Navigating the Gutenberg Landscape: Building a Profitable WP Theme Business

[00:00:00] Matt Cromwell: Hey, welcome everyone to another episode of WP Product Talk. Katie, how are you doing?

[00:00:52] Katie Keith: Yeah, good thanks. How are you?

[00:00:54] Matt Cromwell: Good, good. I'm excited to be here. And, um, Hugh, look like you're in a interesting location. Um. What's going on there?

[00:01:04] Katie Keith: I just went to the garden 'cause I couldn't find a private place with, uh, share an office with my husband and he was working and my daughter's at home as well.

[00:01:12] So I thought I'll just go outside and then hopefully nobody will come.

[00:01:16] Matt Cromwell: That's a gorgeous, and it's just

[00:01:17] Katie Keith: the right weather at the moment in New York or It's comfortable, but it's not crazy hot yet. So soon it'll be too hot.

[00:01:24] Matt Cromwell: Yeah, that's a gorgeous garden and you must spend a lot of time out there.

[00:01:28] Katie Keith: Um, well we just moved in in February and we are waiting for it to become swimming weather 'cause we haven't even used the pool yet.

[00:01:37] Matt Cromwell: Nice. That's awesome. Cool. Well we could talk about Myorca a lot more, but. We're probably gonna talk about some other things instead. Um, we are talking today about navigating the Gutenberg landscape, building a profitable WordPress theme business in a changing market. You picked this subject, right?

[00:02:00] Katie Keith: Yeah.

[00:02:01] Well, it's a big topic, isn't it? Um, it. And it's like a kind of existential change to the theme industry. Yeah. And because you and I are plugin people, I feel we've been a bit biased towards plugins when Yes. Um, actually this is WP Products talk, which equally includes themes, and we should probably talk about other products at some point as well with the WordPress.

[00:02:24] Uh, you're right. But yeah, today it's the themes.

[00:02:27] Matt Cromwell: You're right. You're right. For sure. I'm just feeling like I'm going into the conversation with not a whole lot of ammo this time.

[00:02:34] Katie Keith: I know what you mean. Yeah. But we have an expert, don't we? To help us.

[00:02:38] Matt Cromwell: Exactly. Good thing we have a really good guest with us today, so introducing our guest right now.

[00:02:44] Michelle Frechette: Hi, I'm Michelle Frechette , host of WP Coffee Talk, and I'm introducing today's WP Product Talk guest, Pavel Ciorici. Pavel is the founder of WPZoom, a WordPress theme shop that is amassed more than a hundred free and premium WordPress themes ranging from business to portfolio, blog, magazine, and WooCommerce, just to name a few.

[00:03:06] Their flagship theme is Inspiro, a theme that comes in many flavors and variants based on user needs and the complexity required. One of the things that I first loved about WordPress when I started 11 years ago is the versatility and flexibility that comes with a variety of themes that we have access to, and it's only gotten better ever since.

[00:03:27] And now here's Pavel. Enjoy the show.

[00:03:31] Pavel Ciorici: Hi everyone. Welcome. Thanks to Hi. Thanks for really nice, uh, uh, presentation. Hi, ed.

[00:03:40] Katie Keith: Hi. Thanks for coming.

[00:03:42] Pavel Ciorici: Thank you for inviting me. It's really an honor to be at podcast along with our WordPress creators.

[00:03:49] Matt Cromwell: Absolutely. Thanks so much for being here and, uh. Yeah, that was Michelle Frechette who, uh, introduced.

[00:03:55] So, uh, a lot of people know her in the WordPress space. Um, it's been fun getting some other podcast folks to do our introductions for us recently, so

[00:04:03] Pavel Ciorici: it's really a good idea. Yeah.

[00:04:06] You'll find enough creators like video creators for every.

[00:04:10] Matt Cromwell: Exactly.

[00:04:11] If, if you're a video creator and you wanna do a a, a, an introduction, hit us up because, um, I need more So

[00:04:19] Pavel Ciorici: free promotion.

[00:04:20] Matt Cromwell: Exactly. Um, nice. Well, Pavel, um, this subject I think is really important as Katie was alluding to earlier. Um, the whole concept of themes has really been evolving and changing a ton, uh, recently. Um, and some people have even said like, if. Full site editing really comes into flavor, like what is the purpose and the point of a theme anymore at all.

[00:04:44] Um, and, uh, so there's a lot of big questions with how Gutenberg is going and where it's heading. Um, really quick, can you give us kind of like your perspective on why the subject of, of themes and WordPress in particular right now is so important? Like, um, where are you coming from?

