0:04

Welcome to a new episode of

0:06

Frontend Happy Hour podcast. We

0:09

are on episode 188 and have

0:12

not done a dedicated episode

0:14

on WordPress. I am amazed.

0:16

I can't believe we haven't done

0:18

this. So I'm really excited to

0:21

actually dive into it. I've spent

0:23

a lot of years throughout my

0:25

career building on WordPress, you know,

0:27

building websites, applications, themes, plugins,

0:29

whatever it be, but it has been

0:31

many years since I've touched it. And

0:34

so in this episode, we are joined by

0:36

Jason to help us talk through insights about

0:38

WP GraphQL. And

0:41

so we're going to learn more about the APIs

0:43

around WordPress. And yeah,

0:45

that will be a fun topic to dive into. Jason,

0:48

do you want to give an introduction of

0:50

who you are, what you do, and what

0:53

your favorite Happy Hour beverage is? Man, yeah,

0:55

my name is Jason Ball, creator

0:58

maintainer WP GraphQL, which is a free

1:00

open source WordPress plugin that provides

1:02

GraphQL API for WordPress. I'm

1:06

principal engineer at WP

1:09

Engine, where I work on

1:11

open source software, primarily

1:13

WP GraphQL, but we have other open source

1:15

projects I help with, like a

1:17

front end for a next

1:19

base framework called Foust

1:21

JS. So I

1:23

help a little bit with that and then

1:25

maintain some extension plugins for WP GraphQL, like

1:27

WP GraphQL for advanced custom fields, for

1:30

example. But and then my favorite

1:32

Happy Hour, I don't drink alcohol, so

1:35

I'll go with Dr. Pepper, that would

1:37

be my favorite beverage. Right

1:39

on. I mean, that's the thing too, is like,

1:41

I feel like more and more people aren't drinking alcohol. So

1:44

it's like, this is good. So

1:46

having various beverages of choice is

1:48

great. All right. I only

1:50

have Cole and myself, but Cole, do you

1:53

want to give an introduction? Hi everyone. My

1:55

name is Cole Turner. I'm a software engineer

1:57

at Netflix and I've had a few encounters.

2:00

with WordPress when I was in college. Nice.

2:03

Yeah, it's a great platform. So I'm

2:05

excited for that. And I'm your host

2:07

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at Porkbun for only $1 for the

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first year. Well, let's dive

3:07

into WordPress. Maybe let's start actually, like

3:10

I was gonna start and say like

3:12

what's WPGraphQL, which we should get to,

3:14

but even let's get a baseline of

3:16

like if someone hasn't used WordPress,

3:18

like the three of us have, which is awesome,

3:21

what is WordPress? Like how do we even define

3:23

that? Let's start there. Yeah,

3:25

I mean, yeah, WordPress is a

3:27

content management system. So it's a

3:30

web-based application, right? It's where users

3:32

can log into it and they can

3:34

publish content. It powers somewhere

3:37

in 45-ish percent of the web

3:39

right now. So pretty

3:42

much any...there's a good chance

3:44

on a daily basis you're visiting a site

3:46

that is powered by WordPress. Some of the

3:49

top sites, you know, publishing

3:51

sites like

3:53

NASA actually just relaunched on WordPress,

3:55

like NASA and their

3:58

science website, things like that. So,

4:01

yeah, it's a open

4:04

source CMS, so developers can download

4:06

it and extend it and write

4:08

code to do whatever they want.

4:10

There's a massive plugin ecosystem for

4:12

it. So you can kind

4:14

of turn it into whatever you need it to be

4:17

for your project. But yeah,

4:19

it's all web-based and yeah, let's

4:21

use this direct content and publish it to web. Yeah,

4:23

and I think that's a big thing too, what you

4:25

hit on is like the plugins. It's

4:27

extendable. You can write themes, you can download

4:29

themes, you can download plugins, integrate it, write

4:32

your own. I think that's what's been so

4:34

powerful with it. It just gives a lot

4:36

of flexibility for people to do what they

4:38

want with it. Yeah, so it's, it has,

4:41

I'm surprised. I didn't realize how much of

4:43

the web is taken over by WordPress. I

4:45

mean, I'm not surprised, but like didn't really

4:47

realize how much is being

4:49

used by WordPress. But I have

4:51

seen it leverage for so many things. Even

4:53

just, there's things that I've had to do

4:56

with it over the years that I didn't

4:58

even think possible. Like it was

5:00

like, why are we extending WordPress so hard?

5:03

But it's cool to see what you can do with it. On

5:05

that note, I guess, let's say it's me

5:07

and I haven't used WordPress in a while.

5:10

What are some typical use cases for

5:12

a developer to choose WordPress over something

5:15

else? Yeah, so

5:17

I think access is a big one. It's, first

5:20

off, it's free, right? So if you have

5:23

limited resources or whatever, like you

5:25

can just go download it and start using it. It's

5:28

very, like we talked about, there's a massive plug-in ecosystem

5:30

so you can extend it to do almost

5:32

anything you can imagine. Like it

5:35

can do, is it necessarily the best job? Maybe,

5:37

maybe not, I don't know. But like it can

5:39

do it almost certainly. So access

5:41

is a big one. Cost

5:43

is a big one. They say

5:45

it's free like a dog, right? Like you get

5:47

a dog given to you, but there is cost

5:50

associated with it still. So it's not like, it's

5:52

not like truly free,

5:54

but like the software itself is you can

5:56

start prototyping with it with no cost to

5:58

get started. But Yeah, I

6:00

think those are some big ones. There's access to

6:02

it and the limited, you know, reduced

6:04

cost of getting started with it. So that's

6:06

a big thing. And

6:08

then yeah, like 40 something percent of the

6:10

web is using it. So there's lots of

6:13

examples out there of like, oh,

6:16

I want to accomplish this. Can it be done

6:18

on WordPress? Well, here's an example. Yeah, of course.

6:20

So yeah, yeah. Yeah,

6:23

I mean, it's been around for years

6:26

too. Like the adoption is high. It's

6:28

grown significantly in, you know, bettering, making

6:30

it a lot easier for people to

6:32

leverage. You can have it hosted for

6:35

you. Like a lot of hosting platforms

6:37

have it available for you. Obviously WordPress

6:39

itself is available to just have it

6:42

online and leverage that. But

6:44

you can also host it yourself. You can move it,

6:46

migrate it wherever you want to put it, which

6:48

is pretty cool too and really flexible. Yeah,

6:51

I would say the community and documentation is

6:53

huge too, right? Like, so if you do

6:55

feel like you're stuck, if

6:57

you're working on some custom application for a

7:00

company and they're the only company running that

7:02

software, if you get stuck, it can

7:04

be hard to get out of that, right? But

7:06

with WordPress, high chance

7:09

somebody else has run into the same situation

7:11

even Kerrigan can help you, right? So the

7:14

community and documentation is massive. I feel

7:16

like it's one of

7:18

the most documented pieces of software out there

7:20

in my opinion. Both good and bad, because

7:22

there's outdated docs too and can kind of

7:24

send you down the wrong trail sometimes too.

