--- title: Online Learning and Keeping up with Technology with Ryan Irelan date: 2024-05-14T05:30:00-04:00 author: Sean Smith canonical_url: "https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-8/online-learning-and-keeping-up-with-technology-with-ryan-irelan/" section: Podcast --- <!\[CDATA\[YII-BLOCK-BODY-BEGIN\]\]>[Skip to main content](#main-content)![Ryan Irelan](https://website101podcast.com/uploads/hosts/_200x200_crop_center-center_none/ryan-irelan.jpg)Guest Ryan Irelan Ryan is the creator of CraftQuest, an online learning platform for Craft CMS and modern web development. He is also a partner at Pine Works, a design and development agency with good ethics and strong opinions. He's taught engineers at NASA, internal teams at the University of Chicago, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and UMass Boston. [ ](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanirelan/) Season 07 Episode 8 – May 14, 2024 50:31 [Show Notes](#show-notes) ## Online Learning and Keeping up with Technology with Ryan Irelan  0:00 0:00 1.0x 0.75x1.0x1.25x1.5x2x [](//dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/website101podcast.com/uploads/mp3/season-07/S07-E08-Online-Learning-with-Ryan-Irelan.mp3) In this episode we talk with Online educator Ryan Irelan about online learning and keeping up with technology in web development. ### Show Notes - Ryans path to online teacher - First course was with Pragmatic Programmers - The switch from a la cart to subscription modal - Udemy and course platforms - Communication with Pixel and Tonic about upcoming features and changes - Advantages/disadvantages of discord servers - Chat GPT - CraftQuest is launching a discord server! - How Ryan learns new technologies - Ryan's approach to teaching explained - Ryan has strong opinions about Craft CMS - What makes a good topic for a course, a lesson, or a livestream - What Ryan does use for screen recording and editing ### Show Links - [CraftQuest](https://craftquest.io/) - [Pragmatic Bookshelf (formally programmer)](https://pragprog.com/) - [Udemy](https://www.udemy.com/) - [Craft Quest community & discord](https://craftquest.io/community) - [Obsidian](https://obsidian.md/) - [CraftQuest RSS feed](https://craftquest.io/feeds/craftquest.rss) Powered Transcript Accuracy of transcript is dependant on AI technology. **\[00:00\]** **Mike:** And we're back with another episode of the website 101 Podcasts. This is a podcast for people who want to learn more about building and managing websites. I am one of your host, Mike Mella, and with me is Sean Smith. Hi, Sean. How are you doing? Hey, how are you doing? Doing well. And Amanda Loots is here. Amanda, hi. Hello, friends. And today we have a guest, and we're thrilled to have him on. We have Ryan Ireland, Ryan's the creator of Craft Quest, as a lot of our listeners are probably aware of. That's an online learning platform for Craft CMS and modern web development. He's also a partner at Pineworks, a design and development agency with good ethics and strong opinions. Ryan's worked with brands like Ben and Jerry's, Papa Johns and Stanford University. He's taught engineers at NASA, internal teams at the University of Chicago, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and UMass Boston. Wow, that's quite a bio. Ryan, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here. **\[01:08\]** **Sean:** Hey, thanks for having me. And I think I hung out with Mike, both you and Sean, when I was in Toronto for the CBC **\[01:16\]** **Amanda:** work. Yes. I think Amanda was there. **\[01:19\]** **Sean:** We're there, Amanda. Okay. Awesome. **\[01:22\]** **Amanda:** Well, there we go. This is back when we were all involved with expression engine at the time. **\[01:26\]** **Mike:** Yeah, like years ago, we did some stuff then, that's right. **\[01:29\]** **Sean:** So I hate to say this, but you know, that was 10 years ago that I was there. We did that. **\[01:35\]** **Ryan:** Oh, he smokes so long ago. **\[01:38\]** **Sean:** Yeah, it was a long way. **\[01:40\]** **Ryan:** Yeah, I cannot remember events that happened that long ago. Until Google Photos says, hey, this is your history from so many years ago, I don't remember it happening. Exactly. **\[01:52\]** **Amanda:** Right. Right. Wow. Yeah, I definitely remember Ryan coming in because I was organizing the expression news and meet up in Toronto, and it was the largest turnout ever. **\[02:04\]** **Mike:** Yeah. I remember that day. **\[02:06\]** **Ryan:** Yeah. All for Ryan? Amazing. **\[02:09\]** **Amanda:** All for Ryan. **\[02:10\]** **Mike:** Yeah. **\[02:11\]** **Sean:** Hopefully there were no regrets. **\[02:14\]** **Amanda:** Industry celebrity. **\[02:16\]** **Sean:** Oh dear. **\[02:17\]** **Mike:** So, Ryan, can you just tell us a little bit about how you, what was your path to becoming a teacher in the technology space? How did you get started doing that? **\[02:28\]** **Sean:** Yeah, so more than 10 years ago, I moved to Germany and to live there because my now wife then girlfriend is from Germany. And I was moved to be there with her. And I started taking a class there, German for foreigners, essentially, is what it was called. And it used the immersive or immersion learning technique for learning a foreign language, basically the teacher comes in and from minute one, the entire class is taught in German. And even though the people all around you, I was sitting next to a couple from Japan, and next to me were some elderly people from Russia. There were people from Turkey, from Iran, Iraq. And really no one had a common language. I was probably in a lucky spot because most people could at least string together a few words of English. And it's such a global language. But we all had to learn how to communicate with each other. using German a language none of us knew from day one and then because of that it helped you learn pretty quickly because you were immersed in it you needed to use those skills and those tools like you know every single day after the class I would have to go get on the bus and communicate to the bus driver you know where I wanted to go so he or she knew which fair to charge me. Anyway, so when I got back from Germany, we got married, and I went back to university and got an undergraduate degree in German studies. And then I went to graduate school