Blake Helps You Upload Big Files to Gravity Forms
54321. Blake Whittle, welcome to Breakdown.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Thanks much for having me, Matt.
Speaker 1:Headed off to WordCamp US anytime soon, or are you staying away from this year?
Speaker 2:Yeah. No. I'm heading out to work camp US next week. Heading out, early Tuesday morning and, be returning on, Saturday. So looking forward to a couple days of of, WordPress.
Speaker 2:And, you know, actually, I'm super excited because, there's been all that talk about how the sales numbers are are lower this year, but I'm a little bit excited because I feel like it's going to be a more intimate conference. So I'm I'm super excited about WordCamp US here in a couple days.
Speaker 1:When you go to a WordCamp because you go to press conf as well. Right? You go you
Speaker 2:I have not been to a press conf yet.
Speaker 1:Okay. I thought you I thought you went to press conf. How do you approach the goals for an in person event? Oftentimes, I fall into just going and just, like, surviving, like, the travel and then walking around and saying hi to everybody. I always forget to have, like, really clear dedicated goals.
Speaker 1:How about you when you go to events?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I also went to WordCamp Europe. And with that one, I had a a bunch of, like, set goals of here's who I wanna talk with, here's who I want to try to get partnerships with, etcetera. With WordCamp US, you know, I'm just kinda just honestly, kinda chilling, if I'm being honest. Of course, I want to network with as many people as possible, but, you know, I I guess a a a goal for me would be to, network with a lot of new people.
Speaker 2:You know, I I feel I feel like at WordCamps now that, you know, we are gonna talk in in our circles. And so I'm hoping to kinda branch out and talk to some new people and, sit with some random people at lunch and stuff like that. So I'm looking forward to to meeting new people for sure.
Speaker 1:Nice. It's certainly for the for the listener who's never even heard of a WordCamp, maybe has never attended a WordCamp, these are, these events that are purely for WordPress. And they're trying to branch out. They're trying to to reach new audiences as WordPress needs. Right?
Speaker 1:You know, the more folks we can get, you know, wrangled into an in person event with WordPress, the better it'll be for all of us regardless of what you do with WordPress. Whether you're just a Gravity Forms user and you just happen to use it because that's what they're using at your job, or you're like a blogger or a designer, developer agency, which, Blake, you know a lot about running ClickIt. Yeah. What does ClickIt do? We're gonna talk about some of the products, and the Gravity Forms stuff you have coming, for, our ecosystem.
Speaker 1:But what do you do on the services side with ClickIt?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So with ClickIt, we're a traditional WordPress a agency where we do, web design, web development, maintenance, hosting, everything with WordPress. So currently, with ClickIt, we have about, 200 websites that we manage and maintain. And so I've I've start I started Clickit back in 2017 when I was a freshman in college, actually. So I got started a bit younger than the average bear, and so I I did that part time.
Speaker 2:And then once I graduated from college in 2020, I went full time with Clickit, and we've just been growing ever since. And now with the AI era, we're we're adapting to that. But, we we we just do a ton of stuff with with WordPress and small businesses and and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:You mentioned AI. Of course, like, I was gonna try to avoid it. But we'll we'll we'll push that, a little bit out because, obviously, if you're interested to talk about it, I wanna talk about it as well. I'm sure the listener's interested about, like, what people are doing with AI, WordPress, and Gravity Forms. But something that you mentioned, well, you started as a younger person, not only as an entrepreneur and and and and business owner, but using WordPress and leveraging WordPress.
Speaker 1:When you saw opportunity to use WordPress, what was that spark as a young entrepreneur to go, oh, that WordPress thing, I wanna use it. Can you walk us down why you saw or how you saw WordPress as an opportunity? And then if you could button that up against today in 2025, how do the younger people see that same opportunity? Or is it gone?
Speaker 2:Right. For sure. So I got started with with WordPress actually back in 2013 when I was a sophomore in high school. And I was in a web design class. I knew nothing really about web design, but I just loved it.
Speaker 2:And so what happened was the the the teacher for that class saw that I was excelling and whatnot, and he knew a realtor that needed some help with their website. And so he just kinda gave it off to me, and it was a WordPress website. Again, at the time, I I knew nothing about WordPress or really even what it was, but I knew the basics of HTML and CSS. And and so, I did a lot of cowboy coding per se with, with with with that retailer's website. And from there, I discovered, you know, themes, plugins, widget spec at the time, and I just fell in love with it.
