E137 – Growing a Powerful Decoupled WordPress Solution (Leonardo Losoviz, GraphQL API)

In today’s episode, Joe talks to Leonardo Losoviz, a freelance developer and writer, with an ongoing quest to integrate innovative paradigms such as Serverless PHP and GraphQL into existing PHP frameworks such as WordPress. He is a one-man team running GraphQL API plugin, offering the most powerful GarphQL experience into any WordPress site.

Leonardo fearlessly shares his expertise in coding and developing websites, the ongoing challenges of promoting a new plugin, and the opportunities of building-in-public approach for developers to reach more audiences.

What to Listen For:

• 00:00 Intro
• 02:27 Welcome to the pod, Leonardo!
• 03:03 The freedom of building websites as a hobby
• 05:03 What is GraphQL API?
• 12:23 Security issues on open source API
• 16:24 Pulling SEO data on a decoupled site
• 20:42 The struggles of promoting a product
• 24:40 How do you rate success?
• 28:43 Coming soon: a behind-the-scene monthly newsletter on plugin development 
• 30:45 The building-in-public strategy
• 33:32 Strategies to eventually compete in the plugin market
• 38:56 Find Leonardo online!

Episode Resources:

• GraphQL API
• Tweet Leonardo
• Ask Leonardo a question
• Leave an iTunes review or binge-watch past episodes
• Send questions to yo@wpmrr.com for the next Q&A pod
• Visit the WPMRR website

Podcast Transcript:

Joe Howard: [00:00:00] Howdy folks, Joe Howard here this week, I got to sit down and chat with Leonardo . Leonardo is a plugin developer, the plugin developer behind graph QL API. So this conversation started off pretty technical kind of explain like what graph QL is. We go into, like, what is headless WordPress or decoupled?

WordPress? What is like a react front end versus a WordPress backend look like? So the first 10 or 15 minutes of the pod are pretty technical. So if you want to hear all that background, just keep listening. But if you wanted to skip all that and go to the second half of the podcast, that’s totally cool too.

We started off more technical, but we got into more of the philosophy behind building open source software. Leonardo is kind of self-admittedly, he’s a tinkerer. He’s again, very technical guy, adept developer, but around growing. Open source software around getting more adopters for his plugin against, you know, working on making his tool a really known around the WordPress space has been a challenge for him.

So we talked a little bit about some strategies and tactics around doing that. What he’s tried, what’s worked for him, what hasn’t worked for him. And I gave a little advice around how, and maybe some more community stuff he talked about. You know, working with some of the community on, on Reddit, some of whom are our biggest fans of WordPress.

So it was very interesting conversation talking about that as well. So yeah, graph ql-api.com. If you want to check out the website while you listen, uh, and that is it for the intro without further ado, please. Welcome.

Leonardo Losoviz: [00:01:45] WP MRR WordPress podcast is brought to you by WP buffs. WP buffs manages WordPress websites, 24 seven and powers digital growth for agencies, freelancers and WordPress professionals. Join our white label program. And by next week you could be offering 24 seven white label website support to your clients and passively growing your monthly recurring revenue.

Or become a WP buffs affiliate to earn 10% monthly payouts every month for the lifetime of every client. And finally, if you’re looking to sell your WordPress business or website, check out the WP buffs acquisition unit, learn more about all3@wpbuffs.com.

Joe Howard: [00:02:26] All right. We are live on the part that this week we’ve got Leonardo, the soul is on the podcast this week.

Lenardo why don’t you tell folks a little bit about what you do with WordPress. What I’ve been

Leonardo Losoviz: [00:02:36] working with WordPress since 2012. Now I’m a developer. I will be in their websites. And I said, well, building websites, I will be doing my own solutions for the websites and my own solution grew into some library, which is what I’m working on now, which is based on graph QL.

It gave us an address solution. And now I’m not beating websites for clients anymore. I’m full on working on this library. It’s a plugin

Joe Howard: [00:03:01] nowadays. Okay, cool. So it sounds like you went from either like freelancing or client work and moved into more selling your own product or building your own plugin open-source plugin.

Is that

Leonardo Losoviz: [00:03:13] right? Actually, I have never mind to get a client. I’m never even making money. I’m good with building stuff. No, with selling stuff. So I was actually building a website for a friend of mine. He could send it to you. Uh, I would vote on Siri for him and you know, when I get hobby, so, because he’s a coffee, you can take liberties, you can experiment, you can do what you want to do.

