Breakdown - A Gravity Forms Podcast

[00:00:00] 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
Smith, welcome back to Breakdown.
Dave: Hey Matt. Thanks so much for having me.
Matt: Uh, you've launched a flurry of new products, uh, I believe since you've been on, uh, you have this booking add-on, which we can, uh, chat about today for Gravity Forms. Uh, you've been enhancing your spell book feature set, which I think I didn't even talk to you about.
I, I talked to Cole about that stuff. Uh, and now you're back with API Alchemist, which is a really, really interesting, uh. Feature set to the rest of your products and of course to, to gravity form. So I'm, I'm excited to dive into all [00:01:00] those things today.
Dave: Awesome. Yeah, we have been very busy for sure. It's the classic scenario where we even internally have been struggling to decide what should take the spotlight.
Matt: How, how much does chat GPT help guide your direction?
Dave: You know, not very much. I do use it for, uh, like personal counseling. I love it just to challenge my own ideas. But when it comes to actually shaping the direction of the business, I, it has some random, random ideas. If I was, uh, a more courageous, uh, founder, CEO, I might, I might go for some of the ideas, but generally speaking, we just kind of do a little consensus between me and my, uh, partner Clay.
Matt: Has it been helping, uh, with the software development side of the business to iterate and, and move faster with any of this stuff? Like how is it really, uh, affecting, if at all, um, you know, your production output?
Dave: So [00:02:00] I have the, uh, the unfortunate blessing and curse of not having to touch code very much anymore these days.
But, uh, clay has mentioned several times how profound the impact has been for him. I know, uh, GP bookings was the first project that he kind of said, Hey, I am going to force myself to use AI on this project from start to finish, just to find the edges of it. And I think the, the final estimation there was something around 80 20, 80% of the code was written by ai, 20%, um, by him.
Uh, and obviously a hundred percent validated by a human.
Matt: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course. Little, little disclaimer there. We're not just shipping AI code without it. There's a, um, so I still follow the podcasting industry really close and podcasting industries. Pretty big these days, of course, with YouTube trying to claim podcasting to themselves, which don't get me started, but it's a pretty big industry and there's this.
A company that has been [00:03:00] making a splash and I, uh, I'm gonna forget the name of the company, which is a good thing 'cause we don't really need to care about them. But they've been cranking out 3000 ai podcast episodes a week, a week, uh, of a AI generated like the contents all AI generated, and then the voice probably using like 11 labs.
Or maybe they're doing some homegrown thing where, uh, it's just. Pumping out content, uh, across all like silos of, of industries. And, uh, the podcast industry is a little perturbed with that. Yeah. Uh, because even there was a ci and I, I say this because, you know, when we think about the ethics of ai, I think about this stuff quite often and, and especially how it'll impact WordPress, which, you know, maybe we'll talk about in a little bit, but.
Even the CEO, she was interviewed recently and, uh, admitted that even her small team of, of humans don't review all the content. And she admits, how could we keep up with that? And it's like, well, maybe that's the issue. Maybe you shouldn't [00:04:00] be shipping that much unedited and, uh, uh, reviewed content that goes up to the world.
Yeah. Just a thought,
Dave: the, the natural threshold right? Is, is, yeah. Who could, if you can't review this, then maybe don't. I agree with that completely. That's definitely where we're at with code, at least. You're actually making me think about, uh, SOA two. I know that came out somewhat recently and the, I saw the first like, actual demo of it.
I think Casey NY Stat did a, a YouTube video of it and I, it just strikes me as such an interesting concept that. I don't fully understand the market that's gonna consume this content that that's the thing that's missing for me. Obviously there must be some money there, but. I'm like, who is it that wants to, to view this for me, when I look at art or you know, a podcast or a YouTube video, it is the fact that there is a human behind it and that kind of, that parasocial relationship that develops there.
That's part of the experience for me. So going and, [00:05:00] you know, just watching, especially for entertainment, you know, not just informational, but just entertainment that has been essentially pre-generated for you by ai. I just, I, I may, you know, maybe 10 years from now I'm be like, oh, I was so dumb. It's so good.
But right now I just can't see it. Well,
Matt: well, how does that relate to, uh, the business and. Famously Gravity whiz has just a ton of snippets. Do you, do you have customers coming to you now going, Hey, look, I built this thing with, with ai, or are you getting support requests where somebody might come to you and say, Hey, I took your snippet, or I took your add-on and I, I added my own stuff to it.
Please support me. Is is that happening at, at, at your company or, or how are you seeing AI impact? Either negatively or positively the way people either slot your product into their WordPress site or ask for support.
Dave: So I think we've seen both of those use cases where we've had people come [00:06:00] that are deep into the AI woods and they're like, please lead us out of, out of this cesspool that we've arrived in.
Um, and. Generally, those are the times where it's kind of tough 'cause we're like, Hey, you're like really deep in, you're gonna have to, you know, get a, a contractor to, to help out with this. Obviously, if it's simple enough, if it's like a simple snippet that they've whipped up, you know, we're all about it, we'll, we'll help out, figure out a way to, to, you know, close that gap that they're not understanding or just sometimes the AI doesn't understand a particular nuance, you know, of, of what needs to happen.
I do think the more interesting is, uh, we have a lot of goodwill with our customer base. Uh, I think, you know, in some part, just because we have published so much free resources over the years, and so we do have a lot of customers coming to us and offering us their AI coded solutions that are working for them, solving their need.
And it always kind of breaks my heart a little bit to have to essentially say, you know, yeah, thank you. [00:07:00] But we also can't really do a whole lot with this because there's a, a huge gap between making a product that solves a specific need for a specific customer versus how do you take that product and then again, put it into a product suite that we need to make sure it works with all the other products in the product suite.
We need to make sure it has a general enough appeal if it's too specific, too niche. It's just not gonna be a good fit for us. We're just adding overhead without adding any real, uh, value to the suite. But yeah, so it's just, uh, that's funny that you mentioned that 'cause I had like, at least three of those in the last couple weeks.
Matt: Yeah. I, I, I try to get into AI as much as possible. Uh, again, I think in the last time we did a webinar, which was, I don't know, maybe 10 months ago-ish, uh, with Gravity Forms and, and talking about your stuff. I think we did one about your. Uh, open AI integration, like the things that you were doing. So that was actually almost a year ago, right?
Headed into the holidays, and [00:08:00] I was like super pumped on a lot of the. Like AI, vibe, coding stuff, and like all these tools were coming out at a, at a rapid pace. We were bolt lovable, rep lit, like they're still here. But I even find myself going, you know what? I am not going to waste that time anymore.
Building that like little idea that I have with. Uh, like a react based app, like SaaS based, like interesting idea because what I've done since then to my own and, you know, admitting my own, uh, you know, faults here with AI is drank the Kool-Aid dove in and I was like, this is awesome. I can build anything And realize that as soon as you start to build something of any kind of like, uh, utility or, or, or value, it just becomes really complex.
And if you don't know code that vibe coding session. Is just spinning the wheels and you're just like, I am not accomplishing this thing. Like I was [00:09:00] working with this app that I was building. Just trying to set up permissions, uh, like user role permissions. And my point, my greater point here is, is like, I think we take a lot of what WordPress gives us for granted, right?
Oh yeah. Permissions and user roles and stuff like that. I start building a little SaaS app and I'm like, oh, I gotta user permissions, user login, uh, dashboard user management. And then I'm like, why does every, like, everyone has super admin access every time I log into this app. Why isn't this working? And I'm just.
Fighting and then I'm like, I'm looking up. Uh. You know, react libraries like Castle for, and I don't even know what I'm, I'm so deep into yes. Unknown territory that like, I get it as a power user and somebody who like helps build software. Like I get the fundamentals, but I can't deploy it into the code.