[00:05:01] Pavel Ciorici: Okay. Yeah, I guess Katie is in a good position, as she mentioned, but, uh, they don't have to, I don't know.

[00:05:07] They don't have all these challenging, uh, challenges as we do with, uh, being in a film business because, uh. We are used like, uh, every now and then something big comes to WordPress, like another revolution, another, I don't know, like a major update. And every time we are kind of scared, like, oh, what's gonna happen to our business in the next one or two years?

[00:05:30] So we are always prepared, like for the worst scenario. And yeah, of course, uh, having a plugin business is probably safer, a safer game. But, uh, so. We also try our best to diversify and then to have a, a piece of themes, themes and plugins. So, but yeah, I mean, we are in business for a long time, so we've seen enough, uh, things like, uh, we are a small team and for us it's really easy to adapt and, um, to adapt new changes in our press, like to implement new features to update our products.

[00:06:08] So. Every time we, we were just happy to see something new, some new improvements to our press. I mean, even when I started, like in 2009 to make themes, there was no easy way to create your manual. Like it, the themes, themes were just displaying automatically all your pages. So you, yeah, it was really challenging.

[00:06:29] And then new features like, uh, menu management arrived and yeah, of course it was important to quickly update your themes. We had, I dunno, like at the moment, maybe 40, 50 films in our collection. So it was kind of challenging to implement, to make all these updates. But yeah, we did our, we tried our best, like to keep the code, I don't know, in a way, like a common in our products.

[00:06:54] So we can, so, so we, so to, to be easier for us in the future to make, um. Quickly changes among all of them. So now we are witnessing something different with a full site editor. And, uh,

[00:07:08] again,

[00:07:08] I mean the, I think, uh, it's also important for everyone involved in this, uh, industry, like to jump the train and, uh, to learn it from the beginning.

[00:07:21] Because if they will wait to. Longer, it'll just be harder to catch up with all the changes. And, uh, I started like, I don't know, maybe half a year ago. To give more attention to block themes to full site editor. I'm not talking about Gutenberg because that happened like a few years ago, so we are already experienced in that area, but now we are talking about full site, uh, editor, full site editing themes.

[00:07:47] And it's really something interesting I feel, I don't know, like, uh, this spark comes back to WordPress and I kind of, I'm enthusiastic like, uh, to try new things, to learn new things, to try new technologies. I mean. Yeah, and both I think, uh, users and, uh, as developers, uh, product owners can benefit. Um, it's a win-win.

[00:08:10] Yeah. It's may maybe easier for us to create themes, easier for users to create websites.

[00:08:16] Matt Cromwell: Mm-hmm.

[00:08:17] Pavel Ciorici: Have a lot of control over very, their websites, so. Mm-hmm. My thoughts. It's a really important period and we shouldn't neglect

[00:08:28] Matt Cromwell: it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What, what do you see right now considering like the way that full site editing is evolving?

[00:08:35] Um, what, how do you, what do you see as the role of themes in particular? Um, uh, in, in, in light of, of where everything is going with Gutenberg in particular, and also with full site editing. What's the role of the theme now that, like you said, it used to be that it would design your page. Like you, you didn't have often, you didn't have a lot of choice or a lot of flexibility.

[00:08:57] Like you hit admin page, you type up your content, you hit publish, and it, and you have that design and that's it. Um, um, and then themed authors started adding a lot more functionality into, into the pages in particular. Um, but now it's kind of like. What, how much control does a theme really have at the end of the day, um, of, of the look and feel of the site, uh, compared to where it was before?

[00:09:25] Pavel Ciorici: I think, uh, now the themes are just, uh, an easy way to quickly create a specific type of website. I mean, it's not a secret that, uh, even until now, all themes, like most popular ones, like included dozens of demos. And, uh, these providers had to build another tools, like to make it, to allow, uh, users to I import quicker, quickly, all this demos they see on their website.

[00:09:53] But now we've, we've full sighted. I think, uh, yeah, the experience becomes small, unified, like among, uh, along all, all themes. They still have a role. For example, I think this, uh, gives like, uh, uh, opens the world for different talents. Like, uh, maybe someone is not good at, uh, developing, uh, complex things, but they're good at designing, uh, layouts.

[00:10:17] So maybe for someone is, uh, easier to create a WordPress website without having, uh, coding good knowledge so they can easily build a theme like, I don't know. I think the, the themes will take, take, take control more of, uh, front end of a design. So let the plugins do the, uh, complex, uh, stuff in the backend because we know that so many features, uh, were bundled with, uh, multipurpose themes, which were supposed to be in separate plugins.

