Transcript ↓

In this episode of Cache Up, host Michelle Frechette chats with Miriam Schwab, Head of WordPress at Elementor, about the company’s latest innovations. They discuss new products like the Image Optimizer, Site Mailer, Ally accessibility plugin, and Angie, Elementor’s AI assistant. Miriam shares insights on Elementor’s codebase revamp for better performance, the company’s commitment to accessibility, and the growing role of AI in WordPress. The conversation also highlights Elementor’s community involvement, especially at WordCamp US, and the expanding availability of their tools beyond just Elementor users.

Top Takeaways:

• Elementor Expands Beyond Page Building: Elementor is rapidly evolving beyond its roots as a page builder, expanding into a full suite of standalone tools that serve broader WordPress needs. These include utilities like Site Mailer for email deliverability, Image Optimizer for performance, Ally for accessibility, and the soon-to-launch AI assistant Angie. Importantly, many of these tools work independently of Elementor, making them accessible to all WordPress users regardless of their chosen builder.
• AI Integration is Shaping the Future of Elementor: A major focus for Elementor is integrating AI to streamline website creation and management. From Site Planner, which generates a full website structure from a prompt, to Ally’s AI-powered accessibility fixes, and Angie’s promise of automating time-consuming tasks, Elementor is positioning AI as a core part of the WordPress user experience. This not only increases efficiency but helps WordPress remain competitive and user-friendly in an AI-driven era.
• Performance and Speed Take Center Stage with Version 4: Elementor is addressing long-standing concerns about performance by refactoring its aging codebase. Version 4 (V4) of the page builder brings improvements in speed, cleaner code, and better development workflows. This overhaul is designed to benefit both end users, who will see faster websites, and developers, who will gain the ability to deploy new features more quickly and cleanly.

Mentioned In The Show:

• Elementor
• W3Techs
• Image Optimizer
• Ally
• Site Planner 
• Angie
• WP Accessibility Day
• Underrepresented in Tech

🐦 You can follow Post Status and our guests on Social Media:

• Miriam Schwab (Head of WordPress, Elementor)
• Michelle Frechette (Director of Community Relations, Post Status)
• Olivia Bisset (Intern, Post Status)

The Post Status podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis. 📝

Browse our archives, and don’t forget to subscribe via iTunes, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, Simplecast, or RSS. 🎧

Transcript

Michelle Frechette 00:00:02  Welcome to the Post Status Cache Up, I almost said plugin. Cache Up Podcast. You can tell it’s Wednesday morning, and I’ve already checked out for the week apparently. My brain is not working. This podcast I love, because it gives us an opportunity to talk to people who are working in the WordPress ecosystem about what’s happening with them, without any scripted questions. I don’t send, you know, anything in advance. We just decide to get on together and just chat. And today, my guest is Miriam Schwab. Miriam is with Elementor. And we’re going to talk about some of the cool things that Elementor has been doing. So, Miriam, welcome. 

Miriam Schwab: Thanks. 

And your title over there. I don’t, I didn’t remember.

Miriam Schwab 00:00:43  It’s okay, It’s it’s I’m head of WordPress.

Michelle Frechette 00:00:47  Okay. So that’s a pretty nice title, right? I want to be head of WordPress someday. That sounds really good.

Miriam Schwab 00:00:53  It’s. It is pretty good. It definitely covers a lot of varied and diverse, and interesting things.

Michelle Frechette 00:01:00  Yeah. It also means I get to see you at a lot of events throughout the year. Yeah, which is great.

Miriam Schwab 00:01:05  Totally. Yes. That is definitely a perk that I get to see you. I get to see a lot people from the community, it’s really fun.