Like, I know I need security. I know a package should be the way it should be done. But, uh, I can't get it to work. Yeah. And uh, I found myself just throwing [00:10:00] those projects away and be like, nah, I'm just gonna go back to something like WordPress. 'cause it's done for me and a human cares about it.
Dave: Oh yeah.
That, it's actually interesting that that whole idea again, that that theme of getting lost in the woods, it's, it. Uh, it's actually, I was introduced to that through chess, uh, and chess, you know, the top players, they memorized, you know, all of the openings. And so in order to be competitive, you know, they will go off script, if you will, out of the book.
And they call it taking your opponent into the woods. And that's how often how I feel like with ai, when you get a certain, there's a certain depth where you're like, okay, we're just officially off the rails now. And it, it takes a lot to kind of get it back. It. The other interesting thing there is that I think AI itself.
It gets lost in the woods. It gets so deep into the project that it can't, you know, see the forest anymore through the trees. You know, it's just it. And you're asking for these what you know, seem to you as a human who can think critically and understand. You think this is actually really simple. Why is it [00:11:00] struggling to understand what I'm asking for?
And it's because it's, again, it's just so deep. You betted so much complexity that it cannot see the whole, and it can only see the pieces. And so it. Fixes one thing and breaks another, and then you repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, and then you eventually just cry yourself to sleep.
Matt: I fear, I fear we're in a bubble, but I, I won't get on that soapbox because that would, that would fill up the, the, uh, a whole hour of conversation.
We'd save that for another episode.
I invited you here 'cause A API Alchemist. I'm really interested to see like where this product goes. It's gonna be connecting up to ai, pulling data in, sending data out, connecting it up with populated anything makes this one two combo super. Uh, super great. But hold that thought, we're gonna push that out just a little bit.
I wanna talk about GP bookings. That's the latest. I guess these are my words. Latest, big feature to come out from the team recently. Right? That seems like a pretty big product. I'd say.
Dave: Yeah, I would [00:12:00] say so. As far as timeline, uh, API, Alchemist is the, is the newest, but, uh, GP bookings, we released it as, uh, essentially early access and we're working towards a beta one.
So it's, it's been, the news is kind of like trickling out a little bit more slowly, whereas API Alchemist, we kind of just. We just yoed it, 'cause it, we felt so strongly about where it was as a product. Um, but yeah. Bookings. What questions do you have? What can I tell you about this awesome product?
Matt: What, what does that squarely compete up against?
What, what's the, what's the SaaS provider that we are really trying to take down with Gravity forms, GP bookings, and WordPress.
Dave: You know, I don't think that's how we really approached it. Um, and I don't know that there is a single, I do have my eyes on like Calendly and, uh, I forget. What do you use Matt for your scheduling?
I use Savvy Cal. Savvy Cal. Yeah. So a lot of those services where they are incredibly robust and have, uh, so many features, but most of the time you only need like. Five of those features, [00:13:00] you know, you're not using everything and to the, to the degree that, and it's a whole, you know, it's a yearly subscription or a monthly subscription that you're paying, uh, and it adds up, it adds up considerably, especially if you have, you know, other needs, uh, that are in the bookings realm.
And that is kind of what are thinking was like, look, there are so many similarities, uh, in booking requirements, you know, for events. For, uh, reservations, um, you know, uh, as far as like, uh, like appointment based bookings, a lot of these things, they're different and they're unique and, and that's why you see a lot of services that really specialize in one of them.
But we know from our customers that our customers generally want a solid platform. You know, you're just talking about WordPress as a platform. That is our goal with GP bookings. We want it to be a booking platform that you can. It'll get you 80 to 90% there on almost any type of booking that you want to do.
And then the rest of it, that 10%, we're gonna help you kind of [00:14:00] figure out that little bit. Maybe it takes a smidge a hint of custom coding if you have like a really edge case requirement. Um, but yeah, our customers do this time and time again with our products. They come in, they build out. The, the bulk of the requirements, and then they just tweak a little bit at the end to tailor it to either their own needs or their client needs.
Uh, and that's what we're really hoping to achieve, uh, with, with GP bookings,
Matt: any kind of time-based. Maybe service business is a good fit for that, right? If somebody's listening to this and they're either an well, uh, I think most freelancers are trying to get away from hourly bookings, but you never know.
Uh, maybe got some consultation or some, uh, pre-sales time. They could book a, a client could book a slot of time with them, schedule it, pay for it, and. All is well in their world.
Dave: Yep. 100%. I mean, anything to do with dates and times where you are offering a service or even, uh, a, a property, an object, uh, rentals are, [00:15:00] are also supported.
Matt: Ooh, I like that idea. Like an Airbnb kind of thing.
Dave: Yes, 100%. And it can, it can do it all. And the, the field, there's like a really special field in there called the booking time field. And it dynamically updates itself to handle the type of service and resource that you have selected. Uh, and so that, again, just we're really leaning to this idea of flexibility.
Matt: And this is. Directly in gravity forms. I know you have stuff for WooCommerce. Does it work with WooCommerce products too, or like, does it stay strictly right in the gravity forms, I guess ecosystem, for lack of a better phrase.
Dave: No. It, it works with WooCommerce through our product configurator, uh, plugin. So, yeah, so you get WordPress, you add product configurator to tie, uh.
Word, uh, gravity forms into WordPress, and then anything that's supported in gravity forms is supported through product configurator. So that means cheapy bookings, which works with gravity forms, can also [00:16:00] work with WooCommerce.
Matt: Nice. Um, so we've been hinting at and saying things like, WordPress is a platform.
We want WordPress to win. Of course, we're, we're very biased, uh, being, uh, gravity forms guys. Um, but. Open source WordPress has never been under. So much pressure to perform and to be the choice of software. Um, and well, because of AI and because of like the competition, the, the Shopifys, the Wix is the web flows of the world.
Every, all these like closed source systems, I say, do they do portions of open source to, to be fair, but they're platforms are, you know. Monthly subscription platforms. They control the data, they control the price points, et cetera, et cetera. WordPress has never been under so much pressure, uh, as it, as it stands close to the tail end of 2025.
I always look at WordPress as, you know, the platform of choice for anybody who wants to control their content, they control the experience, uh, on their [00:17:00] website for their customers or their users. Uh, data portability, obviously open source code. You launched this new API tool, which allows people to connect and talk to APIs.
You said you yolo it. I, this was just your short words before, but I'm sure you had a use case for it. I'm sure you were using something before going, ah, this is a, this is a magic unlock right here. Like we need to turn this into a product. So what was that aha moment for you? To build API Alchemist.
Dave: So it, we actually were trying to build something different.
We were trying to solve a problem that we have with populate anything. And for those who aren't familiar, populate anything allows you to populate choices and field values, uh, from pretty much any. Local source, so anything on your server. And one of the, you know, historically, uh, most requested features was people were saying, Hey, we [00:18:00] wanna populate data from remote sources.
Like, we wanna get data from, you know, the National Highway Safety Patrol. You know, we, we want to get stuff from our healthcare, uh, API service that we're using. And we wanna populate that into this form, either again as choices in a field so they can select, Hey, this is my insurance provider. Or, uh, as value, so hey, like I have a vin.
I wanna be able to look up the, all the details on this car and save that to the entry on submission. And so we're trying to figure out how to do that. We wrote like a snippet that kind of did the, the bare bones version of that. Uh, and so then we started down this road of just trying to make almost like an add-on for populate anything.
Then during that process, that's when we realized, okay, wow, wait a second. We can make something a lot more robust that solves that need, but also opens just a thousand other doors. A thousand's probably underselling it, honestly. Yeah, [00:19:00] and that's where the idea of, okay, so like what else? I mean, what else do you want to do with data?
