Hi Reader,

In the previous email, The Big Gutenberg Misconception, we looked at how WordPress is changing and why you need to change with it.

Change seems negative. Especially change that seems imposed on you and requires you to level up your skills.

But change also means opportunity.

In this email, we'll look at three significant opportunities for your web design and development business in 2024.

Stop tying your business fortunes to $100 plugins

A common question is, "Why don't Enterprise websites use page builders?". My answer is always the same: Nobody wants to build a $100K website on the back of a $100 plugin.

Enterprise websites don't just get thrown away every couple of years. They need to stay in perfect working condition for an extended period. And even then, the redesign won't be from scratch.

Page builders and commercial meta-box frameworks are a risk to this longevity. If the company goes out of business, a crucial component is no longer receiving maintenance and security updates.

Of course, Enterprise agencies know how to perform these updates themselves. But the associated cost would be ruinous.

As a business owner, you must also think like these companies. If you rely on a specific plugin for your business, your success depends on this plugin.

With the site editor, WordPress allows you to throw off these shackles.

The Twenty Twenty-Four theme proves that you no longer need a page builder.

With the planned WordPress 6.5 release, Core will easily integrate custom fields into blocks. Doing that makes tools like ACF blocks obsolete.

Increase your profit margin

Why do WordPress professionals love plugins? Because it's way cheaper to use an existing solution rather than coding it yourself.

Unfortunately, when it comes to themes, this is not the case. While using an existing theme gives a good starting point, customizing non-block themes is tricky because there are two extremes:

• You have themes without elaborate customization options, like the WordPress default themes. In this case, you must use a child theme, painstakingly override CSS styles, and copy and change templates.
• You have themes like Blocksy, which offer many customization options through the Customizer. But here you're stuck with whatever the theme offers, as these themes are next too impossible to child theme (trust me, I tried and failed!).

Because of these limitations, WordPress professionals have relied on starter themes like Underscores (_s) or frameworks like Genesis for years. They speed up development while offering flexibility.

But with block themes, this has changed drastically. You can either use an existing theme like OllieWP or adapt it to your project. Or you can use an unopionated framework like Frost.

Or even something as minimalistic as my own Bare-Bones Starter Theme.

Since all block themes use a standard foundation, you don't have to learn a new interface for every theme. You can switch out and change parts of themes easily.

And if you do build from scratch, it will take you a fraction of the time it will take you by coding this manually.

Give your clients the tools they need to succeed

If you have yet to hear about Kevin Geary, he runs a membership website that teaches people to succeed in web design. He wasn't on my radar until I stumbled upon his "Stop Letting Clients Edit Their Own Websites" video.

If this works for Kevin and his customers, great. I have a very different stance on this.

WordPress is a content management system. Its whole mission is to democratize publishing. In other words, make it easy for non-technical people to create and publish content.

Content can be anything—a blog post, a landing page, a digital or physical product, a membership, etc.

We've seen that WordPress has all the necessary tools built in to create this content. But it also has a set of programming interfaces that allow you, as the website creator, to remove, restrict, and pre-configure WordPress to your client's needs.

Block theme building in the "real world"

This email is the last one in this series, in which I'm sharing my personal analysis of the situation. Based on my knowledge and experience.

I've received great feedback from you about the last two emails, so thank you. And as usual: whether you enjoy this email or don't, feel free to reply.

For the rest of January and February, we'll shift back to the more actionable emails. I'm currently working on an Elementor to block theme migration project. And there have been more than a few lessons learned!

Looking forward to sharing these with you.

Cheers,
Fränk