Michelle Frechette 00:01:10  Yeah. For sure. Absolutely. So, Elementor, I think if you haven’t heard of Elementor, you’ve been living under a rock and not very active in the WordPress ecosystem because you all are everywhere, and you can’t miss your booths at WordCamp because they are pink, bright pink. And so it’s like, oh, there’s the Elementor booth. It is glowing pink from across the room, which I love because it’s like a beacon for people. And you’re all always busy talking to people, because everybody wants to tell you how great their websites are working with Elementor, which is awesome, too. And pick up your pink t-shirts and other swag that you have. So y’all have been working really hard to be the page builder that is a go-to for people, but you have turned into so much more than that. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about what’s been going on at Elementor and some of the really cool things that are recently launched that we might be looking forward to?

Miriam Schwab 00:02:01  Okay. I will try to keep track of everything. I have to say that even working in the company. It’s sometimes hard to keep track of everything that’s happening because there’s so many new innovative products and new directions. Yeah, it’s really great. It definitely keeps things fun and interesting, but it’s a lot. So what’s going on with Elementor? Okay, so we have our page builder, obviously, which is very popular. I was just checking the stats earlier today. So 12.7% of websites use Elementor according to W3Techs, and it’s 29.7% of WordPress sites, something like that. It’s like almost 30%. So it’s very popular, very widely used, brings a lot of value to a lot of people, through our free version, which is in The Repo. And then, for people who want more functionality or whatever, then they can upgrade to our pro version. So yeah, so that’s the page builder and that’s what we’re most known for. Over the last few years, Elementor started launching and releasing different products that aim to kind of fill the needs, specific needs for people building websites along their journey. So for example, we have an Image Optimizer plugin which actually has over a million active installs.

Michelle Frechette: Wow. 

Miriam Schwab: Yeah. It’s, it I guess it really solves a need for people, even though, you know, there’s a lot of Image Optimizer options and they’re all. Most of them are great, but,

Michelle Frechette 00:03:29  You could say it’s the need for speed if you’re optimizing your images.

Miriam Schwab 00:03:32  Oh my goodness, that’s right. What movie is that from?

Michelle Frechette 00:03:36  Speed. No, it was from Top Gun, Top Gun.

Miriam Schwab 00:03:40 Classic.

Michelle Frechette 00:03:41  Back in the 80s.

Miriam Schwab 00:03:43  Yeah. Yeah. So it’s the need for speed. But yeah, that’s what it comes to solve. Like it actually works. It’s very easy to, like, click. It just runs through images, optimizes them, creates Web Keyversions, whatever. You can save the originals. You don’t have to save the originals. It’s like you can revert. It’s, it’s like, pretty straightforward, but I guess it’s handy. So, so that’s Image Optimizer, and we have another one called Site Mailer also coming to solve, just like a specific need of email deliverability from website, also in a space where there’s lot of options. But people like it. Again simple click install. You don’t have to integrate it or connect it to other services. It just does the job. So they’re like almost like utilities, I guess. But these types of products, which I guess, you know, adds more capabilities to users beyond the page builder and takes care of like these pain points that are annoying. So, and then, a plugin that we launched recently is it’s called Ally. It’s an accessibility plugin. Also aiming to simplify that space. So not just reporting what’s wrong, but also now using AI to help you fix what’s wrong. And you can like, choose to apply changes or not. And, we have a new version coming out, next week. I don’t know when this is going to be published, but in like mid-August, there’s going to be a version with even more AI capabilities, so that’s pretty cool. And even our page builder is getting like a lot of attention. So Elementor was founded nine years ago in June, and so nine years ago means like a nine-year-old code base. And Elementor is the page builder is like got so much happening in it that you can just imagine it’s like layers upon layers of stuff. So the decision was made to revamp and refactor what’s going on underneath the hood, but also making, like workflows better for web creators and adopting more best practices, particularly around CSS and classes and things like that. So already parts of V4 have been released in the latest versions of Elementor. They’re kind of like embedded in there, and people can test it out. And, you know, it’s also like some improves UI and things like that. So that’s that. And then we have our whole AI thing. See, I’m telling you, I’m like, yeah. Did I mention everything?

Michelle Frechette 00:06:02  You need a checklist on your computer.