You see something new and you’re like, I’m going to try this out. You know? So, you know, you don’t have the recruitability or having to make money in the test. So I was trying stuff. And actually, I, I, when I started with WordPress at the beginning, I’m talking about 2012. Okay. For me, it was glorious. You’re like, wow, look at this.

Like nowadays, you know, people complain about WordPress because I mean, it’s all by now, but when I started, which will not, you will not all you on the new for me was just amazing. I need this moment, you know, that we’ll know Facebook nowadays, everyone says needs to be a Facebook. Everyone, you know, it doesn’t use react.

They’re like, Oh my God, what are you doing? You know, but I’ve been going on with WordPress and I’m still in love with WordPress. And I don’t think I will stop in love with WordPress in that sense. So, as I was saying to now our playing and I’m playing with WordPress since yeah. Since students and on Twitter, trying on new things and coding new things and experimenting with weed stuff.

Um, and not so much client work I don’t have. Yeah.

Joe Howard: [00:04:37] Cool. Tell me, as, as someone who’s not as technical, you mentioned this project you’re working on, so people want to check out the stuff you’re working on. It’s just that graph ql-api.com. You mentioned before, you know, plugin library. As someone who’s not very technical, I’m kind of like, what, what does the library mean?

What does a, you know, as opposed to a library, like in a plugin or part of a plugin, maybe we could also start with just like, what is graph QL? And like, how does it fit into the WordPress ecosystem? Like what would people use it for? You know,

Leonardo Losoviz: [00:05:12] what breasts, it’s a software for making websites. But what does it mean to make it work set?

Right. You know, when they ask you, Hey, can you make it work for me? Yeah, sure. How much will you charge? Well, I don’t know what works or do you want to build, right. So there are websites and websites. You can actually be a bicycle or you’re going to have the fastest car, or you’re going to have like a, like a studio apartment or you go ahead and print a house, you know?

So it’s the same with websites at the end of the day. So in this sense, no way we have these trends to become more modern. These trend to use client side frameworks for rendering the content of your website to make it dynamic. So the prime example of this is Facebook. I think Facebook has set like a precedent in the sense that it’s easy to use and it’s free.

So then everyone expects that kind of quality. So then the question is how do we make Facebook, like websites that had a couple of tools. Well, you can call them libraries or we can call them tools at the end of the day, the library, because it’s only one of them is called Riyadh. Another one is called view and I’ve used that a couple of them.

So the idea with these tools is that you will render the website on the client, on the browser, and then you can interact with the work site very easily. So for instance, when you’re typing and the response, you know, appears on there on real time, When you’re chatting with somebody that like a small popup and now you type, you know, you had the response from the other person that he comes at the same time, all of these dynamic websites.

Right. So they’re all rendered on the client’s side. So if you think about WordPress, WordPress is very static in that sense, because historically you render the whole website on the server and you need to refresh the whole page, right? So you could not have that interactivity. That I type something on the screen.

There is a response, you know, that the screen actually changes on real time. And so the idea is, well, we still want to use WordPress. So how do we make that happen? Deviate to the couple, the server side and the client side. So now you have the server, would you see in WordPress to handle all of your data?

You still upgrade your boss, you have your users, you add your comments, all of the data. You still have a WordPress backend. So manage that, but on the front end on the client, you use these tools such as react or view to produce HTML, to convert that into what the user would see. Okay. But now how do we communicate?

That’s where you have graph QL. Let let’s not talk about graph QL yet because  is a new tool. There’s something called rest, which is what you have in world breasts scenes. Version 4.7, which is what is called an API is basically a way to get data. So you’d send the WordPress server. I need all the blog posts.

Please give them to me. And the API, the rest API will return a list of blog posts in a easy to consume format with you called Jason. So in the Jason, you will have an array of item of items, all the blog, post title, URL, and author. Time, you’re an offer time. You are an offer for all of them. So you get all this data and in the front, in the front end, you can use react for you to produce your website, your webpage.

Okay. So this is what we have had with WordPress since version 4.7. So like three, three to four years ago. So now we have graph QL graph. QNE the same concept as rests. Would it feel differences? The few differences is the rest. You get all the data that it really find, or what is called an invoice. So with rest, you say, I need all the blog posts and they say, you’re ready.

That will be slash booked. And you get that and you cannot really customize it. So whatever you’re given, if you have, and you have to use that, if you need some custom data, You need to create another input. So when you have one end point, you can use it. When you have two end points, you can use it when you have 10 end points, you can use it.