You know, like you wanna send gravity forms data away. You wanna pull remote data into gravity forms. And then also you want to, uh, not just pull that data into a gravity form live, aka with popula, anything, but you want to enrich data. Oftentimes you want to take data again, that the VIN is a good example of that, where you have the user entered vin.
And you submit it and it can go off and fetch that data and then it can enrich the entry with all that data that you may need for subsequent processing of that entry or just, you know, search data. We did a really cool, uh, demo at our last, our workshop last week where, uh, I don't know if you're familiar with Node Nation, but it is amazing.
Much better than Zapier, in my opinion. Uh, and. You just, you can do a whole workflow there. So you send the data to, to No Nation and have a whole workflow that, in our example that we used, we used their tool that allows you to extract data from PDF files. [00:20:00] And then we sent that, extracted it in No Nation, and then sent it back to the form.
So that was kind of, it just, it wasn't really a specific, uh, use case that we had in mind when we started developing it. It was just that aha moment of potential. Again, we have, so our customers give us. A million ideas every day, and this was one of those things that we realized kind of as we were developing and, oh wow, this solves this, this solves this, this solves this.
And so we just ran with it.
Matt: API Alchemist, by default, if somebody would've just purchased it today, throw it into their gravity forms. I just want to paint the picture of the one two combo. Of that and populate anything. If they just get API API Alchemist, you can, you can send data, well, you correct me if I'm, if I'm wrong. Mm-hmm. You can, you can access the API and an external API and then send that data from gravity forms to [00:21:00] that API endpoint.
Yep. But you, but populate anything would allow you to bring that data into the gravity form and then. Manipulate, like have that manipulation happen there, whether you know it's saving to your entries or sending out to another API. The one two combo is you can send anything with API Alchemist, but in order to manipulate it and maybe store it on WordPress, you need to have populate anything.
Am I getting that picture correct?
Dave: Almost. So the, the nuance here is that with API Alchemist, you can send data on submission and you can receive a response back and update the entry. But it has to happen. That is all happening post submission right now. What populate anything unlocks is the ability to do all of that.
Live on the form so you can go, do they enter something on the form, make a selection and a choice. Enter a a value, you can send that user, enter data off to the remote API and get a response [00:22:00] back immediately and then populate that response into the form. So think like chain selects where like you're doing like a year make model all from a remote data source are again, going back to the VIN example, the user type manually types in their vin.
And you can populate their year, make and model right there and just say, Hey, just validating. This is the car that we found for that. Then it just kind of improves the UX for the scenarios where that would be valuable. In some cases, again, like when you're doing like enrichment, you don't care the, the user never really intended to see it.
Uh, it's just like after the submission, you want that data. And the other nice thing because with populating anything, you're doing it live. You can also use it as a validation tool. So if you don't get a valid response for that vin, you can let them know like, Hey, this isn't a valid response and you can hide the submit button.
So they can't proceed that way. You're not getting trash submissions or, you know, even again, just going back to UX for them, they're aware that they made a mistake entering their VIN and that, you know, they need to update that before they submit the form.
Matt: Yeah. Yeah. I, um, this [00:23:00] is when I see these tools come together, like any time I can explore an API and do something with WordPress, like I'm all in, this is like vibe coding to me.
And this is when I knocked on your door. I'm like, Hey man, let's, let's come on the show and let's talk about this because I really see WordPress as like this way of, uh, low code, no code. Kind of like database of content. Like sure we can build websites and blogs and e-commerce stores, but I truly think the future of WordPress is to, to give somebody like me or some power user somewhere.
Or as it gets easier, you know, somebody even, you know, below that level, the ability to like build this, these. These databases of, of content that they have, you know, especially with custom post types, custom fields, your tools, gravity forms, being able to pull in and, and send out data and manipulate that data and create your own thing of content is really appealing to me.
And I'm just curious like how [00:24:00] you see WordPress. Evolving over, over the future? Like, do you see it continuing to just be a sort of like standalone CMS, uh, making websites and, and blogs or, or do you see it evolving in a way where, like Matt Mullenweg famously said a while back, like an operating system for the web?
Like, do you see those kinds of things or where do you see that future of WordPress settling up for you?
Dave: You know, it's funny, I forgot Matt Mullo actually had said that. Uh, but I also, it, that's how I explain WordPress to most people who aren't familiar with it. You know, I say, Hey, you have your phone.
Your phone has an operating system. You install apps on your phone. Uh, WordPress is an operating system for websites, and you install plugins, which are essentially apps for your website. So, as far as where I see WordPress going. I don't know. That's my honest answer. I I, it's a, it's a wild landscape out there right now.
Ai, you know, definitely makes everyone feel a little jittery about the, the future. But I [00:25:00] kind of go back to this idea of the platform. I mean, you get so much for free with, with WordPress, I mean literally for free, you know, with WordPress that it. Makes it, I think just a very compelling starting point. Um, the future that I kind of imagine for WordPress at this point are the, the biggest leap forward.
I think it's gonna be this idea, you know, MCP servers where you can, you know, issue commands and it can do things on your, on your site. I, I think the, the true building future of, of WordPress will be the ability to assemble all of the different tools together. So rather than you. Having to do all this legwork to find, you know, which plugin can handle this feature, which plugin handle this feature.
When we get to the point where you can just go into WordPress and say, here's the feature I need. Find all the code that's already written, that's already been, has security audits and has been supported for 15 years, like gravity forms, [00:26:00] and just install that for me and go ahead and, you know, set up what I'm talking about.
Like whatever, you know, the requirements are for that project. Uh, and I think if we can get somewhere like that, I think it has a really good chance of taking on that kind of place where a lot of these other, uh, shops, uh, you know, other what platforms, I guess. I think they'd have a hard time competing with that.
It's the same reason that I think Gravity Forms itself has done so well, is that the ecosystem is. Just insane. Like there is a lot of really pre top premium plugins out there. Again, a, a lot of the shops in the space, and I'm getting tooting our own horn here, like we do security audits. We are taking the time to make sure that this code is code that you can deploy on live websites and not have to worry, you know, not, not have to stay up at night.
Making sure that the, you know, someone's not hacking your, hacking your site. And I think that's. That's such like, it's like a, a goldmine for, for ai we can [00:27:00] just figure out how to make AI the assembler rather than, you know, the humans having to go in and manually. 'cause that's the friction point right now.
Right. I think for a lot of customers is that they have to go in and, and learn WordPress and learn a big part of that's learning all the plugins that come along with WordPress.
Matt: Yeah. I mean, there, there is. I have a, a whole range of thoughts around like I was testing out the tool and you know, one of the things I really love about WordPress is that just out of the box, unless you know your web host has modified it, or maybe your IT team has modified it, but out of the box you have this rest API built right in.
In other words, I can knock on the door of WordPress and say. How many blog posts does this site have? What's the content? How many users do they do they have? What's the media account like? All of this information. In fact, I vibe coded a tool to help me explore that with WordPress, and I still use it. I used it when I was, uh, demoing your, your, uh, products [00:28:00] to help, um, you know, just show me what information was available.
And then I found out your plugin is going to do that too. So I built this little tool called WP API explorer.com, and if you just punch in your WordPress URL in there, it's gonna show you the response of the WordPress Rest API type in blog post you have when the last blog post was, when the first blog post was.
Dave: Mm.
Matt: And the ability to get that data. I think is so important for the open Web and humanity. Case in point, again, like you built a demo using the, was the highway?
Dave: Yeah. National Highway Safety, uh, tra uh, it's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Yeah. N-H-C-S-A.
Matt: Yeah. And there's all kinds of data out there.