at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill to go to our heels. I'm sure that you've been college basketball in the US, but there I got the graduate students So you can get an appointment to teach, essentially, like all the grad students there, have a one or two class load each semester. So you're teaching undergraduates. And they also use this similar technique as best you can in the US. But I learned then how to then teach the way that I was taught, which is using like real-world scenarios, trying to get through life in the foreign language. And then I finished, I got a master's degree finished school, got my first job in Ed Tech in an early ebook company. And I started working with expression engine and then realized, oh, if I want to teach this to people, this is just like teaching people a foreign language, because you want to teach in a real world context or scenario, which instead of teaching people directly from a manual, you're helping them build a site that would be very similar to something that they would build for a client, or a customer, or at their company. Right. So it all kind of, basically I took what was probably going to be a very not-looker to career in German, and turn to something where you could actually have like do something with it in technology. That's kind of where I started. So way back in, I released my first course in 2008, I think. **\[06:05\]** **Amanda:** And that was with Magingo? **\[06:07\]** **Sean:** Well, that was actually with the pragmatic programmers, which is a publisher out of North Carolina. And they actually signed me up to write a book first. And then there was this whole like long wait for Expression Engine 2 to come out. I'm not sure how many of you guys remember that, but. And so I had to, I just did the videos first because we were doing like physical printed books, and so we didn't want to commit to a physical printed book until we had the new version of Expression Engine. So I did these videos over the summer of 2008 and just released like a new video in this course every week. And it did really well, I was like really surprised. And then I did eventually do the book and then I decided that I wanted to do this on my own. Yes, that's when I did Magingo, which was a terrible name for a company that I just came up with and then have since retired. But and I started selling Iowa cart just like these courses on my own and I really liked that because I was like I was able to like email and connect with the customers, whereas when you do with the publisher, you have no access to your customers. And so it was nice to be able to, you know, get email from them and reply or even tell them like, yeah, I got something new. I might be interested in. And then, yeah, and then I did that for years and years. It eventually started doing stuff on Crafts CMS when that came out in 2000 something. I don't remember when it was. **\[07:43\]** **Amanda:** I think it was around 2012. **\[07:44\]** **Sean:** 2012, yeah, so I was early in. I used to get when it was called Blocks. Branding Kelly, who's the founder a pixel ontonic and craft, he, I've known branding like going back to probably 2008 maybe something like that and I would get like screenshots and he was like working on the first control panel and stuff. So I was like, I had all the info I needed and I could come up with a course pretty early. I think I had my first course out when craft one was in beta, if I remember correctly. And yeah, just, you know, there was a good response from the stuff that I did, and this was all well before there was any, like, the industry is like it is now with online learning. It's, it's explored. It's huge. And I've been involved in some, like, there's a company called Porosite, I've licensed some of my courses through them. I think I still do, at least I still get this, like, tiny royalty checker recorder from them. and it's just been fun and then in 2018, I decided to essentially decapitate my business model and launch craft quest. So I went from OlaCart, you bought a course as you needed it to the subscription model with the idea that I could go deeper into topics, touch on fringe topics or side topics and create a larger catalog without worrying that if I spend two weeks on this thing, is anybody going to buy this? Is this going to pay my bills when I'm done? By doing the subscription, I felt like I could spread that risk out because people were subscribing and then I can share with them something several things that I hope add up to being worth it. And instead of having to like create something that I have to like sell to somebody every single time. Which then you start to create things I think that aren't like truly what you want to cover or truly what you think people need to know because it's hard to like I could do like a four minute lesson that might be really helpful for people. But what am I going to do asking for four dollars? It's like a weird dynamic. So that's why I switched the subscription thing. So So that was coming up next month in June of this year will be six years since I launched a craft quest, which is wild, I think, because it feels like I just **\[10:27\]** **Amanda:** launched it. To do, it's awesome. Did you ever consider you putting your courses on something like Udemy or one of those other course platforms? **\[10:39\]** **Sean:** I have. And I don't know why I decided not to do it. I think mostly it was because of control, one of the things I did was I got out of working with a publisher because I wanted to pull control over the process and I also wanted to be directly connected with my customers. That was really important to me. You know, the one of the things with you to me is great, like those types of services because I get you out in front of a lot of people. I was already teaching like fairly niche topics. I'm not teaching React or View or I do teach Astro but like not, you know, I teach Astro to our crowd, not to the general public. So, so those types of places would have actually been more harmful to me than helpful, because it would have been harder for people to find stuff and it wouldn't, like honestly, I probably just be working just as hard right now and probably trying to like, make ends meet because you're just not, they're not pushing enough that the same, the type of people that I want to connect