But when you have a big project and you might need like 15 points or 100 end points, it becomes a management problem to have to use. Rest graph. QL works differently. We’ve left here and you have one single endpoint. So with rest you have slash posts. Slash Pullmans slash users with graph QL. You have only one single endpoint, which is slash graph QL, and w and then you do a query and you ask for the data that you need exactly the data that you need.

So you say, I need the posts and for each post, I need the things, ID, title, and condoms. And then the end point will give you exactly that data. So then you don’t need to manage like the, the end points on the bucket. So at the end of the day, rest and wrap you in serve the same purpose, which is so good to have the server transfer data to the client.

The difference is that what wild rice, the data that you get to redefine in graph QL is dynamic. You get it on the fly. You can say, I need this data. So then he becomes lingual.

Joe Howard: [00:10:58] Cool. Okay. I think I followed that. I’ve had the conversations on this podcast before about headless WordPress, and that was a Scott Ballinger from app presser.

That was episode 72. Is that people have called this kind of like headless WordPress, decoupled, WordPress. We’re talking about the same thing there is that

Leonardo Losoviz: [00:11:16] right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It’s called the couples because you’re decoupling the backend and the front end. Now you’re going to have war breasts on the backend and you can render the content with any other tool.

It doesn’t have to be a WordPress. So now they are decoupled.

Joe Howard: [00:11:32] Gotcha. Okay, cool. So this has been an interesting topic for me. I’m on your website right now. Just graph ql-api.com. And I see you have like a, a cool, like interactive area here. Where I believe it’s talking about that single end point. You’re talking about that your tool uses because I see like you can press this play button and it’ll do this.

It’ll try to grab what it needs from you, but it looks like it’s grabbing from a single endpoint and your tool is just asking for what it wants. Right. It’s asking for URL, title, excerpt, date, comments, limit three. And based on that single end point, you can just pull from that end point. I feel like makes it easier again, I’m not super technical, but.

I like to be able to ask for something and get what I want back and probably the same for developers. Um, tell me a little bit about security issues around the open API. I know there’s been talk of like turning off that API because of security risks in the past. That’s something that’s still a concern.

Is that, how does that kind of work within your framework?

Leonardo Losoviz: [00:12:36] Yeah. All right. Um, one thing, uh, before we jump into the, into this issue, You, you were playing with the client. You can press play and even the data, but you can also play with it. You can actually modify the query. So if you start typing, it will list down.

It will list down all the fees that you have available on there, or what is called the schema. So this is what we have the security, Brenda, you were asking when you type there, it gives you all the things, right. But that is available to everyone, not just to you. Who is the admin on the website? You go now you’ll have one single endpoint.

I am somebody that you don’t know, and I can also type a query against your word set, and I can see all of your data. So that is potentially a security problem because you know what happens if you have private data, the user’s email, should that be public or should that be private? Now, this is not a new topic because I mean, you have different with WP recipe.

I also. That you had a user’s email, should we make that public or should we make it a private, but graph QL? The problem is compounded because all of your data is available on that single endpoint. So what do we do? Okay. I would send you a, this is a problem that comes with graph QL, right? In general, like, I mean, all of the solutions that you have for WordPress, for Laravel PHP or JavaScript.

For.net for all of them, every single graph your server will need to cope with these fisheries is a big problem with graffiti. The way that I have based this challenge is with something called persistent queries, which is the intersection between graph UN and the rest. So if you’re actually playing on, or if you drag the documentation on the site, you can read about the you’re going to play so much about that because  worries.

It’s an endpoint that you publish on your website like wrists. So then what is the idea? The idea is instead of having the single endpoint that is available to everyone, you only have it on your backend, on your WordPress, on your WP admin. So then you log into the WP admin and you have the same client to compose graph your queries.

Then you grade your query and URL and content. And when you have the query that you want. You publish it. And then you publish that, that becomes an endpoint on its own URL, similar with rest. And now you grab that URL from the new endpoint and you access that on your website. So that means that you are once again, finding all the data that is exposed, not everything you, and you can still access everything.

But by default, the default behavior on, on, on my solution, on my plugin, These two, the same as the single end point and to have the admin create versus the inquiries because they’re very secure.

Joe Howard: [00:15:42] Cool. I, I remember when I was talking with Scott in our conversation about headless, we talked about what were some of the reasons you may want to do.

