Is WordPress Still the Right Choice for Conference and Event Websites?

SPEAKERS

Keith Johnston, Tess Vismale, Announcer

 Announcer  00:00

You're listening to the event tech pull up the show that brings you the good, the bad and the ugly of event technology with your hosts, Tess Ritz mail of isocial x and Keith Johnston of i three events.

 Tess Vismale  00:13

So Keith, I came across this article because, you know, I don't really pay attention to the news at all. And it said something about WordPress issues, and I know I sent it over to you, but we hadn't had a moment to sit down and chat about it, because I know you have been such a WordPress geek for so many years. If there's another plug in, he tells me about, I swear. So tell me a, what is that about? And then B like, however, you've been using WordPress, because I kind of felt like you've been using it beyond your site for your company. I three events that I thought you'd been using it for clients and things well, so how, how deep Are you in it?

 Keith Johnston  00:54

Yeah, so we've been using WordPress, so probably since 2011 and WordPress runs all of our clients, event and conference website, websites, including registration, ooh, so for example, and booth sales, and, you know, like with floor plans, we've turned WordPress into a complete conference management solution. It's not an event management but it's conference man, like it controls the show floor, the registrations, those types of things. So that's what we use WordPress for.

 Tess Vismale  01:28

So you're trying to tell me, out of all of this time when we've been in all of these event techs, you're not technically using an event tech solution for your client. You're custom building the sites for them based on how you know they would like it delivered. And you happen to be using WordPress and some of those plugins that what I just heard you say,

 Keith Johnston  01:50

yeah, that's mostly correct. So, so yes, for clients that don't require specialization, right? I think event technology, the tools go with the client, right? You you match the tool to the client. So for example, you know, one of the conferences we have coming up in February, they're doing some booth sales. They're doing registrations. You know, speakers need to upload presentations, but they don't have a massive budget. So because they don't have a massive budget, we're able to use WordPress and save them 1000s of dollars. Now, the trade off is there's probably more work on the back end, because when you get the reports, they're not in a dashboard and things like that. You know, for for clients that have budgets, certainly we're using a lot of tech tools. I mean, there's another conference we also have in February where we're knee deep in Whova, yeah, you know. But, you know, Wordpress, for years, has had certain advantages over, you know, event all in ones, I guess would be the term that's a bad, I know it's a bad word in that it's nimble, it's lightweight, it's free. It's, you know, there are paid plugins, of course, that you can get to enhance the workings of WordPress, which is what we do, or sometimes we design our own. But I don't know anymore,

 Tess Vismale  03:13

so tell me, Well, tell me literally, what is going on? Because I heard that the founder and WP Engine, they were having some challenges. What is that?

 Keith Johnston  03:23

So WordPress is, is a nonprofit, because WordPress is open source and that it is controlled by a company called automatic, which is like chat, GPT, no, that's not automatic.

 Tess Vismale  03:40

No, it's not

 Keith Johnston  03:40

Automatic. You're scaring me. I'm like, Oh no. Now we're they too, and which is controlled by a gentleman, Matt mullenweck, who actually has spoken at one of our events. I did meet him briefly. He was very, very nice guy. Or no complaints from me. Anyway, it was very nice to me, but he is currently. He got a B in his bonnet about companies like WP Engine. So WP Engine is another company that makes plug ins for WordPress, and they're also a WordPress host, meaning they host your website, and they do a spectacular job. It's really expensive, but the sites run fast. The plugins that they've created, like Yoast for SEO, Advanced Custom Fields, which allows you to make like speaker profiles and things like that, they're they're great plugins. They have a beef. And rather than working it out behind the scenes, Matt Mullenweg, who controls automatic went absolutely freaking nuclear, and has banned WP Engine's websites from getting updates. They took over there. There's a plug in called advanced custom fields, which has a free version, and then you pay to go up from there where, well, wordpress dot org. That's the nonprofit took over that plugin, and now they've changed the name, and they're, it's, it's,

 Tess Vismale  05:08

that's nasty,

 Keith Johnston  05:09

it is. And I actually see

 Tess Vismale  05:11

this happened in September.

 Keith Johnston  05:13

It's been it's been coming for some time. Some memos have come out that were internal to automatic, that they've been thinking about this a long time. And what they're basically, what they're saying is WP Engine is not giving back to the WordPress community, which, and now remember, this is open source software, so you are supposed to give back to the community

 Tess Vismale  05:32

Exactly.

 Keith Johnston  05:33

It's actually kind of like a rule thing. And they're saying that WP Engine is making millions and hundreds of millions of dollars, but not giving back to the WordPress community, not giving back to the WordPress Core, coding stuff, and that they're also using WordPress trademarks without paying a licensing fee, you know, and then on the flip side, WP engine comes back, and they're defending their use of everything, saying it's, it's fair use, right? You know, we're creating

 Tess Vismale  06:05

So they did a cease and desist.

 Keith Johnston  06:07

They did, and the cease and desist have been flying back and forth. So long story short is, what, what? What does that mean for WordPress and conference and event websites? We don't know yet. You know, right now you've got WP Engine sites that are not able to be updated, which becomes a security risk in time, you have, you know, is WP engine going to do what's called forking WordPress, which is where they change some code, and it starts, they start drifting far, farther and farther apart, and which then, what does that mean for the plugins? What does it mean for the this is a very bad situation,

 Tess Vismale  06:49

because too risky for an event. It's too risky in general. But events, to me, are like, say, volatile land, meaning, yeah, it's it's hook or crook. So what have you been thinking about?

 Keith Johnston  07:02

We've actually been thinking long and hard. There have been meetings, you know, what are, what are we going to do? Right? You know, currently we, I operate, or we, the collective I operate, about 63 websites.