with, they're just not there. So it made more sense to kind of stay small. **\[12:03\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, you're in good company for running your own courses. I mean, West Boss and right, there's several other people. Like the best courses that I've ever done online have all been off of you, Demi. Yeah, not not on a course platform. **\[12:20\]** **Sean:** Right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so and I actually like you to me. I'm actually taking a class in like on you to me right now. So I'm not like, I'm not down on those places. And I have a business relationship with Porosite, where they were very kind and took me on as a licensed author. But it's just a different business. But if I was teaching React, I would probably do something like you to me. It makes more sense than what you're doing. Yeah, because you got a wider audience, actually. Exactly. And if I was like, if craft was on you to me, then I would have to both evangelize craft like on you to me in order to entice people to learn craft, rather than spend my time just focusing on like teaching things that I think are really interesting helpful to people that are already interested in it. So it's kind of a weird situation. **\[13:21\]** **Amanda:** Excellent. **\[13:22\]** **Mike:** So, Ryan, if you're mostly teaching craft stuff now, do you ever consult with Pixelantonic and Brandon and those guys about what you're going to teach about, like in anticipation of new features or new versions, do you talk to them before you decide to create things? **\[13:42\]** **Sean:** I have, yeah. I, uh, Brandon super helpful in, like, if, if, especially with the lead up to craft five, if there was like a breaking change or a, like a UI, like, when they revamped the, uh, the sidebar and they just kind of gave it a little bit of a tint. So it wasn't the same color as the rest of the, um, as rest of the control panel. He messaged me and just let me know that that was coming and I just asked if I had already recording. But you're recording stuff because I think you did. So yeah. So, but really only in the sense that, and I let him know, like, hey, like, I'm, you know, I'm gonna, like, start recording. Are you guys kind of locked in? You know, I just want to know. Just so. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So because it's obviously it's right, it's to their benefit when craft five comes out that there's material on my site ready to go. So they've always been super supportive. But Brandon's been, since I've known him, going back in the Expression Engine days, he's always been a supporter of mine in terms of, he advertised on my old news site that I ran for Expression Engine. And he has always just been an advocate for the work that I've done. So I've always really appreciated that. **\[15:05\]** **Ryan:** Craft has got a really great user community. **\[15:08\]** **Sean:** The best. Yeah, absolutely. I think so too. I wish it wasn't all stuck in Discord, but I agree, 100%. **\[15:17\]** **Ryan:** Where would you move it? Where would you expand it to if not all stuck in Discord? **\[15:21\]** **Sean:** I say this, like, on the precipice of launching a Discord channel, which you can talk about. And, uh, but, um, you know, Facebook groups, just say no, uh, my space, no, um, I don't know. I just, uh, my one concern is that Discord server is so amazing. And there's so many hopeful people that put so much time and information in it that I just wish that it, that it, that it was searchable and, and surfaceable for other people. That's like my big gripe. Um, if You search, like, for questions on like, I've done a fair amount of Laravel projects. If you search for questions on Laravel, you get at LaraCast, there is a forum that is fairly active, but we'll pretty much always cover every question that you ever have, or at least help point you in the right direction. And I wish we had something like that. **\[16:15\]** **Amanda:** So I do, I do miss forums for the ability for all of you. **\[16:21\]** **Sean:** But we're all Sean, we're old, I mean, yeah. **\[16:24\]** **Amanda:** I don't know. But like the forums, the big advantage get the question and you get the answer somewhere in there and then back and forth and the closest we've got is GitHub issues now or Stack Overflow. Stack Overflow is, I've been there since a chat GPT cannot. So that's the thing, right? So chat GPT is another thing **\[16:46\]** **Sean:** that kind of replaces that information. But here's the thing, chat GPT is worthless if people aren't published in that information online because chatchuby doesn't they just don't they don't develop those answers out of thin air right there they're not exactly it's it's not creating the **\[17:03\]** **Amanda:** answer right stealing the answer from somewhere and preventing it to you from my site but **\[17:13\]** **Sean:** so yeah so I think forums like that's probably like a bad word for it but just something that's That's more open. A stack overflow, like I'm on there every day I subscribe to like the new, like I still use an RSS reader, like I'm talking about how old school I can be sometimes, but, because I like to see like what people are posting and I answered a couple of questions today on there. So there's still a fair amount there, but 90% of the stuff is definitely in Discord and the reason it's in Discord is because that's where the people are and that makes complete sense. And I think we should all be grateful and appreciative of a community that where people are just kind of hanging out and helping each other. But I wish, I really, really wish that stuff was findable. I really am. **\[18:03\]** **Amanda:** I'm with you on that. Speaking of Discord and you kind of hinted at that is that you've got your own Discord server, which I stumbled upon today when I was like browsing your site looking for things to bring up in our discussion. And I joined and it's empty, so can you tell us what's the plans for it, like what's going on and when is it going to launch, when can everybody find out about it? **\[18:30\]** **Sean:** It's going to launch in the coming days and it is empty, so I was traveling last week. And before I left, I had pushed some changes to the site where I, if you go to craftquest.io slash, I think it's community. the live stream that