7:27

Or there's bad docs or whatever, but it

7:29

is very highly documented. If you're searching

7:31

for something, you're gonna find somebody

7:34

else who's written about it. So that's a

7:36

positive, I think. I love

7:38

that. Because I think about where I started

7:40

in my career. I did a lot of

7:42

WordPress very early on because of exactly what

7:45

you're saying, Jason, where if you're

7:47

running into use cases you've never built before,

7:50

they could be old, they could be new, they

7:52

could be all over the place, but it's good

7:54

to have options and it's good to have other

7:56

people's work to influence your work. And I think

7:58

that is where we're going. WordPress is a

8:00

great tool for many people who are

8:04

across different skill sets because you

8:06

can do that customization as you need to

8:09

see it fit or potentially maybe

8:11

you don't need all that and you get a lot

8:13

out of the box for free. Yeah,

8:15

great points. Well, let's move

8:18

to WP GraphQL. All

8:20

right, what is WP

8:22

GraphQL and how does it differ

8:25

from traditional APIs from WordPress? Yeah,

8:28

so typically when you think of WordPress

8:30

as being a content management system, it's

8:32

what the word monolithic is thrown

8:34

around a lot. So it does everything, right?

8:36

It's one piece of software that does the

8:38

content management, but it also does the presentation

8:41

of the website for you. It has a

8:43

template system and all this stuff, right? So it's

8:46

monolithic meaning one big application

8:49

and a lot of

8:51

organizations find themselves investing

8:53

in training folks that produce content

8:56

and they want them to continue using WordPress because that's

8:58

a big cost, right? I

9:00

used to work for a newspaper publisher and we

9:02

had hundreds of people trained to publish content in

9:05

WordPress. So switching off of that

9:07

would be a massive investment, but the

9:09

front end, what's

9:12

presenting the content on

9:14

the front end, WordPress doesn't always make sense

9:16

to do that. We had native iOS

9:18

and Android apps, for example, and

9:21

you're not running PHP on phones. So like

9:23

having a WordPress template as an iOS app

9:25

doesn't make sense. So you need

9:27

to get the data from the CMS.

9:29

So we have the folks trained

9:31

to publish content, but we

9:34

need it for the web, of course, but

9:36

also for native iOS and Android apps, but

9:38

also for print. Like it's a

9:40

web first world, right? We're publishing stories on

9:42

the web and then preparing it to print.

9:45

So having access to

9:47

the data outside of how it's

9:49

rendered for the web was an important

9:51

thing. So WordPress

9:54

has a REST API, which is the REST

9:57

APIs are like an

10:00

app. endpoint per resource is kind

10:02

of how it works. So you would hit an endpoint like,

10:04

you know, your WordPress site slash posts,

10:06

and you would get a list of

10:09

posts or slash post ID one, you

10:12

know, and that'll give you an individual post.

10:15

So WordPress has that arrestful

10:17

API built into it since

10:19

I think 2015. And

10:22

we use that when I was working in the newspaper, like

10:24

I said, and we were using that pretty heavily, but we

10:26

ran into a lot of problems trying

10:28

to scale it. That's

10:31

largely because if you think of even just

10:33

like an individual newspaper article,

10:35

right? That's a lot

10:37

of resources to make one article. You have like an

10:40

image, which is a separate resource. You have

10:42

the author who wrote the article, which is

10:44

a separate resource. You have the

10:47

categories and tags that it's categorized in.

10:49

You possibly have image galleries, which are

10:51

another list of resources. You

10:53

have comments maybe on the article, which

10:55

are different resources. So just to publish

10:57

one article page, you're talking like

10:59

lots of resources and hitting an API

11:02

for each of these resources. Typically,

11:05

arrestful APIs will

11:08

give you a full resource and then

11:10

IDs to related resources. And

11:12

so you have to wait for the first

11:14

resource to come back, get the IDs, make

11:16

references back to the other resources, sometimes get

11:18

IDs to other resources. And so you're making

11:20

this like what they

11:23

call, maybe callback hell, right? And

11:26

so we were using arrest

11:28

APIs to do stuff, like I said,

11:30

our native iOS and Android apps, but

11:32

also to like syndicate content to other,

11:34

we had a network of like 50

11:36

something newspapers across the US. And

11:39

so if Denver Post, for example,

11:41

published an article about the

11:43

Broncos winning the Super Bowl or whatever, then maybe

11:46

some other cities wanted

11:49

to subscribe to that news. And so we

11:51

were sending data from one side to another

11:53

or pulling it from one side to another.

11:55

So those systems were

11:58

getting pretty complicated to scale. using

12:00

the resource-based APIs. And

12:02

so around that time GraphQL was open source by Facebook

12:05

when I was working on the newspaper. I was like, oh, this

12:07

looks like it might solve some of our problems. Because

12:11

GraphQL, you

12:13

can build it in a way where you

12:15

can consume multiple resources in one request. And

12:18

I was like, that would solve at

12:20

least some developer problems, right? Like of

12:23

us consuming all these APIs and having to wire

12:25

it together on our end as the consumer. So

12:28

if we could do it on the server and then

12:31

each of our applications could specify what exactly

12:33

they need, our iOS app could ask for

12:35

exactly what it needs in a request where

12:37

it makes sense. So

12:41

I started tinkering with it and proven it

12:43

to some of my colleagues. And then we

12:45

went ahead and production with it not

12:48

too much later in replacing most of our REST

12:51

API usage. So

12:53

that's kind of like the story of it. But yeah,

12:55

so GraphQL differs from REST in that you can, it's

12:58

a type-based system. So

13:00

everything in your application is

13:02

described as a type. So a post,

13:04

for example, in WordPress would be an

13:07

object in GraphQL, an object type.

13:09

And it would have fields like the title

13:12

and the date. And then it can have

13:14

what's called connections to other types in the

13:16

graph, right? So a post

13:18

can have a connection to author and

13:20

images and categories and times. And

13:23

so as the consumer, the person building the

13:25

iOS app, for example, they can write

13:27

a query, a GraphQL query, and

13:30

they specify exactly what fields they want

13:33

to be returned. And so

13:35

the client has full control over what they get,

13:37

and they can do a lot of, you know,

13:39

connected resources in a single request.

13:43

And so from a client perspective,

13:46

like the consumer getting the data, it usually

13:49

is a much more pleasant experience. And when

13:51

things go wrong, which it's software, things will

13:53

go wrong with REST,

13:56

you just know something on that endpoint went

13:58

wrong. And that could

14:00

be a thousand fields on that endpoint. It

14:02

can be a little tricky to debug sometimes.

14:04

With GraphQL, since you specify exactly what fields

14:06

you need, it can be a

14:08

little bit easier to identify when something goes wrong.