[00:10:51] So, I mean, yeah. These were mistakes. A lot of us, uh Yeah.

[00:10:57] Mm-hmm. In the

[00:10:57] past. And you learn by your mistake and you still, maybe years later, you still fix them and try to take, uh, some specific features out from a theme. From a theme. For example, even in our case, like, I dunno, maybe custom post types, which were registered many years, like 10 years ago in the theme, and we take it out in the plugin.

[00:11:18] So. I think it's a good way to split what's plugin territory and what's, what's related to design. So maybe it's gonna be easier, like to switch from one theme to another without it losing too much from functionality.

[00:11:33] Matt Cromwell: Yeah.

[00:11:34] Katie Keith: It feels like it's kind of bringing it full circle really, because originally a WordPress theme was just another word for a skin.

[00:11:41] It changed the design. And I remember watching, uh, Matt Mullenweg in the most recent state of the word where he was. Going through the demo and all these things you could do with themes. And he was like, look, I just built a theme. You don't need themes anymore. I'm rewording what he said. But that was the sort of essence.

[00:11:58] Mm-hmm. And it was certainly implied. Maybe you don't need a theme. And I thought, no. Where's the design? Who's you let the average website owner mess around with, uh, full site editing. Without that design and the branding and the look and feel, then you've got nothing. You've just got a hash mixed together of components on the page, and so.

[00:12:21] Really, I think people will still be needing to research themes and finding that design that fits their desired brand, works with their logo, whatever. And then that gives them the starting point. And yeah, sure. WordPress will have within it, the page builder, the full site editing that they can, the user can create their own layouts and things.

[00:12:42] But they still need the design, don't they? And all the components need to be styled in line with that design to create a really great looking website. And, um, if you don't want what comes with the basic skins that come with the free themes, um, the default themes, you're still gonna need to buy a theme, aren't you?

[00:13:00] Yeah, exactly. I mean,

[00:13:01] Pavel Ciorici: unless you are good at learning quickly all these options available or you have a good for design, otherwise, it'll might be much easier just to find the, the design you like and just install it. And now it's gonna be easier for you, like to make adjustments instead of installing page builders and additional plugins.

[00:13:23] Like yeah, everything will be. Like one piece together, so Yeah. Yeah. I think, and there has been

[00:13:31] Katie Keith: builders, sorry. You, there's been builders available for years, like something like generate press or any of the big multi-purpose theme forest them, if people had that. I, for design, there have been no code solutions to build very complex websites and layouts for years and years.

[00:13:49] All that's changed with that sense is that it's come into WordPress itself. Mm-hmm. But those. 99% of people that can't do that professionally, then they still need to find that theme. So,

[00:14:00] Matt Cromwell: exactly. But it does require

[00:14:01] Katie Keith: some pivoting, doesn't it?

[00:14:03] Matt Cromwell: Exactly that. I mean, I think that's the irony of. Of, of some of the way that this is evolving is WordPress used to have, at least in like in the core development area of WordPress, used to have a really opinionated view of decisions, not options, um, of like, let's try to make decisions so that the user doesn't have so many options.

[00:14:25] But it feels like with full site editing and themes in general, uh, and the way that that's going, it's like options with options and more options. Um, so that if you wanted to build out a website just with full site editing, you have to be a designer, uh, in order to do that. Um, whereas the great thing about having a theme is just being able to just.

[00:14:48] Write and hit, publish and be done because you're not a designer. Um, and you don't wanna have to make those decisions at all. Um, and I, I'm really curious as to where this all is going to head, uh, in the long run because I, I really want to make sure that folks, users who aren't designers still have that ability.

[00:15:08] Um, even with page builders, they continue to choose page builders often, and page builders often will lean towards, uh, like. Um, templates in one form or, or like a whole page template, like, and then their website ends up just being a whole bunch of very disjointed variations of templates. Um, instead of having a cohesive look and feel and experience.

[00:15:32] Um, I don't know, it, some of that is a bit concerning for, for me. I don't know. Pavel Pavel, does that make sense? Like, does that ring true with you and where you're thinking for your business?

[00:15:43] Pavel Ciorici: So I see it like, um. I see both the good parts and the bad, bad parts. Like when I compare with classic themes, if we will call this way all themes.

[00:15:53] Mm-hmm.

[00:15:53] So for example, one as a theme author, like, um, who has some responsibilities like to provide support. Uh, I will say that until now, we, we struggled with specific issues with our customers. Like when it comes to classic things, like even, even for some parts were kind of like, uh, fixed. Like you couldn't make easily changes to Heather to footer.