Weather data, NASA data. I looked at my state website. There's all these APIs that. We as citizens of the United States have access to. And I think when we start to build tools [00:29:00] like, um, API Alchemists and of course Gravity Forms populate anything, what we're enabling is people who are not developers to be able to explore this stuff and build things with it.
Like we don't know what people are gonna build with it. But I was building out like, Hey, let me uh, use API Alchemist. Knock on the door of Matt Mullenweg's WordPress website, pull in all of his blog posts and then use populate anything to, uh, display them in a dropdown in a gravity form so I could, uh.
You know, effectively any WordPress website with a rest API, I could access blog posts. I could make my own little site with like reviews, like, oh, this blog post, let me leave a, a review for this blog post that this person wrote. You know, so long as it's, it's WordPress and it has that open rest, API access, like.
Then I started thinking like, well, now I could actually through the rest API through API Alchemist, I could pull in the content of that blog post right into gravity forms. I [00:30:00] could have it send to open ai, uh, chat, GPT, using your plugin and say, Hey, summarize this for me, or rewrite this for me, or gimme the tone of this.
And then I could have, like, I could trigger so many other things with like conditional logic and gravity forms and say if tone is whatever, like I could switch gravity forms to give me other options. And I'm just sitting there going, God, there's like endless opportunities. Yeah. With, with this kind of thing.
And again, like I really just can't stress enough like. Headless WordPress, I think is going to be a real, we're gonna see that take off a little bit more, uh, thanks to ai, right? I think people can build apps on top of the rest, API, but now we can do that right in WordPress with, with your tools and it's, it's gonna be fascinating to see how all of this stuff evolves.
Dave: I agree with that. That's actually a good, uh, I think a good argument for, you know, your vision for, you know, WordPress as the, [00:31:00] uh, the universal platform of the web. The thing that you said that I think, that struck me the most there about API Al Alchemist specifically is just the, I did not anticipate it, but it has been a really lovely surprise, and that is how approachable it has made.
Uh, rest APIs. We've had so many customers that are non-technical, but when they see the UI for API Alchemist and they see some of the demos and they see how it's, you know, you put in it, you're just copy and pasting URLs and, and then everything else is point and click after that, uh, it's been awesome.
Like seeing them get inspired for all the things. You know, they, I get asked at least once a day right now, can I integrate with this API? And I'm like, it's a rest API. So yes, it, it absolutely can. Uh, and that is like a, a great, you know, just kind of unlocks a lot of potential for, for our customers and for anyone using gravity forms.
That's like super exciting.
Matt: Yeah, I mean when you see, when you put in an API, uh, and you know, I am fanboying a bit [00:32:00] on, on the product because I think you're a hundred percent right that it's, it's opening up stuff that people have never, um, realized was available. So like if you put in any. WordPress site with, uh, with the rest API EN enabled.
And you see like all the responses of like, everything you can do post, get, you know, all this stuff, all these endpoints, all of that data and your plugin makes it easy for somebody to like, browse all of that. You're like, wow, man. Like I can, I can do a lot. I think about the higher ed a lot from my background of like running an agency and working at a hosting company that did a lot of enterprise stuff.
Like there were, you know, higher ed organizations that have hundreds, if not thousands of WordPress websites, and they all have, you know, ways of like, oh, so many different ways of like managing those sites and accessing the data and pulling data into the Central College website or university website.
Like now, it's just gonna be so damn easy with, with, with your stuff. And it's just like, then there's that [00:33:00] other combo of like custom fields and custom post types. And now you can make that's, that's where like the database comes in for me is like, man, if you can build your database of. Content or resources, and then you need to pull that stuff into another WordPress site, you know, through API Alchemist, and, you know, gravity Forms and populating anything.
It's like, it's a super powerful tool. So kudos on that launch. I'm really excited to see where it goes.
Dave: We're only gonna make it easier too. We're, we have lots of plans to make it even more approachable as far as, you know, both education around, uh, rest APIs and also just improving the, the UX of the plugin just to make it as, as seamless as possible.
Matt: And I gotta put you on the hot seat as the CEO. Let's go. How do you, how do you see this competing with maybe like the. The add-ons that you have in your Gravity Connect suite. Right? Uh, you know, do you see it sort of going, all right. This is for the real di wire here. If they can like wire stuff up with, [00:34:00] uh, API Alchemists to send information to.
Say Notion or something like that through the API will, they not need my Notion Connect tool. Like how do you see those, those, how do you define those lines Between API, Alchemist can send data anywhere, and then I have all of these individual add-ons to send data to those individual sites.
Dave: Yeah, that's a great question because as we were developing API alchemists, it slowly dawned on us what we were doing.
Yeah. I will say, uh, so some of the, the simple connections you may not, you know, you may not need. I'm just thinking, for example, uh, notion. Notion's. The the one where if you just wanna send a notion request off with API Alchemist. Yes, absolutely. Uh, you still get a more tailored experience with the notion connection, uh, especially if you don't want to fuss with the API level of, you know, knowledge.
There is still some learning there, right? Whereas with [00:35:00] notion, you just go in, you build your template in a, in a layout or. A UI that is completely familiar and comfortable to you. Um, whereas if you go through API Alchemist, yes, you, it is easy to figure out, but there is still a, a level of figuring it out.
Matt: Yeah.
Dave: Um, and the other, uh, differentiator is something like Google Sheets, for example, our Google Sheets connection, that is incredibly robust. Uh, it, it does a lot of efficiency. Um, you know, there's a lot of efficiency code in that to handle scenarios that API Alchemists is not going to be, uh, quite robust enough to handle.
Uh, and we're gonna also see that we have some connections coming out in the future for. Uploading files to different services, for example, and API Alchemist works great. If your file is a small, like under one megabyte, you know, but at the second that you're getting into large files, that's where you're gonna need like a dedicated connection that's gonna have all of the robust code in place to support that specific use case.
Matt: Yeah, I mean, I would say like if you are a freelancer agency listening to [00:36:00] this, just thinking about my days as an agency owner, like handing over a site to somebody and saying like, you're okay, here's your gravity forms and you do the, you know, the education walkthrough and all that. Show the people how to use it, whatever.
As easy as API Alchemist is like you still gotta be more of that developer mindset to even understand what the heck it is that you're looking at. Authentication headers, you know, you guys do a great job with like inline documentation and help. Tutorials and stuff like that, but you're certainly not giving that to somebody to, that's like managing a MailChimp newsletter, right?
Right. You're not gonna be like, Hey, Alchemist will set it up. I'll just show you how to like set your header in your authentication. You're like, what? Like, yeah. I think those tailored experiences of like the notion add-on and the other connections that you have, like it's just grab that API key or sign into that service.
It's authenticated done, right? Like, yeah, you map the fields, that's it. You're not looking at. JSON responses, right? Yeah. Which is like totally different, um, you know, for, for, you know, most common folks. So I think it's a clear win. [00:37:00]
Dave: Oh yeah. Even the idea of, uh, you know, you're talking about like mapping the data with these, with the established plugins, the established connections, there is a lot of.
Formatting of that data to get it into the right format that the, you know, service is expecting. Again, some of that is possible with API Alco, it's just more work. But as far as how we're approaching future connections, uh, with API Alchemist, API Alchemist is definitely gonna be our litmus test. You know, we're gonna set it up first and API Alchemist, see how it works, and where we see we can add additional value above API Alchemist.
Those will be the connections that we pursue moving forward.
Matt: Yeah, a hundred percent Dave Smith, gravity whiz. Where can folks go to get the GP booking stuff that we talked about today? A P Alchemist, uh, populate. Anything. Where can they go to find more?
Dave: Always start with, uh, gravity whiz.com. Uh, check out spell book.
