Episode 10
In this episode, Michelle and Jeff spend time with Nathan Ingram learning about the rebrand of iThemes to SolidWP. Listen in to learn what customers can expect and how Nathan will continue the iThemes learning community as Solid Academy.
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Michelle: Welcome to WP Constellations, a podcast exploration of the WordPress universe, brought to you by StellarWP.
Welcome back to WP Constellations. I always say welcome back. I’m assuming that people have listened to our previous episodes, and if you’re listening to this one and you haven’t, you go back and listen to those because they’re pretty good. But anyway, welcome to WP Constellations. I am here, as always, with my wonderful co host Jeff Chandler. And today I should say, hi, Jeff, how are you?
[00:00:35] Jeff: Hello. I’m doing fine. And if you ever talk to me in that tone of voice, I will absolutely do whatever it is you want me to do.
[00:00:43] Michelle: I am a mother. I do have that mom voice. Sometimes it does come out, even though my kid’s in her 30s. But anyway, we are joined today by a really good friend of mine and somebody that I’ve been connected to in the WordPress community for quite a while, Nathan Ingram. Nathan, welcome to the show. It’s nice to have you here.
[00:00:57] Nathan: Hey, Michelle. I’m doing great. Glad to be here.
[00:01:00] Michelle: Awesome. Well, thanks for joining us today. So our first question is always the same. Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do in WordPress.
[00:01:09] Nathan: All right, well, I am from Birmingham, Alabama, born and raised here. This is home. And I’ve been all in on WordPress since about 2012. Started experimenting with WordPress around 2009, 2010. I have been working with clients building websites since 1995. And so WordPress was, well, the last of a series, an evolving track of different pieces of software we have used to build websites over the years. And WordPress is just an amazing tool. We all know that. But the best thing about WordPress is not the software, it’s the community. And that’s what I really fell in love with, with WordPress, because for me, for years, I was just working on my own from my office at home. And then getting connected to a broader community has just been delightful. And so I actually learned WordPress on web. Well, then it was called Webdesign.com, which is currently called iThemes Training, which is about to become Solid Academy. So I actually learned and was introduced to the WordPress community there, and it’s been a wonderful thing. So in addition to running an agency, which is about half of my time, I’m also the host at iThemes Training, soon to be Solid Academy. I also do some coaching for the last seven or eight years now, I’ve been coaching people who do WordPress things with clients, small agency owners, and I have a little product called Monster Contracts as well.
[00:02:36] Michelle: And speaking of, I think of all the WordPress books that have ever been written or know WordPress adjacent books, your Monster Contracts, I can’t remember the exact title of it, but the book that you have, I have it in my other office. Yep, Dealing with Problem Clients. That is probably the best cover I’ve ever seen on a WordPress book. So I don’t know who designed that for you, but hats off, that’s a great cover and it’s a good book, too.
[00:02:57] Nathan: That’s the friendly monster. We’ve got to love the Friendly monster.
[00:03:00] Michelle: Love it. Absolutely love.
Yeah, I think that like you said, getting connected to the WordPress community, it’s like having a book but then meeting the people that the book’s about.
Because when I first started working in WordPress, I had no idea there was a community. You find a tool, you start to use the tool and then it’s like suddenly you have a tool that’s a hammer and you’re like, hey, and let’s meet all the other people that know how to use a hammer and they can teach you how to use a hammer even better, right? So it’s super, super cool.
So you mentioned Solid WP we mentioned items. So can you tell us a little bit what is Solid WP and how is it different from iThemes?
[00:03:38] Nathan: Oh gosh, it’s such a good question. You know, iThemes is one of the first real recognizable brands in the WordPress space from way back when Cory Miller and company founded iThemes. At the beginning it was a commercial theme company iThemes. That’s what it was about. And slowly over the years, iThemes began to add other plugins. So iThemes back in the day had this great theme called iThemes Builder that was years ahead of its time. We used that for a long time in our agency.
But then came along BackupBuddy and a whole host of other plugins to do things on your website. And then security became part of the equation and gradually the theme sort of disappeared. And so you have this company called iThemes that doesn’t have a theme. So it’s kind of weird.