[00:16:19] We were assure that, uh, it'll be hard for customers to break a website like, uh. They kind of were able to control the content, but uh, it was harder for them to make mistakes and, uh, yeah. But now we site when new site editor, maybe it's just because of a transition, uh, phase and everyone is still, uh, learning how to use it.

[00:16:39] Uh, what I see is people have way too much control on, uh, global things, on websites and uh, yeah, if they make a small change, I don't know if they can. If they, if they know how to undo all these, uh, changes and then it's too late and then they have to, I don't know, reinstall everything or reset everything.

[00:16:58] So I think, yeah, maybe it's nice for them to have full more control, but on the other way, it's kind riskier to give, uh, to someone maybe new to WordPress. Too much control.

[00:17:10] Mm. Yeah.

[00:17:10] If they're okay breaking their websites, I don't know.

[00:17:15] Yeah.

[00:17:15] I prefer, like, I know maybe. To lock some, uh, to lock in some, uh, sections like to be harder to maybe have confirmation or, I dunno, what needs to be done in this direction to avoid, uh, to too often.

[00:17:30] Same problem to happen too often. Yeah,

[00:17:32] Katie Keith: sounds like a product idea of that doesn't already exist. I dunno much about how the, um, the WordPress user roles fit with the different elements of, um, Gutenberg and full site editing and whether you can prevent certain roles from changing blocks. Probably, yeah,

[00:17:48] Pavel Ciorici: probably you can block different sections or, yeah.

[00:17:52] Katie Keith: Good

[00:17:52] Pavel Ciorici: blocks. Someone needs to be, someone needs to set up everything for you first and to do all these measures. Yeah. Otherwise it's too late, but yeah. Yeah. I dunno. I think I personally, I think it's nicer when you see people using pre-made designs like. In the way they are presented, the presented on, I don't know, on a demo.

[00:18:14] So they just add their pictures, text without, uh, trying to, I don't know, improvise when they don't really have a good taste maybe. But yeah, that gets the

[00:18:25] Katie Keith: best results usually because a great designer created that demo. And Exactly, yeah. Move away from it. It starts to fall apart and mm-hmm.

[00:18:33] Pavel Ciorici: Yeah. Otherwise it hands with video backgrounds on all pages.

[00:18:37] On all sections. So yeah. We need to control that,

[00:18:43] Matt Cromwell: I guess. Yeah. Paval, tell me a little bit about like, um, is there, is there a lot of opportunity right now for, uh, a theme shop, um, in WordPress or. Is it gonna be more, you have to choose between plugins or page builders. Like you, you are right in between there.

[00:19:06] You're like focusing on themes where we see so many of the theme shops becoming plugins essentially like page like Divvy and like Elementor, um, they're like, ah, let's not worry about the theme as much. Let's make the page builder thing. You're right in between the middle there. Is there a lot of opportunity?

[00:19:26] Specifically for WordPress themes right now?

[00:19:30] Pavel Ciorici: Well, um, if I want to build something, filter proof, I think everyone has now equal chances when it comes to, yeah, when it comes to building maybe new themes because there are not so many good, uh, full site editor, uh, I think themes. So basically everyone can start from zero and they compete at the same level.

[00:19:51] Because, uh, all these big players, I don't know, there are some very popular themes they are kind of avoiding for now. Um, everything, what, everything about the full site editor, so, uh. Maybe it's a good opportunity to try to impress with some nice designs, like to fill some gaps maybe quickly. And I don't know, even, uh, applauding on WordPress at work in the repository.

[00:20:18] Uh, nice looking theme with lots of features or templates. Cool. The es some, uh, yeah, some good results. Uh, but I don't know, maybe if you have a good idea also for reply again. Yeah. And you do something better. Or usually, for example, we also started with themes, but eventually we ended like building additional plugins, which were just, uh, not to be an interest to make money, but just to, uh, yeah, extend our themes with additional features and.

[00:20:49] Once you put all these plugins on workers that work, I mean, everyone can download them. So of course this was a good way for us to gain new users to mm-hmm. Get new feedback. And, um, it was, it was never intended like a backup. But now I, I look at our plugins from our collection, even the free ones as a plan B, as a backup.

[00:21:10] I dunno, in case something goes not mm-hmm. In the right ion with things, we can always monetize them. Um,

[00:21:18] yeah. Yeah. True. I think,

[00:21:19] yeah, if you can combine both of the worlds, it's nice. Mm-hmm. Maybe, yeah. Plugins with plugins you can maybe monetize more, I dunno, like mm-hmm. There are like too ma way too many more money involved when it comes to, especially e-commerce plugins.

[00:21:35] Matt Cromwell: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:21:36] Pavel Ciorici: No better.