It is our platform plugin. We, we got a, a platform theme going on today, Matt. Uh, and spell book will just get you access to all of our products, [00:38:00] documentation, purchasing all the free plugins. Uh, in the future are all of our snippets. We have over a thousand our snippet library. So gravity was.com and then next stop is spell book.
Matt: Awesome stuff. Thanks everybody for listening. We'll see you in the next episode.
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 gravity forms.com/breakdown and click the icon of your app to add us and listen to us every two weeks.
Okay. We'll see you in the next episode.
[00:39:00] 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
Smith, welcome back to Breakdown. Hey Matt. Thanks so much for having me. Uh, you've launched a flurry of new products, uh, I believe since you've been on, uh, you have this booking add-on, which we can, uh, chat about today for Gravity Forms. Uh, you've been enhancing your spell book feature set, which I think I didn't even talk to you about.
I, I talked to Cole about that stuff. Uh, and now you're back with API Alchemist, which is a really, really interesting, uh. Feature set to the rest of your products and of course to, to gravity form. So I'm, I'm excited to dive into all those things today. [00:40:00] Awesome. Yeah, we have been very busy for sure. It's the classic scenario where we even internally have been struggling to decide what should take the spotlight.
How, how much does chat GPT help guide your direction? You know, not very much. I do use it for, uh, like personal counseling. I love it just to challenge my own ideas. But when it comes to actually shaping the direction of the business, I, it has some random, random ideas. If I was, uh, a more courageous, uh, founder, CEO, I might, I might go for some of the ideas, but generally speaking, we just kind of do a little consensus between me and my, uh, partner Clay.
Has it been helping, uh, with the software development side of the business to iterate and, and move faster with any of this stuff? Like how is it really, uh, affecting, if at all, um, you know, your production output? So I have [00:41:00] the, uh, the unfortunate blessing and curse of not having to touch code very much anymore these days.
But, uh, clay has mentioned several times how profound the impact has been for him. I know, uh, GP bookings was the first project that he kind of said, Hey, I am going to force myself to use AI on this project from start to finish, just to find the edges of it. And I think the, the final estimation there was something around 80 20, 80% of the code was written by ai, 20%, um, by him.
Uh, and obviously a hundred percent validated by a human. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course. Little, little disclaimer there. We're not just shipping AI code without it. There's a, um, so I still follow the podcasting industry really close and podcasting industries. Pretty big these days, of course, with YouTube trying to claim podcasting to themselves, which don't get me started, but it's a pretty big industry and there's this.
A company that has been making a [00:42:00] splash and I, uh, I'm gonna forget the name of the company, which is a good thing 'cause we don't really need to care about them. But they've been cranking out 3000 ai podcast episodes a week, a week, uh, of a AI generated like the contents all AI generated, and then the voice probably using like 11 labs.
Or maybe they're doing some homegrown thing where, uh, it's just. Pumping out content, uh, across all like silos of, of industries. And, uh, the podcast industry is a little perturbed with that. Yeah. Uh, because even there was a ci and I, I say this because, you know, when we think about the ethics of ai, I think about this stuff quite often and, and especially how it'll impact WordPress, which, you know, maybe we'll talk about in a little bit, but.
Even the CEO, she was interviewed recently and, uh, admitted that even her small team of, of humans don't review all the content. And she admits, how could we keep up with that? And it's like, well, maybe that's the issue. Maybe you shouldn't be [00:43:00] shipping that much unedited and, uh, uh, reviewed content that goes up to the world.
Yeah. Just a thought, the, the natural threshold right? Is, is, yeah. Who could, if you can't review this, then maybe don't. I agree with that completely. That's definitely where we're at with code, at least. You're actually making me think about, uh, SOA two. I know that came out somewhat recently and the, I saw the first like, actual demo of it.
I think Casey NY Stat did a, a YouTube video of it and I, it just strikes me as such an interesting concept that. I don't fully understand the market that's gonna consume this content that that's the thing that's missing for me. Obviously there must be some money there, but. I'm like, who is it that wants to, to view this for me, when I look at art or you know, a podcast or a YouTube video, it is the fact that there is a human behind it and that kind of, that parasocial relationship that develops there.
That's part of the experience for me. So going and, you know, just [00:44:00] watching, especially for entertainment, you know, not just informational, but just entertainment that has been essentially pre-generated for you by ai. I just, I, I may, you know, maybe 10 years from now I'm be like, oh, I was so dumb. It's so good.
But right now I just can't see it. Well, well, how does that relate to, uh, the business and. Famously Gravity whiz has just a ton of snippets. Do you, do you have customers coming to you now going, Hey, look, I built this thing with, with ai, or are you getting support requests where somebody might come to you and say, Hey, I took your snippet, or I took your add-on and I, I added my own stuff to it.
Please support me. Is is that happening at, at, at your company or, or how are you seeing AI impact? Either negatively or positively the way people either slot your product into their WordPress site or ask for support. So I think we've seen both of those use cases where we've had people come that [00:45:00] are deep into the AI woods and they're like, please lead us out of, out of this cesspool that we've arrived in.
Um, and. Generally, those are the times where it's kind of tough 'cause we're like, Hey, you're like really deep in, you're gonna have to, you know, get a, a contractor to, to help out with this. Obviously, if it's simple enough, if it's like a simple snippet that they've whipped up, you know, we're all about it, we'll, we'll help out, figure out a way to, to, you know, close that gap that they're not understanding or just sometimes the AI doesn't understand a particular nuance, you know, of, of what needs to happen.
I do think the more interesting is, uh, we have a lot of goodwill with our customer base. Uh, I think, you know, in some part, just because we have published so much free resources over the years, and so we do have a lot of customers coming to us and offering us their AI coded solutions that are working for them, solving their need.
And it always kind of breaks my heart a little bit to have to essentially say, you know, yeah, thank you. But we [00:46:00] also can't really do a whole lot with this because there's a, a huge gap between making a product that solves a specific need for a specific customer versus how do you take that product and then again, put it into a product suite that we need to make sure it works with all the other products in the product suite.
We need to make sure it has a general enough appeal if it's too specific, too niche. It's just not gonna be a good fit for us. We're just adding overhead without adding any real, uh, value to the suite. But yeah, so it's just, uh, that's funny that you mentioned that 'cause I had like, at least three of those in the last couple weeks.
Yeah. I, I, I try to get into AI as much as possible. Uh, again, I think in the last time we did a webinar, which was, I don't know, maybe 10 months ago-ish, uh, with Gravity Forms and, and talking about your stuff. I think we did one about your. Uh, open AI integration, like the things that you were doing. So that was actually almost a year ago, right?
Headed into the holidays, and I was like [00:47:00] super pumped on a lot of the. Like AI, vibe, coding stuff, and like all these tools were coming out at a, at a rapid pace. We were bolt lovable, rep lit, like they're still here. But I even find myself going, you know what? I am not going to waste that time anymore.
Building that like little idea that I have with. Uh, like a react based app, like SaaS based, like interesting idea because what I've done since then to my own and, you know, admitting my own, uh, you know, faults here with AI is drank the Kool-Aid dove in and I was like, this is awesome. I can build anything And realize that as soon as you start to build something of any kind of like, uh, utility or, or, or value, it just becomes really complex.
And if you don't know code that vibe coding session. Is just spinning the wheels and you're just like, I am not accomplishing this thing. Like I was working with this [00:48:00] app that I was building. Just trying to set up permissions, uh, like user role permissions. And my point, my greater point here is, is like, I think we take a lot of what WordPress gives us for granted, right?
Oh yeah. Permissions and user roles and stuff like that. I start building a little SaaS app and I'm like, oh, I gotta user permissions, user login, uh, dashboard user management. And then I'm like, why does every, like, everyone has super admin access every time I log into this app. Why isn't this working? And I'm just.
