798 – Take your website skills to the next level: Tom talks WordPress Full Site Editing

Episode 798 – Wordpress Full Site Editing
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode 798 to Screw the Commute podcast. I'm here with my right hand, left hand, all hands guy, Larry Guerrera, who, by the way, has worked the back end of every one of these podcasts, 800 and some podcasts. So he knows what he's doing there for sure. I guess I should be careful saying working the back end, but it's technically what it is. So today, Larry's going to tell us about WordPress full site editing and all the changes that have happened on WordPress recently. Not all of them because they come like crazy, but this particular one. Hope you didn't miss Episode 797. That was one of my most favorite people in the world. Richelle Futch She's she was the military Spouse of the Year at Fort Bragg. And yes, we call it Fort Bragg. We're not going all in with these stupid name changes. And she is also a marine Corps veteran. And she got me invited to the White House and just love her. She was talking about the cool things she's doing with putting sponsorships. It's like a sponsorship dating site, putting sponsors together with people that need sponsorship. So check her out. Episode 797. Anytime you want to get to a back episode, you go to screwthecommute.com, slash, then the episode number. She was 797 and today is 798. And I'm sure you'll want to hear Larry's smooth, silky voice again when it comes to working on your WordPress site. Check out my mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com. And don't forget it, or let's put that to the positive. Remember to download a copy of my automation book. You will thank me for it. screwthecommute.com/automatefree and then follow me at tiktok.com/@digitalmultimillionaire on TikTok.

[00:02:23] All right, let's get to the main event. We got Larry Guerrera here. He's a graduate of our school and he's got a million different certifications and things I can't pronounce, but he's going to tell us about WordPress stuff today. So take it away, Larry.

[00:02:39] All right. Let me put on my best smooth voice.

[00:02:41] Yeah, There you go. And take care of the back end, too.

[00:02:45] Right! Okay. So today we're going to talk about the latest iterations of WordPress, which give us the ability to edit our entire website. Now, you might be thinking to yourself, well, what's the big deal? Can't we do that all the time with anything? No, not until recently. And by recently I mean the last two years. Wordpress and actually any of the other types of methods you use to build websites did not allow you to do what's called full site editing, meaning you have control over every single little thing on your website the icons, the navigation bar, the way images are placed to how the heading looks, how your footer looks, where you can put social media icons, all that other good stuff.

[00:03:28] All right, wait a minute. Does that mean now I remember way back in front page. You could change one thing on one page and it would change it all across the site. Is that what we're talking about here?

[00:03:41] Yes, that's one of the things we're talking about. It goes.

[00:03:45] Like this. It used to be page by page by page.

[00:03:47] That is correct. Yes. Yes. It goes much beyond that. But yes, this allows you to do far more when it comes to global changes. So like Tom mentioned, you may have something on every single one of your pages, like it's a little icon or it's some kind of logo. You want to change this whole thing across the site. This will allow you to the way WordPress operates now will allow you to do that. So here's a tiny bit of history back in July of 2021. So it's a little more than two years ago, WordPress 5.8 came out and gave us all the ability to do what we're calling full site editing. Prior to that, you used what was probably considered the Gutenberg blocks. That was the Gutenberg editor became very popular and that superseded what was called the classic editor. Many people still use that and it still works today. So don't think you have to trash anything that you're using right now. It will all still work. However, if you are the type of person that wants full control over every single thing you do on your website, this is what we're talking about. So starting in July of 2021, WordPress gave us the ability to edit, change, do whatever we want to every tiny little aspect. And normally when WordPress gives you an update, it provides a new theme that you can start using automatically. That particular theme was called 2022.