[00:21:38] Matt Cromwell: Well, let's jump into a little bit of our, um, personal experiences with this subject. Um, I can say from, from, from my perspective, um, my partner Devon and I, in the very beginning, before we even built give, we did consider jumping into themes a little bit because, uh, that was where. Uh, he and I both had a lot of experience in terms of building out websites, um, with building our own custom themes, uh, according to a specific, uh, design and spec.

[00:22:06] Um, and we were like, we can, we know how to code these things. We know how to build them, we know how to design them. Uh, let's start spinning out themes. Um, and, um, we quickly decided that. It wasn't gonna be what we wanted to do. Uh, we started going in that direction and, um, and just felt like, um, there's so much, um, subjective, uh, feelings about the look and style of a site that we, um, we, we felt like the.

[00:22:34] We weren't gonna be successful in that way. Um, and so, um, and so we didn't, um, go down the way of themes and instead we did products. Um, and then our experience became how can we make sure that our product works with all the themes? Um, and how can we make sure that our plugin doesn't get broken because of themes?

[00:22:54] Um, and that's the, what you were talking about earlier, about that, that line between plugin territory and theme territory. We would. We're often most frustrated when a theme would load its own version of jQuery, for example. Like that was always a big challenge. Or we had a big maps builder plugin for a long time, and there were several themes that that loaded a Google, um, API, uh, automatically, uh, on every page and it would break our maps plugin every single time.

[00:23:23] Um, and things. So themes for us started to become problematic, um, in many ways. Um. That's a good time.

[00:23:32] Pavel Ciorici: Automatic problematic.

[00:23:34] Matt Cromwell: Yeah, exactly. Um, and um, but as of recent, my most recent experience, uh, on the, in terms of the business of Themes is, is with working a lot closer with Ben Ritner and Kathy Zant, uh, at Cadence, wp, um, and seeing their approach, which was really.

[00:23:53] Interesting. And, uh, a, a, a big eyeopener for me because of how I hadn't been in touch in the theme space in such a long time and how seeing how everything has evolved and to the point where now cadence is, uh, like you said, it, they're kind of trying to do both. They're trying to. The plugin and theme oriented, and their focus tends to be to try to, um, have cadence used to leverage Gutenberg as much as possible.

[00:24:20] They're also compatible with Elementor, of course. Um, and, but the whole experience is all about, um, how to make a website builder. It's like, it's not even about a theme really. It's like trying to be a, a website builder as much as possible. Um. Which I think is a really interesting approach for sure. Um, because that, in many ways, that's what folks, that's the criticism of WordPress, uh, from the outside, is that when you get on WordPress, it's like, how do I build anything?

[00:24:49] It's all just to DIY, do it yourself. Um, I'd much rather prefer to have it like Squarespace where I just sign up and I pick the layout that I want and I run. Um, and I, I think that that's a lot of what some folks want nowadays. Um, is, is to have that more visual builder experience. Um, uh, and if, if a theme, uh, or a combo, a theme plugin combo can provide that, then I think it's a, I think it's a win.

[00:25:18] Um, but their most recent, uh, struggle on the cadence side, uh, is acknowledging that full site editing changes the way that you approach building out a page completely. Um, and how can a theme, uh, tackle, um. Compatibility with full site editing as well. Um, it's, uh, it's a problem that they're currently working to solve, um, as well, like all the big theme shops are trying to solve.

[00:25:43] Um, but, um, it's a big challenging one for sure. So, um, that's a bit about me, about my experiences. Um, and I honestly like, um. If, um, if somebody were to come and, and ask me if, if I would recommend starting a theme shop, I, I don't know if I would recommend it. I think it's super challenging. Yeah.

[00:26:06] Pavel Ciorici: It's just about your preference.

[00:26:08] Matt Cromwell: Yeah. I think you have a lot of advantages 'cause you've been there for a super long time already. Um, and that, that's definitely an advantage for sure. Um, yeah. Katie, what about you? I'd love to hear a little bit about barn two's experiments with themes or, or not themes.

[00:26:25] Katie Keith: Um, when, well, when we were an agency, um, as you said, that's kind of where you get the experience, the themes as much as anything.

[00:26:34] And so in 2013, we spent most of the year. Building a theme and we took ages on it, and while we were doing it, the market changed and we built a fairly simple theme. So I'm not sure why it took a year, but there you go. It was alongside client work and things, but it was a fairly simple theme. And in 2012, you could do that.