14:10

Oh, it's that exact field. And you

14:13

can start doing things like tracking how fast

14:15

each field responds and things like that,

14:17

and start figuring out like the granular

14:19

details of your application. So it solves

14:21

a lot of problems, I think. And yeah,

14:24

hopefully that covers

14:27

it. I like that a lot, actually.

14:29

Good explanation of it. I mean, it makes

14:32

a ton of sense. It's a similar thing

14:34

with anything that we've seen with REST API,

14:36

right? It's not scalable. I mean, it is.

14:38

I shouldn't say it's not scalable, but it's

14:40

like, yeah, GraphQL has just made it so

14:42

much simpler and more scalable and

14:45

more customizable, right? Depending on like that

14:47

iOS client, that Android client versus the

14:50

web, it's like you really get to

14:52

choose, but use that same dataset, which

14:54

is huge. It's funny hearing

14:56

you talk about like, REST even being

14:58

introduced to WordPress. That came, like you

15:01

said, like 2015 or something. I

15:04

was doing something similar at Evernote. The

15:06

task was I was supposed to integrate

15:09

in the Mac client, the iOS and

15:11

Android, and I think the

15:13

web, but they wanted a lot of

15:15

the content. It wasn't like all, obviously

15:17

all of Evernote's content, but some of

15:19

these like notifications and content was coming

15:21

from WordPress. That

15:24

was before REST even existed in WordPress.

15:26

There was a lot of hacking on

15:28

our end to get that to work. Just

15:31

seeing how much it's evolved is amazing. The

15:33

fact is, is like GraphQL didn't exist at

15:35

that time, but if GraphQL had existed, it

15:38

would have made it a lot simpler for

15:40

each of the clients to decide really what

15:42

was the information needed. I

15:44

love your explanation on that. I'll also add,

15:47

I love that we're talking

15:49

about REST versus GraphQL, but in the

15:51

context of WordPress and newspaper

15:54

type websites or other type

15:56

websites like blogs, even

15:58

Evernote and... newspapers are kind of

16:00

similar in the sense that it's a lot of unbounded

16:03

content of different varieties. So you have

16:06

like text, you have images, you have

16:08

media, and this is supposed

16:10

to flow in between the actual website

16:12

itself. And so mixing these different mediums

16:14

is a perfect use case for something

16:17

like GraphQL because different clients can take

16:19

out parts of those mediums that is

16:21

more useful for that client. And

16:23

in the case of like the New

16:25

York Times or some

16:28

other newspaper, when you want

16:30

to make sure that your experience

16:32

is performant, using something like

16:35

WordPress and GraphQL is a great fit

16:37

because it is one

16:39

request resolving many different varieties of

16:41

subjects. And to have

16:44

that be over rest could be, for

16:46

example, 100 different rest calls. And if

16:48

one of those calls fails, the rest

16:50

will just kind of topple over because

16:52

as Jason was saying, you don't have

16:54

those connections anymore to infer on. With

16:57

something like GraphQL, you have less

16:59

of that performance issue where

17:01

you're resolving one big batch

17:03

of requests and you're

17:05

not making multiple round trips between the server

17:07

and the client. So in many ways, it

17:10

makes sense that GraphQL is a great

17:12

fit for this type of user experience

17:14

where it allows you to really

17:17

optimize your performance and tailor each

17:19

client to its needs. I

17:21

will say there are trade-offs, right?

17:24

So rest, when we talk about rest not

17:26

being scalable, quote, unquote, it is obviously, and

17:29

we know it is, but it can be

17:31

frustrating for sure. But what

17:33

one upside rest has is that since

17:35

it is resource-based, it's easier to cache,

17:37

right? So like if you have

17:40

an endpoint for one object, well,

17:42

whenever that object changes, it's easy to

17:45

invalidate that endpoint. So GraphQL

17:47

being an open one endpoint

17:49

to access everything, like

17:53

that's a lot more difficult to cache, right? It's

17:55

like, oh, this is tricky. So

17:57

there are trade-offs to stuff like that. solutions

18:00

though. Like I maintain a plugin

18:02

called WP GraphQL Smart Cache, which you can add

18:04

on to WP GraphQL. And

18:08

then a lot, like my host,

18:10

my employer, WP Engine, we, we

18:13

support like edge caching for

18:15

GraphQL requests. So you can,

18:17

you can query whatever you want, whether

18:19

it's posts or users or taxonomy terms

18:21

or images or whatever you want. And

18:24

Smart Cache plugin, what it does, it tracks

18:26

those IDs and it tag it sends back

18:28

headers in the request. Or sorry, in the

18:30

API response, it sends back headers

18:33

that identify what was asked for in the request

18:35

and what was resolved. And then that can

18:37

be tagged in the cache. And then it

18:39

listens for events in WordPress, like editing

18:41

a post or publishing a new post or deleting

18:43

a post. And then it can

18:45

purge any GraphQL query response from the

18:47

cache if it was impacted by the action.

18:50

So it, it brings back some

18:52

of the benefits of caching a REST API,

18:56

but you get the benefit of the flexibility

18:58

of GraphQL. So it brings back

19:00

some of the stuff that if

19:02

you research like caching GraphQL, you'll read

19:05

a lot of arguments on like, Oh,

19:07

you can't cache it, whatever. It's

19:09

more difficult, but there are solutions and

19:12

we at least have provided some on our side. So,

19:15

yeah. And Jason, my assumption

19:18

there too, the fact that it is

19:20

a plugin is it's probably

19:22

pretty straightforward to integrate into WordPress. Am I

19:25

wrong to say that? Yeah. Yeah.

19:27

So it's a, yeah, it's free on

19:29

the wordpress.org repository. Just search WP GraphQL,

19:31

you can activate it. And then immediately

19:33

what happens when you activate it, you

19:35

get a graphical IDE. If you've ever

19:37

used GraphQL, you probably

19:40

have played with the graphical IDE. So it's just

19:42

an IDE where you put a query on the

19:44

left side and you click the execute button and

19:46

get the response on the right

19:48

side. So you get that in the WordPress admin

19:50

to start playing with. But then

19:52

you just get a GraphQL endpoint and then it's up to

19:54

you to do something with the data, right? Like it, it

19:58

Provides the API for you, but it doesn't. I

20:00

don't do anything with it, credit and let

20:02

you. Do. Something with it sorted. It's really

20:04

a developer two or. More

20:07

than like a lot of wordpress. Planes are like. You.

20:10

Do something you know it's like at it as some

20:12

you why we can drag and drop something or whatever

20:14

written this just as a way for you to access

20:16

data an A in a different way. Of

20:19

are just as A. I love that

20:21

because thinking about my experiences with Wordpress,

20:23

I remember a sewing plugins and it

20:25

was never just like plug and play.

20:28

You install plugin and you spend hours

20:30

tinkering with the settings, making shirt matches

20:32

your environment or third different needs that

20:34

you have by even just reading the

20:37

documentation and hear what you're describing. Jason

20:39

Wp Graft You all is well documented.