Speaker 2:It it it it it it was so powerful. Can the the opportunities were endless with it because of all the plug ins out there. At at the time, you know, as as a younger person that do just just seemed like that that there was a plug in for everything, and it could be true now. But there's always something, that has to be custom coded. But, yeah, at the time, just loved WordPress, fell in love with it, and started doing websites.
Speaker 2:And, yeah, that's essentially it there.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Do you see the opportunity changing, like, with the with people coming out of, school today? I mean, heck, anyone who might be studying computer information systems or going for that typical, like, CIS degree might be like, oh my god. What am I doing in the in, you know, in the face of AI these days? Like, should I even be doing this as a career?
Speaker 1:But how how you seen or how do you see, if at all, the opportunity with WordPress today? Like, if you could sit in front of your freshman college class or back as a sophomore at high school and sort of tell people about the opportunities of WordPress, do you do you have a way that you might pitch WordPress to the younger crowd?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I would pitch WordPress as the as a truly everything for someone. WordPress can be as simple as you want it to be to where a retired person that, knows nothing about technology can start up a WordPress blog and use it, and it can can be complex that I've seen total software as a service products be built on top of WordPress. And so that's what I I I love about it. And and there's that old trade or old saying of jack of all trades, master of none, but I really think that WordPress is the exception with that because WordPress can do everything with with with code, with plug ins, with everything.
Speaker 2:It's it's it's endless possibilities. And so to someone that, that is a younger person and I actually wish that I could almost do, like, a brain wipe of of everything I know of WordPress and start fresh because I'm I'm ingrained in the older ways of doing things, to where I'm probably not as up to date on Gutenberg and how to use, you know, full site editor as as I should be. And so I feel like a younger person that's just started now will totally grasp that from the get go and and be able to to learn with that. And I think what's also nice about Gutenberg, and I know people don't like it sometimes, and there's all that there's there's debates about it and whatnot, but, the cool languages are are React. PHP is not really a a cool language that, you know, kids like to learn.
Speaker 2:So having Gutenberg be being based in React, I think, is a leg up for WordPress as well because it's going to be something that that those younger people are already familiar with.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, for what it's worth, people debate the color of the sky. So I I can totally, you know, I totally hear you on the on the big debate of Gutenberg and site editor and stuff like that. Are you a glass half full or half empty because of AI with WordPress?
Speaker 1:Do you see WordPress as being potentially threatened or enhanced by, some of the, accomplishments, of AI these days?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So that that's an an an interesting question. And I I have two answers for it because I operate in two different markets. So on the agency side of things, I I I do view AI as more of a threat, because we have all these different website builders, not not not like Elementor or whatnot, but like AI website builders. Like I think wordpress.com now has has a AI builder that you type in what you want, what colors you want and it builds the site for you.
Speaker 2:Now granted where we probably targeting those people, Probably not. Switching over to the plug in side of things, I view AI as a positive because it's going to get WordPress into more people's hands for that exact use case that I just said of of the more beginner or uneducated user can easily get a WordPress website up and going, and our plugins are geared towards beginner markets. So I I I view more more people in WordPress as a positive, for our plug in side of the business.
Speaker 1:I I'm not a developer, but, I do feel like one now because of AI. And I've been using a lot of Claude code in terminal, in a combination with with cursor and and building out some React apps. And one of the interesting features that, Claude code just launched, or at least I saw it recently, which I've yet to try, but I I need to, is, the sort of like I I forget what they call it. It's like a verbose mode where it will, teach you while it codes or simply, like, explain more while it codes. And I really like that concept because, you know, for the last I don't know.
Speaker 1:We're, I guess, mid August right now. So I guess for the last eight months as I really steeped myself into AI coding outside of the WordPress space, it was a huge learning. Well, it's a huge learning curve, but it's also a huge learning opportunity for me to, like, learn what was outside of of WordPress, like, React and all the frameworks and Yeah. All the libraries and dependencies and hosting and how that all comes together. I I had a massive eight month run.
Speaker 1:Like, if AI went away tomorrow, I learned a ton, you know, from, like, what's out there in technology. And, like, god, you you you think it's you think it's difficult to choose between, like, the top four or five contact form plugins in WordPress. The amount of libraries and frameworks in the React world and beyond is just mind boggling. And then you wonder why, like, it's so highly debated topic amongst developers, especially WordPress developers, etcetera. Based on, ClickIt, you've been running this agency now for quite some time.
