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Hey guys, how you doing? So I'm going to answer a question that was put to me. So let's just jump into it here. Hello, I found myself at a crossroads and I thought it would be wise to seek your guidance, given your experience and valuable insights you've shared with me in the past. When you butter me up like that, your chances of me actually answering your questions increases by 69. 87%. So good move. Apparently I'm proficient in React and Next. js. However, as I venture into freelancing, when you go into the real world outside of the YouTube nerdiverse, reality bites. Okay, I've noticed a growing demand for custom WordPress sites.
Oh geez, who would have thought that? Primarily because it gives clients the flexibility to edit their content. When I've attempted to suggest alternative CMSs or even a headless WordPress setup, basically when you're using WordPress in a headless setup, you're using the WordPress database, you're using the backend of the WordPress tools to add content, so forth, but the presentation is piped through other layers. Anyway, let's just go on. I've been met with resistance. For example, I recently built two websites for friends using a headless WordPress CMS, and they struggled to understand why WordPress was only used for a content management system, for content management.
Additionally, the challenges associated with hosting costs, build times, and the inability to simply transfer a zip file of a website to a web host and move on have become increasingly apparent. So I'm unsure what the best path is forward. Should I shift focus and dedicate myself to traditional PHP WordPress development, or should I continue advocating for headless solutions, perhaps suggesting other CMSs? My primary goal is to fulfill my clients' needs while also effectively managing my own workload and setting appropriate expectations. I appreciate your thoughts on the advice in this matter. Thank you in advance. So, good questions.
Number one, when you are out there in the real world of development, you're going to find that a lot of companies already have invested a considerable amount of time and money into certain technologies. It could be WordPress, it could be Drupal, it could be. NET, who knows? And even though you may find certain technologies to be more effective, more efficient for you, you may prefer it, the problem is that the company who has already invested in, let's say, WordPress traditional, they are very, very reluctant to want to drop that and go into something new or new CMS because, A, they're used to what they have.
They feel they've invested money in this and they don't want to lose that investment, even though it may be a false perception. And also, they may say to themselves, well, WordPress developers, easier to find than some customized CMS solution. We understand WordPress and its templating system, the theming system.
Do we want to jump into some specialized headless implementation that will put me into a situation as the owner of this site, into a situation where I may find it hard to find a new developer to replace this person if I have to do updates, say, a year from now or two years from now and this person is not around? So, as a business owner, there's a lot of, those are considerations that pop up, right? So, for you as a developer, you have to understand when you're writing code and you're developing an app, you're doing it once, but the use of that app is, you know, it's continuous.
So, sometimes, not sometimes, most of the time, my general rule in development is that better spend more time writing out code that is a little harder to write, a little harder to implement, but to maintain it's cheaper and easier. Because once it's done, it's done. But if you go the other route where you implement something that's easier for you but to maintain it or to build upon it is more costly down the road, that's not the way to go.
I see a time and time again where all these YouTube coder gurus who probably don't, a lot of them don't have anything to really show except the YouTube channels, they propose, they suggest, they assert certain things that experienced developers just go, so yes, headless CMS implementation of WordPress, headless WordPress implementation is kind of cool in many respects, but unfortunately, when you get into the market, you have to deal with the needs of the client. So, to answer this dude's question, if I go back to that, I am unsure of the best path forward.
Should I shift focus and dedicate myself to traditional PHP WordPress about or should I continue advocating for headless solutions, perhaps suggesting other CMSs? Well, you want to get the gigs, right? You want to get the gigs, first of all. Instead of thinking about what you want to do, you should think about what is best for your clients. Now, you may think a headless solution is better, there are certain advantages, but you have to also consider the non-tech variables that are factoring into this equation, as I just mentioned, the business consideration, replacement consideration, so on.
That's the downside of freelancing in a sense where you have to deal with the market, but if you work for a company, you get hired to do iOS development, that's what you're doing. You get hired to do WordPress development, that's what you're doing, that's it, you're full time. As you mature in your freelance business and your experience, you'll be able to more and more pick and choose what projects you want to work on. So eventually, if you have enough clients, you got enough money saved up, you could say, well, I only do headless WordPress development, so go pound-sand. I don't need to do it.