And so recently here in the last year as the company was kind of looked at and what are we doing and who are we? Really what we realized was we’re really about plugins that build the foundation of your website. So great backups website management with updates, running updates from a centralized dashboard, providing great security that’s really what iThemes had become. And so a new name was created called SolidWP. So it’s a solid foundation for your WordPress website.
[00:05:06] Michelle: I love that and I’m glad that you are still the face of it. As we move from one name to the other and we kind of hone in on what we’re doing, I can truly appreciate that.
[00:05:17] Nathan: It’s what’s important, I think it’s good for any business is to really focus in on what are we actually trying to do here and when we’re coming out and saying we’re going to build the best in class foundational plugins for your WordPress website. Backups and security and updates and other things that may or may not be coming in the future, focusing in on that really gives purpose and clarity to what we’re trying to accomplish.
[00:05:45] Jeff: And to show you how OG I am in WordPress, when I went to my first WordCamp, it was a few months after Cory Miller, Nathan Rice, and the gang founded iThemes.
Yeah, that was cool. WordCamp Frisco. Frisco, Texas.
[00:06:00] Nathan: Wow. Yeah.
[00:06:02] Jeff: As part of iThemes, you created educational content. How will that continue with SolidWP and what does that look like?
[00:06:09] Nathan: Yeah. So we have for years now, been doing three live training webinars every week. And it is rarely actually about our own products. It’s really more about WordPress in general. So most of what we do is free. Probably two thirds of what we do is free content available to anybody who wants to sign up for the training, the live stream training and come in.
We do things like a WordPress news roundup. I do a plugin roundup every month looking at about a dozen or so plugins out of the directory that are new or updated. Have a lot of fun with that. We bring in a lot of experts in different areas. We just had a great security talk with Tom Raef from We Watch Your website, things like that. It’s educational content particularly aimed at people who are doing WordPress with clients. So the person who’s a solopreneur or a micro agency owner, a small agency owner who is dealing with clients and trying to put plugins and themes and a solution together to work with clients using WordPress, our content is good for anybody in WordPress, but that’s really who we’re focused on. And so even when we do technical training, there’s usually a flavor to it of, okay, this is great, but how does this interface with working with clients? So, like, the last couple of months, we’ve had Lindsay Halsey on from Pathfinder SEO to do a premium training event for us and fantastic SEO training. She’s fantastic. But also we’re talking about how do we deal with clients in all of these things and maybe even build this into a service that we can continue to grow our income on the agency side. So that’s a little bit. We’re not just a bunch of YouTube tutorial videos out there. It’s really focused on, how do I take this tech now and use it to grow my business.
[00:08:02] Michelle: I love that. I think it’s so important. Right. Like I said earlier, you use the tool, but if you’re not connected with others, you’re not necessarily learning all the best ways that you can use it. And having now Solid Academy previously iThemes Training that you have the ability to ask other people, how do I solve this problem? And you all are creating content that you don’t have to ask. It’s like, here’s how you solve this problem, which is super cool. And if there’s one problem in my previous life as a freelancer solopreneur agency of one, whatever phrase you want to use for yourself. Right. My biggest pain point was, how do I get the content from my customers? So I don’t know if you’ve solved that problem yet, but if you have, link me up and I will put that in the show notes for sure.
[00:08:49] Nathan: That is like a whole other conversation, right? So, yeah, there’s definitely strategies that make that easier or can protect you from clients that delay a project based on content.
[00:09:03] Michelle: My favorite was Lorem Ipsum and Cat Placement so that every photo on their web was a picture of a cat and everything was in Latin. And they were like, what is this? And I’m like, well, unless you give me content, that’s what’s going live.
[00:09:16] Nathan: You got to love it. And what you’ve just put your finger on is a shared issue. If you talk to anybody that’s working with clients in WordPress and you start talking about project delayed on content, they’re like, oh yeah, I got a story too. Everybody has a story. And the beautiful thing about community, and we really do try to create community in our iThemes Training audience and soon Solid Academy audience. When you put people together and they’re in a live training livestream and they’re chatting with each other about some of these things, instead of it just being me sitting here in my office alone and having these ideas of maybe I’m the only one that has these problems. But when I get connected to a community of people who have that same problem too, it just does so much to increase confidence and help me believe that I can really do this. I can really grow my business.
[00:10:09] Michelle: Absolutely.