[00:26:55] A theme was just a skin. It didn't have tons of functionality, a billion short codes or portfolios, whatever. So we submitted it to theme forest. Because I didn't have the confidence to market it independently, and it was rejected for being too basic and simple and all of that. The world had moved on by then.

[00:27:15] Things like we Arvada and enfold would hit the market and were taking over the world, um, themes at that time and we realized we didn't want to compete with that. You need to be a much bigger company and have big resources to create a theme that big. And there were people then doing, um, niche themes that were successful, um, but they were more.

[00:27:37] Independent, and it just didn't feel the right direction for us. So we ended up with plugins. But I think that's a really good analogy of how the changes now theme companies have to be really quick to mm-hmm. Um, get the changes, make themselves compatible and move with the times and just in the way that we didn't adjust our approach.

[00:27:58] So I think similar things are happening. The industry's changing, and to survive you need to. Go with it. Um, but my more recent experiences with the plugin side of integrating with these changes, and I find it a really big challenge because the market is so fragmented, uh, for things like page builders and themes, and I dunno what we should integrate with.

[00:28:24] Like, we've stuck with short codes for a lot, for example, even though short codes are not user friendly, unless you're. You know, con confident with them and lots of our users aren't, do we do divvy blocks and Elementor blocks and Gutenberg blocks and every other kind of block. Um, it's always been a dilemma.

[00:28:44] So we've been assessing the demand and, and doing integrations based on that demand as we get the evidence for it. But I'd love to provide like a block for everything, and it's not realistic. Just yesterday, I was analyzing the refunds for a particular plugin and discovered that in the last three months we had refunded four customers on this plugin because it didn't work with the brick builder.

[00:29:08] Mm-hmm. I realize I'm talking about builders rather than themes, but there's. Um, they're quite closely connected, of course. And, uh, I'd never heard of the brick page builder until yesterday. And, um, then I saw it on Twitter randomly. I was like, oh, is this a thing? And so we're going to implement with it. No one on my team's heard of it either.

[00:29:29] Uh, we're gonna make it work, but it's even, it shows that a page builder can grow that rapidly.

[00:29:35] Pavel Ciorici: Mm-hmm.

[00:29:36] Katie Keith: There's still some market for themes in page builders, even with the WordPress, uh, core changes.

[00:29:42] Matt Cromwell: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Gosh, I resonate with so much of that. Um, that, I mean the, the, the dance between plugins and themes and page builders and just trying to help users to be able to get to success in one form or another between all of that is, it's so endemic to what WordPress actually is.

[00:30:02] Um, it's, uh, endemic to, its. Power and its strength and its flexibility, but also so much of the pain. So much of the pain is all wrapped up in all of that stuff at the same time. Um, it's really, really a dynamic and challenging area for sure. Well, Pavel, tell, tell us a little bit about your, uh, history and experience with, uh, WordPress, uh, theme business.

[00:30:25] Pavel Ciorici: So, my story is also. It's coming from themes, but it ended in a plugin, so mm-hmm. Talking about short codes, I can continue this discussion because, uh, when Gutenberg was introduced like five years or so ago. We had a few popular food blogging themes and, um, they had the, like shortcuts to add recipe cards.

[00:30:48] Like you will click in the old classic editor on some buttons to add quickly a list of ingredients, a list of directions, how to prepare specific recipe. And, um, when Gutenberg was introduced, uh, many new WordPress users couldn't see this, uh, buttons because by default their editor was Gutenberg. But we were still using classic editor like during that month, year or so.

[00:31:15] And so we had to come up with a quick solution. And that's when we build the, uh, build quickly, uh, simple, uh, recipe plug, recipe plugin, and with some simple, uh, gut and bear blocks, like to offer options to add the ingredients, uh, directions, recipe details. And at the time, I think, uh, no one really. Yeah, looked at that.

[00:31:40] It's like something serious. We were just experimenting, like to get, uh, familiar with how to code blocks, how to develop them, and, but eventually, um, all these new or users, which we were neglecting, they provide a lot of feedback. They ask for new features. Sorry for new blocks, new ideas. I need some water.

[00:32:07] No worries. Um, in the end, this plugin even was, uh, featured by Matt at the, one of his keynotes.

[00:32:16] And

[00:32:16] this really, uh, gave us like a boost, like, uh, mo uh, motivated us to give more importance to this plugin and we launched a free version initially. Now it has around 10,000 k. And, uh, later we made a premium version.

[00:32:34] It's called Recipe Card Blocks Pro. And this started like, uh, something, uh, like a fun project. Now it's. It wa it's our most, uh, most popular premium plugin. And yeah, I think it was a good, uh, start, uh, trying to fix a simple problem, eventually resulted in something, uh, more complex. And now it's one of the best, one of the most popular workers rescue plugins.