Decoupled WordPress and have kind of a WordPress backend and react front end or something like that. And one of the reasons was performance and it was just the speed loading time of, of the website. And I remember Scott’s, he has his podcast, he created his podcast website on a headless website and it was so fast, like going to different URLs, different pages.

It was like almost instantaneously loading. And I was like pretty blown away. But as someone who’s, um, kind of a layman from a technical standpoint, if I’m thinking about like, I want to create a website that has good SEO. And usually when I create a WordPress website, okay. I’ll use like, you know, SEO plugin or rank math, SEO, plugin.

And that’s how I kind of do my SEO. How does that work when it comes to. Pushing that kind of stuff through to maybe a react front end. Like I want to make sure all my title tags are correct and meta descriptions are correct. And that the SEO data is pushing through so that I can have my. WordPress backend react front end sites, still rank well and have good on-page SEO so that I can drive some traffic.

Is that easy or is that still a challenge? Like how does that SEO data pull through to a react front end in terms of decoupled site? Is that a, is that a challenge?

Leonardo Losoviz: [00:17:06] It’s complexity. So what you’re actually saying it will, we all want to have, and you need to invest a lot of time and a lot of equity into that.

So what you want is a website. And on one side is the capital so that you can access all the data and render that very quickly on the front end so that the user can have a very snappy experience. But at the same time, if you load that same URL, it has to come from the server. So then you have exactly the two solutions.

You’re coding it twice. You’re putting it on the server to produce HTML that works well with SEO. And at the same time, you’re calling it on the client side so that the user can have a snappy experience itself is a challenge. Uh, they know standard solution for that. The best strategy is to use the tools in Riyadh than looser.

What do you call server side rendering that you can also render the, the react components on the server and bring your HTML on the server. And so the same components. You can render them on the client or on the server, but it’s effort and there’s, you know what I mean? The best websites in the world, the nicest ones, they have huge teams basically.

So take care of these challenges. Now we have a COVID alert right on Gutenberg. If you think about it is react that it being a server side rendered because actually you go to the WP admin, you go to the WordPress editor and when you create the blockbuster, you’re using react. And the way that it works Gutenberg is that he saves that HTML on the, of the blog post and that he says it render on the server and Gutenberg right now doesn’t really work on the client side is a lot of effort to make a good number website that works on the client side one day, they will, they will work on this issue to have Gutenberg, be both server site render and also perfectly working on the client side.

And then we’re breasts will be massive in the sense that you can be in these wonderful websites by, you know, using the WordPress editor. When that happens, it will be extremely awesome. But until then it’s a challenge.

Joe Howard: [00:19:20] Yeah. I think they started on Gutenberg knowing that that was a long-term project and that, that wouldn’t.

Work perfectly the first, you know, year or two, it’s going to take years to get it to that point. But I think that pain point we’re talking about here is, is a big one in terms of decoupled WordPress. After I had my conversation with Scott, I was thinking like his website is so fast. Like I would have, we would have such an advantage over some other WordPress websites in terms of like SEO stuff.

If we had a website that loaded that fast, like Google would be like, wow, like. Okay. Like, obviously this is a ranking factor. Now your website’s so fast, let’s rank the site better, but the challenges, our current SEO structure we’d have to totally translate that into, you know, we don’t have a huge team here at WP boss.

We’ve got a small team and so we don’t have the resources to be able to pull off a big project like that at this point. But I think that’s, if that’s a challenge that a team could solve, how to get there. The challenge is WordPress is open source, right? So everyone’s always updating their plugins and changing the plugins and themes.

And so to be able to move all that stuff seamlessly into a react environment or a different front end environment requires probably a big team to be able to constantly be working on, Oh, someone updated their plugin. Okay. We have to update how we’re pulling in this information to react, something like that.

So, um, yeah, there’s a lot there, but it’s a cool, it’s a cool idea. How hard is it to get new users, you kind of mentioned at the beginning of this call, you were like, I’m not very good at selling or like marketing or kind of that area of the business. You’re more of a tinkerer. You’re more of a product person.

You know, you want to work on a cool solution. How has the journey been in terms of, you know, your stuff’s live right now? Graph ql-api.com. People want to go check it out. How has the process kind of getting adoption for this tool? It’s

Leonardo Losoviz: [00:21:09] a work in progress. And it’s tough in a way, you know what I mean? Do you think they don’t come easy?

I am envious of all of the plugins with millions of downloads. You know, you, you don’t know how much effort it is. You, you look at it from outside and you’re like, I can do that. But when you’re doing that, you’re like, okay, wait, where’s your, what should I do now? Whatever I tell you, what in mind strategy.