In the initial stages of your freelance career, you're going to have to deal with this kind of thing. Again, that is the thing. As new developers, we're always attracted to the shiny new stuff. We're hoping that the new stuff is going to give us some sort of advantage, and sometimes it does, but unfortunately, you have a legacy code base out there, and lots of people just have what they have and they want what they want, and that's pretty much it. Ultimately, the type of development that you do and how you handle that is personal and professional choices on your part.
I know people who do strictly WordPress development, traditional, and other things, depending on what the demand is, and they do very, very, very well because they become quite good at it. A lot of people are reluctant to jump to WordPress or older other CMSs, Drupal, because they're not great systems necessarily. They're not great in one area, but they could be great in another area, and also because they're just not comfortable with it. Yes, some things are a pain in the butt, ultimately, but at the end of the day, if you can find yourself—we'll talk WordPress and see brought up WordPress.
If you can find yourself in a position where you're able to deliver on traditional WordPress development for maintenance and so forth, and you've got really good workflows, and you understand the landscape, you understand the plugin architecture, you understand what's good, what's bad, what themes are useful, which ones aren't, etc. , etc. , then deployment options. You're an expert at WordPress deployments, automations, and backups, and so on. You can make a mint because you've got those efficient, efficient workflows that allows you to do that at a fraction of the time that it would have taken you otherwise.
Just because you're an expert developer, you could be a master developer, a PHP Laravel, but you could still be crap at WordPress because you just don't know the WordPress ecosystem. There you go. The opportunities are vast out there in terms of the types of development, but you're going to see for freelancing, which means small business, a lot of small businesses are on WordPress simply because WordPress has been around for so long. It's got such a wide install base. I think that's something like 43% of websites, if not more, have WordPress somewhere or another. It's just convenient.
My advice is to let the market drive you as you develop more FU money, as you develop more skills, you can pick and choose your clients, the type of projects you work on. For me, I started learning how to code in 94 to build a website for my business that had nothing to do with technology. Then I saw that a couple years later. I had done some gigs on the side for fun, and then I started going full-time freelance. I was pulled in all kinds of different directions. I looked at learning new languages or new frameworks as puzzles to solve. Ultimately, a developer is a problem solver. You're solving puzzles.
You're figuring out how with the tools that you have, and tools are the technologies, the frameworks, the languages, the APIs, you're figuring out how to get the job done for the client with the set of tools that you have, with the limitations that they've imposed upon you. Limitations could be budget. Limitations could be that they have invested in a particular infrastructure that they don't want to divest from. That's the game. Later on, after you've done this several times, I know some people do very well, freelancing, making tons of money. They do this for several years, and then they retire young. Some keep doing it because it's fun. Other people will.
As I did, I slowly started developing my own apps on the side. I fed myself doing freelance, and eventually started building my own apps. I had a dating site that had 17,000 members and was growing. I talked about that in the past. I shut that down because I got invaded by all these swingers. I didn't want to be the swinging coder guy. I would have to grow a mustache, smoke cigars, wear silk robes and stuff. It wasn't me. Of course, sometimes I regret shutting that down. I should have sold it. Anyway, that's another story. I've gone into other things as well.
I am here where I am today. I have my studio web SaaS software, which is used by a whole bunch of schools for many years now. Now I've taken that technology and my processes and my curriculum structure and I've ported that to my mentoring program, my boot camp. I'm able to deliver super high quality educational outcomes, real outcomes, teaching people to code and how to get jobs and so on, for a fraction of the cost of all the other boot camps that are out there. That's because of my deep experience over a decade working with schools in the educational system, combined with my experience as a pro developer. Anyway, tangent.
Those are the paths. You freelance. When you're first starting out, you're going to have to take some sucky jobs. You have to feel your way through figuring out where the demand is. You may love doing flash action script coding, but I don't think there's too many jobs in there. Then once you figure all this out, you may find yourself with a nice set of workflows that allow you to pump out projects for clients at a fraction of cost time that used to take you initially.
You may have a lot of money there or you may find yourself building your own software as a service, your own applications, which gives you ultimate control. But there's challenges to everything. There's challenges to working for somebody, challenges to freelancing, challenges to starting your own software business. But we'll have to leave that to another video. All right. I hope you found this useful. I am, I am, I am Uncle Steph. I mentor people in the ways of code and other things as well. Check out the links below if you're curious about learning how to code from a pro from the 90s up until today. Yeah.
Check a look at unclesteff. com. Thanks for watching. Bye bye. Yeah. .
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