I do with Andrew Welch, craft quest on call, first and third day of every month, and then there is now the discord channel. So I'm trying to build up some community resources around craft quest that are more than, that are like two-way communication versus one way, which is what my videos are, right? I'm just kind of talking into a microphone here in my little office in my backyard and the this is supposed to kind of help like increase that **\[19:19\]** **Ryan:** communication. We've been trying to do the same thing. We have a YouTube live on the first and **\[19:25\]** **Sean:** third Wednesday of every month. Perfect. The day before you guys. Yeah. Are you trying to **\[19:30\]** **Amanda:** stage me. Not successfully, though. Yeah, I love I love that the live chat and if you all have **\[19:41\]** **Sean:** watched the live stream, you know that like Andrew and I have this dynamic where he he's always around. He's always getting on my case and causing causing me emotional like trauma, but that's what friends do? No, Andrew is wonderful but that is our thing and it's not even like like in text messages like that's how we we roll but we kind of have like that type of dynamic and it's fun. Anyway so that's the the livestream but then the discord thing is all about another way of of communicating with people. And right now, it's reserved for premium members of craft quest. So if you subscribe to one of the paid plans, whether it's a monthly, quarterly annual, or you're part of a team, one of the team plans, then you can access to it. And we'll see how it goes. So by the time this comes out, I should be all ready to chat with people. The hard thing about communities like this is the cold start dilemma where you have to start this community. But if Sean, you showed up, you said no one's here. You're probably going to log out and go somewhere else because nobody's here. But I need people to hang out and stay around. And so that's why I'm going to be working on to try to make that happen. So go to craftquest.io slash community. And if you can get a free three day trial, And it actually will unlock it for you and then you can come hang out. So I guess I just gave everybody a hack. **\[21:24\]** **Ryan:** And then after those three days, Ryan kicks you out of there. **\[21:30\]** **Mike:** After you've made all your friends, that's it. **\[21:33\]** **Sean:** That's it. And I'll publicly announce your removal. No, I'm just kidding. I like it. No, I would love to see as many people in there as possible. **\[21:44\]** **Amanda:** Awesome. Yeah, awesome. I'm looking forward to it. **\[21:46\]** **Sean:** Yeah, me too. Yeah. They'll be fun. It'll be a different vibe than, then, you know, other, or the main craft discord and it's not really meant to replace that. It's just meant to be a, uh, I always talked about craft quest as a community. And I want these people that are all learning from the site and might be having the similar problems and are also on the discord server for craft the official discord server to all come together as they're learning. I have it right now broken up into channels. I'm not sure if they actually, if you can see the different channels right now, Sean. But I have them broken up by like the main courses, like the Quick Start Guide, Real World Craft. **\[22:24\]** **Amanda:** And that way if people are ever in problems, during the course, they can just drop in there. Do you want to hear more Website 101 Podcast content? Of course you do. Now you can not only listen to us, but watch us on our YouTube channel. Search YouTube for Website 101 Podcast. **\[22:44\]** **Ryan:** So I also teach part time at a college here in Toronto, web development, and I'm constantly telling them that some of the best ways to learn how to do something is to try it and break it and figure out what you did. And so by that process, this Discord channel would be great. And also teaching other people. It's like, it makes, it solidifies those fundamentals and the facts about how something works. If you can explain it to somebody else. And oftentimes new people are intimidated to do that, so if it's a discord specifically for other people who are currently learning, it would, you know, hopefully people would be a little more open to sharing suggestions. So hey, this worked for me. **\[23:26\]** **Sean:** Right. Or, and I would love to also have someone struggling or something, and I get email sometimes from people, but I thought people were sometimes hesitant to send an email, and maybe there are a few less hesitant to just message in a discord, but if there's struggling or something, it might be because I did something wrong, whether I messed up something, I messed up an example that they downloaded or, or I just structured like that part of the course in a way that was confusing. It would be really helpful to see that as well. And because you can always, when you're teaching, you teach the best way you think you can, and then you're starting to feed off the feedback of your students, I mean, Amanda, I don't know if you teach in a classroom or not, like in a physical classroom, but you can, like you look at the student's eyes and you can immediately read the room. **\[24:14\]** **Ryan:** You can see the blank faces and I need to explain it a different way. **\[24:17\]** **Sean:** Exactly, exactly. So I want that. I don't get that. It's a one-way medium. So I really wanna try to get some of that back. **\[24:25\]** **Ryan:** Teaching online is not fun. I was gonna pepper you with so many teaching questions, but at the end, I'll save that. Oh yeah, let's do it, yeah. But for now, what I wanted to know is how do you personally learn about the new technologies, like even just the ideas of them. So you can start researching them more to decide whether or not you want this to be a course that you're gonna set put together, or even just like learn it more yourself. Like who are the teachers you follow? **\[24:53\]** **Sean:** Oh, Sean had mentioned West Boss. I really like the stuff that West does. I purchased some of his courses. I like to read the documentation. And then what I do is I always, so I use Obsidian is the app that I use. And I create a new Obsidian doc for, let's say Astro, right? So Astro is completely unrelated to craft but can be connected to craft via like GraphQL or the