Fighting and then I'm like, I'm looking up. Uh. You know, react libraries like Castle for, and I don't even know what I'm, I'm so deep into yes. Unknown territory that like, I get it as a power user and somebody who like helps build software. Like I get the fundamentals, but I can't deploy it into the code.
Like, I know I need security. I know a package should be the way it should be done. But, uh, I can't get it to work. Yeah. And uh, I found myself just throwing those [00:49:00] projects away and be like, nah, I'm just gonna go back to something like WordPress. 'cause it's done for me and a human cares about it. Oh yeah.
That, it's actually interesting that that whole idea again, that that theme of getting lost in the woods, it's, it. Uh, it's actually, I was introduced to that through chess, uh, and chess, you know, the top players, they memorized, you know, all of the openings. And so in order to be competitive, you know, they will go off script, if you will, out of the book.
And they call it taking your opponent into the woods. And that's how often how I feel like with ai, when you get a certain, there's a certain depth where you're like, okay, we're just officially off the rails now. And it, it takes a lot to kind of get it back. It. The other interesting thing there is that I think AI itself.
It gets lost in the woods. It gets so deep into the project that it can't, you know, see the forest anymore through the trees. You know, it's just it. And you're asking for these what you know, seem to you as a human who can think critically and understand. You think this is actually really simple. Why is it [00:50:00] struggling to understand what I'm asking for?
And it's because it's, again, it's just so deep. You betted so much complexity that it cannot see the whole, and it can only see the pieces. And so it. Fixes one thing and breaks another, and then you repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, and then you eventually just cry yourself to sleep. I fear, I fear we're in a bubble, but I, I won't get on that soapbox because that would, that would fill up the, the, uh, a whole hour of conversation.
We'd save that for another episode.
I invited you here 'cause A API Alchemist. I'm really interested to see like where this product goes. It's gonna be connecting up to ai, pulling data in, sending data out, connecting it up with populated anything makes this one two combo super. Uh, super great. But hold that thought, we're gonna push that out just a little bit.
I wanna talk about GP bookings. That's the latest. I guess these are my words. Latest, big feature to come out from the team recently. Right? That seems like a pretty big product. I'd say. Yeah, I would say so. [00:51:00] As far as timeline, uh, API, Alchemist is the, is the newest, but, uh, GP bookings, we released it as, uh, essentially early access and we're working towards a beta one.
So it's, it's been, the news is kind of like trickling out a little bit more slowly, whereas API Alchemist, we kind of just. We just yoed it, 'cause it, we felt so strongly about where it was as a product. Um, but yeah. Bookings. What questions do you have? What can I tell you about this awesome product? What, what does that squarely compete up against?
What, what's the, what's the SaaS provider that we are really trying to take down with Gravity forms, GP bookings, and WordPress. You know, I don't think that's how we really approached it. Um, and I don't know that there is a single, I do have my eyes on like Calendly and, uh, I forget. What do you use Matt for your scheduling?
I use Savvy Cal. Savvy Cal. Yeah. So a lot of those services where they are incredibly robust and have, uh, so many features, but most of the time you only need like. Five of those features, you know, you're [00:52:00] not using everything and to the, to the degree that, and it's a whole, you know, it's a yearly subscription or a monthly subscription that you're paying, uh, and it adds up, it adds up considerably, especially if you have, you know, other needs, uh, that are in the bookings realm.
And that is kind of what are thinking was like, look, there are so many similarities, uh, in booking requirements, you know, for events. For, uh, reservations, um, you know, uh, as far as like, uh, like appointment based bookings, a lot of these things, they're different and they're unique and, and that's why you see a lot of services that really specialize in one of them.
But we know from our customers that our customers generally want a solid platform. You know, you're just talking about WordPress as a platform. That is our goal with GP bookings. We want it to be a booking platform that you can. It'll get you 80 to 90% there on almost any type of booking that you want to do.
And then the rest of it, that 10%, we're gonna help you kind of figure out [00:53:00] that little bit. Maybe it takes a smidge a hint of custom coding if you have like a really edge case requirement. Um, but yeah, our customers do this time and time again with our products. They come in, they build out. The, the bulk of the requirements, and then they just tweak a little bit at the end to tailor it to either their own needs or their client needs.
Uh, and that's what we're really hoping to achieve, uh, with, with GP bookings, any kind of time-based. Maybe service business is a good fit for that, right? If somebody's listening to this and they're either an well, uh, I think most freelancers are trying to get away from hourly bookings, but you never know.
Uh, maybe got some consultation or some, uh, pre-sales time. They could book a, a client could book a slot of time with them, schedule it, pay for it, and. All is well in their world. Yep. 100%. I mean, anything to do with dates and times where you are offering a service or even, uh, a, a property, an object, uh, rentals are, are [00:54:00] also supported.
Ooh, I like that idea. Like an Airbnb kind of thing. Yes, 100%. And it can, it can do it all. And the, the field, there's like a really special field in there called the booking time field. And it dynamically updates itself to handle the type of service and resource that you have selected. Uh, and so that, again, just we're really leaning to this idea of flexibility.
And this is. Directly in gravity forms. I know you have stuff for WooCommerce. Does it work with WooCommerce products too, or like, does it stay strictly right in the gravity forms, I guess ecosystem, for lack of a better phrase. No. It, it works with WooCommerce through our product configurator, uh, plugin. So, yeah, so you get WordPress, you add product configurator to tie, uh.
Word, uh, gravity forms into WordPress, and then anything that's supported in gravity forms is supported through product configurator. So that means cheapy bookings, which works with gravity forms, can also work with [00:55:00] WooCommerce. Nice. Um, so we've been hinting at and saying things like, WordPress is a platform.
We want WordPress to win. Of course, we're, we're very biased, uh, being, uh, gravity forms guys. Um, but. Open source WordPress has never been under. So much pressure to perform and to be the choice of software. Um, and well, because of AI and because of like the competition, the, the Shopifys, the Wix is the web flows of the world.
Every, all these like closed source systems, I say, do they do portions of open source to, to be fair, but they're platforms are, you know. Monthly subscription platforms. They control the data, they control the price points, et cetera, et cetera. WordPress has never been under so much pressure, uh, as it, as it stands close to the tail end of 2025.
I always look at WordPress as, you know, the platform of choice for anybody who wants to control their content, they control the experience, uh, on their website for [00:56:00] their customers or their users. Uh, data portability, obviously open source code. You launched this new API tool, which allows people to connect and talk to APIs.
You said you yolo it. I, this was just your short words before, but I'm sure you had a use case for it. I'm sure you were using something before going, ah, this is a, this is a magic unlock right here. Like we need to turn this into a product. So what was that aha moment for you? To build API Alchemist. So it, we actually were trying to build something different.
We were trying to solve a problem that we have with populate anything. And for those who aren't familiar, populate anything allows you to populate choices and field values, uh, from pretty much any. Local source, so anything on your server. And one of the, you know, historically, uh, most requested features was people were saying, Hey, we wanna [00:57:00] populate data from remote sources.
Like, we wanna get data from, you know, the National Highway Safety Patrol. You know, we, we want to get stuff from our healthcare, uh, API service that we're using. And we wanna populate that into this form, either again as choices in a field so they can select, Hey, this is my insurance provider. Or, uh, as value, so hey, like I have a vin.
I wanna be able to look up the, all the details on this car and save that to the entry on submission. And so we're trying to figure out how to do that. We wrote like a snippet that kind of did the, the bare bones version of that. Uh, and so then we started down this road of just trying to make almost like an add-on for populate anything.
Then during that process, that's when we realized, okay, wow, wait a second. We can make something a lot more robust that solves that need, but also opens just a thousand other doors. A thousand's probably underselling it, honestly. Yeah, [00:58:00] and that's where the idea of, okay, so like what else? I mean, what else do you want to do with data?