Speaker 1:You're building websites, like you said, 200 maintaining and building websites. Now you're getting into, plugins more prominently. Back in December, you acquired a couple of plugins. Did those align well with your with your business? And that's why you're you start to decide like, okay.
Speaker 1:This like, we use these plug ins all the time with clients. There's an opportunity to purchase, so I did. Or are you like, nah. I kinda wanna get into the software side now and and maybe have, like, two, for lack of a better phrase, two streams of income, services and software. How did it all break down for you?
Speaker 2:Yeah. For sure. So I do want to get eventually into software, totally. So eventually, my my goal is for, you know, in in ten years for the agency to be, shut down, and we are software plugins only. So when, when I saw back in March 2024 that Infinite Uploads was up for sale, I jumped on it because I previously known of that product.
Speaker 2:I've never had used it before, but I knew of it and I thought it was just an awesome plug in. So and I I I even remember a couple years ago going, I wanna buy that one day. And then when when it came up for sale, I was like, this is my time. And so, I got with with Aaron Edwards who was the previous owner of Infinite Uploads, and, we we talked about things for about six, seven months. And we met actually at WordCamp US.
Speaker 2:We did a couple of escape rooms and hangouts and whatnot together, and he showed me infinite uploads systems and, you know, financial verification through Stripe and whatnot, and so made an offer. And, he accepted. And so from there, we we acquired Infinite Uploads and BigFile Uploads back in, November 2024. And since then, we've been improving our products, expanding our products, and a lot more. And so from there, we've we've set it up a URL image importer, which is a WordPress plugin that allows people to paste in a link of an image that's on a different site and imports it into their media library.
Speaker 2:Our ultimate goal is to make WordPress uploads and WordPress media better. So everything that that that pushes us towards that vision is what is what we are doing.
Speaker 1:It did Aaron give you a better price if you beat him in the escape room and got out before he did?
Speaker 2:We were on a team, actually. Oh, okay.
Speaker 1:That's how I would have done it. Aaron, you go into that room. I'm gonna go into this room. If I get out, I get 10% off. No.
Speaker 1:That's that's great. You know, that's great that you've made that position. I just wanna rewind a second. Did you say two years was your time frame to shut down the agency?
Speaker 2:Ten.
Speaker 1:Oh, ten. Okay. I was like, wow. That is that's a man who can execute right there. It's like two years.
Speaker 2:Alright. If it's two years, even better. But, realistically, we're probably looking at, like, ten years. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. There's a lot of freelancers listening to, this podcast and and obviously agency owners. Gravity Forms is deeply rooted as being, you know, obviously one of the not only one of the first premium contact form plugins to come out for WordPress, but one of, like, the oldest WordPress businesses, you know, that have been around. Yeah. And a lot of folks think of that transition from, man, I'm I'm I'm so done with the client services side of things, or it's very competitive, and I'm just not up for that fight anymore.
Speaker 1:And they and they wanna trend into the software side of it. What specifically is it for you? Is it you know, like, it's a very competitive market, client services, very, maybe, human resource capital intensive. Like, why the switch? Why the hard switch from agency life to software life?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think with with software life is you have one or you have one or a a set of products that you're taking care of. With with with a small business website and with clients and everything that an agency encompasses, you know, you're you're dealing with so many different types of things that a client could ask you and so many different, you know, bugs and issues. It it it's just a lot to handle because you're expected to remember all of these things that a client wants you to do. And then, you know, they come back six months later and they they they they act like that you're the only person that you're they're they they act like that that that that you're their only customer.
Speaker 2:And and Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's just a lot to to remember and context switching is is what's also killing me as well is is one moment I'm doing x y z for client a, then client b I'm doing x y z, and it's just a lot of context switching. And and so it's just it's just been been more difficult for for us, and that's why I wanna to to switch into products is we just have a handful of our plug ins.
Speaker 2:We set the terms. We set the pricing. It's better recurring income. We don't have to go chase invoices or worry about stuff like that. It's just a lot more streamlined.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Caveats to that though is starting up a plug in business and company is a lot more difficult because you have to spend lots on marketing, you have to develop a product, stuff like that. You have to support it. Whereas it's a lot easier to get going with an agency. So there's pros and cons to both. Sure.
Speaker 2:It's just you have to to to to decide what route you want to go down. And, you know, I went down the route of the agency at first, and now we're veering it in the software. But I've I've seen on x to where there's, I guess, a trend now of of of product owners or or plug in owners going back to the or opening up, agency side of their business as well. So lots of of different, sides of of the same stone, I think, with with WordPress.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So here you are about eight, nine months into being, more on that software side. Or did you have secure forms before, the, Infinite uploads?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Secure secure forms launched about twelve months ago. So Okay.