element API. So it's related but not like in the same ecosystem. And so I just like would go through their docs and most, especially in the JavaScript world, They have pretty great onboarding documentation. So I'd go through that, start to get the world view of, let's say, Astro, and then take notes. And as I'm going and start to jot down like I summarize, this technology is trying to do this thing. And that helps me frame what their goal is. And then from there, it helps me understand as I'm learning, what I'm learning and why they're doing it that way. And then I just take notes as I go, build a sample project, try to get things like really wrong and struggle and figure it out. And then I always go and look, how are other people teaching this? Because my goal is always to find the holes in how other people are teaching. And then, I try to readjust how I would teach it to make sure to either fill those holes or to have a slightly different take. It's important for me to have my own take and not just do it the way everyone else is doing it. One of the things you'll find, if you ever do that, is you'll find that a lot of people are kind of parroting exactly the same way to teach that thing over and over again. And what happens is that they all skip over some really important thing and they don't actually go deep on something. They'll say, oh, we are doing this because this and this and this and then, but that student's like, but why? But why? Yeah. And so I like to say, okay, this is actually why we're doing this piece of code or whatever it is. And that's how I try to approach it. It's one of the big things why I got into when I was teaching Git. That's the thing I did, as Mike mentioned at the top of the show at NASA, I went there and taught a handful of times on their engineers. They were converting over from subversion to Git version control. And they had me out. I think I taught the rear four classes there, and it was all about like not just teaching in the commands, but like these are really smart people and they want to know like why things work. And that's how that whole section of I have on Git where it's all about a Git under the hood where I show like the what they call the plumbing of Git, like all those lower level commands and how it all works. And because I just kind of dug in and dug in and dug in and I'll just pull all these different resources and books on Git and try to see like how people were covering things. And what I could, what I thought would be best to cover. So, and then I just, I try to then take that and put it in a digestible format. And it depends on the goal, right? If it's like a quick start guide, then it's obviously very high level. If it's, if it's like this, the git material I have where it's like, you know, intro, sort of, I forget what I call it, get the next steps, which is kind of like middle of the road, get, and then I have git under the hood, which is like only for massacres who want to create objects themselves and all sorts of things. **\[28:55\]** **Amanda:** All right, I'm not taking that course. Yeah, thanks. **\[28:59\]** **Sean:** Yeah, so it just depends on the process. But it really comes down to that obsidian document. It used to be in Ulysses back in the day. Before that, it was in writing before what was that called NV Alt. I'm not sure if anybody remembers that application. And then before that, it was in a mole-sky notebook is where I wrote all my courses out. The first course I did for Expression Edge was all I had written out. Wow, nice. Yeah, it's got to look back at it. I was like, wow, you had a lot of time on your hands back then. **\[29:36\]** **Mike:** In the course of teaching people things and getting feedback, or even just doing the work yourself on a craft, you know, teaching some feature in craft to whatever, do you ever find that you get ideas either that you come up with or that you're sort of students think like, I'm picturing someone taking your course and saying, oh, you know, in such and such CMS, they do this kind of thing in this way. I wonder why craft doesn't do that. Do you ever find yourself going, hmm, I wonder why craft doesn't do that? And they come up with new sort of ideas that you may or may not pitch to pixel and tonics since you're so close to those guys. I don't wanna throw you under the bus for coming up with things that they don't implement, but, you know. **\[30:20\]** **Sean:** I would say, I mean, I definitely have opinions on how things should be done. But if you go through the feature request for a craft, I'm pretty sure that anything that I have in my head has been listed out and covered. Plus a million. But, I mean, maybe sometimes, but I am, you know, especially with craft five, generally, really happy with what they've done. It's going to take a little bit of, I think, getting used to the entries for everything approach. It's been, I'm sure, obviously, we haven't. And none of us have done that previously, so it's getting a little bit more challenging. I'm kind of torn on the change from categories to entries instead of using just like actual categories, like elements. So I have like strong opinions there. I mean, I have all sorts of strong opinions, but it's really like about like craft features because I'm generally like really pleased with the CMS. I do wish more people knew about craft. I wish that it was like exploding in a bigger way. Cause I think it's super cool. I just don't, I just know that like, you know, PHP isn't like the, you know, the hot, **\[31:53\]** **Ryan:** it's not the sexy and new technology, right? **\[31:55\]** **Sean:** Yeah, it's not the thing. Like it's all about all the JavaScript things. And eventually, you know, and actually I like, I, you know, KraftQuest has a bunch of view code in it. like Astro and React is a thing we all have to use at some point and I think it's all great. I think that the development experience and the workflows, all the cool tools that we've gotten, like VIT and it's all wonderful and it wouldn't have come about if not for this JavaScript revolution. That being said, it is kind of funny that we're like kind of back to this point where everybody's trying to do like server side generated sites now when before it was all like client side. So like, I get it. I still think there's a, I still think, you know, like PHP on