HOLLY: Hello, and welcome to this special bonus episode
HOLLY: of Websites Made Simple. In this episode, I am going to
HOLLY: talk to senior developer Rob
HOLLY: Fisher, and we are tackling an
HOLLY: area of AI. Now, I know that AI is
HOLLY: everywhere and no one needs a whole other podcast about it,
HOLLY: but this coincides with some
HOLLY: different ways that AI are being used within websites and website
HOLLY: technology. And the conversation is so
HOLLY: interesting, I can't wait to share it with you. There
HOLLY: is something to know that my podcast microphone was
HOLLY: not doing its thing during this recording. And
HOLLY: you all know I have an absolutely brilliant podcast producer, Neal Velio of
HOLLY: Podknows Podcasting. He has done absolutely everything he
HOLLY: can to clean this up and to make this a really special
HOLLY: episode. So it might not be the quality that you are used to, but
HOLLY: please do stick it out. You're going to learn some amazing things from Rob
HOLLY: and some great anecdotes.
HOLLY: Obviously, AI is playing such a huge role in
HOLLY: everything these days. You know, with so many AI tools
HOLLY: in every area of running business, whether it's setting up email
HOLLY: funnels, whether it's websites, whether it's putting your iPhone camera
HOLLY: on and the filters coming up, it is absolutely everywhere.
HOLLY: And in some ways that's really great because it's kind of making
HOLLY: our productivity really kind of efficient.
HOLLY: And in other places, it's not quite all
HOLLY: it's made up to be. What I'd really like to focus on is where the
HOLLY: role it plays in websites. I wanted to start off because I have an
HOLLY: episode about Vibe coding and how much Vibe coding absolutely
HOLLY: sucks. It is not my bag at all. And I
HOLLY: always feel like with Vibe coding, the people who are doing it are the people
HOLLY: who have absolutely no business in doing it as well. You know, people
HOLLY: who are like VAs or they're just not working in that tech space
HOLLY: whatsoever. Give me your thoughts on Vibe coding, Rob. Vibe
HOLLY: coding is an interesting phenomenon. Obviously, as a term, it's been around for a couple
HOLLY: of years now. To me, the concept of Vibe coding
HOLLY: in its most literal sense is quite terrifying because you're
HOLLY: essentially allowing people who don't know necessarily what
HOLLY: to expect or what issues to look out for
HOLLY: to build potentially complex software.
HOLLY: And as much as I've. I've always been an evangelist for
HOLLY: bringing people into the coding space and learning how to
HOLLY: code, learning how computer systems and servers work.
HOLLY: Vibe coding is kind of a. A shortcut. It's sort
HOLLY: of jumping up 10 steps and trying to operate as a senior
HOLLY: developer without knowing the things to look
HOLLY: out for, the red flags, the potential
HOLLY: security flaws that you could introduce simply by
HOLLY: not reminding your prompt to, to include them,
HOLLY: or perhaps the prompt just hallucinates them out.
HOLLY: If you don't have experience in what a software
HOLLY: solution looks like, you don't know what to look for at the end to make
HOLLY: sure it's finished and even how to test it. I think that
HOLLY: is the core of the problem with Vibe coding.
HOLLY: Yeah. And I think as software updates,
HOLLY: you have lots of people who say, oh, I've just Vibe Coded my website and
HOLLY: I've done this, that and the other. But software doesn't stay the
HOLLY: same. We're always kind of patching and updating and things like that.
HOLLY: And I think often I find people who are
HOLLY: saying, oh, I'll just vibe code it. And I often hear people like Vas saying
HOLLY: that, people who are like, oh, I work in Google Workspace and I'm just going
HOLLY: to get Gemini to code this or code that. And you think, God, when this
HOLLY: falls down or when this goes wrong or, you know, when this gets attacked or
HOLLY: whatever, you're just not going to know what to do. And
HOLLY: I, yeah, I personally feel like Vibe coding is not the
HOLLY: right shortcut if you want that really solid structural result.
HOLLY: Yeah. And I mean, on the flip side, you can use
HOLLY: the Vibe coding method as a way of learning.