Miriam Schwab 00:06:05  Seriously! Okay. Yeah, I mentioned that, I mentioned that. AI, so like two years ago-ish, whenever it was that ChatGPT came on the scene. Elementor actually like kind of it was it was actually quite remarkable. Like, behind the scenes in the office, Elementor was like, all right, stop everything, kind of, AI needs to be a priority. We’re going to and like and there’s like a some somewhat of a shift, like product development on everything else. But AI became a priority. So we released like the kind of usual AI functionality within the editor, like image editing and code and content, and things like that. Also, it can do some page building for you, within the pages. That was the first step. And then we released something called Site Planner, which is one of my favorite tools. I don’t there, I don’t know why it doesn’t get more enthusiasm, like, even in Elementor. But basically, if you prompt your way to a really high-quality, like site brief sitemap, and then the sitemap is set up in a way that’s really cool. You can edit the pages, add pages in the sitemap, rearrange them. It like really gives you like the structure of the site and then generate a website from it. The website has some level of design and you can like add styles and fonts, but it’s more like wireframes. But in terms of like getting a site up and running, you’re like 80% of the way there. And especially if you’re building sites for others, then you have something you can show them and then tweak it from there. And you can push it like almost in one click, to an existing Elementor website, or download it and upload it, or push it into Elementor hosting. So, it’s really cool. But, yeah, I think it deserves more attention. I love it.  And then the latest is Angie. It’s. We’re calling it Angie. It’s a genetic AI, so it becomes your, like, ongoing assistant in taking care of your WordPress site. And it, what it does is it allows you to reduce your time on, like, busy work or annoying things or clicking around. But also, it can be supportive and proactive, and productive. So, that’s coming soon and actually will be a big focus for us at WordCamp US. So anyone who’s there, come find our pink booth and we can talk to you about it. So that was a very long-winded.

Michelle Frechette 00:08:29  That’s a long list. So let me let me dive into some of those things. The first thing I wanted to do is, is you talked about revamping, looking at the code base that’s, you know, ten years old, that kind of thing, nine years old. And one of the arguments that people have had against page builders in the past is that they slow your site down because there’s so much code that’s part of that. So it’s, it’s nice to hear that you are looking at that. Not that I’ve ever heard anybody complain that Elementor has made a site slow, but that you’re staying on top of that to make sure that you know things are fresh and clean and that you’re not just adding more layers on top to fix problems and patches and things like that. That’s exciting. It might not be the most exciting thing for a developer to work on, right? Because they always want to innovate and create new things. But I think it’s exciting for a company to be able to say, look, this is like even new, you know, new and improved kind of thing, which I think is pretty cool. What was the impetus?

Miriam Schwab 00:09:24  Actually, it used to be, it used to. So, performance, you not like until today. Still, sometimes people will talk about it, but let’s say two years ago, performance was a big pain point for elementary users. And there’s a lot of complaints about that, and rightfully so. And, it became a priority in the page builder roadmap, like every release got a performance improvement even before V4 started rolling out. And we have people on our team who were dedicated to that in there, like always. So they’re reducing the dom. Like Elementor has a reputation of having too many divs. They’ve done an amazing job of cleaning it up, and V4 will be even better, reducing the number of, let’s say, JavaScript or CSS files that are loaded on a page load. So really, the performance has improved tremendously. And people often show me like the, you know, people will say, oh, I can’t use Elementor because it’s slow. And then someone else would be like, look at the site I’ve built with Elementor. And it’s like this. The score is like almost 100. So they’ve done an amazing job. And then with V4 then it really will be faster. But the overall impetus for working on V4 was what it actually was velocity. And from different angles it was like page speed, which is important. Let’s even take it further, even though a lot has been done to improve it, but also development speed. So development speed for our end users in terms of, you know, them being able to deploy things or make changes or build out things in a in a faster way. But also what is interesting is it’s for our own internal development speed. So because Elementor has so many layers, let’s say, and the code base was already, you know, older. Then whenever we wanted to release new features, it actually became cumbersome. That’s that’s something that happens and yeah. Like you have to take more things into consideration I guess, you know, and also it can if the framework or the structure of the code is in a certain way, it can hold you back. And so we, Elementor wants to deploy new features of functionality all the time, as fast as possible, as best as possible. That holding us back. So this new, like refactoring, will allow our tech team to roll out new features much faster. And I think our users will see that once V4 fully rolls out, especially that they’re going to see a lot more features coming out at a higher velocity, which is pretty cool.