So we have customers as iThemes right now. They will be transitioning into Solid WP customers. One of the things that I’m sure you’ve had the same experience, I used to teach a lot of WordPress, and then suddenly we had this thing called Gutenberg, right? And so it was like, gosh, I need to learn Gutenberg before I can teach how to use Gutenberg. But people that were starting to use WordPress after Gutenberg was already part of it, it’s a natural thing for them. So people who sign on to Solid from this point forward, they won’t have this feeling of, wait, what’s happening? Where’s the tornado? And how are things changing?
I don’t think it’s tornado like, quite honestly. I think it’s going to be a pretty smooth transition.
But what can people expect? So people who are already iThemes customers, what are they going to see as far as this transition happens? What should they be looking for?
[00:11:00] Nathan: Yeah, gosh, that’s such a great question. And one of the things I’ve really appreciated about this whole transition is that the leadership of SolidWP made a decision early on to call this a rebrand in public. And so they’ve been very transparent about decisions that are being made and posting videos on YouTube. We’ve had a number of town hall meetings on iThemes training, and they’re just answering hard questions. And if they don’t know the answer, we understand, and we’re trying to figure that out. So it’s been a very transparent process.
And there’s a few things that it seems like I keep saying over and over again throughout this process, especially to some of our members that have been with us for years and years, and maybe they have grandfathered in one of our legacy items toolkits that includes all of these things, right? And the overarching principle since the very beginning has been there’s not a price increase. If you like what you have, you can keep it. We’re not going to take anything away from you that happens when a product gets acquired or something changes names, all of a sudden they gut that product and you have to pay more for less features. And that has never been the spirit of this whole transition. So we have people that they’ve been members for years and years, and they want to keep what they have and great. Otherwise the new offerings from the Solid Suite might be better. But you have the option if you have a current membership to keep what you want.
The one thing that I’m really happy about is that they’re bundling Solid Academy Premium into the Solid Suite. So if you have any Solid Suite level, even if it’s just the one site license, you get all the access to all the premium training that we do.
I’ve always said we’re kind of the best kept secret in WordPress training, and I’m really happy about hopefully seeing some new faces coming to our audience over the next several months.
[00:12:58] Jeff: Speaking of training, you’ve been at this for a long time.
Have you been able to notice any trends or anything? What’s been one of the most difficult things to train people on over the years?
[00:13:13] Nathan: Wow, that’s a really great question, Jeff.
Tech is always changing, right? And that’s what is old is new again. I mean, there’s things that are coming in and out, and there’s always something new to learn. So there’s a couple of things that I’ll talk about as an answer to that question. The first is, I think it’s harder than ever to be in a WordPress client services world because there are just so many things we have to learn. I mean, it’s not enough just to build a website anymore. You’ve got to understand SEO and accessibility, and you’ve got to understand privacy issues.
These are complicated things.
And you also have to decide what are we going to do with AI and all the things that are going on with that.
It’s harder than ever to get your hands around holistically building and managing a healthy website for a client for the long term. So we try to talk about all those issues and give people some understanding. But also what inevitably, I see this over and over again. I think I started coaching WordPress business owners about eight years ago, and I’ve had hundreds and hundreds of coaching conversations over those years and the story always seems to be I got into WordPress and started building websites because I love the tech and I love solving problems and all these things. And then you get like a year or a year and a half in and you realize, holy cow, I’ve got a business here and I don’t know anything about any of that. And so those challenges and surfacing the common challenges that people who are doing WordPress business are facing, those are things that the specifics may change as the tech changes. But the principal things of getting content from the client, how do I deal with a problem client who’s treating me bad? All these things, those are issues that people share and we try to address with some of our training.
[00:15:13] Jeff: Excellent. I know at StellarWP, we are so excited to launch the rebrand of SolidWP. But what are you most excited about? As we look towards the future.
[00:15:24] Nathan: I will say, there’s two things in particular. One is product related and one is selfishly academy related. So product related. I actually this morning got my hands on the pre release version of Solid Security.
Is it too much of an eye roll? If I say it’s “stellar?”
It is so much better.
[00:15:47] Michelle: We lean into that word as much as we can.
[00:15:48] Nathan: As you want to use.
[00:15:49] Michelle: That’s fine.
[00:15:50] Nathan: It truly is.
It is so much better. iThemes security has always been a great product. We use it by choice on the agency side because I like that approach to security.