20:41

It handles a lot of use cases

20:43

like all the different entity ties that

20:46

you have to select from. I've even

20:48

see. It handles. Authentication.

20:50

And authorization debugging. and six just have

20:53

a solution that you plug and play

20:55

and you can actually get started to

20:57

use it. I think a lot of

20:59

developers listening to this can consider Wordpress

21:02

and Gabi Crap Wp to well as

21:04

something that they can just get started

21:06

with in start building with Vs. Here's

21:08

another plugin Years Yet another solution that

21:11

might even like lock them in. Yeah.

21:14

But. I have one of the one I'm

21:16

most common use cases where haven't like of user

21:18

for announced so I came from unique story like

21:20

in the newspaper were your suitcase data and house

21:22

or to snuff out of the guess like the

21:24

common. Use. Of gruff twelve like.

21:27

I'm. But. The the more common

21:29

like with frameworks like Next becoming you

21:31

know. On the rise the

21:33

it's already popular but it's country ski more

21:36

popular I'm and then you know the of

21:38

your smelled them you know. Knocks.

21:40

With view and all these all these

21:42

frameworks everybody wants to stuff in Javascript

21:45

and components right? Components make sense to

21:47

think a lot of people's brains fly

21:49

in. Ah, and especially if you're

21:51

on big teams working on big projects as

21:53

the site. Having. One

21:56

component that. can do everything

21:58

it needs to do usually stuff would

22:00

include styles, markup, and interactivity

22:02

all in one component. So

22:05

a lot of folks are trying to build component-based websites

22:09

or applications. And so

22:11

GraphQL lends to that very nicely. We

22:15

have a framework, like I mentioned, at WP

22:17

Engine, it's called Faust.js. You go to faustjs.org,

22:19

so that's F-A-U-S-T. But

22:22

it's like what we call a meta-framework

22:24

built on Next. And it

22:27

allows you to build Next sites, and

22:30

it works with WP GraphQL, but it does a

22:32

lot of cool stuff that you lose when you

22:34

go headless with WordPress. So WordPress

22:36

has the template system

22:39

built into it, but it's all PHP-based, right?

22:42

And so for folks that do wanna take advantage of

22:45

component-based architectures, they can

22:47

build their React components, couple

22:49

it with a GraphQL query, or what's

22:51

called a fragment in GraphQL. You can

22:54

specify just the fields that

22:56

this component needs, and

22:59

then you can write your markup and your styles

23:01

or do tailwind classes or whatever you're doing. And

23:06

then you can bring those

23:08

components in with other components, and then GraphQL

23:10

goes and gets the data for all of

23:12

your components at once. So

23:14

it's a pretty cool experience for folks. But

23:16

I think that's the most common use case

23:18

is folks building component-based front ends

23:21

right now, and I think it

23:24

lends very perfectly to that. I'd

23:26

also be curious, like we'd mentioned that, yeah, it's

23:29

a plugin, so that's awesome. It sounds like you

23:31

can integrate fairly easily. Can

23:34

existing blog

23:37

sites or whatever, like someone using WordPress for

23:39

five years and they have a lot of

23:41

data, is it hard to integrate?

23:43

Do they have to do something different or is

23:45

it pretty much like, well, you have all this

23:47

data, now you're just gonna be accessing it a

23:49

little bit differently? Yeah, so I would say it

23:51

would depend, right? If you're a, it

23:54

is a developer tool, right? So

23:57

if you're not comfortable interacting with APIs.

24:00

are making fetch requests to get data from API,

24:03

there's going to be a learning curve, right? A

24:06

lot of folks are coming from the

24:08

JavaScript ecosystem, and previously maybe

24:10

have said no to WordPress-based projects, but now

24:13

they can say, oh, I

24:15

don't have to be a PHP expert, right?

24:18

I can set up a couple plugins, and

24:20

I can get the data out into JavaScript

24:22

component architecture, with probably

24:25

not having to write much or any PHP.

24:28

There's going to be cases, depending on how a customer

24:30

project is, like you're probably

24:32

going to have to extend it, and you might have to know

24:34

some PHP or get somebody who does to help you or whatever.

24:37

But there's a lot of folks that can write

24:39

100% JavaScript and be very

24:41

successful using that now, so you don't have

24:44

to be a PHP or

24:46

WordPress expert in every

24:48

case. But it

24:50

is very much a developer tool. Like the

24:53

small business owner who just wants to click

24:55

and drag and drop stuff is probably not

24:57

for them. Will

24:59

it be maybe someday? Maybe. Maybe under

25:01

the hood it'll be used by tools

25:03

that do that, right? Like page

25:06

builder type of tools that are

25:08

built using components that have GraphQL

25:12

associated with it, but the business owner himself

25:14

probably wouldn't be the one using

25:16

GraphQL unless they're a very tech-savvy person.

25:20

I have a question, Jason. Would you describe

25:22

what we're talking about right now as sort

25:24

of a server-driven UI approach? Yeah,

25:26

I would call GraphQL... You

25:32

have the front end and the back end,

25:34

I would call GraphQL like the middle end,

25:36

right? It's basically what GraphQL does, you have

25:38

a schema and you describe all your types,

25:40

so you say this is all the types

25:42

of data that are possible. But

25:44

I don't describe... Like the GraphQL schema

25:46

doesn't describe how the things should look,

25:49

it just says, here's the data that's

25:51

possible. And so the front end still...

25:54

The front end, whoever's building the components still

25:56

ultimately decides what the UI looks like,

25:59

but they can see what's... possible to populate

26:01

that UI with by using tools

26:03

like Graphical to see what's in the schema. So

26:06

a lot of organizations

26:08

I've seen do what's called schema first development.

26:10

So you'll have your front end developer and

26:12

your back end developer come together or your

26:14

product owner, whoever it is, they'll come together

26:17

and they'll have a rough design and whatever

26:20

Figma or whatever software you're using to design these

26:22

days. And they'll say, this is

26:24

what it should look like. Does API support

26:26

that already or not? If it

26:28

does, cool, they can start building and

26:30

you can start mocking it out, right?

26:32

Like you can just populate your component

26:34

with mock JSON data and then your

26:36

back end developer can go, you

26:38

know, add fields as needed to

26:41

the schema to actually populate it. And

26:43

then all you do is get away the mock data and

26:45

put your Graphical query in and it's working. Right?

26:47

So, so it's like this kind of meat

26:50

in the middle approach where you say like, do

26:52

we already have this data? If not, okay, back end

26:54

developer, you need to go add that support front end

26:56

developer. You just need to make sure this shape of

26:58

data works with your component. Jason,

27:00

that's been huge too, right? Like that's

27:02

something that we've found, like

27:05

being at Netflix, that was something

27:07

we're using a lot of GraphQL.

27:09

And that was something that was really beneficial

27:11

in that, like, let's build those contracts between

27:14

back end and front end and being able

27:16

to, you know, agree upon that

27:18

and understand each other, what you need to do.