[00:32:59] And. We are really proud of that because yeah, we, we were never like thinking, oh, we will build something for Gutenberg. I mean, we are in a different industry. We'll focus on themes because they, they work really well. But yeah, we try to satisfy our customers and. End. We have a new product.

[00:33:18] Matt Cromwell: Yeah. Nice.

[00:33:19] Katie Keith: That fits really well with what we were discussing on last week's episode about coming up with ideas for new products, um, where Adish, AK and I both agreed, you don't need to come up with a new idea, you just need to listen, go with the flow and, um, implement feedback.

[00:33:35] And that often does lead to new product ideas. So that's a really good example of that.

[00:33:41] Matt Cromwell: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Nice. I I in the comments, I added this little old callback, I forgot about this too. This was an old blog post I wrote back when I was freelancing, uh, that says, uh, and this reminds me of how I used to write too.

[00:33:56] It's, it's so long time ago. It's like eight years old, this article. Um, but, uh, the death of niche themes. Uh, I was calling for the death of niche themes. 'cause like at that time, everything on theme forest was like. Um. Car, car theme. And then everything was just stock images. Uh, it was, it was, they were really like the same theme over and over again.

[00:34:18] Car theme with like, you have to install this car sales, uh, plugin and you have to, it was always just stock imagery with certain recommended plugins, but it was basically the same theme over and over and over again. And I was like, this, these are not actually niche themes. These are just like standard layouts with.

[00:34:37] Stock photography, why are we doing this? I don't understand. Um, but, uh, of course niche themes have not gone away. Uh, I mean, nonprofit themes are a big thing that people who use give, still really need all the time. Um, but um, it's, uh, things have changed a bit. I do see a ton more actual functionality. Um, that and actual focus, like podcasting themes are actually a, a big deal.

[00:35:04] Uh, anything that's. Compatible with, um, being able to show media super well or have, uh, special kinds of layouts with, uh, with galleries and, and blocks and whatnot. I think it's also really interesting. Um, so, um, let's wrap up though with our, our best advice, um, to, to new, uh, new folks. So let's imagine we're at, at a WordCamp.

[00:35:28] And somebody's like, I want to get into WordPress themes. I'm really good at building WordPress themes and um, uh, I like full site editing and I like Gutenberg, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna build the next big theme shop. What's your best advice for me, Pavel? What's your best advice for our WordCamp friend?

[00:35:45] Pavel Ciorici: I think, uh, they should do learn full site editor editing themes like right away, because now it's right moment.

[00:35:55] I think, uh, even if you're against, uh, niche themes, I think where enough, like enough, uh. Niches, which lack any nice themes. I mean, there are like around 200 themes in total block themes at the moment in repository. So imagine like, like how many options you have, like pick a niche, pick another, and you can, uh, design, especially if you're good design, you are good at designing you, you can do something really nice.

[00:36:24] And uh, one thing about the block films that I like is that, uh, you are no longer required. To, I dunno, to take care of, uh, different, uh, different things like, uh, optimi or page speed optimization. Like all these things are so simple. Like they use different, uh, technologies, like they're much faster. So you don't have to think on, uh, what you bundling them.

[00:36:48] Um. I mean, you don't have to build a framework behind your theme to take care of different features or optimization or customization options. Everything now. Yeah, it just, uh, you put everything in the themes zone file and, uh, the site editor, uh, does the rest. Um, also one thing that I like about Gutenberg beside themes are the single block plugins.

[00:37:17] I don't know if you tested them before, but I really like, uh, this part, for example, in our free block themes, we are using, uh, simple. One single blocks, one, one block plugins that can be installed right away from the editor. So you, you don't have to go to the plugins page to install it manually. You just click a button and it's, it's, it's installed instantly.

[00:37:43] Yeah.

[00:37:44] Yeah. Maybe. I mean, we also try to build a few. Um, similar plugins.

[00:37:49] Yeah.

[00:37:49] But I, I think it'll be harder to monetize them, but they come nice as a, a complementary product to themes. So,

[00:37:58] uh,

[00:37:59] I don't know. Another thing maybe I could, uh, suggest is for. For someone looking to get into WordPress is to be consistent about their product.

[00:38:10] Like to not, to not, uh, abandon it, uh, after a year or two. I mean, this was, uh, something common many years ago when we used to sell lifetime licenses and because we were not getting new users so motivated enough, we were just abandoning, uh, products even for, they were used, used by many customers who paid just once.