HOLLY: And I know a lot of younger aspiring coders who are now doing
HOLLY: this. It's a new way into the industry
HOLLY: where they have a companion with them, the AI tool
HOLLY: Claude or OpenAI or whatever, and they're asking it to teach
HOLLY: them and tell them how things work, why they work, and
HOLLY: then how they can actually test that themselves. And I think that
HOLLY: is a, that is a valid use of
HOLLY: generative AI and the ecosystem around that. So I
HOLLY: think, I think it does have a place in the teaching environment and
HOLLY: obviously it has a, it has a place as a tool in a
HOLLY: software developer's toolkit. Generative AI can save
HOLLY: a lot of time for a developer who knows what they're doing.
HOLLY: The problem is, for a developer that doesn't know what they're doing,
HOLLY: that thing is flipped on its head where actually what you're doing is you're stacking
HOLLY: up what we call technical debt. So your Vibe
HOLLY: Coded software is a liability in
HOLLY: your platform just waiting to break. And, yeah, that can
HOLLY: cost a lot of time, money and stress further down the line.
HOLLY: Yeah, I can imagine. I mean, I obviously approach, as a website
HOLLY: designer, I approach things always from a design point of view and,
HOLLY: you know, coming across more and more Vibe Coded websites. And as
HOLLY: you know, I won an award for my user journeys, my work with user
HOLLY: journeys and stuff. And that's what
HOLLY: vibe coding never seems to do, is give a really good user journey.
HOLLY: It doesn't have that psychology behind it. And unless you're
HOLLY: putting the prompts in there, One of the things that we look at
HOLLY: building in once we've done our hero section and stuff, is looking at the kind
HOLLY: of Z layout, because we know how people read websites. You know, they go
HOLLY: from left to right, up to down, that sort of thing. And it's all those
HOLLY: things, it's like the. You don't know what you don't know. And often,
HOLLY: like you say, with putting in the prompts, I find there's even only
HOLLY: so far that people go with their prompts, you know, especially if they're not a
HOLLY: web designer who's vibe coding a web design. And I
HOLLY: like that. When we spoke about this before that you were saying about,
HOLLY: you know, ultimately AI just doesn't have a brain, so it can't kind of take
HOLLY: it from that psychology point of view. That's right. So
HOLLY: essentially your. The LLMs, the
HOLLY: generative AI systems that we've got at the moment,
HOLLY: do one job, and that's language processing
HOLLY: on an insane scale. And what that means is they
HOLLY: are essentially probability engines that guess the next word.
HOLLY: I mean, it's stupidly technical. There's a lot of maths behind it that I don't
HOLLY: understand. I read the crib notes,
HOLLY: I like to read them out to you. So there's a lot of, there's a
HOLLY: lot of stuff in there. Essentially you're dealing with a black box that is
HOLLY: full of words, phrases, even, to a certain
HOLLY: degree, meanings. But they're all connected together by chains
HOLLY: of probability over lots of levels. What they're
HOLLY: able to do, because they've been trained on the Internet,
HOLLY: they've been trained on human language that's been put together over
HOLLY: the last few thousand years. They're able to pretty
HOLLY: accurately produce strings of
HOLLY: text, strings of language that make sense in a given
HOLLY: scenario, which is why you're able to give it a prompt
HOLLY: of a certain amount of words, and it will give you an
HOLLY: answer that looks like, for all intents and purposes, that
HOLLY: it was written by a human. It's very, very clever
HOLLY: technology. I mean, we must remember that this is, this is
HOLLY: cutting edge stuff. But as you say,
HOLLY: it doesn't have a brain. It is literally a mathematical
HOLLY: equation that's being called many times over every
HOLLY: time you give it a prompt. And the law of
HOLLY: probability Means that most of the time it gives you something
HOLLY: that's relevant or useful, but there's always that
HOLLY: there's a non zero chance it's going to give you what they call a
HOLLY: hallucination, which is where the, the answer to the
HOLLY: prompt is unexpected. It's made a connection
HOLLY: somewhere on probabilities that doesn't make sense, which often
HOLLY: like paragraphs of text that can go
HOLLY: unnoticed. The problem becomes worse in things like code, which
HOLLY: are very rigidly structured, where one
HOLLY: single bit out of place can break the entire structure.