[00:05:12] Now why they called it that and it was in 2021, I don't know. But the WordPress theme, 2022 is the first theme that allows full site editing. So you can go in there and change every single little block, every image, everything. Now, just so you know, I'm a minimalist when it comes to technology, meaning I'll do whatever the minimal it is to get away with whatever I need to do, because it's a lot easier that way if you're the type of person that really goes down the rabbit hole and wants to dig in deep and change all these different parameters and stuff, this is for you If you're the kind of person that's the exact opposite. Look, I just want to click one mouse button and make this work. Well, this could be for you too, because there's plenty in this these latest versions of WordPress for everybody. So what is any what does all this mean? This means you'll be able to generate your websites quicker. You'll be able to edit your websites faster and more precisely, and it gives you the ability to make global changes easier. So editing, text, editing, images, editing, just about anything you want to put in there that includes things like opt in boxes where you're asking for somebody's name and email address, integrating with a Webber constant contact, all these other places integrating with Kickstartcart as well. It's all part of what full site editing is. So. How do you how do you use this? This is really the main question.

[00:06:44] Before you get into that, I want to ask you, you know, we have been had lots of our students over many years using thrive themes and thrive architect. How does that interface with this what you're okay.

[00:06:56] Thrive themes as the company who produces their own themes and also software their software is thrive architect which is the most popular page editing software you'll find anywhere. The integration between Thrive Architect, for example, and the latest version of WordPress could not be more seamless. You won't even know the difference in terms of hiccups or things that don't work or anything. It just like fell into place. The gears meshed and everything just works the way it was. If you used things like Thrive Architect as a page builder prior to July of 2021 or you use that afterwards makes no difference. Thrive doesn't care. It looks at the theme you're using. It edits the pages the way you want them to, and all the different functions that you're familiar with don't change. So what do you get as an add on with that? The add on is that WordPress now fully supports all of these changes. It doesn't matter where they're coming from. It just so happens that WordPress now is into the full site editing game as they call it, because you can edit everything if you're used to using a particular page builder, they don't change it because it'll still work fine.

[00:08:13] If you want to switch over to a page builder beyond what WordPress provides you, not a problem. It will work. I use this all the time on all of Tom sites, so any of these things will work. They will jive just nicely. And for the. I have yet. Let's see. This is. 2023. We're in sort of autumn ish, end of summer. I have yet to run into a problem between these page builders and the latest versions of WordPress. They seem to have gotten that right, so it makes it so much easier. So no worries about upgrading. If you're running an older version of WordPress and the only reason you're running an older version is because you just didn't get around to updating it. I would strongly suggest you update it for a variety of reasons. One is security fixes, other ones a bug fixes, but more importantly, it gives you this ability to be able to edit your site fully. Every single little aspect is now at your fingertips. Now it's going to.

[00:09:09] Look different, right? Yeah.

[00:09:11] Okay. So yes, that's a very good point. When you first look at this, it's going to look different and you're going to sit there and scratch your head and say, what the heck is this stuff? But WordPress has a lot of tutorials. There's a lot of help out there that you can you can tap into that will get you up to speed very, very quickly. Now, one other thing I need to mention is that if you do not have any interest in doing full site editing, you don't have to. Even the latest themes that are available, they are full site editing, friendly. They are not mandating you to edit the entire site. If all you want to do is change a navigation bar, if all you want to do is add a page, if all you want to do is edit some posts, all of that still works. Nothing changes. You are not obligated to make any of these other changes because it does the entire site. If you want to though, all of those tools are now at your command.

[00:10:08] But you still should upgrade for a lot of other reasons. Yeah, I mean upgrade.

[00:10:12] You really shouldn't be running old versions of WordPress anyway.

[00:10:15] Tell them what we run into. Sometimes when somebody has an updated.

[00:10:18] Oh geez, I mean it would take this podcast. This episode alone would be hours long if I run into everything. Okay, so I there's one particular website that I'm working with right now that is running an older version of WordPress. I believe it's 5.3. I don't remember the exact number. So it's way back, basically way way back.