Okay. So I’ve been working on the project and I think my brother is quite cool. So then I was thinking, this is me being very naive, right? I just uploaded, I have it. Don’t get hub. People will use it and then I will get millions of followers. No, it doesn’t work. Even if you had the greatest software ever, you need to promote it.

I think that Google is the only software that were not promoted. That became, you know, That is, that was amazing. But otherwise, everything you had to promote very heavily. What I’m doing right now is to write blog posts. I’m not going to spend money. I’m not going to advertise because I have an open source plugin.

So from that side, I find it clashing with the values. If you’re doing something open source, I believe it’s kind of weird if I pay for an app. Right? So it has to be organic and organic and just writing blog posts and trying to connect to people. Um, funding on Twitter. I don’t know how to use Twitter. So then I approached people and I, Hey, look at what I’m really being, you know?

And they’re like, Hey, do you know what I mean? Don’t send anything to me. No, but it’s open source. Please check it out. Yeah. Okay. And they don’t show up, you know, you see what I’m saying? That is actually hard. Every 20 people that you approach one will download it. So I don’t have a team it’s me. So at the end of the day, I’m thinking, okay, should I spend my energies, bugging people and doing marketing, or should I work on my product?

You know, it’s, this is, this is the challenge. If you don’t have investor behind your back to give you money and then employ a team of marketing people and saves man, and you have to do everything, the thing it takes time, you know, it’s slow. It’s a process. Now the good thing is that when somebody does like my product.

They are very, uh, effusive about it. Like, Oh my God, this is so good. And you feel good? And the funny thing that happens with strangers, so I’m promoting my stuff on Reddit and they don’t know who the person is. You know, it’s a, it’s an avatar and somebody says, this is so awesome. I just feel so good about it.

So I, I, right now I’m living off trying to show my stuff to strangers and having an abortion. And trying to find new challenges to talk about my plugin. I’m using Reddit where they do not like breasts at all. I may say that they take more breaks. It’s so tough to talk about WordPress on Reddit and then showing up in all the brand new letters lately.

I’ve been submitting my blog posts and they’re sharing my content and waiting, you know, it’s waiting on hoping that one day that would be. A mega event, like a big shot saying, you know, like month saying, Oh, I use this plugin, everybody go check it out. You know, waiting for that moment to happen. Yeah.

Joe Howard: [00:24:38] What does success look like for you in terms of building this?

Is it like number of users of the plugin? Because you mentioned that as a big thing, like if you hit a million downloads, like, is that good for you? Is there some, like, are you trying to like potentially attract. Like funding for some of this. Are you looking to like launch a premium version at some point and make it like a paid option?

Like what would success look like for this endeavor?

Leonardo Losoviz: [00:25:04] Success for me are two things, a reasonable amount of users, not Migos. Okay. Just a reasonable amount. And for me to make a living out of it, you know, it’s salary. Now we’re not talking on Silicon Valley investment where it’s like, you know, a salary for one person for one family.

So how to make that happen. You know how to make a few, a couple of thousand dollars USD per month coming into your bank account so that you can keep working on this. And you’re going to need to do side jobs, you know, big scare on there that take your, your energy. So I’m, I’m first, I’m going full on with open source right now, the plugin is open source.

I’m not thinking of selling anything yet. So I want to see either open source strategy can work. I’m looking for sponsors. So I’m trying to reach out. I’m actually in the process of doing this and reaching out to a few companies. My message is in my blogging becomes successful. Then people will appreciate that you are the one who is funding me.

I don’t think I will. I will have one funder. I think that I would need two or three or four, you know? So he’s still having one big one. I get four small ones. And if I, if I manage to do that, I’m done. I’m a settled, if I don’t manage to do that, I will have to go the pro version and then spring my plugin into a basic version.

And if you want more power pay for the upgrade. And trying to avoid it, but let’s see if I had no option. I will have to go down that path.

Joe Howard: [00:26:39] I, I think you’re right about the like paid ads. I like the writing of content. I think people searching organically. They find articles or find your content. That’s a good way for people to find you potentially try out a free tool.

Right? It’s like, it’s also, if they land on your blog post, it’s a free thing to do because it’s open source. It’s not like you’re trying to get them to swipe a credit card. So. That next step is actually, I think the conversions probably gonna be a lot better than if it was like something someone would have to like pay for the thing you mentioned about Reddit was super interesting.