the server is still a very valid way to work. And with twig and And then if you want to, you can use React or something, and have a head with setup. But yeah, so I don't really have any complaints. And I think that I wish Kraft was bigger. I just don't know that at this point in time, that's where tech is. If you go work at a company that's building a new platform, most are going to be building it and did probably react right on the front end and their back end would be whatever it is. You know, there's plenty of people like, you know, I work with companies that use Laravel on the back end and then react on the front end or Laravel on the back end and view on the front end, there's like all sorts of different setups but I do wish more people were into crap instead of, you know, other tools that are not as **\[33:52\]** **Mike:** Yeah, we could we frequently run into this problem at least I can speak for myself with clients new projects It's that whole thing where it's like, oh, what's it? What are you gonna use craft? Never heard of it What if you get hit by a bus tomorrow? Who are you gonna get to fix this thing? Yeah, all that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's not WordPress **\[34:09\]** **Sean:** Right. Yeah, and you know, thank God. Yeah **\[34:13\]** **Amanda:** I'm kind of yeah, I want to say something, but I'm biting my phone because I don't want to do that guy that only says bad things about WordPress **\[34:21\]** **Sean:** I mean WordPress is like it's WordPress is powered tons of business sites And I think it has its own place in the ecosystem, and it's done a lot of a Lot of good and it's a lot of a lot of people to do things the otherwise wouldn't have been able to do **\[34:36\]** **Ryan:** Yes, I think people try to force WordPress to go too far and to do too much and then it gets sloppy and lazy and **\[34:46\]** **Sean:** awful load times right and at the same time, I think that that some people only work in WordPress and this solution to every problem is WordPress. **\[34:55\]** **Amanda:** And yeah. Well, to be honest, I only work in craft and the solution to every problem is craft. So, I mean, I'm sure for every CMS that you choose, there's going to be a large portion of the people there that this is what I focus. This is what I know. This is, I build it. Now, having said that, if I get something that maybe I can't do, or I don't think craft can do it, it hasn't happened. But, you know, at that point, I'll probably say, find yourself another developer. Here's where to go. Look for somebody. Best of luck. But, yeah. Send them to Amanda. Amanda is like pointing her fingers at her face. **\[35:39\]** **Ryan:** Amanda, Amanda can figure it out. **\[35:41\]** **Sean:** Amanda, are you the WordPress specialist in the group? **\[35:44\]** **Ryan:** I have done lots of WordPress. I was a lamp. I'm full-stacked. I mean, for the longest time, I was PHP. Yes, I did friend-end stuff, too, but I did all of it. And then for the longest time, I was of the mindset that I didn't want to be using a content management system. I wanted to be creating the content management system. But clients and bills and getting stuff together and getting the sites out the door. I mean, I really like where I'm at now. I mostly recommend Kraft on new client sites, but I am flexible enough to talk with them about whatever it is that they **\[36:22\]** **Sean:** want to use. Yeah. I don't know if you all have ever done an episode about how to talk to clients **\[36:32\]** **Amanda:** about technology solutions or not. Actually, we're going to make a note and we're going to add that that to our Q for probably next season. Yeah, we're coming up on the end of this season, but I like that. That's a great topic. **\[36:45\]** **Sean:** Yeah. I have really strong opinions that aren't always very popular, that I don't think that agencies or freelancers or whatever you are when you're working with clients should ever be in the position of trying to convince a client to use a technology. I think if you're in the room and you're having to come up with a, with the reasons why they should use craft, then I think you've already lost the conversation. I agree to you. **\[37:17\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, so I'm with you on that. It should be like, this is what I can do for you. **\[37:21\]** **Sean:** Exactly. **\[37:22\]** **Amanda:** And I'm gonna use the tools, I don't tell the mechanic that he has to use a certain kind of wrench. **\[37:27\]** **Sean:** Right, yeah, yeah, exactly. So, and you can just say like, this is what we proposed, you should use this is like, what we think is best in class And this is what we're best at, and you can make a decision. I mean, if you don't get the job then you didn't lose any money because you didn't have the job. So, but you should, that way you're working in the tools that you want and you're not having to convince non-technical people how, why they should use this technical platform, we should be selling outcomes to them. This is why. Yes, I like it. Anyway, you should definitely jot that down as an episode, I think it would be interesting. I will. **\[38:08\]** **Amanda:** I will. We will add this to our air table later. So Ryan, I have a question for you. How do you decide what makes a good topic on this is on craft grass? Of course, a lesson or a live stream. So there's three different types of content that you have. What is the difference and what makes a topic go into one of those channels? **\[38:32\]** **Sean:** really long but helpful and nice email from a subscriber about his confusion about how the heck I was organizing my material. And it made sense, but I'll, and I'm actually going to be making some changes in how it organized things, but I'll tell you right now how things are. So of course, This is a multi-video thing where you learn a topic typically from beginning to end. That you can, when you're done, you know enough to go use that in your day-to-day work. A lesson is more of a snapshot or in-depth on one small narrow topic, and they're typically anywhere from three to 30 minutes. And the idea is that I can capture everything in this one lesson. I understand that when you ever, a man who knows this, when you teach, you typically, in your teaching a course, you don't have to prepare my lesson for