[00:10:39] Okay, so the site itself works fine. The problem is this it is definitely subject to being hacked because there are so many bug fixes that happen between five point, let's just say five point x and the current version of WordPress, which is 6.3.1. That's the very latest version that's available. So that's one thing. Security fixes bug fixes. And then on top of that plugins, and this is probably the most critical thing you need to realize, plugins are always being updated to work with the latest versions of WordPress and there is some backward compatibility. So if I have a plugin that works with the latest version right now and I'm running let's say 6.1, it'll probably still work. Even if I run 5.9 of WordPress, it will probably still work, but if you go back far enough, those plugins will not work. They will break. So upgrading not only you not upgrading WordPress, you don't upgrade your plugins. That leaves those vulnerabilities open for either bugs, hack attacks, some type of malware that could get into your website. You don't want any of that. You really need to keep everything as up to date as you possibly can unless you have something very, very specific. Like if somebody wrote custom code for you a long time ago and it still works and you want to keep it that way, even then, I would really urge you to strongly consider to upgrade only because it makes your site safer. It protects you from being hacked. It protects your other sites. If you have more than one on a given server from being hacked and that kind of thing.

[00:12:16] So it always helps to be up to date with the latest ones. All of our websites, all of Tom's websites are running on the latest version of WordPress because we consider that part of a safety protocol not just for us but also for the people that visit. We don't want anybody that comes to visit one of our websites to have malware downloaded to their computer. So we make sure we try and keep things up to date. So full site editing is one of those things that allow you to have tremendous flexibility in how you set up your website. It also gives you the ability to integrate all sorts of other things that you couldn't do before because you were reliant on other pieces of software like the Gutenberg editor, for example, or a page builder or something like that. So you don't need any of that stuff. But like I said before, if you do have it, it will work fine. You shouldn't have any problems doing that at all. But full site editing is here to stay. Wordpress is not going to be pulling that out anytime soon, if ever. And subsequent versions of WordPress, especially as we go into next year, will increase this capability tremendously. So you'll have tremendous amount of power in your fingertips to edit your site. Now remember, with power comes responsibility. You must be responsible. See Tom likes that. You must be responsible to keep your site up to date and protected.

[00:13:38] Yeah, you can you can attribute that quote to Larry Guerrera. Yeah. If you look him up, please.

[00:13:44] Feel free to use.

[00:13:45] That. Yeah. Nobody else has ever said that before. That's amazing. Amazing. That's why I love this guy.

[00:13:51] Oh, boy.

[00:13:52] So bottom line, folks, is, number one, this is not Ron Popeil. Set it and forget it. If you want to have a successful online thing. And guess what? Just last night, I had to hit Larry up and change, get my password changed on my outlook. I got notice from Zappos that somebody got into Zappos and changed my email address and and ordered a pair of big $150 shoes to be sent to Miami. I don't know exactly where that breach happened, but, you know, I'm skeptical that even big companies are are targets for this. So if it's.

[00:14:31] Now now my question is, were they your size or somebody else's size?

[00:14:35] Wasn't my size either. Yeah, not your size. I wouldn't mind if. Yeah, so so so you got to keep that up and pay attention to this stuff because, you know, links go bad and you know, so you can't just put it there and forget about it forever. That's the bottom line. And then WordPress is the gold standard, but it's always updating and improving, so you just have to go along with it. You can you can get in our mentor program, we'll help you teach you how to do it, but you got to do it one way or the other. So anything else on this?

[00:15:08] No, that'll do it for now. I think there's steam coming out of some people's ears right now, but that's good.

[00:15:14] Yeah. Just so you're aware that this is happening, and then you got to seek out the help to to. If you haven't updated your site for a long time, well, then, you know, you really need to get on it. Like right now this full site editing is going to be there for a while. And if you don't, you know, catch on to that right away, it's no big deal. But if your site is old and not updated, you are putting your visitors at risk and yourself at great risk. So don't do it. All right, Larry. So go edit this thing. Hurry up. No, I got to edit it and then you put it up.

[00:15:48] No, no, you do. That's your job.

[00:15:49] Yeah, I forgot. All right, everybody. So keep an eye out, because we're in the middle of Vet Preneur Month. September is where we honor our veteran entrepreneurs and have them on a couple times a week to see what they're doing. So I really want you to support all those episodes for sure. All right, Larry, thanks a lot, man.

[00:16:09] My pleasure.

[00:16:11] All right, everybody, go check your website. All right. We'll see you later.