27:21

And you can kind of go off and create what you

27:23

need to create. And as long as you've followed

27:25

that, it works really well.

27:27

And so I've seen a lot of benefits to

27:29

like almost, you know, productivity gains where you can

27:31

actually collaborate a lot easier between the back end

27:34

and front end. So I'm glad you called that

27:36

out because I think that is a true benefit.

27:39

Yeah. And what, like what

27:41

I mentioned, we have a lot of JavaScript developers

27:43

that are, you know, attracted to this.

27:46

And you mentioned Kohler earlier, maybe before we

27:48

started recording, but advanced custom fields you used

27:50

in the past. And that's

27:52

a very popular plugin, which My

27:55

employer also owns WP Engine also Advanced. We'll

27:57

go ahead and talk about that. So

28:00

they feel that really complain with

28:02

them. Wordpress where you can. You.

28:04

Can create was com field groups seeking

28:07

the hands of the to have you

28:09

noticed the other email fields or whatever

28:11

passing the fields. your image uploader gallery

28:14

feel like all sorts of different types

28:16

of feals and you can just with

28:18

clicking buttons without having the know Pete

28:21

Pete you can fill the was in

28:23

wordpress for how to manage different types

28:25

content. And. Recently, probably since you've

28:27

used that, they added the ability to

28:29

register post types and taxonomies through a

28:31

desk as. Soon. As.

28:34

Much. As as posting pages out of

28:36

the box right as. But if you

28:39

want other things which most sites need

28:41

other things right light houses or cars

28:43

or you know, products are you know

28:45

whatever shoes or whatever you're managing enough

28:47

ah if ask us feel lousy the

28:50

say like who I want to manage

28:52

cars around a man's houses are only

28:54

use wordpress to manage x, y or

28:56

z other types data. See. Can

28:58

add those types? Just. I couldn't

29:01

a few buttons and now I maintain that we

29:03

pick up to have recess. Now.

29:05

Which which ties the together so you'd have to

29:07

be to tell him. And eight. Figures.

29:09

out what feels you have the advanced feals

29:11

and it brings for to the graft your

29:14

skin as well. And.

29:16

So. Is pretty cool experience eating her

29:18

with graduate Not like these fragments like

29:20

a mention which are like pieces of

29:22

query. Site. If you had

29:25

a little restaurant for example when you needed

29:27

to have list of types of food. You.

29:29

Can. Add support for managing

29:31

food v advanced as some fields and then

29:34

he could add your feals at me like

29:36

a price I'm a picture and. The.

29:38

Calories or whatever it is You know that you

29:40

need a putting all the ingredients. And.

29:43

Then just just by quick and some buttons

29:45

and then you could go see that in

29:47

graphical and you know and consume it with

29:49

draft. Well so javascript developer to do all

29:52

this. Without. Having a new any

29:54

pets V and then they could go build

29:56

their front end with components using craft your

29:58

fragments to say like. Wow. Component

30:00

that shows a list of ingredients. right?

30:03

And has a prominent the most headquarters

30:05

realism ingredients on. A food

30:07

type in the grass and so he also

30:09

you can simply saw this article about. A

30:12

code so. Like Wordpress is getting

30:14

to point. Where. Some low code. Kevlar.

30:17

Cms right? So you as a front end

30:19

developer can. Can. Do you from

30:22

and work he saw me to get be a developer on

30:24

that side of these are now I don't have any. Tools

30:26

at the moment that. Would. Lie to

30:29

be completely. The point and click.

30:31

Here. To. Bowl such but yeah

30:33

I mean supposedly there are tools were

30:36

a I Can Generate Frontier Web Applications

30:38

by I'm I'm still skeptical as us

30:40

and I do love what you're saying

30:42

though in terms of the plug and

30:44

play nature of all these tools. because

30:46

you already have a great platform like

30:48

Wordpress which can do so much and

30:50

a lot of developers were listening to

30:53

this, have used Wordpress and so now

30:55

it's great to know that they can

30:57

just add on these plug and play

30:59

tools like Wp Graft you well, advanced

31:01

custom fields, fast. J as to get

31:03

an even bigger, more richer platform. And

31:05

I love how we're talking about even

31:08

just like scheme of First Development because

31:10

it's Ride with Say at Netflix. That's

31:12

how we've gotten back and engineers and

31:14

print and engineers to speak the same

31:16

language. But as you're describing the ways

31:18

in which is a Pr, it's just

31:20

unblock you. He don't even

31:22

need to be a Phd expert. You can

31:24

work in the language is that you're comfortable

31:27

with and evolved your platforms with these plug

31:29

and play tools to do even so much

31:31

more. And I love that. I think like

31:33

for a lot of people figure out where

31:35

to start, work hard to build that next

31:38

website that even more richer tools like this

31:40

could really help. Yes, I also

31:42

like that you brought up the front and

31:44

aspect of it too because you're not

31:46

necessarily having to learn how to build a

31:49

full back. And for someone like Save Your

31:51

Does building. Like us for a client or

31:53

whatever that may be in and you don't

31:55

have the resources to have a dedicated back

31:58

and engineer some the like Wordpress, Gives

32:00

you so much control and then also on

32:02

the admin side for that. You know client

32:04

that like I need to add you know,

32:07

different shoes to my website or you know

32:09

restaurant needs to add different types of things

32:11

available to the for customer to order and

32:14

it's like they can do that. They have

32:16

that control they don't care. Liked about the

32:18

technology I'd they just want to be able

32:20

to be flexible or not. but then you

32:23

if you're the front an engineer skill yeah

32:25

that's taken care of for me and then

32:27

I can really focus on you know, scaling

32:29

up the front and making it a little

32:32

more custom for that client. I gotta love

32:34

that it's it's really taking the tooling to

32:36

that next level. Unity. I

32:38

mean girls of the similar upsides to

32:41

a commission. For the reason we even

32:43

started it was some frustrations with rest

32:45

and like when when things went wrong

32:47

not known was going wrong. And

32:49

the that's a big part to especially like

32:51

a couple of based development these days when.

32:54

When. Something in your application fails. You

32:56

don't want to know disliked For your

32:58

application this failing, you're like, whoa, What

33:00

part Specifically right? Like that. That

33:03

makes your job easier if you know

33:05

exactly what is failing and so being

33:07

able to like breakdown faced with component

33:10

level or components ask for specific things

33:12

and. And then grabbed your return.

33:14

Exactly what you ask for when something

33:16

does go wrong. In. My opinion, it's

33:18

a lot easier though. troubleshoot and identified

33:21

and six it. So for

33:23

the front end developer who maybe isn't a

33:25

wordpress experts stuff will go wrong like us

33:27

to software that the you know there could

33:29

be a plugin update that breaks and thing

33:31

like it could be.tick off to put him

33:33

up later could be not a plugin updates

33:35

in also like something you can go wrong

33:37

at some point. But. If you're

33:39

if everything's broken down to individual components, it's.

33:42

Often. Is easier in my

33:44

opinion. Thirty. Titan. Fi what

33:46

it is and gets a roulette resolution quicker.