HOLLY: And it's also, it's also a little bit more defined in visual stuff as
HOLLY: well. You know, a prompt for a photorealistic
HOLLY: image can often have quite a few issues. Although it is getting
HOLLY: better, it's harder to spot the issues, but they're never going to
HOLLY: go away. I've seen people, people doing this and their
HOLLY: prompts are usually suspiciously short.
HOLLY: You know, it will be like create me an app that tells me what the
HOLLY: weather is and you know, make it, make it blue and don't make any
HOLLY: mistakes. And that will be their prompt. You're just kind of rolling the Magic
HOLLY: 8 Ball for what you're going to get at that point. Yeah. Whereas when you
HOLLY: have software engineers writing prompts, these things are
HOLLY: pages long with supported document. Yeah. Submitted
HOLLY: with it. While you can get an answer with a very short prompt,
HOLLY: you really need to feed it as much information and
HOLLY: boundaries as possible so that you stand a chance of actually getting
HOLLY: something useful and maintainable. And I think that does apply
HOLLY: also to content creation, although I don't really do
HOLLY: that. I think a short prompt. I'll give me a blog on why AI
HOLLY: is cool. You're not in control of what you get. You need
HOLLY: to give it a summary and a plan for what you want it to talk
HOLLY: about and assuming you don't just want it to make it up. Because
HOLLY: AI, generative AI, the way it works, will read
HOLLY: things like satire on articles or blatantly made
HOLLY: up or wrong things and it puts them together with
HOLLY: everything that's fact because it's got no way of distinguishing it. So yeah, I mean
HOLLY: the prompt is very important and it needs to be
HOLLY: as detailed as you need the output to be.
HOLLY: When you said about giving prompt
HOLLY: boundaries, can you talk to me a little bit more about what
HOLLY: you mean by that? That's in, in essence a
HOLLY: way of telling the generative AI
HOLLY: where its limits are. You know, it's, it's not foolproof,
HOLLY: but it, when I talk about boundaries, I'm saying things
HOLLY: like, well, we're gonna. So keep it in the programming world.
HOLLY: We're gonna write in this language and we want to create
HOLLY: our software in under three modules.
HOLLY: Keep it down to a handful of files and keep
HOLLY: your methods short with content
HOLLY: creation. You might talk a little bit about. This is the topic we're going to
HOLLY: be talking about. We're not going to touch this list of topics at all.
HOLLY: So you're giving it a negative prompt. But we want to focus on why
HOLLY: this thing is good, the cost, you know, here's my notes that
HOLLY: I've given it. Stay on topic. Do not follow web
HOLLY: links and go off into the grass. You know, so that,
HOLLY: that's. Those are your. Stay on topic. Yeah,
HOLLY: stay on top. Exactly, exactly. And generative AI does
HOLLY: need those little nudges. But it is quite funny
HOLLY: really, because the way we as
HOLLY: humans are talking to generative AI and this is, this is the same
HOLLY: for the big companies, OpenAI and Anthropic, which we, we got
HOLLY: to see a little bit of, of how Anthropic works
HOLLY: with their LLM network from the code leak,
HOLLY: the way they are talking to their AI, so their system prompts,
HOLLY: they're almost pleading with it to not make
HOLLY: mistakes. Essentially. You know, what we, what we laugh at the vibe coders
HOLLY: for, it's like, you know, now you need to answer politely
HOLLY: and you need to, you know, please do not use vulgarity and
HOLLY: answer us correctly. Do not lie. They're putting all this sort of stuff
HOLLY: into the system prompt and essentially just hoping for the best. And
HOLLY: for the most part it works. Yeah, but there's no, there's no way
HOLLY: to verify the output that you get. So it is, it is
HOLLY: a roll of the dice. And I suspect with a lot of the
HOLLY: gen AI tools what they do is they feed the output back
HOLLY: in again with another prompt and ask it questions. Is this
HOLLY: okay? You know, is it lying? Does it match the prompt that the user's
HOLLY: given us? And this, that's more profound with the image
HOLLY: generation side of things. When these tools were released,
HOLLY: you had big problems in that people could just ask it for
HOLLY: anything. And when you give the Internet a
HOLLY: image generator that you can ask for anything, people are obviously generating