today. So I understand that the naming convention is strange, which is why people, you know, have set with me about it. And then the livestream of course is, you know, that's typically like me and Andrew Welch doing craft quest on call, although I've had recently had been Krokeron, who I'm looking at your web page, who is a guest in a previous episode. That's our last, yeah, very recently, yeah. So, and I've had other people on as well, I've had Matt from Served on quite a while back. That's what I have on. But, so, there's all sorts of people that I've had on, but the live streams that we're actually live, and then those are recorded and posted for a craft quest call as posted for premium subscribers and get access to the, anyone can watch for free live, but then the archive is for premium subscribers. How do I choose like what I do when? So if I don't think I can talk about a topic and explain a topic within a single video, then it's a course. If I, if it's something that I think I can just get done in a single video 30 minutes or less, then I'll make it a lesson. If I want to have fun and work with someone on it, then I'll do it with Andrew, and it'll be a live stream. A lot of times, I'll do both. I'll do a course. And then Andrew and I will do a live stream version of it, because it's a completely different dynamic. I get Andrew's feedback on it. I get the viewer's feedback on it as they're doing it. Then if someone wants to go back and watch the full recording of the actual course and they can go back and see that, and it's less banterly and more just down to business with me just they are teaching. That's how I break those up. Then there's also articles on the site. And the articles is something I've been doing more of with the idea that I'm talking about like Discord earlier, where things aren't findable. We have the same problem with the videos and we do have transcripts. I think a branches film or a roof of my, hang on. No. No. You heard my dog bark? Yeah. Yes. Check it out if you need it's okay. It's okay. It's okay. It's a metal roof. So like if a the smallest thing falls, it's really loud So where was I articles right so Crafka is also as articles and what I was saying earlier with findability and with discord conversations Is that in videos we have that problem you of course you can have a a? You know the transcript the transcript thank you of the video and that's you know that works well in a lot of the bottom lot of my videos, I also have like a written version, like summary of that, and that helps. So it can be indexed so people can find it. But I'm also doing a lot more articles because I think it's an important way to communicate and it gets information out there. So a lot of times I'll have articles that are versions of videos, or I'll write the articles first and then do a video. So those are the different ways. Yeah, it's just kind of like a like I just kind of go with my gut. But oh, this is probably a lesson. Sometimes I get into it Like I'm writing in a city and I get into the whole thing and then I really was like, oh like I have like way too many like This is a lot. Yeah, I've way too many subheads in this document like I need to break this up into a course And then maybe it's a shorter course, but it makes more sense to People are learning you need to give them like they learn something say for like seven minutes in a video and then then the video ends and you need to give them a little bit of like a pause and either they need to like go do something or just or just like absorb the information and then you jump into the next topic if a lesson video is too long it's just you can see it in my stats you see people start to trail off because it's going on too long **\[43:55\]** **Amanda:** and they they really need a break so I keep that in mind speaking of discoverability you said earlier you're talking about how your old school and you use RSS. Does craft quest have an RSS feed for the articles or the videos? That is a good question. Because I would like to add it to my Slack channel so we have a specific channel and Slack that pulls in articles from select websites. If you've We've got one, please let me know later. **\[44:30\]** **Sean:** I will, so I just pulled up the code in PHP Storm because I did, when I launched Craft Quest, I definitely did have it. Yeah, there's a feed, I see it right here. Feeds, courses.rss, Lessons.rss, and then Craft Quest.rss. **\[44:45\]** **Amanda:** All right, well, there's no link in the footer or anything. I'm sorry, you're right. I didn't exist, so maybe that's something you could update the website when you got them. Thank you. I know that Amanda is running out of time, she needs to leave soon, so anybody else have a one last question. **\[45:03\]** **Ryan:** I had one last question that I wanted to ask on the more video side. With our podcast, I am trying to take some of these recordings and make clips to put on the YouTube's and to hate it. But what do you do for screen recording and video editing and do you enjoy it or is it something that you just sort of force your way to slog through because it's got to be done. **\[45:30\]** **Sean:** I don't always enjoy it. The most enjoyable part for me is researching and crafting for the lack of a better word, the course or the material. That's my favorite part. Crafting craft. The recording I find sometimes to be a slog because I've already written everything, I'm already excited about the course. I just want to share it with everybody, but then the recording and the editing. So what I do is I record my screen using ScreenFlow on the Mac, and then I edit in Final Cut Pro, and I host with Vimeo, and I can export directly out of Final Cut Pro, and it just uploads it to Vimeo. And then from there, I can just grab that link and I drop it into Craft CMS, which is what Craft Quest runs on, and then I have some view code that creates the player and stuff. And then, yeah, I like all parts of it, they're all necessary. I used to have someone edit all the videos for me, but then it was actually my nephew, but then he finished college and got a job, and so that was that. So I edit them all now, and it's important to, I'm very particular about the content and the pacing, so it just can't be like anyone that edits it. So yeah, because you're making content decisions sometimes