Because I think based on your goals of having a salary that supports a single family, you’re not talking about a billion dollar company, that’s your goal, right? You’re talking about, I want to like live a good life and run a cool company and continue to enjoy what I’m doing and support myself and my family.

And this idea that I’ve talked with about people on the podcast for about having a thousand true fans. Is I think somewhat applicable to this, which is like, you don’t need a million fans. You need, you know, maybe thousands of fans or maybe tens of thousands for an open source plugin of dedicated people to what you do.

So Reddit community sounded interesting to me or some kind of community where you can. Continue talking about your product. Cause you, you mentioned here, like people who have tried your product, strangers, maybe people, you know, even have been like, this is awesome. Like that’s really good news. Like if your users are like, Whoa, this is awesome.

That’s like probably the most positive signal you can get is that I’m onto something and to build a community, to help market your stuff, I think is probably a good move. So continuing some of that Reddit, you know, being involved in the Reddit in the Reddit area, because it’s really just like a forum, it’s kind of a.

Reddit’s it’s a big thing. Now, the game stopped and all this stuff has blown up in terms of Reddit, but it’s a glorified forum where people hang out, maybe building out your own community. I don’t know if you thought about doing like, I mean, depends on your, how you feel about Facebook, but a Facebook group or a Slack community, or using something like circle or tribe to build like your own community out.

Sounds like that might be an interesting way to go for open source software. It’s really about community. So.

Leonardo Losoviz: [00:28:43] Um, I actually, I’m planning to do a new letter soon, actually starting this weekend. I want to have a new lip in your letter to talk about difference. Actually, everything that I’m talking to you right now, they’re behind the scenes there.

What is going on to have a plugin? Because people are not aware of all of the things they download, the plugin, they use it. They don’t even know that there’s a human being behind what’s causing it and who needs to make a salary to survive and to keep doing this right. So one of the things that I want to do is to have a new letter that I send once a month with the whole process.

And I really enjoy the process. You know, this is a challenge. Yeah. I mean, it’s tough and I wish I could just be at Redding, you know, succeeding, making a little money and you know, it’s not the case, but if I do make it whenever I make it, I will have, I would say I made it, you know, I wouldn’t deserve it.

So, yeah, my, my first thing is to, is to have the kind of connection that it’s cool to talk about the things and in a way that we’re all in this together, everyone is going through the same experience. You know what I mean? The corporate community is very big and the successful players are actually very few the big names.

You know, the one that made it automatic or Yoast, right? Those are very few. Everyone is like me. We are really striving to. Make it to the end of the month, you know, with our login somehow, you know? So in that sense, yeah, I think that I can actually connect to the WordPress community, but I want to know how to approach them.

I don’t have a channel to approach these people, the ones who are all of us doing the same work. I use Reddit as I was telling you because it’s convenient, but it does not the WordPress community though. Um, I don’t think they something like the, the Reddit community for workplace. I haven’t found it.

Joe Howard: [00:30:39] Yeah.

I think what you’re talking about, or at least how I think about it is kind of built the building in public. Model, which I think is really powerful among the developer community. I would say if you’re doing content marketing, that’s a great conversion point of like someone comes to read, you know, I’m on your blog right now.

And you know, the first article there is just like graph QL, API versus WP graph, QL, you know, talking about some of the differences there. I bet people are Googling that kind of stuff. So when people Google that they may find your article. Hey, a little corner scroll box has like, Hey, like I’m Leonardo. I built this.

I also build it public. I send a newsletter out once a week that literally details everything I did that week in the background of building this. I’d love to have you along for the journey. Hey, I would love to hear about that. I just had Brian castle on the podcast a few weeks ago and he like tweets all the time, like gifts and like videos and like screenshots of the stuff he’s literally working on it.

He doesn’t care if it’s like really good or really bad, or like somewhere in between most stuff he does is great. But the thing is like, people love him for that. They’re like, wow, because he gets great feedback on Twitter and like, You could do it on Twitter, but also an email is just as good Austin Gander in the WordPress community.

He runs a hosting company anchored at host and I’m part of his newsletter. He’s no friend of mine in the WordPress space, but I get his newsletter. He’s talk. He emails out like once a week, sometimes twice a week about the stuff he’s working on. I’m always super interested because he’s, it’s the same.

That’s what he’s doing. It’s pretty much building in public based on his emails and his newsletter. So that may like go to anchor that host and sign up for that newsletter because that’s a really good example. I think of like, Why I’m not just invested in his company, but like in him, like, I’m like, Austin’s awesome.

