A big Udemy course about Next.js would be great. 🙂 Even better if you would show deployment via Docker. I already do it that way but it is always great to see your approach.
I like the Docker idea a lot. I really like Next.js but I'm not crazy about the idea of being so dependent on Vercel's hosting. Your own Docker hosted solution would let you roll any stack you wanted; and then for example, if you wanted real-time chat etc... you wouldn't need to use a 3rd party service like Pusher, you could just bake that into your Docker environment itself. Thanks for the encouragement that a Next.js Udemy course would be appreciated; that's one of the main directions I wanted to move in.
Hi Brad! From Italy, from Rome. Last week I purchased 'Beginner's Bootcamp', I'm about 300 minutes into the course and it's wonderful. The 'pet-site' gets richer every time and I learn even the most indigestible concepts. Excellent!!
The question of why to use Next.js has always interested me a lot, and it's true that I haven't found any other answer from developers than that they want a modern approach. Regarding Wordpress vs Next.js, I think Wordpress is not the best representative to compare. Php is so much better than it used to be and there are other great frameworks in its family. Anyway I'm trying now to use Wordpress with Timber and Twig template engine (with Tailwind) running on a Litespeed server to optimize it as much as possible and I don't see any problem for medium sized projects.
Great feedback! I used Twig (with Craft CMS) at a job and it was an amazing dev experience. I've seen Timber for years but never actually tried it beyond a quick "hello world" experiment. I'm curious to hear how you're liking it! My dream would be a classic WP theme (not block-theme) + Tailwind + a new "official" WP solution that would essentially be WP's version of Laravel's Livewire. I'm hoping that the Interactivity API can be that for us WP devs. Essentially solving the problems of (1) having both SSR for SEO and accessibility + client-side SPA navigation for subsequent clicks and (2) being able to use the same templating system for both client-side and server-side and have just one collection of components that can be used in either environment instead of having to maintain one PHP copy and one JS copy. I think my biggest frustration is that WP has been very stubborn about moving forward with the block-editor and block-themes and JS and React components, yet there is ZERO progress ever being made on the developer experience and being able to use React or blocks in any meaningful way that can connect with the benefits of client-side JS on the front-end or what the server-side offers in terms of dynamic content and SEO/accessibility. It's a lot of technical debt and complexity-overhead for what essentially amounts to static snapshots of HTML and WP shrugging their shoulders and saying "ok devs, you figure out a way to make this usable. Our users that want a page-builder design tool that has 3 total pages are going to love this, we don't care about using WP as a CMS any longer." Having said that, if we just avoid block-themes altogether and stick with traditional themes + Timber + Tailwind + ACF then things are great. I think as the maintainer of a WP course I feel obligated to use the new "officially" endorsed WP tech of block-themes which is a odd position to be in because it directly agitates me as a developer 😂😂 In other words, I think WP should have never launched the Block Editor (2018) unless they already had the Interactivity API to launch ready with it (2024 or 2025 beyond). Sorry for the ramble; processing my thoughts out loud :D
Hey Brad! I hope you are doing great. This video actually making me confuse and informing me as well. I was planning to learn PHP from scratch. Should I learn react and then Next Js like MERN stack approach. Or laravel + vue.js could also be great choice?
Hi! I'd say it depends on your goals. If your main goal is to create and ship your own websites / apps I'd say Laravel + Livewire is pretty hard to beat in terms of developer experience and productivity. Also if your goal is get a job specifically in the Laravel world; that would be an amazing choice. However, if your goal is to learn skills that will open up as many job opportunities as possible then I'd recommend Next.js and the React world. But then again, jobs are not like Pokemon, we don't have to collect them all, we only need one, so that might not even be the smartest goal over just landing a solid Laravel job. No wrong answers!
@@LearnWebCode Thanks a lot Brad! I am going to choose to "PHP" and then I will hit all "Laravel+Livewire" and WordPress. Will it be great choice? Thank You
I love you ❤. Please tell how will you manage your blogs with just next JS? I mean how will you write new blogs after shifting from wp? Will you hard code every time & publish a static page? I mean CMS has panel to public blogs easily. How will you do it without CMS?
Great question and one that I feel so many people overlook when they criticize WordPress. Honestly, I'd probably keep WordPress installed locally, or on a secret sub-domain, and then still use WP to author posts and pages, but use Next.js to automatically pull the content from the WP REST API and programmatically create all the necessary URLs. If I wasn't going to go with that approach, I'd probably look into one of the "headless CMS" out there like Sanity, Strapi, Contentful, Ghost etc... I don't know which one is best. But to tell you the truth, while a standalone Next.js site is going to offer unbeatable speed/performance, I'm not sure if it's worth all the extra technical debt and complexity it takes to still have an easy to use authoring experience that non-devs can use. Maybe in the next 6 months I'll find a workflow that I really like, but for now, if a site needs non-devs to contribute content, I'd probably just stick with 100% traditional WordPress.