HOLLY: pictures of cats everywhere. And what they quickly found was, okay, we can't just,
HOLLY: we can't give people unfettered access to this. So what they do
HOLLY: is they take a prompt, they generate the image
HOLLY: and then they use an LLM to look at the image before it gets sent
HOLLY: to the user and say, is this safe? Is this child
HOLLY: friendly? And, you know, and it may, I mean, we are
HOLLY: oversimplifying. It may go through several steps of that, but it's using another LLM
HOLLY: to do it. Yeah. Which means that no matter what they do, they're
HOLLY: just kicking the can down the road. At some point someone will come up with
HOLLY: a prompt that can give them the output they want without the system
HOLLY: noticing. Yeah, that's, that's the funny world of, of prompts and
HOLLY: generating text and images. Weren't you telling a story the other
HOLLY: day in the Sparks group about how like, customers were on
HOLLY: a chatbot and they managed to persuade the chatbot to
HOLLY: basically give them 100% discount code or something like that? There's been a few of
HOLLY: those. And this does actually play into the, I suppose, the dangers and
HOLLY: the warnings that go with agentic AI and, and how much
HOLLY: permission you give it. So this, this particular
HOLLY: instance was a chat bot on a website, an e commerce system,
HOLLY: and the chat bot was allowed to talk to
HOLLY: customers and find out what their needs were. And if it felt that
HOLLY: it was necessary, it could offer a discount.
HOLLY: It's like an arbitrary discount, 10% or something, like something to sweeten the deal.
HOLLY: One particular astute customer who probably knew
HOLLY: a little bit about AI and what was going on, managed to prompt this
HOLLY: thing and convince it that no, it was wrong, it didn't
HOLLY: have any boundaries and it was allowed to offer any kind of discounts it wanted.
HOLLY: And I think, I don't think it was 100% discount, I think it was 85%
HOLLY: or something. But this shop was selling things for like
HOLLY: $10,000. You know, it was big industry stuff.
HOLLY: And then, and then what happened? So he was able to complete the checkout, make
HOLLY: the payment, which of course was flagged up by a human
HOLLY: once they saw the order, like, oh, my goodness, they've bought this stuff and they've
HOLLY: got thousands and thousands of pounds off. You know, this is, this is going to
HOLLY: tank us as a company. And they tried to revoke
HOLLY: the order, but the customer pushed back. And
HOLLY: he may actually still be in court with this because he has a
HOLLY: legal case that their website literally
HOLLY: offered it to him. You know, it's, it's very sketchy
HOLLY: where you are positioned legally.
HOLLY: If your AI agent promises something
HOLLY: and you decide you don't want to deliver it, but you've programmed that
HOLLY: AI agent and the loopholes are then yours,
HOLLY: you know, it's very difficult to argue the, oops, that was a
HOLLY: mistake. Yeah. And that's happening more and more as
HOLLY: people perhaps adopt this technology too quickly without
HOLLY: really understanding the risks.
HOLLY: People who have been listening to the podcast for a while will know how I
HOLLY: feel about this software Elementor. And
HOLLY: quite a while ago now I did an episode called, you know, stop
HOLLY: using this tool for building your websites. It's about Elementor. We will link it into
HOLLY: the show notes. But as I have the expert here,
HOLLY: let's talk about the AI generated code and Elementor.
HOLLY: A lot of dev houses are now taking on this AI first
HOLLY: approach where they're essentially farming lots of
HOLLY: agentic systems that are generating new features
HOLLY: based on prompts. For better or for worse, that
HOLLY: is the way these companies are doing it because they think it's faster,
HOLLY: they think they're going to get things shipped a lot quicker.
HOLLY: The problem that we're seeing is the initial jump
HOLLY: to that sort of thing has caused a lot of high profile
HOLLY: disasters. I mean, in Elementor you're seeing it with a
HOLLY: broken plugin, but with the bigger companies,
HOLLY: Amazon, they have in recent years got
HOLLY: rid of a lot of their DevOps engineers. We had last October, October
HOLLY: 2025, we had the, I think the biggest outage of AWS ever.
HOLLY: Yeah. Where their primary region went down. So
HOLLY: AWS West, West 1 went down,
HOLLY: which is unheard of. AWS doesn't go down on that scale.
