The WordPress drama shows why WordPress remains the best choice

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Over the last few months, the WordPress community has been a bit of a mess. The short version of the “mess” is that Matt Mullenweg (the man behind WordPress) is not happy with WP Engine (a major host of WordPress sites) and it’s causing a lot of fallout. My friend Aaron has a great timeline of events if you want to dig in a bit deeper.

While it’s all very unfortunate and it’s hurting the WordPress ecosystem quite a lot, it also shows why WordPress remains the best platform for most websites.

Because WordPress is self-hosted (you can download it and run it wherever you want), there is only so much that Matt (or anyone else) can do to break things. He’s causing a mess, and many of our clients are hosted on WP Engine, but the direct impacts have been minimal because with WordPress you fully own your site.

Matt isn’t happy with WP Engine, but he can’t do much about it. We have a lot of clients hosted on WP Engine, and their sites are fine.

Why not Squarespace?

This is the main difference between WordPress and other platforms like Squarespace or Shopify. If Anthony Casalena (CEO of Squarespace) or Tobias Lütke (CEO of Shopify) had a similar beef, they could literally just shut websites down if they wanted to. They both seem like solid leaders, but many thought the same of Matt Mullenweg until recent months. Things can change.

We’ve actually seen this happen in small doses, like when Squarespace shut down the website for America’s Frontline Doctors. The question of “should they have shut them down?” aside, the fact is that companies like Squarespace have the power to do that with the push of a button. With WordPress, they don’t.

With WordPress, the worst case would be for your specific hosting company to decide to shut down your site, at which point you move to another host and keep going because you fully own your site.

This WordPress mess is frustrating, but it’s exactly the reason that we’ve been such a proponent of WordPress over the years. This may have long-term implications for the platform, but for now your WordPress sites will remain fully in your control and no one can take that away from you.

Be a voter

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If you haven’t yet, I hope you vote today. Perhaps more importantly, I hope you encourage others to do the same. When you do, the words that you use matter.

Asking someone to vote is a great thing, but encouraging them to “be a voter” has been found to be 15% more effective.

In his book “Magic Words“, author Jonah Berger shares this:

Turning action words into identity words (verbs into nouns) is effective because we all strive to uphold positive self‐images and avoid labels that make us look bad. One study found that when election campaigns talked about “being a voter,” instead of simply asking people to vote, they increased voter turnout by 15%. Another study found that students who heard, “Don’t be a cheater” cheated half as much as students who received the words, “Don’t cheat.”

Today is a big day for the United States. Be a voter.

Do you know why your side might lose?

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At the time of publishing this post, the 2024 United States election is tomorrow and it’s very unclear who will win. I suspect that the losing side will be full of “how could that have possibly happened?” kinds of questions, and that’s not a good thing.

I know who I’m voting for, and I’m 100% pulling for that party to win, but I understand why people might vote for the other side. I don’t agree with them at all, but I understand what lead some people to make that decision.

A few years ago I shared a post about seeing things from both sides of the aisle, and that’s still something I try very hard to do. I also try hard to understand both sides to the degree that I could make solid argument for voting the other way. As Charlie Munger has said:

“It’s bad to have an opinion you’re proud of if you can’t state the arguments for the other side better than your opponents. This is a great mental discipline.”

Ultimately, it’s all about perspective. Are you able to see things through the eyes of others, or not? In her book “Blind Spots“, Madeleine Van Heck says:

“If we truly cannot understand why or how others think or act in the way they do, then we, too, must have a blind spot: something is preventing us, at least at the moment, from grasping the perspective that differs from our own.”

I hope incredibly strongly that the election goes that way I voted, and I disagree with those that voted the other way, but I understand why they ultimately did and I hope that their ideals change for future elections. If you don’t understand it, that’s a blind spot that you should try to work on.

The Sunday Summary: Crazy goals, big fires, hamster wheels, and fence posts

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In an effort to help me keep up with everything I post each week, here is my latest “Sunday Summary” of my posts from the week.

Mon, October 28: Four years of daily blogging
A few thoughts on having done this for four years straight.

Tue, October 29: The joy of crazy goals
It’s unlikely they’ll keep it up, but over the last five games the Detroit Lions have scored 25 touchdowns but have only thrown a total of 20 incomplete passes.