33:48

Also, even just the told practice of the

33:51

said earlier jason is that. Almost.

33:53

half the or let is running on wordpress

33:55

oh yeah something does go wrong chances are

33:57

you're going to be up guys out of

33:59

where it went wrong for some help. I

34:01

think back to my experience with WordPress and

34:03

as soon as you start to become more

34:05

custom back in the day you used

34:08

to run into a wall but with tools

34:10

that you're describing today it sounds like these

34:12

are paved paths that help users almost

34:14

coalesce to each other's use cases but

34:17

I also think about like even the

34:19

maturity of some of this stuff where you

34:22

know I think to the past where I

34:24

was encouraged not to use WordPress because people

34:27

I was working for were afraid that my

34:30

software would look like someone else's software and they'd

34:32

be able to attack my software but

34:34

what you're saying is no it's matured to

34:36

such a point where there's

34:39

clarity there is observability into some

34:41

of these issues and by componentizing

34:44

our software development it

34:46

makes everything reusable it makes things

34:48

more predictable and I love that

34:50

I think that's awesome yeah there's

34:53

a lot of we have I don't know

34:55

if I can share any of their sites

34:57

but there's a customer that uses WP GraphQL

34:59

and they build headless Nux sites which is

35:01

like the Vue version of

35:04

Next.js right and they have

35:06

a bunch of Webby Awards for like

35:08

they're like these super creative like almost

35:11

makes you think of like the flash

35:13

days where everything was animated and stuff's

35:15

moving and you know like you would

35:17

never ever guess that they're WordPress sites you

35:19

know what I mean like they're completely custom but

35:21

all the data is the people

35:23

publishing the content still want to use a CMS

35:25

they're familiar with right they don't want to get

35:28

trained on some new system but the

35:30

front end looks completely different

35:32

than anything you've ever seen you

35:34

know so I

35:37

love that you just called that out Jason

35:39

like it is that too is because so

35:41

many people are using WordPress they may have

35:43

like from the publisher side of things they're

35:45

used to that they're used to that editor

35:47

having to learn a new tool is frustrating

35:50

and also if you want to completely

35:52

overhaul the site and make it more

35:54

interactive or do something that

35:56

doesn't change for the admin side of things that

35:58

doesn't change for them publishing, that's

36:01

just data that continually gets published, but

36:03

you can completely overhaul and change things

36:06

from the developer perspective and what the

36:08

user actually views, but that data doesn't

36:10

change. And I think that is really

36:13

cool to call that out. I think just

36:15

wanted to highlight that. Yeah, speaking

36:18

of that, the concept of having like

36:20

multiple front ends for the same back

36:22

end, like when

36:24

I rebuilt my front end

36:26

for wpgraphical.com, for example, at

36:28

one point I was just on a traditional WordPress site

36:31

because I needed something up fast, right? So I was

36:33

like, I'm an API, but I'm

36:35

just gonna build in a monolithic WordPress. But

36:37

on the side, I started building a

36:39

front end. At the time I was working at Gatsby,

36:43

and so we were building headless front end in

36:45

Gatsby, which pulled in data. So I can

36:47

have my traditional WordPress site rendering on the

36:50

side, I'm building a Gatsby site that's pulling in data

36:52

from my WordPress, and then when I'm ready, I just

36:54

set the DNS, right? Like I can

36:56

have two sites rendering the same data. And

36:59

then when I decided to change from Gatsby to

37:01

Next, same thing, my Gatsby site is still being

37:03

served to users. I start building on

37:05

the side, my next site, right? I'm

37:07

not changing a single thing with how I publish my

37:10

work. You know, so like my WordPress

37:12

CMS is unchanged. Normally, like if you're

37:14

going to do a rebranding for a

37:16

site running on WordPress, it's a chore.

37:18

You've got to like, typically, you migrate

37:20

the whole database somewhere else, you activate

37:22

a new theme, you know, you

37:24

do all this work. And then

37:27

there's some day where you're like, hey, guys, don't

37:29

log in for 12 hours, right? We've got

37:31

to do a content freeze while we switch

37:33

everything over. It's like, you don't have

37:35

to do that anymore. Like, you know, to

37:38

the second you change the DNS, people could

37:40

still be logged in publishing content. And

37:42

your front end developers are just building their

37:44

components over here, and when they're ready, just

37:47

flip it, you know, from pointing the

37:49

front end to WordPress to pointing to a next

37:51

site or a spelt site or whatever

37:53

you're building in. Yeah, I think it also

37:56

makes it a little bit easier for managing

37:58

data across environments to like... If you have

38:00

a local environment, test environment,

38:02

staging, whatever, all the different

38:04

environments, it does make it

38:06

easier. I absolutely remember having

38:08

to change plugins

38:11

or themes or completely overhaul

38:13

a WordPress site and

38:15

you're dealing with people that are still, they're not

38:17

stopping their job, right? You're trying

38:19

to do it behind the scenes and

38:21

you're right. It was not necessarily easy

38:23

to do that. It wasn't the hardest

38:26

thing because there are ways in which

38:28

you can develop a theme and just

38:30

switch the theme. As

38:32

long as everything works, it was pretty seamless, but

38:34

I'm 100% with you is that if you

38:37

can abstract that even more, it makes it

38:39

that much simpler. You

38:42

don't have to have those down times because businesses

38:44

don't want down times. They're like, no, I want

38:46

to keep going. Also, as a developer, you don't

38:48

want to go, oh, well, I could do it

38:51

on the weekend or I can do it late

38:53

at night in the evening because no one's working.

38:55

That sucks too. Both scenarios

38:57

don't work that well. Yeah. Another

38:59

cool thing too that we've been

39:01

seeing in the JavaScript front end

39:04

ecosystem is Vercel,

39:07

for example, if you deploy something to Vercel, it'll

39:09

deploy every time you open a port request your

39:12

code base, right? Then what's cool is you can

39:14

go look at that preview URL. You

39:16

can look at your website at that state. You

39:20

can have two different PRs. One changes your site

39:22

from blue to purple and you can look at

39:24

your blue site and your purple site or whatever.

39:26

Then you can do cool stuff like add comments

39:29

to individual pages and stuff like that. There's

39:32

some really cool stuff that you can do. Normal

39:35

WordPress, you can't look at what your site

39:38

looked like yesterday or the day before. These

39:41

headless run-ins are building static assets of your

39:43

site at a given point in time. It's

39:47

pretty cool. It's like time travel through

39:49

your website development. Yeah, it's

39:52

pretty cool. I hope it

39:54

gets so funny because we're

39:57

basically almost describing the way in which technology

39:59

is... cyclical and I feel like that's a

40:01

theme on this podcast, but in

40:03

this sense, WordPress created a

40:06

development model that these technologies like

40:08

GraphQL came back around and

40:10

made better. And WordPress is

40:12

reaping the benefits of this iteration

40:15

and innovation because now separation of

40:18

concerns is becoming better. And when

40:20

it becomes better, developers no

40:22

longer have to proliferate their changes

40:25

throughout one code base. You

40:27

have your headless CMS over here,

40:30

you have your API over there, and

40:32

that separation of concerns as you're

40:34

describing Jason makes things more reusable.