HOLLY: That doesn't happen. And it makes you wonder
HOLLY: what went wrong, what happened? And you know, did they give
HOLLY: generative AI a little bit too much rope? That again.
HOLLY: We've also had a series of Windows updates this year
HOLLY: that have caused some significant problems for
HOLLY: users. Microsoft again have laid off lots of people
HOLLY: in hopes that AI is going to save them a fortune. This is
HOLLY: just a necessary step in building caution.
HOLLY: So companies that are, at the end of the day, they just want to make
HOLLY: money, they're going to want to reduce their outgoings as much as possible.
HOLLY: They've been sold a dream by
HOLLY: anthropic and OpenAI of this is going
HOLLY: to replace developers, it's going to replace system admins, it's going to replace
HOLLY: content writers. This is, you know, it's better. It's like, it's like having
HOLLY: 10 people with PhDs all in different subjects in your office.
HOLLY: Whereas I'm not saying that those were lies, but it
HOLLY: was definitely marketing speak and hype. Yeah.
HOLLY: And that's. And that's what's been bought into. Because the, the
HOLLY: fact of the matter is these tools, having, having worked with them
HOLLY: myself, are not necessarily on the
HOLLY: senior level, they're more on the junior level. Yeah, right. So
HOLLY: while they, while they have access to the sum of human
HOLLY: knowledge, the way that they can pull it together
HOLLY: is, is much more limited. They can give you explainers for things
HOLLY: and they can pretty much do anything you ask them to do.
HOLLY: They don't know why. They also don't know your intent and
HOLLY: things like that. So they're not an expert in the sense that an expert would
HOLLY: push back and say, you know, they say to me, Robert,
HOLLY: you're being an idiot. This is a really dumb approach. You don't want to do
HOLLY: this. You actually want to do this route instead. Over
HOLLY: here, a generative AI system wouldn't do that. It would go, oh, you've told
HOLLY: me to do that. That's a great idea. I will push ahead. You know,
HOLLY: while at the same time while constantly telling you you're a genius
HOLLY: and you know, and all that sort of stuff. I think we've got a rough
HOLLY: ride ahead of us, hopefully over the next few months, worst, over
HOLLY: the next few years of high
HOLLY: profile disasters due
HOLLY: to letting AI do too much without
HOLLY: human control. And I think Elementor is
HOLLY: just the tip of the iceberg for that.
HOLLY: Something that drives me a little bit crazy that I'm seeing a lot and
HOLLY: again, kind of moving into that Vibe coding chat again is
HOLLY: designers who have a bit of coding knowledge
HOLLY: using Vibe coding to create plugins, who really have no business
HOLLY: using Vibe coding to create plugins. And the reason
HOLLY: that I have such an issue with this is of course a
HOLLY: plugin is just part of the ecosystem of a website. Yeah, We've got
HOLLY: the WordPress, we've got the theme, we've got everything else going on there and
HOLLY: we need to be really, really sure about what we are putting on the websites,
HOLLY: not only because of how safe and secure they are
HOLLY: for the website, but how they play well with the other tech and
HOLLY: stuff like that. And so when people like, oh, I, I'm in
HOLLY: some web design groups and people like, oh, I've vibe coded these plugins, I'm going to
HOLLY: be selling them to developers. And I'm like, and what happens
HOLLY: to this plugin when there's a WordPress update or there's a
HOLLY: new version of PHP released or you know, what happens to your plugin then?
HOLLY: And it just feels like a house of cards. Gotta say those two things, those
HOLLY: are legitimate problems that developers have to deal
HOLLY: with. And you know, that's always the question, like what, what
HOLLY: happens when, when WordPress updates then are you going to be here
HOLLY: maintaining this plugin or is it you know, it's, it's something we've had forever
HOLLY: with WordPress. Yeah. And now we've given the keys to build these things
HOLLY: to literally everybody and everyone and their dog can now, can
HOLLY: now make a WordPress plugin. Which is great. You know, it's, it's always
HOLLY: said that WordPress itself is an
HOLLY: extremely secure, extremely efficient platform
HOLLY: to, to run your website from, to use as a content management
HOLLY: system. But the moment you put one theme and one
HOLLY: plugin in there, you're, you're essentially just opening
HOLLY: wide the door for malware. While the WordPress
HOLLY: ecosystem itself is maintained by Automattic,
HOLLY: the big company behind WordPress and you know, they're pretty good at
HOLLY: keeping it secure and patched. Literally anybody in the world can create
HOLLY: a plugin or a theme. And the
HOLLY: structure of WordPress is such that as you've already
HOLLY: said, those themes and plugins have free reign
HOLLY: over the entire code base and also over your hosting.