Wed, October 30: Big fires aren’t started by big sparks
“Some forest fires are bigger than others, but no one would claim that the size of the fire depends on the exceptional nature of the initial spark. Big forest fires aren’t caused by big sparks. Lots of individual trees have to catch fire and carry the flames.”

Thu, October 31: The Hamster Wheel of Social Media
Creating content on social media is certainly a great move for many businesses, but doing it with purpose and insight is far more valuable than just churning out more and more generic stuff.

Fri, November 1: The opposite of authentic is consistent
“I think this pitch that you should be authentic is baloney. No one wants you to be authentic. Just name anything you care about. If you go to a concert or if you get or need surgery, you don’t want the surgeon to be authentic. If they’re having a bad day, you don’t want them to do a bad job. You want them to be consistent.”

Sat, November 2: Counting fence posts
If you want to build a fence in a straight line that has 10 sections, how many fence posts do you need? The answer isn’t 10, but 11.

I hope you found some value in this. If you ever have questions, ideas, or disagreements regarding anything I write, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Counting fence posts

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There are some simple math problems that can stump a lot of people, like the “bat and a ball” question that I shared a few years ago. This is a related problem:

  • If you want to build a fence in a straight line that has 10 sections, how many fence posts do you need? The answer isn’t 10, but 11.
  • Or suppose you’re building that same fence with 10 sections, but this time with each end connected to a house. Now how many posts do you need? It’s just 9.

This kind of issue comes up quite a bit. For another example, suppose you want to deposit four checks at the bank, but you need to wait five minutes between each deposit. How long will it take? It’s not 20 minutes like it seems at first glance, but just 15.

This is commonly known as the fence post error, or the off-by-one error. When counting things like this, it’s easy to get off by one in either direction because we’re counting the wrong thing. This surfaced a few years ago with this meme that went around:

The teacher’s logic was counting the number of cuts, which is what was measured by time, but the number of boards was a slightly different equation.

Presh Talwalkar explains it very well in this video:

This problem shows up in computing quite frequently, because computers often start counting at 0. If you have a program that was counting 4 apples, it would have a “3” saved in that spot because counting to four goes:

0,1,2,3

It’s a super easy mistake to make in all of those scenarios, and it’s something I’ll try to keep in mind when fence post-related questions pop up in the future.

The opposite of authentic is consistent

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I’ve shared about the idea of authenticity on here a few times, both good and bad. Authenticity can be a huge step above automation, but it can also lead to laziness. In a recent episode of his “Remarkable People” podcast, Guy Kawasaki spoke with Seth Godin, and Seth laid out some problems with being too authentic.

He starts by sharing the overall problem:

“I think this pitch that you should be authentic is baloney. No one wants you to be authentic. Just name anything you care about. If you go to a concert or if you get or need surgery, you don’t want the surgeon to be authentic. If they’re having a bad day, you don’t want them to do a bad job. You want them to be consistent.”

That’s not to say you should lie to people, but rather you should focus on the job to be done (with some exceptions). Again from Godin:

“I think that being a hustling fraud is not okay. I think that manipulating people is not okay, but I am defining the opposite of authentic as consistent if you’re a professional. There are a few people, a Kardashian, Miles Davis who we will pay money for authenticity. … But in general, what we want from professionals in our life is consistency. Sign up to be who you want to become and keep doing that.”

For most of us, we can be authentic or we can be consistent, and the people we serve generally would prefer that we’re consistent.

It’s similar to what Gary Vee said about how to view marketing today. There is the side of what we wish it would be (our authentic desires) versus how things actually are (dealing with the realities of today).

We can share our desires and be authentic at times, as that can be a great way to help build relationships, but at the end of the day we need to be able to push most of that aside and be the consistent performer that we’re being paid to be.

The Hamster Wheel of Social Media

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About a year ago, Jay Acunzo released an amazing concept called “The Idea Impact Matrix“, which was focused on creating higher-impact content.

As part of the matrix, he encourages us to stay out of the “commodity cage”, where you produce content that is very general and not too insightful. There is a ton of that content online, and AI is only making it worse. Here is a short clip from a session that Jay led that showcases how many people view social media today:

Creating content on social media is certainly a great move for many businesses, but doing it with purpose and insight is far more valuable than just churning out more and more generic stuff.

There are a lot of people that I follow on various social platforms that put out awesome, useful content that I love to see. Then there are others that are just pumping out whatever they can. The more you can lean toward the former, the better.