But the thought that’s been given to the user interface and the improvements and the PatchStack integration, there’s so much happening there.
I got a big smile on my face doing clicks this morning and so that was pretty cool.
On the Academy side, I am super excited to launch the new Solid Academy website. Hopefully pretty soon.
The current website for iThemes training is just bad. It is so bad.
It was built in 2013, so it’s ten years old and it is so bad.
We actually were tasked as an agency to build the new Solid Academy site and I think we’ve done some really good work that’s going to make things actually findable. There’s over 1000 events that are pre recorded. WordPress education. There’s probably close to 2000 hours of training that you can’t find anything right now. And it’s such a great resource. And so being able to surface a lot of that great content we’ve been recording for years, I’m just thrilled about that because it’s only going to help people.
[00:17:16] Michelle: I love that, especially when it’s evergreen type content. And even if it’s ten years old, there are things that just stand the true test of time, but being able to unearth them is definitely a positive.
[00:17:26] Nathan: Absolutely.
[00:17:27] Michelle: I’m excited to see the rebranded training website as well. So Solid Academy, it’s got a great name too. You’ve got to admit, Solid Academy just sounds like you’re going to get all the good bedrock stuff that you need for that for sure.
[00:17:38] Nathan: Right?
[00:17:38] Michelle: So what else are you excited about? What else should we know about? What haven’t I asked about that you’d like to share with our audience about what’s coming up?
[00:17:46] Nathan: Oh, goodness.
Well, let’s see. On the Solid side, I’ve talked about most of the things that I’m super excited about.
We’re going to be exploring on the Academy side, live streaming to YouTube. We haven’t done that in the past. It’s all been sort of in our Zoom and our channel, and we put up the replay. So we’re going to be doing some experimentation with live streams out to social media, which is going to be fun and a challenge, and we’ll probably stub our toe on some things and figure that out. But it’s great because our audience is very gracious and we’re all kind of figuring this out together. So that’s exciting. This is a totally non Stellar/Solid anything. I am thrilled that WordCamps are coming back. I am looking forward to WordCamp Atlanta that’s coming up in about a month from now and seeing some folks over there.
But pre pandemic, I was doing probably 15 WordCamps a year. I mean, it was just part of my life, and that’s been gone for years, and I miss it. So I’m really excited about getting back face to face with community members across the country.
[00:18:49] Michelle: Yeah, I’ll echo that. It was so good to see you in person at WordCamp US this summer. I think the last time I’d seen you in person might have been or to actually have a conversation might have been all the way back at Northeast Ohio, maybe 2017. It’d been a while.
[00:19:05] Nathan: Wow. Yes. Right?
[00:19:09] Michelle: So it was definitely good to see you there and looking forward to the upcoming WordCamps. If you’re watching this now or in the future, WordCamp Atlanta will already have happened by the time we publish. But there are so many WordCamps in the plans for 2024, so make sure you get out there and pay attention and be part of the community if you’re listening to this, because I can’t echo enough what Nathan’s saying about getting involved and meeting people face to face.
[00:19:37] Nathan: Absolutely.
[00:19:38] Michelle: Where can we find out more about what’s going on with SolidWP? How can we find Nathan Ingram online if people are interested in connecting with you?
[00:19:45] Nathan: Well, so hopefully all the Solid things will be published by the time this goes live. So SolidWP.com will be the site. It’ll be perfect and great.
I’ll be at Academy.SolidWP.com. The plans are still going forward to do at least three live streams every week, and then you can find me on social media at Nathan Ingram. I’m Nathan Ingram. Just about everywhere.
[00:20:10] Michelle: Fantastic. Well, Nathan, thank you so much for being here. If you are listening to this episode and you want to find all the links that we’ve mentioned today, just go to stellarwp.com/podcasts and look for this episode. The transcript will be there, as well as the show notes and links that we’ve mentioned today.
Nathan, thank you so much for joining us. Jeff, thanks for being the co host with the most, and we look forward to seeing everybody as we explore the WordPress Universe in our upcoming episodes. Thanks so much.
WP Constellations is a production of StellarWP, home of The Events Calendar, LearnDash, GiveWP, Kadence, Iconic, SolidWP, Orderable, and Restrict Content Pro. Learn more about the StellarVerse at stellarwp.com.