Michelle Frechette 00:11:47  That is very cool. And so some of the other projects that you talked about were like, so accessibility is close to my heart. I, you know, one of the organizers for WP Accessibility Day and talk a lot about that on Underrepresented in Tech and things like that. Incorporating that very proactively as opposed to reactively is, I think, pretty cool. So talk a little bit about ally and what that does. And, and can somebody. So all of these other projects, like Ally and Angie, are those only used within Elementor or can somebody. Are there are any of them standalone plugins that you can bring into another website?

Miriam Schwab 00:12:21  Oh, that’s a really good question because that’s an interesting shift that’s been happening in Elementor as well. These products that I mentioned, Site Mailer, Image Optimizer, Ally, Angie, that’s coming out. They you don’t have to use Elementor. They’re agnostic. You can use them with anything, which is really cool. So, so it’s available to everyone. Site Planner, which builds a site, builds a site with Elementor. I mean, that’s just what we do best, right? But other than that, all these other tools are available to use with the other. With. With anything. Right? Angie, the genetic AI. I will be able to communicate with Gutenberg, for example. Also, like and other tools which will be hopefully be able to share more about going forward. And with Ally. So the initial version of Ally like kind of took care of like pretty simple things. But the next versions have more advanced functionality and remediation, available to users in one click. So I’m that’s going to come out next week, so people can see more about that. Oh, that’s mid-Agust.

Michelle Frechette 00:13:24  Yeah it should be out by then I think usually these come out on Tuesday. So we’ll see.

Miriam Schwab 00:13:31  Okay. Yeah.

Michelle Frechette 00:13:32  We have we have a college student who does all of our post-production. So some of it is dependent on her class schedule, understandably so.

Miriam Schwab 00:13:40  Well, that that is very understandable. And it’s great that she does that.

Michelle Frechette 00:13:44  Absolutely. David Bisset’s daughter, Olivia. Shout out to Olivia. 

Miriam Schwab 00:13:50  Oh, cool. Yeah. Nice.

Michelle Frechette 00:13:51  She’ll hear that. And then she’ll be like, they shouted me out. She’s awesome. So that’s cool, though, that you could use those. You know, separate from Elementor. So if you’re really into your own code or you are using a different page builder, or, you know, you’re using Gutenberg block editor that you can still take advantage of some of these things. So what does the Ally plugin do?

Miriam Schwab 00:14:14  That is an excellent question. I will tell you in one minute. I really don’t remember everything that happens, but I’ll tell you. Okay.

Michelle Frechette 00:14:23  Okay. You’re not on the marketing team for every single product, I’m sure.

Miriam Schwab 00:14:28  Oh my gosh, it’s I’m telling you, it’s so hard to keep track. Not just of the products, what each one does and then what happens in each release. So but I’ll tell you what’s coming up in the next release. A new color contrast remediation flow in the assistant. Oh, so it’s going to have an AI assistant now, also built in. Improved scanning of dashboard stats. Oh. So there’s oh, so the users, right. They’ll have, like, a dashboard showing them what issues they had and what has been fixed. WPML support, which is cool. A tooltip to encourage analytics tracking and some fixes, but mainly the I think the big thing there is going to be the AI assistance that will be helping people along their journey. So we’ll see how that is received and how that goes. But that’s it just makes a ton of sense to bring AI to picture accessibility. Because accessibility is so complicated and so hard to tackle that hopefully this will help people. Basically, the idea with Ally is will help people get take another step towards more being more accessible, more accessible. It’s it’s you can’t guarantee 100% accessibility. That’s just not possible. But if you can be better than you were yesterday, then that’s already better for the web.