Like, look at all this stuff he’s doing, you know, I would not have known about this. If he was not sending this newsletter out, I would just kind of see the front end of anchor.host and be like, okay, like another hosting company. But that newsletter like really gets me invested. So I think that’s a really interesting idea.

It’s almost like a build in public in the newsletter, which I think it adds a good human element of like, this is not just a tool. It’s like a tool built by human beings and. Would you like to support this human being?

Leonardo Losoviz: [00:32:45] Yeah. I follow certain new leaders. You have been delicious brains newsletter, which is quite awesome.

It’s pretty technical, but it’s cool because you get to learn so much, you know, they, they have a problem, they have a plugin, they solved the problem and then they’d send you how so you’re still saying this in my knowledge. I don’t want my competitors to know about this. No, on the opposite, you know, share it with everyone.

And I really enjoyed it. So I’m applying. I actually, I want to do exactly the same thing with my blog post and then with the new letter to share my challenges, the plugin technical, the business in like business, not being as, as in making money, money, money, business as how to survive, you know, like yeah.

As a connection, you know, But, yeah, that’s it.

Joe Howard: [00:33:31] How was it having a little bit of competition? And is that something you’re following? Are you like, look seeing what other folks are doing and kind of letting that lead you to some new features and stuff you want to do? Or are you kind of just like doing things on your own and getting more feedback from users?

What’s your strategy around like other people in the space with similar solutions or with solutions that you know, are trying to solve what you’re trying to solve too. Okay.

Leonardo Losoviz: [00:33:53] So there are two plugins for fueling WordPress. Mine. Would you call it graph QL API? And WP  is their graph your plugin. So I wouldn’t call myself a competition yet because you know, it’s a very small guy against the big guy is what it is.

Nobody knows about my plugin yet. I just, I just launch it. My work site is one month old. So only now I’m reaching out and contacting people to say, Hey, check this out. You know what I mean? I think it’s pretty good until now. They didn’t even know that they were, that there was this second plugin. So then the competition between these two plugins, I do not check how they do or what they do, because it’s a completely different architecture.

I didn’t start my plugin to compete with them because they did something wrong. No, I mean, not at all. As I was mentioning Janell, I was like, I will mentioning at the beginning, I’ve been working on WordPress since 2012. For a friend of mine who had an NGO and I was experimenting. So as I was experimenting, I greeted this framework based on server side components.

No need to talk about this. Very technical, but it got so good. It got so awesome that I went down the path of developing Jeff for the sake of developing it. So I run one and a half years ago. I discovered graph QL. I am not using rough years in the beginning. Graph QL was launched in 2015 and it became popular in 2016 around.

So it’s been four plus years of graph here. I discovered graph QL around 2019. And when I saw what they were doing, I thought that I could do the same with my framework. And it was a challenge. It was a technical challenge. You know, me developer, of course you can, you can do it. You know, like it’s like a mathematical problem that I need to, to try to solve.

And I did it and I did this on my own completely blinded or what was going on at the same time. So the  has started development in 2016. If I’m not wrong by 2018, they had something which was not stable. But was okay. And people started using it so fast forward to today, they have, they have had more than two years of a plugin that all companies have been using.

There is the, it was the only graph your solution in for WordPress. It was not like necessarily grandiose, but it worked, you know what I mean? He’s grabbed here. That’s what you needed. So now I come out of nowhere. And I bring my other plate. If you ask me about technical stuff, I can send you, my plane is superior and I, and I mean it, and I say it with pride because I’ve been working on this for many years and I can, if you read the blog post on my website, does it have to be  the blog post is 30 minutes long.

I try to go all over it because I want to demonstrate, I want to say, I think my stuffy better, why I wanted to play. Why I’m not trying to sell you something. As I said, I’m not good with marketing, but I can explain what I have been and why I really like that and how it works. And in the process, I was all on my own.

Absolutely. On my own, not going out, not seeing the light of the day. You know, one day you come up from a deep sleep and you see, and you open the windows and it’s a beautiful day. I was in a dark room, working on my stuff for like two years without looking outside to see what was

Joe Howard: [00:37:44] going on. Will you say about marketing is interesting because you kind of say, you’re you feel like you’re not the best marketer, but as a marketer myself, I think the best marketing is authentic and is honestly it’s just education and giving people that data and knowledge, they need to make informed decision and to make the best product to solve the best.