in pacing decisions, and I want to make sure that that's good. **\[47:00\]** **Ryan:** Yeah, the software that we're using right now, the website Riverside, it has this special, oh, let AI go through and make clips for you. And it's not, they don't know the content, they don't know the context, and the clips, it seems to just be like almost random. **\[47:18\]** **Sean:** Yeah, I use another service, and not for my craft quest stuff as much, but at Pineworks, which is the, that Mike mentioned at the beginning is the agency that I'm a partner in. We do, we record videos and a lot of them get posted on LinkedIn. And we use, oh man, what's that, the site called. We used to use like Vidya or something, but there's another one that we use that is, that does the same thing. We just avoid, it just creates all these clips and that's perfect for us for that thing because it's not it's meant for like quick consumption not not for like warning but yeah those tools I'm kind of like old school like I edit everything by hand and I know in Final Cut and I know that there's online learning platforms where I'm sure you can submit I would be surprised if you you didn't you didn't have something where you can you know they'll edit your videos for you with AI upload the raw video Yeah, that's about for you, but I like to, you know, I care a lot about people's experience that are like, you know, paying me money every month to provide them with good morning content, so I should put that. You have to put forth the effort. **\[48:29\]** **Ryan:** Put the effort in, yeah. Yeah. I find that I'm super anal-retentive about things having to be done right, and then halfway through I hate myself for all of the time that I'm putting into it on this activity that isn't my favorite. **\[48:41\]** **Sean:** the high standards. Yeah, the production. The production, of course, is very unglamorous, and it's a lot of me just sitting here in my office, you know, hoping my dog doesn't bark. And I'm hoping I don't like just make such a major mess up that it's not fixable. I've gotten good at, you know, weaving long pauses. Like I have built techniques in that I use to make everything go much quicker and including like you know very exhaustive outlines or writing actual word for word really really important things like when you're clarifying or explaining something it matters whether you whether you say it correctly and so I would write those things out word for word so I make sure that that information is crystal clear and exactly how I want to say it when I record the **\[49:29\]** **Ryan:** video. Nice. It's a lot of work. Okay, we will wrap it up there, shall we? Thank you, Ryan, **\[49:38\]** **Amanda:** for joining us today. Thanks for having me. Yeah, it's been really good. I'm glad you joined us. **\[49:44\]** **Mike:** Yeah, thanks a lot. We'll put all your your your sites and whatnot in the show notes, Sean Will, I mean, not week. I'm not doing what Sean's gonna do. That's all that work. Yeah, thanks so much for being being here really appreciate it. Thank you, fun. **\[50:01\]** **Ryan:** The website 101 Podcast is hosted by me, Amanda Loots. You can also find me online at **\[50:06\]** **Amanda:** AmandaLoots.com. Recording from a secret layer while plotting world domination, **\[50:12\]** **Mike:** I'm Sean Smith, your co-host. One of your hosts today was me, Mike Mella. Find me online at be like water.ca or on socials at like mella. Close Transcript Have a question for Sean, Mike, and Amanda? [Send us an email](/contact). [![Listen on Google Play Music](/assets/images/google_podcasts_badge@2x.png)](https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly93ZWJzaXRlMTAxcG9kY2FzdC5jb20vZmVlZC5yc3M%3D)[![itunes badge](/assets/images/itunes-badge.png)](https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/website-101-podcast/id1449510012)[![itunes badge](/assets/images/spotify-logo.png)](https://open.spotify.com/show/3rmSM1R9t6q1U8DmYWJRSO?si=NrYPMgDaRV6Dd56PjEaPow)### Season 07 - 1 [ When to Say No](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-1/when-to-say-no/) - 2 [ How can I communicate better with clients?](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-2/how-can-i-communicate-better-with-clients/) - 3 [ What to do when work is slow - with Mitchell Kimbrough](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-3/what-to-do-when-work-is-slow-with-mitchell-kimbrough/) - 4 [ Motivation, Burnout, and Imposter Syndrome, with Kevin Nicholson.](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-4/motivation-burnout-and-imposter-syndrome-with-kevin-nicholson/) - 5 [ How to spin up a website quickly using a boilerplate](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-5/how-to-spin-up-a-website-quickly-using-a-boilerplate/) - 6 [ Back in my day...](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-6/back-in-my-day/) - 7 [ How to submit a support request with Ben Croker](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-7/how-to-submit-a-good-support-request-with-ben-croker/) - 8 [ Online Learning and Keeping up with Technology with Ryan Irelan](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-8/online-learning-and-keeping-up-with-technology-with-ryan-irelan/) - 9 [ Unlock your ADHD superpowers with Chris Ferdinandi](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-9/unlock-your-adhd-superpowers-with-chris-ferdinandi/) - 10 [ Rebroadcast: 11 Things to avoid doing on your website](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-10/rebroadcast-11-things-to-avoid-doing-on-your-website/) - 11 [ Raw and Unedited](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-11/raw-and-unedited/) - Bonus[ The Joy of Self-Taught Coding](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-/the-joy-of-self-taught-coding/) ### All Seasons - [Season 01](https://website101podcast.com/season/01/) - [Season 02](https://website101podcast.com/season/02/) - [Season 03](https://website101podcast.com/season/03/) - [Season 04](https://website101podcast.com/season/04/) - [Season 05](https://website101podcast.com/season/05/) - [Season 06](https://website101podcast.com/season/06/) - [Season 07](https://website101podcast.com/season/07/) - [Season 08](https://website101podcast.com/season/08/) - [Season 09](https://website101podcast.com/season/09/) <!\[CDATA\[YII-BLOCK-BODY-END\]\]>