Speaker 1:So about about a year into Yeah. Into Yep. That we'll we'll we'll chat about that plugin in a second. It doesn't it's well, you told me in the green room, it doesn't support Gravity Forms yet, but it will be Correct. Yep.
Speaker 1:In the in the in the future. But I saw you on Twitter. You were sort of teasing a new product coming for Gravity Forms. Mhmm. What's that all about?
Speaker 1:Because, you know, this is breakdown for Gravity Forms customers and users, and I'm sure they're excited to learn what you have to offer.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, we are launching this week, new plugin called big file form uploads, which is an add on for our big file uploads plugin. So just to give a short recap, big file uploads is a popular WordPress plugin. It recently just celebrated its one millionth download back in March of of this year. It has over 100,000 active installs, and what it does is it uses file chunking to bypass your web hosts maximum upload size.
Speaker 2:So some web hosts set a super small maximum upload size, and you have to go into your h t access file or PHP dot dot I and I file and, you know, set a variable for a beginner. Way too much to to do. They don't wanna mess with it. And then as well, say, if you wanna upload a super large file to WordPress and it's like, you know, five gigs of a video in in in a single file, a WordPress host isn't going to allow you to set, a maximum upload size that large. So big file uploads uses file chunking to bypass that.
Speaker 2:One caveat to it has always been it does not support front end forms. So if for so for if someone has a a a gravity form on their website and they need to accept, a large file through their form, big file uploads will not help with that. So that's why we've now created a big file form uploads that, hooks into big file uploads and increases the maximum upload size that your visitors can upload through your Gravity Forms and and other form plugins.
Speaker 1:It's fantastic. You can get big file uploads right from wordpress.org. Search for big file uploads on wordpress.org. I'll have the link in the in the show notes, below. So this this will add a upload field, or will this replace the file field?
Speaker 1:How do you envision it working in in Gravity Forms? I'm sure you've already been testing it, but just so the listener can understand how it might work for Gravity Forms.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So it it makes no changes to the the Gravity Forms interface or stuff like that. You still build your forms the exact same with file upload field and the multi up up file upload field. And if you have big file form uploads enabled, you just set the maximum upload size in big file uploads and from there, it just works. So with big file form uploads, there's no user interface who would actually, it just all runs in the background.
Speaker 2:It hooks into and feeds off of these settings in big file uploads, and it, your your users can then set your your users can then upload, the the file size that you set in Gravity Forms. So you're you're no longer limited by your host or Gravity Forms. You can do it, or set it as large as you want it to be. And in in in our testing, we've we've tested up to, I think, two gig file, through through Gravity Forms, and, it's worked great. It uses, as I file chunking on the back end, and then it reassembles those chunks and puts it into the, default storage location that Gravity Forms stores the, uploads that people submit through the forms.
Speaker 1:It's fantastic. For the freelancer listening who might have never hit a file upload limit for their customers let's say they're building websites for customers. They're using Gravity Forms, and they've yet to hit that kind of, you know, stop gap for the file size. Where do you see the use cases for something like this? Like, what types of customers or agencies tend tend to be working with where they're like, oh god.
Speaker 1:Like, I need to upload 100 megabyte files, gigabyte sized files. What do you think the best use cases are for this?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So two use cases are going to be the the beginner market to where, you know, if you're a developer, you're probably not going to want to use this plugin because you already know how to do all this in the in the h t access file and whatnot. It's more geared towards people that aren't familiar with that kind of things, and and they just want to do it through a plugin. So we have the the beginner market, but then as well the people that need to upload extremely large files. So as mentioned, no matter within, WordPress, no matter how big you set your maximum upload size, when if you're not using big file uploads, what happens is is that when you upload a file through your form not using our our solution, it stores it all in memory.
Speaker 2:And then you're you're gonna tap out of your memory and it's it's going to be exhausted. Big file uploads and big file form uploads prevents that by uses the file chunking, and it doesn't keep it all in memory. So you can upload two gig files, five five gig files, etcetera, through your front end forms now. And it's perfect for people, you know, all the types of UK use cases, and and I'm not going to to go through them all. But one that, that that we know of is there's a competition that requires people to upload videos.