You know, like you wanna send gravity forms data away. You wanna pull remote data into gravity forms. And then also you want to, uh, not just pull that data into a gravity form live, aka with popula, anything, but you want to enrich data. Oftentimes you want to take data again, that the VIN is a good example of that, where you have the user entered vin.
And you submit it and it can go off and fetch that data and then it can enrich the entry with all that data that you may need for subsequent processing of that entry or just, you know, search data. We did a really cool, uh, demo at our last, our workshop last week where, uh, I don't know if you're familiar with Node Nation, but it is amazing.
Much better than Zapier, in my opinion. Uh, and. You just, you can do a whole workflow there. So you send the data to, to No Nation and have a whole workflow that, in our example that we used, we used their tool that allows you to extract data from PDF files. And [00:59:00] then we sent that, extracted it in No Nation, and then sent it back to the form.
So that was kind of, it just, it wasn't really a specific, uh, use case that we had in mind when we started developing it. It was just that aha moment of potential. Again, we have, so our customers give us. A million ideas every day, and this was one of those things that we realized kind of as we were developing and, oh wow, this solves this, this solves this, this solves this.
And so we just ran with it.
API Alchemist, by default, if somebody would've just purchased it today, throw it into their gravity forms. I just want to paint the picture of the one two combo. Of that and populate anything. If they just get API API Alchemist, you can, you can send data, well, you correct me if I'm, if I'm wrong. Mm-hmm. You can, you can access the API and an external API and then send that data from gravity forms to that [01:00:00] API endpoint.
Yep. But you, but populate anything would allow you to bring that data into the gravity form and then. Manipulate, like have that manipulation happen there, whether you know it's saving to your entries or sending out to another API. The one two combo is you can send anything with API Alchemist, but in order to manipulate it and maybe store it on WordPress, you need to have populate anything.
Am I getting that picture correct? Almost. So the, the nuance here is that with API Alchemist, you can send data on submission and you can receive a response back and update the entry. But it has to happen. That is all happening post submission right now. What populate anything unlocks is the ability to do all of that.
Live on the form so you can go, do they enter something on the form, make a selection and a choice. Enter a a value, you can send that user, enter data off to the remote API and get a response back [01:01:00] immediately and then populate that response into the form. So think like chain selects where like you're doing like a year make model all from a remote data source are again, going back to the VIN example, the user type manually types in their vin.
And you can populate their year, make and model right there and just say, Hey, just validating. This is the car that we found for that. Then it just kind of improves the UX for the scenarios where that would be valuable. In some cases, again, like when you're doing like enrichment, you don't care the, the user never really intended to see it.
Uh, it's just like after the submission, you want that data. And the other nice thing because with populating anything, you're doing it live. You can also use it as a validation tool. So if you don't get a valid response for that vin, you can let them know like, Hey, this isn't a valid response and you can hide the submit button.
So they can't proceed that way. You're not getting trash submissions or, you know, even again, just going back to UX for them, they're aware that they made a mistake entering their VIN and that, you know, they need to update that before they submit the form. Yeah. Yeah. I, um, this is [01:02:00] when I see these tools come together, like any time I can explore an API and do something with WordPress, like I'm all in, this is like vibe coding to me.
And this is when I knocked on your door. I'm like, Hey man, let's, let's come on the show and let's talk about this because I really see WordPress as like this way of, uh, low code, no code. Kind of like database of content. Like sure we can build websites and blogs and e-commerce stores, but I truly think the future of WordPress is to, to give somebody like me or some power user somewhere.
Or as it gets easier, you know, somebody even, you know, below that level, the ability to like build this, these. These databases of, of content that they have, you know, especially with custom post types, custom fields, your tools, gravity forms, being able to pull in and, and send out data and manipulate that data and create your own thing of content is really appealing to me.
And I'm just curious like how you [01:03:00] see WordPress. Evolving over, over the future? Like, do you see it continuing to just be a sort of like standalone CMS, uh, making websites and, and blogs or, or do you see it evolving in a way where, like Matt Mullenweg famously said a while back, like an operating system for the web?
Like, do you see those kinds of things or where do you see that future of WordPress settling up for you? You know, it's funny, I forgot Matt Mullo actually had said that. Uh, but I also, it, that's how I explain WordPress to most people who aren't familiar with it. You know, I say, Hey, you have your phone.
Your phone has an operating system. You install apps on your phone. Uh, WordPress is an operating system for websites, and you install plugins, which are essentially apps for your website. So, as far as where I see WordPress going. I don't know. That's my honest answer. I I, it's a, it's a wild landscape out there right now.
Ai, you know, definitely makes everyone feel a little jittery about the, the future. But I kind of go [01:04:00] back to this idea of the platform. I mean, you get so much for free with, with WordPress, I mean literally for free, you know, with WordPress that it. Makes it, I think just a very compelling starting point. Um, the future that I kind of imagine for WordPress at this point are the, the biggest leap forward.
I think it's gonna be this idea, you know, MCP servers where you can, you know, issue commands and it can do things on your, on your site. I, I think the, the true building future of, of WordPress will be the ability to assemble all of the different tools together. So rather than you. Having to do all this legwork to find, you know, which plugin can handle this feature, which plugin handle this feature.
When we get to the point where you can just go into WordPress and say, here's the feature I need. Find all the code that's already written, that's already been, has security audits and has been supported for 15 years, like gravity forms, [01:05:00] and just install that for me and go ahead and, you know, set up what I'm talking about.
Like whatever, you know, the requirements are for that project. Uh, and I think if we can get somewhere like that, I think it has a really good chance of taking on that kind of place where a lot of these other, uh, shops, uh, you know, other what platforms, I guess. I think they'd have a hard time competing with that.
It's the same reason that I think Gravity Forms itself has done so well, is that the ecosystem is. Just insane. Like there is a lot of really pre top premium plugins out there. Again, a, a lot of the shops in the space, and I'm getting tooting our own horn here, like we do security audits. We are taking the time to make sure that this code is code that you can deploy on live websites and not have to worry, you know, not, not have to stay up at night.
Making sure that the, you know, someone's not hacking your, hacking your site. And I think that's. That's such like, it's like a, a goldmine for, for ai we can just figure out [01:06:00] how to make AI the assembler rather than, you know, the humans having to go in and manually. 'cause that's the friction point right now.
Right. I think for a lot of customers is that they have to go in and, and learn WordPress and learn a big part of that's learning all the plugins that come along with WordPress. Yeah. I mean, there, there is. I have a, a whole range of thoughts around like I was testing out the tool and you know, one of the things I really love about WordPress is that just out of the box, unless you know your web host has modified it, or maybe your IT team has modified it, but out of the box you have this rest API built right in.
In other words, I can knock on the door of WordPress and say. How many blog posts does this site have? What's the content? How many users do they do they have? What's the media account like? All of this information. In fact, I vibe coded a tool to help me explore that with WordPress, and I still use it. I used it when I was, uh, demoing your, your, uh, products to [01:07:00] help, um, you know, just show me what information was available.
And then I found out your plugin is going to do that too. So I built this little tool called WP API explorer.com, and if you just punch in your WordPress URL in there, it's gonna show you the response of the WordPress Rest API type in blog post you have when the last blog post was, when the first blog post was.
Mm. And the ability to get that data. I think is so important for the open Web and humanity. Case in point, again, like you built a demo using the, was the highway? Yeah. National Highway Safety, uh, tra uh, it's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Yeah. N-H-C-S-A. Yeah. And there's all kinds of data out there.
Weather data, NASA data. I looked at my state website. There's all these APIs that. We as citizens of the United States have access to. And I think when we start to build tools like, [01:08:00] um, API Alchemists and of course Gravity Forms populate anything, what we're enabling is people who are not developers to be able to explore this stuff and build things with it.
