, it makes you think j JavaScript will be a pointless thing to have on a website because it just needs to be flat information. What's the point in moving things around? So that's where I think the websites won't disappear. They just, we might just not go to them as much.

They might be just pushed to us, but the data is still coming from Yeah. So it's

[00:54:09] Nathan Wrigley: more like a repository of data which is presented based upon the thing that you are holding, which is what a content management

[00:54:14] Paul Lacey: system is for. Yeah. Yeah. And our,

[00:54:18] David Waumsley: job as designers is to make that this static content is presentable.

We, we give the browser instructions to how to present it to a growing range of different devices. and that job will always be good point with us. And because we'll always need to, as that changes, new devices come on. And as we need to communicate in different ways with each other, I think there's a good future for, I think it's the best time actually at the moment for

People who are web designers.

[00:54:47] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I love these conversations where we get into the more sort of philosophical side of things. It's really interesting, gazing into the future and just pontificating what it might be. Of course. Who knows? Maybe we'll turn out to have, yeah. I think anybody who

[00:55:00] Paul Lacey: tells you what the future's gonna be doesn't clearly know all the variables.

[00:55:04] Nathan Wrigley: Perhaps we'll all be shoveling coals into steam. We'll find out. We'll find out. Yeah. Yeah. on that bombshell, we'll wrap this episode up. It just remains for me to obviously say a great big thank you to, to Paul Lacey for joining us today. Who knows, maybe this will be the first of many appearances, but really nice to get your insight into all of that.

Obviously, David's with me every single time. thank you to David as well. Paul. Just before we go, where can people. Get in touch with you, find you,

[00:55:32] Paul Lacey: please don't. But if you really must, then you can go to Paul Lacey Digital. and also guys, it's just been so nice to reconnect. Do you know the, the first ever podcast I did before I was in my podcasting days was with you guys and, so to, to have, years and years of not doing it and then coming back and it's, you two is just the best, Aw, I wouldn't wanna do it with anybody else. That's so nice.

[00:55:56] Nathan Wrigley: Thank you so much. Okay. We'll be back with another episode at some point in the near future. Until then, stay safe. See you soon. Bye-Bye.