Michelle Frechette 00:15:38  Absolutely, absolutely. I tell people that do it for the right reasons. But if you don’t do it for the right reasons, do it for the wrong reasons. It’s still accomplishing the same thing. You’re doing it for your own, for your own SEO, and you’re doing it for your own conversion to sell more. I’ll take it. Right?

Miriam Schwab 00:15:55  So, yeah, I mean, you see, with a lot of, accessibility products, not just ours, that the marketing around it is making a business case because we should everyone should be doing things for the right reasons. Right? But especially until now, implementing accessibility is quite expensive. Or it can be because, you know, if you, let’s say, someone built a site for you, they didn’t build in an ideal way, then what you’re going to like, you have to rebuild it or you have to like, do it. It’s just it’s really it’s it can be costly. So, so generally the, the, there’s like a business case that’s used in marketing to encourage people to spend that money. If that still works, then great. Like you know.

Michelle Frechette 00:16:33  Absolutely.

Miriam Schwab 00:16:34  Yeah.

Michelle Frechette 00:16:35  I know. So that’s why I say do it for the right reasons. But at least do it for the wrong reasons. It’s all good.

Miriam Schwab 00:16:41  We’re not going to question your motivations if you make your site more accessible to you. It’s up to you.

Michelle Frechette 00:16:47  For sure. AI has become the topic of everything. You can’t like you can’t turn to any tech at any point right now, without or even just the news in general, without hearing about AI and its integration with things. So it’s exciting to hear that not just external. Like I don’t have to go to ChatGPT to ask things or to Claude or whatever your, your AI choice is right now for building and checking, and searching to be able to do that right within your own website, I think is really cool. So, and that you’re building. Yeah. That you’re building it into things like accessibility, I think, is very cool too.

Miriam Schwab 00:17:28  Yeah. I mean everyone’s saying this, so I’m not saying anything new, but it’s going it’s really going to be a game changer. And I’m excited for WordPress about the advances being made with AI because WordPress is such a powerful product. But also the user experience can be overwhelming for new users. You know, it’s hard to figure out where to get started or how to do something. You have to click around a lot to find a setting. You might not even know the setting exists. But all of that stops being an issue with WordPress. When you have an AI assistant there, just where you can just have it do your things for you, or that whether it’s like changing settings or like doing things that are like annoying or even like bulk types of work. Like if you have a WooCommerce site and you want to upload like a, an inventory list or whatever, so now you might be like, Publish. Publish like type, type, type, publish. Or you could just upload a CSV and be like an Angie or whatever you’re AI using and all these products, and then it’s done for you, and you just saved like an hour of work and an hour of annoying work that nobody wants to do.

Michelle Frechette 00:18:36  The busy work that nobody wants.

Miriam Schwab 00:18:38  The busy work that’s just like you put off forever. Because who wants to sit typing things? And then once you’ve got that in place, it really lets WordPress shine as a strong and robust content management system. And I also think that the open-source nature of WordPress will shine in the world of AI, because we’re going to see so many products and approaches being developed to integrate AI with WordPress that, you know, it’s like the more options you have, the more amazing options you’ll have. Not everything is going to be amazing, but then people can choose their preference, what works best for them, and the ones that are really great will, you know, will shine and come through, you know, be the ones that people adopt more strongly. And I think it will just it’s exciting.

Michelle Frechette 00:19:23  I agree very much. So what I what haven’t I asked you about yet that you’d like to talk about? Whether it’s Elementor or Miriam or WordPress in general?

Miriam Schwab 00:19:34  Oh my goodness.

Michelle Frechette 00:19:36  I know you weren’t expecting that. 

Miriam Schwab 00:19:37  What do I want to talk about.

Michelle Frechette 00:19:38  Is there anything that’s worth mentioning?