I encourage you to check out Jay’s two-part series for more.

Big fires aren’t started by big sparks

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This is one of those things that we all already essentially know, but I had never really thought about. If you see a giant fire blazing, you never think “wow, it must have taken a huge spark to start it“. A tiny spark can turn into a giant fire just as easily as a huge spark.

With social media, things are heading in the same direction. As I shared earlier this year, the value of having “followers” on social media is plummeting. It’s not a bad thing to have a lot of followers, and it can help a bit, but it matters less and less.

In his book “Contagious“, author Jonah Berger shares this thought from Duncan Watts:

“Describing why a small handful of cool or connected people (so-called influentials) are not as important to social epidemics as we might think, sociologist Duncan Watts makes a nice comparison to forest fires. Some forest fires are bigger than others, but no one would claim that the size of the fire depends on the exceptional nature of the initial spark. Big forest fires aren’t caused by big sparks. Lots of individual trees have to catch fire and carry the flames.”

Your very first post on TikTok could get a million views. The next post from a big influencer might only get 10,000. Your tiny spark can turn into just as large a fire as a huge spark from an influencer. Their big sparks are more likely to catch, but that’s changing quickly.

The quality of every piece of content matters more than the name behind it, so produce great things and hope that some are able to light things up.

The joy of crazy goals

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As a lifelong fan of the Detroit Lions, it’s been great to see them become an elite NFL team. I don’t know how long it will last, but it’s quite enjoyable right now as they’re clearly one of the best teams in football.

There is one stat in particular that is crazy to me: over the last five games, the Lions have scored 25 touchdowns but have only thrown a total of 20 incomplete passes. These are not stats that are normally compared, because they’re generally not even close.

As an example, the 2018 New England Patriots (who won the Super Bowl led by Tom Brady), threw 195 incomplete passes and scored a total of 47 touchdowns that season. That was shockingly good, but was not even a 3-to-1 ratio. The fact that the Lions are well above a 1-to-1 ratio in recent games is just staggering.

More wins than walks

It reminds me of a goal that Greg Maddux had when pitching for the Atlanta Braves. While he never accomplished it, he always wanted to have more wins than walks in a year. Again, it’s not a comparison that is even in the realm of consideration for most folks, yet it was something he went after. The closest he had was in 1997 when he put up 19 wins and only walked 20 batters for the entire season.

Related, for his career Maddux faced 8,025 hitters and only threw 8,006 balls — less than one per hitter. Crazy.

Business

Just like in sports, crazy goals are very rare in business. If a company finds a way to make incredible amounts of revenue, others will quickly eat into it. It’s like the early days of Google when they routinely made more than $1M in revenue per employee (like in 2004 when they had 3,021 employees and $3.18B in revenue).

None of these situations pop up often, but they’re fun to watch when they do. Let’s go Lions!

Four years of daily blogging

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It’s hard to believe that today makes four years since I started writing every day. It’s also amazing to me that my core purpose for blogging hasn’t really changed either. If anything, I’ve continued to dig even deeper into my reasons for doing this.

In particular, I’m doing and more and more to give myself reasons to revisit old posts and previously-read books. I recently heard Seth Godin mention that he listened to old tapes of Zig Ziglar so often that he had memorized around 75 hours of his talks. Building that kind of repetition into his mind has certainly shaped who he has become.

That leads to my ever-present question of how frequently to tackle new content versus reviewing the old. For now, I’m trying to continue to push forward on both, which is clearly not feasible in the long run. I plan to keep posting daily on here, and then using things like our virtual book club (talking about “Contagious” next; email me if you’d like to join us) and the consistently-growing Stacking Knowledge podcast.

If you’re new here in the past year, here are some thoughts on why I’m doing what I’m doing:

Why I’m Writing Every Day
Some thoughts on why I decided to start doing this.

Get Writing in 2021
Some related thoughts from Seth Godin on why you should blog daily.

Blogging beats journaling
Why I blog in public rather than journal in private.

To write more, read more
How I find ideas for new posts.

How I plan out my future posts
Some thoughts on getting my posts organized.

WordPress Editorial Calendar plugin
A great (free!) plugin that I use to help lay out my blogging schedule.

Sharing the posts I write
My daily plan (at least at the time) for sharing posts after they’re published.

Here’s to the next 1,000 posts!