 Tess Vismale  07:17

That's a lot, and they're on WordPress,

 Keith Johnston  07:19

all running on WordPress, most of them, they're either conference and event websites, or they are conference and event industry siloed websites, and I don't know what we're going to do.

 Tess Vismale  07:32

So are these so from a business standpoint, were these conversations you initiated to your clients to say, Hey, this is what's going on. This is what's happening?

 Keith Johnston  07:41

First, we sat down and we looked at it internally, and said, Okay, you know, is this a risk we can manage? Currently? Yes, it is a risk we can manage. You know, the two aren't so far apart now that it's doing any detrimental harm. It is what it is, but we have to the conversations with the clients now is especially the one that's in February, where we do booth selection, and those types of things that conversation had to be, had had, which is, look, we're good through February, right? They're not going to be, you know, nothing's going to happen between now and February. But after that, we've got to make a decision. Are we going to stay this route, or are we now going to have to go back into the event tech world and find a solution that they're going to end up a lot of money, right, that they save every year doing it the WordPress way. Now they're going to have to spend that money and then generally, for the other events, it's, well, you know, this is kind of crazy, but, you know, WordPress is good. It's comfortable. We've been using it. We can spin up sites super fast. But now this is bad for WordPress, because now we're actually looking at other solutions. Yeah, you know, we're like, you know, let's go have a look at this. You know, they've come a long way in five years.

 Tess Vismale  09:01

And let's, let's, let's take Can I ask a question right now around how WordPress works? Are they a hands off tech company? Yes, or hands on tech company? And explain that to the audience,  there

 Keith Johnston  09:13

there are two sides to WordPress. There's wordpress.org which is the self hosted you download WordPress, install it on your server, whether it's WP Engine or other, you know, Pressable, whatever it happens to be, and then you manage the whole thing. You know, your host might do a little help you with a little bit of the management. Like WP Engine, they do what's called, you know, managed hosting, so they make sure your plugins are updated and things like that. But you could also put it on your home server and run it from your basement. Then WordPress also has something called wordpress.com which is fully managed by WordPress, and it is that's a paid service. I think there's a free tier, but that's a paid service that you go into. Primarily what we're talking about is wordpress.org which is the self managed free version of WordPress that everybody can get, and that powers almost 50% of the web at this point, this thing could be bad. I mean, if it, if it truly blows up. Because the biggest fear, I think, that people have, and I just totally changed gears on you, and sorry for that. But the the biggest fear that that plug in developers have is now that WordPress has seized Advanced Custom Fields and turned it into their own plugin, well, what about all the other plugins that are in the repository that WordPress all of a sudden decides, well, they're going to take that so all of these creators that are making these amazing plugins that I mean literally, there's a plugin for everything, and they're going to stop making plug ins for fear that someone is going to take it from them,

 Tess Vismale  10:46

or someone's going to create a business to take that business away easier. Here's a service. Boom, done. Yeah, that's the model that's that many. It's i and then price it where it makes sense.  So

 Keith Johnston  11:02

So I guess my takeaway on this is, if you are running your conference and event website on WordPress, you really need to be watching what's going on, because you may be forced, don't be forced into a situation exactly. Don't let the situation control you. So. So in January, if this war gets greater, you need to know what your options are, you know, and there are great options. I mean, by the way, we've now been back into them, researching all of the great web building platforms.

 Tess Vismale  11:39

Which ones are you kind of looking at, like your top three that you said that you'd like, so far, that's what you've made. Decisions like, oh, I kind of like,

 Keith Johnston  11:47

well, the next word, the first runner up to WordPress, is expensive and it's but it is beautiful and it works super, super well. Is Squarespace, yep, right.

 Tess Vismale  12:01

That's what I use for my website.

 Keith Johnston  12:02

Yeah. I mean, you can create amazing websites. You could even do paid registrations through some of the form builders that they have. So that would be good. And there is some even member management, I think, in Squarespace, the next one after Squarespace, and I'll only go through three,  I think, think three is enough. The second one is Wix. It has come a long way. Well,

 Tess Vismale  12:33

that's what I heard, because people hated it and then they loved it.

 Keith Johnston  12:37

Yeah, it was one of those things where, I don't know if you remember a little platform called Weebly. Well, Weebly and Wix came out at about the same time, and even though Weebly had a stupid name, I actually thought Weebly was going to be the one that took off in like a rocket, and it wasn't. But both of those most people don't know are actually forks of WordPress. So with open source software, you can actually change it and then make it your own, and then it goes off on its own trajectory. So they forked WordPress. Weebly is still around, and it's okay, I guess, but Wix has the websites you can now create with Wix and for the cost, are absolutely amazing. And on that as well, you can do paid registrations. You're not going to have the depth of plug in support that you do with WordPress. So for example, us doing floor plans where an exhibitor can select a booth space, pay for it, and then it's taken out of inventory and it shows us paid on the show floor plan. You're not doing that on these you could with WordPress, but unfortunately, those days might be gone, but there is actually one more Website Builder. Some of the member management systems have website builders built in. And if you already have your hat thrown in with whatever is your member management, and it has the ability to create a website. It might be the way to go. It is not going to be the world's best website, but for ease of use, it might be. It might do the trick.

 Tess Vismale  14:11

Okay. Well, thank you so much for sharing that. It's going to be an interesting battle. Maybe we can come back and do a session on talking about kinda

 Keith Johnston  14:21

On the weekend Keith, when he had to move 63 websites

 Tess Vismale  14:25

right exactly on how to begin that journey on that tech stack looking at specifically your event website.

 Announcer  14:34

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