Speaker 2:And it's a lot of, like, business ideas and innovation, so they don't wanna post it on YouTube or somewhere public. And then, you know, they they they tried to, you know, accept only a Google Drive link, but then you you get into the the whole debacle of people aren't sharing it properly or or stuff like that. So we actually already have, or will have a a a a organization, a nonprofit that will be using our plug in because they'll be be able to accept those those large m p four files directly through Gravity Forms on their website, which is Gravity Forms is what they use for, their their application process.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. No. That's fantastic. I I'm actually in the in the middle of, just, working on a new video for Gravity Forms.
Speaker 1:You know, obviously, I enjoy AI. A lot of a lot of the stuff that people are are doing for tutorials on AI. I've done a bunch as well. And, like, the use case that happens a lot with AI is like, oh, build a directory site with AI. Look like, look how easy that is.
Speaker 1:And Mhmm. It still takes hours and hours of your life. You know? Like Right. Sure.
Speaker 1:Like, AI spits out something, like, super fast, and you're like, oh my god. This is amazing. And then you quickly realize that, like, only about 70% of it works, and then that other 30% is a, like, you know, a slot machine that you're pulling the arm down going, please, AI, get it right this time, and then you wait to see if it gets it right. You're like, no. I gotta do it again.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And I quite honestly, like, it really shows the value of of something like WordPress, of course, Gravity Forms, plugins like yours because by putting together three, four, five, six plugins and, you know, not very big plugins, a lot of these add ons to Gravity Forms, you can build a business directory. Right? Gravity kit, Zach's products is fantastic for that. Right?
Speaker 1:Building business directories using a plugin like yours. Now you can say, well, if I ever wanted to replicate and build my own, let's say, YouTube type of experience, people could start uploading videos, you know, display it in a grid using Zach's products. Everything's powered by Gravity Forms and the base of it being WordPress. Like, it's a it's a pretty wonderful world. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I think we've been taking it for granted, for a while. And all of a sudden, AI is a shiny new thing. It's like, oh, oh, but you could just take this stuff off the shelf, it would be done in ten minutes. Like, yeah, you're gonna have to pay a couple $100, but if your organization is making money off of whatever it is you're building, why not spend a couple $100 and it's done and it's reliable versus, you know, spinning the the, you know, the wheel of fortune with AI? And, you know, it's just an interesting concept.
Speaker 1:So it's it's great that, you know, you're you're leaning into the Gravity Forms space as well because Mhmm. It's a pretty big ecosystem. When the when the plugin is ready, it'll be available at clickit.now.com, I presume, or do you are you gonna have a dedicated website for it?
Speaker 2:It's gonna be on infiniteuploads.com. So Ah, okay. This is going to this is it is falling under our infinite upload suite of of plugins and products.
Speaker 1:Very good. So they'll be able to get it at, the the listener will be able to get it at infiniteuploads.com. It is August 19 today. This podcast should go out on Monday, which I think is the twenty fifth, twenty fifth, if all things go well. Will your plug in be out on the twenty fifth or after?
Speaker 2:It should be out late today or tomorrow. Oh, okay. We're wrapping up a a couple of things, and, we we are are, like, 99.9% there. We just have to button up a couple of of of marketing aspects in terms of the, release and and whatnot. But the the plug in itself is ready to go.
Speaker 2:We used Freemius as the merchant of record and the payment processor, so it's very simple to use. And, in terms of pricing, we've priced it extremely affordable. One site is $14.99 per year, and so extremely cheap. There's also a lifetime option for one site is $59.99.
Speaker 1:Very nice. Very nice. Blake Whittle. Click itnow.com. Infiniteuploads.com.
Speaker 1:That's where you'll be able to find the products we talked about today. You can also find him at WordCamp this week if you're listening to it, the week of the twenty fifth. Hunt him down, shake his hand, say hi, buy his products. Blake, anywhere else you want folks to go to say thanks.
Speaker 2:I'm very active on x and LinkedIn, so feel free to find me on there. I think on x, it's Blake Whittle seven is my username. I don't think that there's actually seven of us on LinkedIn, but that's what was available and or on x and then on LinkedIn, just Blake Whittle.
Speaker 1:That's it for today's episode. If you could do one more thing for me today, share this episode on social media, your favorite Facebook group or Discord channel, spread the word about this podcast. It really helps. If you haven't added Breakdown to your favorite podcast app, point your browser to gravityforms.com/breakdown and click the icon of your app to add us and listen to us every two weeks. Okay.
Speaker 1:We'll see you in the next episode.