[00:38:31] So, yeah, it wasn't a good, uh, position. So, but on the way, everything now where we see in nor uh, industry, everyone uses very recurring, uh, uh, revenue model business model. So, uh. You can be sure that if you'll push constantly, new updates, new features, um, even yeah, in, in long term, this will, you'll have to benefit from this.

[00:38:58] This is, uh, as Michelle uh, mentioned it in have, uh, present in my presentation about our most popular, uh, theme, which is called Inspiro. I. I don't know why, but, uh, like eight years or so ago, uh, we, it was a video theme like for portfolio websites with integration and the. Uh, we really received a lot of, uh, feedback and, uh, very difficult requests from our users.

[00:39:23] Like to, to implement specific videos in specific areas like in the ground. And it was very difficult at that time. Maybe internet wasn't so fast, so it was basically to put, uh, uh, large videos loading automatically. But I dunno, we try to find ways to do it so. I, I think this played a good role, a big role for us because we weren't so many themes.

[00:39:46] So maybe none. None at all. Like we've, uh, really specific features. So yeah, this kind of helped us and we were constantly pushing new updates, new features. We were announcing them everywhere possible. So people, I think for people, for users, it's important to see that the product is alive and. You keep, someone is behind, work behind it, working really hard.

[00:40:10] Face enough. Yeah. Yeah. So that's my advice.

[00:40:14] Matt Cromwell: Nice. That's great advice. Katie, how about you?

[00:40:19] Katie Keith: Yeah, I'd say if you're thinking of getting into, uh, themes now, then work with Gutenberg and full site editing and not against them in particular. Look for gaps and opportunities and needs that they don't fill because there are plenty, particularly if you wanna add something, um, more niche, um, or, um.

[00:40:40] More complex than what they're designed to do then, then there are always going to be opportunities. There's also the design side of things. There will always be a need for good, unique designs, um, that meet different needs. So I think there are opportunities there and you need to look at what your product, what your theme can add on top of what's available in WordPress itself instead of trying to fight with it.

[00:41:03] Matt Cromwell: Yeah, absolutely. That's really good advice for sure. Um, me personally, uh, ironically I would say to focus on some sort of niche in one form or another. And honestly, um, I think the biggest one to focus on is e-commerce. Like if you're gonna go out, um, and start, um. Building themes. I would focus on trying, trying to be a theme for WooCommerce in particular.

[00:41:29] Um, I just think that that's where the most opportunity is. It's kind of the easiest, biggest grab that you can go for if you just try to go and be like, we're a theme, like, use us. Uh, I don't know that you get a lot of traction that way. Um, but if you're like, we are a great theme for WooCommerce. Um, it's a good way to, to turn heads, um, and get people to pay attention.

[00:41:50] Um, and um, and there's a built in audience there automatically. Um. I think the other thing I would really emphasize strongly is, uh, the user experience on the admin side. Uh, I think a lot, not, not enough themes actually, um, cater to the admin experience. Uh, they really try to make everything look really great on the front end, but, um, how people actually interact with your theme, uh, even if it's like via the customizer, which is still available for a lot of folks.

[00:42:20] Um, or if it's in full site editing screen or if it's a setting screen or if it's in the page editor or the post editor, all of that is fresh area for your theme to be able to shine and make the website building experience nicer, um, and let your users get to success quicker. Um, so I, that's, that's kind of my two big things, like really focus on.

[00:42:46] Probably e-commerce as your niche and really focus on user experience as much as you can. Um, nice. Well this was a really interesting conversation, Paval. I'm really glad you were here to share your expertise with us. Um, thank you so much. Thank

[00:43:02] Pavel Ciorici: you also

[00:43:02] Matt Cromwell: for

[00:43:02] Pavel Ciorici: inviting

[00:43:02] Matt Cromwell: me. Yeah. Um, Katie, are we lined up for next week already?

[00:43:07] Katie Keith: We are, yeah. Next week. The topic is customer onboarding. How to turn first time buyers into loyal customers, which is super important because once you get the sale you need to keep it. And we've got a great guest again, uh, mark Zara from Spotlight Instagram feeds, W-P-R-S-S, aggravator, and also the WP Mayor Blogs.

[00:43:29] And news site. So he's gonna come and talk to us about that. Um, Matt, I know you are particularly strong in this area as well with the onboarding side of things at Give, so it should be a really good one.

[00:43:40] Matt Cromwell: Yeah, I'm looking forward to it for sure. Thanks everybody. Do us a favor and share the video around, hit the like button, hit the subscribe button.

[00:43:48] Um, it helps us for sure. And, uh, we'll see everybody next week on WP Proc Talk. Thanks a bunch. Bye-Bye.