40:38

And what I love most about this,

40:40

and maybe I'm just kind of getting

40:42

caught up in the moment, but it

40:44

really democratizes development in my opinion. It

40:47

enables developers of all ranges of

40:49

skill to come in and start

40:51

with WordPress, add an API

40:53

with WP GraphQL. And

40:55

then to build their front end in such a way

40:58

that you don't have to be a WordPress expert anymore.

41:00

You can be a front end expert, you can be

41:02

an API expert, or you can be a WordPress expert.

41:06

And I just think it's cool

41:08

to see how technology continues to

41:10

improve on itself. Yeah. And

41:13

like you said, stuff is cyclical too. I

41:15

think like CMS is like web

41:18

used to be fairly static, right? There's like

41:20

HTML pages that you would upload via FTP.

41:22

And like if you want to make a change, you

41:24

got to go like change the HTML and upload a new file. And

41:27

open Dreamweaver. Yeah. And

41:29

so like, like the performance was probably pretty good,

41:31

right? It was like these static files that, you

41:34

know, there wasn't server logic in between is just

41:36

like, here's your file, man. So

41:38

now, but the CMS is like, oh, that's hard.

41:41

Like we need to solve that. But then at

41:43

the cost of okay, now it's dynamic. Now the

41:45

server's taking a hit every time people load your

41:47

page. And then there's like caching that got figured

41:49

out and whatever. But

41:52

now we're back to static. We're like a

41:54

very popular way to build sites with

41:56

Next, for example, is to output static

41:58

files. user hits, they're

42:00

getting a static asset from

42:03

Cloudflare or whatever, and there's

42:05

no server being hit. And

42:07

so, we're back to that point where

42:10

you can use a CMS though, but

42:12

like wp-graphical.com, for example, is

42:14

all static. You're getting 50, 60

42:18

millisecond responses or whatever. It's not hitting

42:20

a WordPress server. All my data or

42:22

a chunk of my data is in WordPress. I

42:24

have multiple data pool. Some of my

42:27

docs are marked down files in GitHub, but

42:29

then my marketing pages and blog posts are

42:31

in WordPress. So, it's like multiple data sources

42:33

come together and make one unified front end.

42:35

That's another cool part

42:38

about APIs and components

42:40

and stuff. So, we're back to that

42:42

point in web development where it's

42:44

a static file that the user is getting served 20

42:46

years ago, but

42:49

there's the dynamic nature. I can go hit

42:51

publish in WordPress. It invalidates next

42:54

cache, next rebuilds the page on

42:56

demand and creates a

42:58

new static file. So, my users are

43:00

always getting that static response,

43:03

50 millisecond responses,

43:07

but they're seeing up-to-date data. So, I

43:09

could go publish a new post and you'd be

43:11

able to see it within a couple seconds, but

43:14

the file is static. So, it's

43:17

a really cool step of

43:19

cyclical, but we're coming up with new solutions to

43:22

get to the same end result that we used to have. I

43:26

love it. Yeah, it's so

43:28

great. I mean, I love going down this

43:30

journey and just learning the updates on WordPress

43:32

because it has changed significantly and quite frankly,

43:34

made it a lot better for developers and

43:37

end users. I'm

43:39

curious, before we dive into our

43:41

picks, I'm curious to know, what

43:44

are some advice that you would

43:46

give someone wanting to leverage WPGraphQL?

43:50

How would they get started? What

43:52

are things that they can maybe avoid making

43:54

mistakes with? Yeah,

43:57

sure. So, yeah, like anything,

43:59

there's... There's trade-offs with

44:01

any technology, right? So like we mentioned,

44:03

one of the benefits of GraphQL is

44:05

being able to fetch multiple

44:07

resources in one request, right? But

44:10

there's a cost to that too, right? It's

44:12

not magic, right? The server still

44:14

has to get these resources and put it. So

44:17

there is a tipping point, and it's not

44:19

the same for everybody. It depends on your

44:21

other plugins you have and what type of

44:23

data you're asking for. But there is a

44:25

tipping point when asking for too much data

44:27

is too much data, right? So

44:31

be cautious, just because you can doesn't

44:33

mean you should, right? So like at

44:35

some point, you probably still should break

44:37

up your GraphQL requests into multiple requests.

44:41

Not always, it doesn't mean like every time

44:44

you fetch two resources should be two queries.

44:46

Like that's not the case, but you

44:48

shouldn't be creating for like 500,000 posts with

44:51

their authors and their terms and their comments like

44:53

all in one payload. That doesn't make any sense,

44:55

right? So use your brain a little bit too

44:59

and just be like, when I do this

45:01

outside GraphQL, would this make sense outside GraphQL,

45:04

right? And if not, then it might not make sense

45:06

in GraphQL too. It might be easier to do, but

45:09

you maybe shouldn't do it too. So

45:11

there's things like that to consider. Also with

45:14

like caching validation, like we have solutions

45:16

for caching validation, but the more

45:18

data that you query, the

45:20

more actions will be tied in validating that

45:22

data too. So like having a balance of

45:24

like getting the data that

45:27

you need, but also what does the user need,

45:29

right? Does the user actually need a thousand posts on

45:31

the blog? Probably not, like

45:34

maybe 20. And then when they scroll, maybe

45:36

a load more button or infinite

45:38

scroll or something, you know? So just be

45:40

smart, like just because you can't

45:42

do it doesn't mean you should. So those are some

45:45

things you should think about. There are plugins

45:47

for, like I said, like there's caching

45:49

plugin, there's the GraphQL plugin for

45:51

ACF, there's all sorts of different

45:53

stuff, but WordPress is

45:55

massive. There's thousands of WordPress

45:57

plugins that do lots of unique things in WordPress.

46:00

And so there's definitely not coverage for everything

46:02

out there. So if you

46:04

need X, Y, or Z

46:06

functionality, the counterpart in

46:08

GraphQL might not exist yet. So you

46:10

might have to roll up your sleeves and

46:14

make a WordPress plugin work with the

46:16

GraphQL API. So that's

46:18

true with even with like the REST API too

46:20

or anything else. You

46:23

might have to do some custom work or find someone who can

46:25

help you do it. But

46:28

so there's things like that. You do

46:30

lose some things, like I mentioned, like WordPress

46:32

does have the whole template layer to it.