Like we don't know what people are gonna build with it. But I was building out like, Hey, let me uh, use API Alchemist. Knock on the door of Matt Mullenweg's WordPress website, pull in all of his blog posts and then use populate anything to, uh, display them in a dropdown in a gravity form so I could, uh.
You know, effectively any WordPress website with a rest API, I could access blog posts. I could make my own little site with like reviews, like, oh, this blog post, let me leave a, a review for this blog post that this person wrote. You know, so long as it's, it's WordPress and it has that open rest, API access, like.
Then I started thinking like, well, now I could actually through the rest API through API Alchemist, I could pull in the content of that blog post right into gravity forms. I could [01:09:00] have it send to open ai, uh, chat, GPT, using your plugin and say, Hey, summarize this for me, or rewrite this for me, or gimme the tone of this.
And then I could have, like, I could trigger so many other things with like conditional logic and gravity forms and say if tone is whatever, like I could switch gravity forms to give me other options. And I'm just sitting there going, God, there's like endless opportunities. Yeah. With, with this kind of thing.
And again, like I really just can't stress enough like. Headless WordPress, I think is going to be a real, we're gonna see that take off a little bit more, uh, thanks to ai, right? I think people can build apps on top of the rest, API, but now we can do that right in WordPress with, with your tools and it's, it's gonna be fascinating to see how all of this stuff evolves.
I agree with that. That's actually a good, uh, I think a good argument for, you know, your vision for, you know, WordPress as the, uh, the [01:10:00] universal platform of the web. The thing that you said that I think, that struck me the most there about API Al Alchemist specifically is just the, I did not anticipate it, but it has been a really lovely surprise, and that is how approachable it has made.
Uh, rest APIs. We've had so many customers that are non-technical, but when they see the UI for API Alchemist and they see some of the demos and they see how it's, you know, you put in it, you're just copy and pasting URLs and, and then everything else is point and click after that, uh, it's been awesome.
Like seeing them get inspired for all the things. You know, they, I get asked at least once a day right now, can I integrate with this API? And I'm like, it's a rest API. So yes, it, it absolutely can. Uh, and that is like a, a great, you know, just kind of unlocks a lot of potential for, for our customers and for anyone using gravity forms.
That's like super exciting. Yeah, I mean when you see, when you put in an API, uh, and you know, I am fanboying a bit on, on the [01:11:00] product because I think you're a hundred percent right that it's, it's opening up stuff that people have never, um, realized was available. So like if you put in any. WordPress site with, uh, with the rest API EN enabled.
And you see like all the responses of like, everything you can do post, get, you know, all this stuff, all these endpoints, all of that data and your plugin makes it easy for somebody to like, browse all of that. You're like, wow, man. Like I can, I can do a lot. I think about the higher ed a lot from my background of like running an agency and working at a hosting company that did a lot of enterprise stuff.
Like there were, you know, higher ed organizations that have hundreds, if not thousands of WordPress websites, and they all have, you know, ways of like, oh, so many different ways of like managing those sites and accessing the data and pulling data into the Central College website or university website.
Like now, it's just gonna be so damn easy with, with, with your stuff. And it's just like, then there's that other combo of [01:12:00] like custom fields and custom post types. And now you can make that's, that's where like the database comes in for me is like, man, if you can build your database of. Content or resources, and then you need to pull that stuff into another WordPress site, you know, through API Alchemist, and, you know, gravity Forms and populating anything.
It's like, it's a super powerful tool. So kudos on that launch. I'm really excited to see where it goes. We're only gonna make it easier too. We're, we have lots of plans to make it even more approachable as far as, you know, both education around, uh, rest APIs and also just improving the, the UX of the plugin just to make it as, as seamless as possible.
And I gotta put you on the hot seat as the CEO. Let's go. How do you, how do you see this competing with maybe like the. The add-ons that you have in your Gravity Connect suite. Right? Uh, you know, do you see it sort of going, all right. This is for the real di wire here. If they can like wire stuff up with, uh, [01:13:00] API Alchemists to send information to.
Say Notion or something like that through the API will, they not need my Notion Connect tool. Like how do you see those, those, how do you define those lines Between API, Alchemist can send data anywhere, and then I have all of these individual add-ons to send data to those individual sites. Yeah, that's a great question because as we were developing API alchemists, it slowly dawned on us what we were doing.
Yeah. I will say, uh, so some of the, the simple connections you may not, you know, you may not need. I'm just thinking, for example, uh, notion. Notion's. The the one where if you just wanna send a notion request off with API Alchemist. Yes, absolutely. Uh, you still get a more tailored experience with the notion connection, uh, especially if you don't want to fuss with the API level of, you know, knowledge.
There is still some learning there, right? Whereas with notion, you [01:14:00] just go in, you build your template in a, in a layout or. A UI that is completely familiar and comfortable to you. Um, whereas if you go through API Alchemist, yes, you, it is easy to figure out, but there is still a, a level of figuring it out.
Yeah. Um, and the other, uh, differentiator is something like Google Sheets, for example, our Google Sheets connection, that is incredibly robust. Uh, it, it does a lot of efficiency. Um, you know, there's a lot of efficiency code in that to handle scenarios that API Alchemists is not going to be, uh, quite robust enough to handle.
Uh, and we're gonna also see that we have some connections coming out in the future for. Uploading files to different services, for example, and API Alchemist works great. If your file is a small, like under one megabyte, you know, but at the second that you're getting into large files, that's where you're gonna need like a dedicated connection that's gonna have all of the robust code in place to support that specific use case.
Yeah, I mean, I would say like if you are a freelancer agency listening to this, [01:15:00] just thinking about my days as an agency owner, like handing over a site to somebody and saying like, you're okay, here's your gravity forms and you do the, you know, the education walkthrough and all that. Show the people how to use it, whatever.
As easy as API Alchemist is like you still gotta be more of that developer mindset to even understand what the heck it is that you're looking at. Authentication headers, you know, you guys do a great job with like inline documentation and help. Tutorials and stuff like that, but you're certainly not giving that to somebody to, that's like managing a MailChimp newsletter, right?
Right. You're not gonna be like, Hey, Alchemist will set it up. I'll just show you how to like set your header in your authentication. You're like, what? Like, yeah. I think those tailored experiences of like the notion add-on and the other connections that you have, like it's just grab that API key or sign into that service.
It's authenticated done, right? Like, yeah, you map the fields, that's it. You're not looking at. JSON responses, right? Yeah. Which is like totally different, um, you know, for, for, you know, most common folks. So I think it's a clear win. Oh [01:16:00] yeah. Even the idea of, uh, you know, you're talking about like mapping the data with these, with the established plugins, the established connections, there is a lot of.
Formatting of that data to get it into the right format that the, you know, service is expecting. Again, some of that is possible with API Alco, it's just more work. But as far as how we're approaching future connections, uh, with API Alchemist, API Alchemist is definitely gonna be our litmus test. You know, we're gonna set it up first and API Alchemist, see how it works, and where we see we can add additional value above API Alchemist.
Those will be the connections that we pursue moving forward. Yeah, a hundred percent Dave Smith, gravity whiz. Where can folks go to get the GP booking stuff that we talked about today? A P Alchemist, uh, populate. Anything. Where can they go to find more? Always start with, uh, gravity whiz.com. Uh, check out spell book.
It is our platform plugin. We, we got a, a platform theme going on today, Matt. Uh, and spell book will just get you access to all of our products, documentation, [01:17:00] purchasing all the free plugins. Uh, in the future are all of our snippets. We have over a thousand our snippet library. So gravity was.com and then next stop is spell book.
Awesome stuff. Thanks everybody for listening. We'll see you in the next episode.
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