HOLLY: Just to run. Because it's a traditional PHP system,
HOLLY: you're adding PHP code to the server as part
HOLLY: of your, your plugin. That code can do anything
HOLLY: within that hosting environment. It's mitigated more
HOLLY: now, but in the older days of WordPress you'd have a bad
HOLLY: plugin would infect a shared hosting service and it could
HOLLY: jump to other WordPress instances on that same
HOLLY: hosting. We've managed to sort of bolt the door on,
HOLLY: on, on that sort of thing but it's, the problem is still
HOLLY: there. You, you install a plugin, even one that looks safe today,
HOLLY: could receive an update down the road that makes
HOLLY: it a Trojan horse for something that is a big deal.
HOLLY: Say you've got a plugin that, I don't know, adds a, adds
HOLLY: a form to one page, a contact form,
HOLLY: which is great, you use it, use the short code that's wonderful. But that,
HOLLY: that plugins code if changed, could
HOLLY: actually do much more wide reaching things around WordPress. The
HOLLY: plugin is active, which means all of its code is running. So
HOLLY: what's to stop a malicious change coming in that
HOLLY: changes all the passwords or starts
HOLLY: emailing out from that website, spammy messages or
HOLLY: stealing people's credit card information. Once you've got the plugin
HOLLY: installed and it's auto updating, it's too late. You're not
HOLLY: very, you're not looking at the code changes that come in, you know, because this
HOLLY: isn't a development pipeline. This is a thing that
HOLLY: people think of more like Windows Update or something like that or you know, my
HOLLY: browser's got to Update. So I've got to update my plugins. Yeah. And
HOLLY: goodness knows where this code is coming from. And
HOLLY: up until now it's kind of been the only way to do it. Going back
HOLLY: to kind of how plugins can destabilize a
HOLLY: whole system. You know, in my time I've seen some pretty major plugins
HOLLY: do that, like WP Rocket, you know, which has millions of installs
HOLLY: that had malicious code put into a few years ago
HOLLY: and last year or the year before, all in one migration, which,
HOLLY: you know, suddenly had everyone's like used by everybody there. Because
HOLLY: people aren't just using it for migrations, they're using it for backups. And, you know,
HOLLY: we use it with, on our websites and stuff. So. And these are,
HOLLY: you know, plugin companies who have huge teams of developers behind them, making
HOLLY: sure that they're all up and running and doing their things as well.
HOLLY: So, yes, those kind of people who think about vibe code and plugin and
HOLLY: make some money out of it, hopefully this conversation will have put them off
HOLLY: that people who want to create a plugin. You can use
HOLLY: AI tools to help you to understand how plugins work and
HOLLY: maybe mess around with them as an entry into that sort of thing.
HOLLY: I don't want to discourage people from experimenting,
HOLLY: but I think it must be held in the context of, okay,
HOLLY: I don't really know what I'm doing, I'm using this AI to do it.
HOLLY: There are going to be problems. If I think my plugin is a good idea
HOLLY: that should be rolled out to the marketplace, then
HOLLY: whatever you do, get a software person involved,
HOLLY: prototype it in AI and mess around with it locally
HOLLY: or on your website. But. But before you
HOLLY: bless the world with
HOLLY: your creation, make sure that it's been properly
HOLLY: evaluated and perhaps bits rewritten to be more
HOLLY: consistent. But yeah, get an expert on it. That's what I'd say.
HOLLY: One final thing before you go. Actually, we haven't talked in
HOLLY: this episode about the introduction of AI in WordPress 7.
HOLLY: I don't know if you want to talk about that a little bit as we've
HOLLY: talked quite a lot about WordPress. Shall we? There's. Yeah, I mean, this is.