46:34

If you're building sites in traditional WordPress,

46:37

if you go with React or some other technology,

46:40

you have to do a lot of that yourself, right? Like,

46:43

so fast we try and help with that. I would encourage

46:45

you to check it out if you are building stuff in

46:47

Next. Like we do things like, at the

46:51

center of WordPress, whenever you visit a URL,

46:54

WordPress knows how to translate that URL to

46:56

figure out what type of thing it is

46:58

and return a template that matches that thing,

47:01

right? Like if you visit a user profile, like

47:03

on a newspaper, you see a list

47:05

of posts written by that user. So WordPress

47:08

knows that that URL represents a user

47:10

and should load a template of users

47:12

posts, right? Or if you visit the

47:14

homepage, it knows to load the homepage template. So

47:17

fast, like we have a we have a templating

47:19

system that works very similar to

47:22

WordPress so you can build

47:24

templates based on the URL that you visit.

47:26

Fast knows how to talk to GraphQL to figure

47:29

out what data it is and

47:31

then what templates should match. And then so

47:33

you can just in Next provide templates that

47:35

match and whichever one matches first so it

47:37

will load very similar to WordPress.

47:39

So a lot of stuff like that, headless

47:41

developers are trying to figure out on their

47:43

own. And we're trying to centralize

47:46

some of that. Like the stuff that

47:48

you lose by decoupling WordPress, we're

47:50

giving it back to you. But allowing

47:52

you to take advantage of cool stuff

47:54

like components that you can't do in

47:56

the traditional WordPress. So I

47:58

love that. Yeah,

48:01

I think also one thing I would add to

48:03

maybe not so much for WP GraphQL

48:05

as a best advice, but you

48:08

mentioned plugins. We've actually mentioned it quite a

48:10

few times in this episode is

48:12

one thing I've learned over the years

48:14

is use them sparingly. Like there is

48:17

so many plugins out there and you

48:19

can go and add way too many

48:21

plugins. I've had clients that want everything

48:23

and everything that can be customizable and

48:25

it just adds more complexity that

48:27

you may not need. So that's just one piece

48:29

of advice I would share. I would just

48:32

say after listening to this episode, if you're

48:34

not sure where to start, check out the documentation because

48:36

I was looking at, I've used WordPress

48:38

before, but I was looking at the documentation

48:41

for WP GraphQL and it

48:43

is comprehensive and it's presented in a

48:45

way that I think any developer can

48:47

pick up. And so I always recommend

48:50

starting off with documentation or examples and

48:52

there are plenty. We

48:54

just launched a new site last

48:56

week for the ACF extension too.

48:59

So acf.wpgraphql.com, still some stuff

49:01

in progress in there, but for

49:03

that particular extension, it's even more comprehensive

49:06

for just that one plugin. All

49:08

right. Well, that's a good time for us to jump

49:10

into picks. In each episode of the Front End Happy

49:12

Hour podcast, we like to share picks of things that

49:15

we found interesting, want to share with all of you.

49:17

Cole, you want to start us off? Sure.

49:20

Today I have two picks.

49:22

My first pick is Costco's

49:24

Kirkland peanut butter pretzels, which

49:26

are ironically in

49:28

my background right now.

49:31

And they're very good for when you need

49:33

a snack and I just, you'll see this

49:35

kind of disappear over the day. My

49:38

second pick is I recently moved

49:40

and my house doesn't have any

49:42

forced air at the moment. And

49:44

so I've picked up one of

49:46

these CO2 sensors from Aeronet. And

49:48

as you can see right now,

49:50

even just in this episode, I'm

49:52

in the yellow territory. This is where you start

49:55

to get a little bit like lightheaded, a little

49:58

bit like you've just exercised. And

50:00

so this is a great sensor for reminding me

50:02

when I need to open a window or go

50:04

on a walk after All

50:07

day sitting in virtual meetings right

50:10

on Jason. What do you have for us? Oh Man,

50:13

I don't think I can't prepare for this.

50:15

I'll go I'll say a stream deck. So I've got

50:17

a stream deck. I have This

50:19

little tool so I could do it's got buttons, you

50:22

know that I can press I can do things like

50:24

control my lights or whatever, you know

50:26

straight from here So I can

50:29

configure shortcuts and stuff to do things like that

50:31

I can even turn on lights

50:33

in other rooms and stuff like that

50:35

just from here or like control zoom

50:37

settings or whatever We'll go

50:39

with that Yeah, that's a

50:41

good one I definitely leverage that one

50:43

especially in meetings and things like that to

50:46

you can have like raising hand or mute

50:48

Unmute like there's is a really

50:50

customizable for what you want to do with it

50:52

Which is pretty cool and actually having physical buttons

50:54

is great. So that's a good one I just

50:56

have one pick for this episode. I Obviously

50:59

been doing a lot of photography for years

51:01

on my own I love seeing my kids

51:03

get into it. And so I purchased

51:06

two cameras for one for each of

51:08

my kids It's just like a small

51:10

point-and-shoot camera It's not an expensive one

51:13

at all, but it's been

51:15

really cool to see them just like using

51:17

them. They're shooting video They're taking photos and

51:19

you know, it's just it's been a really

51:21

cool thing So if people have kids want

51:24

a cheap point-and-shoot that works well I

51:26

will link that in the show notes, but it's it's been

51:29

a cool one to try out Jason Thanks

51:31

so much for joining us. This is amazing

51:33

I love taking a thank you for taking

51:35

us down the journey of WordPress and WP

51:37

GraphQL It's been great to learn a lot

51:40

on that. Where can people get in touch

51:42

with you? Yeah, so WP GraphQL calm, of

51:44

course like Cole mentioned that's where

51:46

the docs and everything are I'm on Twitter

51:49

at WP GraphQL or at Jason ball. J

51:51

s 1 b a h l So

51:54

you find me on or X calm? I guess

51:56

I still call Twitter. What's the agreement? Do we

51:58

call it Twitter? So I still call We

52:00

call it Twitter. Yes, definitely. No one knows what

52:03

X is. I call it Twitter until

52:05

I'm not calling it at all anymore. That's

52:07

fair. Yeah, exactly.

52:10

And then on the

52:12

WPGraphQL website, if you scroll all the way to the

52:14

bottom, we have a link to Slack community. So you

52:16

can join that from that link. We

52:18

have, I don't know, 3,000 or something people

52:20

in there helping each other out,

52:23

you know, building stuff with

52:25

WPGraphQL. So I'm pretty active in there.

52:27

Awesome. I love when there's a community

52:29

around like any certain technology because you

52:31

learn a lot from one another and

52:33

can get that help, which is great.

52:36

You can find Front End Happy Hour

52:38

at frontendhappyhour.com. We are now on YouTube.

52:40

We are recording these videos, which is

52:42

great for our episodes. So you can

52:45

find us on YouTube at Front End

52:47

HH, on Twitter. Yes, Twitter at Front

52:49

End HH. Any last words?

52:51

I'm on YouTube too. I forgot that. All

52:54

right. So just search WPGraphQL on there

52:56

too. Why are we not on TikTok? TikTok

53:01

might need to be the next thing, Cole. That is

53:03

like probably the next thing that we need to be

53:05

doing. I feel like TikTok

53:07

is the new Twitter. At least I'm

53:09

seeing a lot of tech start to proliferate

53:12

there.