Miriam Schwab 00:19:41  Well, we’ll be at WordCamp US, which I’m excited about. And, I’ll give a shout out to the organizers. So as sponsors, we’ve gotten a few extra perks that I didn’t expect. They might have mentioned them, but they keep surprising me with them. Like, it’s hard to keep track of everything. 

Michelle Frechette: Yeah, yeah.

Miriam Schwab: But, like, some really nice extra perks. Like, for example, we can have a 30 sec video displayed in between talks. Like, you know, as sponsors, we’re not there for some kind of ROI. WordCamp is a different kind of story where we get a lot of value of being there and connecting to the community. But it’s not like that. But it’s it’s nice when the organizers are thinking of different ways to, you know, prop up the sponsors and give them a bit more exposure than the booth. So that’s interesting. And I’ve been enjoying that. I’m looking forward to the showcase day talks. One of my colleagues is going to be speaking about AI and Playwright, like a QA tool, so that’s pretty cool. Yeah. So there’s that. I can’t believe it’s around the corner.

Michelle Frechette 00:20:52  I know.

Miriam Schwab 00:20:53  It’s so soon. 

Michelle Frechette 00:20:54  It is. I will be there. I’m actually. I’m speaking at WordCamp US this year.

Miriam Schwab 00:20:58  Oh, it’s so cool. What are you speaking about?

Michelle Frechette 00:21:00  Working in the WordPress ecosystem. So whether you choose to.

Miriam Schwab 00:21:04  Wow, that is very.

Michelle Frechette 00:21:05  Work for yourself or for somebody else. Exactly. Right. So all the work that I do, it’ll be it’ll be exciting. And then or you decide to build a casserole career like. But I’m actually in the process of now. So yeah. All the things.

Miriam Schwab 00:21:16  That’s really interesting. Oh that’s cool.

Michelle Frechette 00:21:18  I have to write it still, but it’s in my head. I know exactly what I want to say.

Miriam Schwab 00:21:23  That is the story of my life. When I’m speaking, I have to write it still.

Michelle Frechette 00:21:27  I wonder if AI will just build my slide deck for me? It probably could.

Miriam Schwab 00:21:31  Yes, please. AI probably could just take what’s in your brain, dump it into AI, and it will make your slides for you.

Michelle Frechette 00:21:36  I’m gonna try that. We’ll see how it goes.

Miriam Schwab 00:21:38  Yeah, totally.

Michelle Frechette 00:21:40  Well, I appreciate you as a person. I appreciate Elementor for sure. All the work that you all contribute and the things that you do for the WordPress community and that your sponsors of Post Status as well. So thank you for all the things that you do and sponsor and put out all the good in the world. So thank you so much for that and for spending some time with me today.

Miriam Schwab 00:21:59  Oh, it’s always lovely. I love spending time with you and thank you for this opportunity. And we are very happy to sponsor both Post Status and WorkCamps and wherever we can be helpful, we try to be.

Michelle Frechette 00:22:10  Well, we appreciate that very much. So thank you, Miriam. This will be out before WordCamp US. So if you are attending WordCamp US, make sure to stop by the Elementor booth. Say hello to Miriam and all the folks over there. They’re the ones in pink, and you’ll be able to see them.

Miriam Schwab 00:22:26  Yep, exactly. Yep. A mile away.

Michelle Frechette 00:22:28  That’s right. I don’t know what your swag is this year. You don’t have to give it away. But I will always say their swag is always awesome. So make sure you swing by.

Miriam Schwab: Thank you. 

Michelle Frechette: And pick something up. So all right. We’ll see everybody on the next episode of Caching Up and or the Cache Up. And, about catching up, it’s a little play on words I put together.

Miriam Schwab 00:22:45  It’s so cute, I love it.

Michelle Frechette 00:22:46  Okay. Thank you.

Miriam Schwab 00:22:47  Really. It’s great.

Michelle Frechette 00:22:48  Awesome. All right, we’ll see everybody next time. Thank you.

Michelle Frechette 00:22:52  Bye.