HOLLY: It's almost a disappointing thing to talk about because
HOLLY: while we're about to make the switch to WordPress
HOLLY: 7.0, which any major release is terrifying
HOLLY: because you always find that there's plugins that are lagging behind that just don't
HOLLY: work with the new version and, and things like that, but
HOLLY: what they're actually doing with AI is
HOLLY: it's kind of cool, but also it's not
HOLLY: going to change anyone's lives in the short term and I'll, I'll, I'll tell you
HOLLY: why. So there, there are some major restructuring
HOLLY: things going on in WordPress 7. But what they're doing
HOLLY: is they're making it easier to integrate with
HOLLY: AI APIs, which are the little connectors for software to
HOLLY: talk to each other. So they're, they're building natively
HOLLY: into, into WordPress these connectors. So third
HOLLY: party tools that want to introduce AI can more
HOLLY: easily and more efficiently do it. That's essentially
HOLLY: the changes. So when we update to WordPress 7, we're not going
HOLLY: to see suddenly a load of AI
HOLLY: tools all over the screen. It will be one of those updates
HOLLY: where it's like, but I thought there was AI stuff. But actually it's all the
HOLLY: code underneath supporting the use of that technology
HOLLY: that's been implemented. Once that's in, what you can expect to see
HOLLY: is every plugin and his frog suddenly implementing
HOLLY: some kind of AI tool. It's going to be the wild west
HOLLY: for a little bit. You're going to wonder why, I don't know, your caching
HOLLY: plugin is suddenly processing everything through AI or
HOLLY: you know, that, that kind of thing. But it's setting the
HOLLY: stage for WordPress to go into this new world of,
HOLLY: okay, we support AI natively. You're not having to write all of the
HOLLY: API connections yourself. You can just talk to the WordPress
HOLLY: API that deals with AI. It's a tongue twister, isn't it?
HOLLY: But I'm glad you're one side, not me. It makes it a lot
HOLLY: easier to do that. So for me, the more exciting things that are
HOLLY: coming in WordPress 7 are relating to the native block editor.
HOLLY: The react code, which is what the block editor runs in at the
HOLLY: JavaScript framework is getting an update and the, the block
HOLLY: editor is becoming a lot easier to use, which I kind
HOLLY: of like because I, I don't like to use builders
HOLLY: because they're adding another abstraction layer onto an abstraction layer.
HOLLY: So you're getting further from pretty code, useful
HOLLY: code, efficient code. You know, every, every builder you put on top,
HOLLY: anything that makes anything simpler. Yeah. Is just moving the
HOLLY: complexity somewhere else. Like you say, kicking the can down the road.
HOLLY: Yeah. And with, with block builders, you're losing the complexity on the editor, so
HOLLY: making your life easier as a content creator. But you're giving that to the
HOLLY: end user who's browsing, wondering, why, okay, why? Why am I looking
HOLLY: at 7 million nested elementor blocks here when I've just added one
HOLLY: title. WordPress 7 is getting a much
HOLLY: better user experience with their block editor,
HOLLY: so that's something that I'm particularly looking forward to messing with, I think.
HOLLY: Love it. Thank you so much for joining me today on this. It's been great.
HOLLY: Thanks for having me. It's been great to talk about some techie stuff. I always
HOLLY: feel like I'm approaching things from a kind of running the business point of view.
HOLLY: So like hearing about stuff under the hood has been absolutely
HOLLY: fascinating. So no problem at all. And that's all from
HOLLY: us today. Thank you so much for listening and thank you
HOLLY: once again for sticking with the slightly lower quality
HOLLY: audio. I promise we will be back next episode to
HOLLY: the usual production, but in the meantime I would
HOLLY: love to hear what your take on this
HOLLY: episode has been around what Rob and I have been discussing
HOLLY: the different thoughts around AI because I appreciate that AI is
HOLLY: absolutely everywhere and we're not saying about avoiding it, we're saying
HOLLY: about use it strategically. And if if you would like to
HOLLY: send me your thoughts, please do get in touch. You can contact me
HOLLY: at hello@websitesmadesimple.co.uk
HOLLY: reach me at the website, which is websitesmadesimple.co.uk,
HOLLY: or you can find me on LinkedIn
HOLLY: @HollyCChristie. And
HOLLY: until next time, happy designing.