Pain points for people. So I’d say the marketing you’re doing is great. There may be some things you’ll continue to learn along the way. Okay. How do I make sure that article that’s so well-written and so comprehensive. How do I make sure that, you know, ranks well in search engines? You know, that may be like a tactical marketing thing to have to continue to learn in terms of SEO stuff, but.

Don’t change your marketing approach. I think the, you know, you have to market from who you are and to be in an ethical marketer and to be, to have a good relationship with the truth and with knowledge and data, that’s so important, you know, you see all sorts of marketers doing all sorts of crazy quote unquote marketing things.

That’s like it’s really adjusted. Generate leads and to get more clients, that’s the goal. It’s not to help. It’s not to have the best product. And so let’s keep doing what you’re doing. So cool. I think that’s a great point to start wrapping up today. Tell folks where they can find you online, all this stuff online, go read this blog, post, all that stuff.

Right.

Leonardo Losoviz: [00:39:03] So my website is graph ql-api.com. My Twitter is at low service. Like my surname. And you can contact me through these channels on the, on graphical apa.com. There is a contact us form, so I will get it. And then through there, and I’m always available. I get very excited with people who want to try out the plugin and then they give me feedback.

So if you, if you have any feedback, both good or bad, maybe you’re like, look, I mean, I think you can do something better, please let me know. I want to know all about all about the other day. One person installed my plugin and it did not work on his environment. He had more security installed and he failed for him.

So he sent me an email saying, Hey, I got this third, your block, your plugin. And he gave me the logo of the ureter. I fixed it in, in 15 minutes and it made my day because actually they will just, before I published this blog post on the comparison between refusal API, and that will be grafting and I had many more downloads since then.

So I was thinking, I don’t want them to download my plugin and then they cannot install it. You know, they it’s buggy. So yeah. I mean, whenever somebody contacts me, I get so excited, even if it is to ask me stuff or to ask me to work for them to fix the problem. Would you? My problem. So, yeah, please talk to me guys.

Joe Howard: [00:40:28] Yeah. And I will add onto that. Leonardo’s said in this podcast, he is potentially looking for some sponsors for his project. So if you. Are having an interest in that, or maybe represent a bigger company that wants to. Invest in give back in the graph, QL space, reach out to Leonardo or reach out to me and I’ll make a connection with Leonardo.

We’ll make sure you, you get to talk. So, yeah. Leonardo, thank you again. Last thing I always ask the guests on the show to do is for you to ask our listeners now for a little iTunes review for us. So if you wouldn’t mind asking us for a quick iTunes review, I’d appreciate it.

Leonardo Losoviz: [00:41:05] Yeah, everyone please. For the show, you have a wonderful review.

I would vouch for you and for Joe. I mean, he’s doing such a wonderful job, so he deserves it. I mean, this is the least that we can do for him. Just go to the iTunes. So give him the five stars. I mean, he, he deserves it. Everyone. Please do it for me. Do it for Joe.

Joe Howard: [00:41:30] Awesome. Appreciate it, man. Yes. The people leave an iTunes review.

You can just leave five stars or you can leave a comment. Tell us how much you like this episode. I can shoot it to Leonardo and say, thanks for helping us get a review. It helps us to know what future topics to go on. Okay. We’re going to obviously do more graphics, no content. We got like four, five star reviews on this episode.

So we want to do more content around it that helps us with content creation, helping us do episodes on topics that you, our listeners love. WP mrr.com forward slash iTunes. We’d direct you right there. If you were on a Mac device or an Apple device, if you’re a new listener to the show. Go ahead and listen to some old episodes.

You can go ahead and binge old WP MRR podcast episodes. Is that Netflix or Hulu or any of that? HBO, max, whatever. Check out binge from old, uh, podcast episodes, something that’ll help you grow your business or WordPress company. If you have questions for us at the show, I’d like to do Q and a episodes every once in a while.

Shoot those into us, a yo@wpmrr.com or you can hit me up on Twitter at Joseph H. Howard. And yeah, we’d love to answer some questions live here on the show that is it this week or the podcast will be in your podcast players again next Tuesday, Leonardo. Thanks again for being on, man. Yeah.

Leonardo Losoviz: [00:42:46] Thanks so much for you, Joan.

I have really appreciated your talk today and your podcast. It’s absolutely wonderful. Thanks so much.

Joe Howard: [00:42:57] I appreciate it, man. That, that got ya. All right. See everyone later.