Hi Brad. I don't think we have a suitable course on only Frontend focused on udemy. I have watched one of your free bootcamp where you mentioned how in the early stages every developer chooses to be a frontend developer and then move to the full stack with time. So basically with 1.html 2.css 3. git universal skill 4.tailwind css as css framework 5. Scss 6. js 7. Introducing build tools 8.react/vue 9.docker basics and what ever front end skills ask in the junior developer job description. I think your wp course is the most loved course on udemy because on its own its a complete course and over the years you have made this course amazing with your important updates where you have added sections. So this frontend course could be your another game changing or loved course something like your wp course. You can create a version of this course in the first year and then in upcoming years you can make the course amazing by adding 2 or 3 sections which can be beneficial as this field is changing a lot over the years.
I like this idea a lot. It's very similar to my new premium Bootcamp course on Udemy / Teachable. It also covers MongoDB and a tiny bit of server-side basics but we do spend more time on front-end tasks. But essentially if I added chapters about Docker and explained Build Tool options in a bit more detail it would be exactly what you're describing. We start with a Figma reference design and build out a pet adoption site + basic CRUD app. It's very much my plan to add new chapters to the course as time goes by and continue adding to its value proposition. All the best, Brad.
@@LearnWebCode I have already enrolled in your new premium bootcamp on udemy. In a week i have already completed 35% of the course. I am really enjoying it. But the thing is I think you are introducing us to the topics which are needed to do the web development. and you mostly covered 10-15% of what we need to know about any topic and tried to show us what we can do with only this much knowledge. Which is amazing but you have 20 years of experience and you do know at least 60-80% of every topics you covered or even if you don't know 60% you have enough experience with knowing just 30% of the topic is enough for you. therefore, its somewhat easy and natural for you to apply the knowledge practically. Now my question would be even though we don't apply for an IT company rather apply for a marketing company will it be enough to get a job ? and even though we do get a job but will we get enough time from the client or company boss to learn the topics before completing a ticket. For example you have showed us how to use css grid now if we get a complicated layout we will get enough time to learn further and apply it on the job ? What i am trying to say is that this course is amazing without a doubt and if its purpose is to show how little you need to know in order to create something big and amazing then it served its purpose amazingly. it feels like this course title should be "Web development bootcamp 101" and i am really enjoying how you make this course in a way so that it feels like i am doing a job. you use git at the end of the topics that really amazing. now back to the question will this 10-15% knowledge would be enough to get a job ? I think we need to know at least 30-35% which will cover the important topic more extensively. For example some JS basics or some important topic related to DOM and important things related to react which is crucial to know. at least cover the basic and some advance knowledge so that we would be more confident while applying this skill to the real world. and it would be great if you create a course for that because I really enjoy your teaching methods or you can add sections to this course in a way it feels important topics are covered which will be needing in daily life on the job. Thanks Brad
I used nextjs with the wp json Api for a project and if i could redo it i would of just used WP standalone and a little bit of alpinejs when needed... was a huge headache
I'm still experimenting locally with using Next.js to consume the WP REST API, definitely not ready to go live with anything yet. But even if I do, you still need to leave WP installed in a sub-folder or sub-domain, because the entire point of WP is that you don't need to be a web developer who can edit markdown files and push to Git to be able to create a new post; so the authoring experience still needs to be online somewhere. All that to say; I agree, the headless approach has big advantages in some areas, but at the end of the day it's hard to beat the simplicity and developer productivity of just letting standalone WP be the front-end. I'm still skeptical, but wanting to see if I can have my cake and eat it too. Ultimately, I'm not 100% sold that all the extra work is worth the speed increase.
I am big fan of your courses present on udemy. For future I want to learn android app development but I have no idea, which programming languages are necessary? where to start?...Please guide me. Will make a compressive android app development course in future, because nobody can do it better than you.
That's funny, I had an item on my brainstorming list "Add headless Next.js Chapter to WP course" - but I'm still testing to make sure I personally endorse or feel that approach is "worth" it before investing in creating the chapter.
Good question; that really made me stop and think. I'd say it feels less like I want out of WordPress and more like I want to stay but WordPress has kicked me out. With each passing year and new feature that WP introduces it feels harder to create a good developer experience or site that's on "rails" for clients. In 2017 with just a tiny bit of effort a developer could use WordPress as their CMS for clients to enter plain content and images, and have the site use all of their own dev written HTML, CSS, JS quite easily. In 2024 it feels like WordPress is a page builder design tool that actively does NOT want any dev written HTML, CSS or JS anywhere in the equation. It feels like WP actively does NOT want any separation between content and styling. It feels like WP actively does NOT want anyone to be able to change the HTML/CSS for a feature used in 500 differently optioned instances across 500 different posts/pages. It feels like I have to get overly creative to create any of those aspects you'd want as a developer. Or it feels like putting 100 sets of handcuffs on a round peg and then putting it through a square hole. I'm a huge fan of the WP Rest API and I'm very very very hopeful for the upcoming Interactivity API, but other than that I've disagreed with just about every decision WP has made since 2017. It's worse for developers and worse for content-authoring clients. It's better for people who are "designing" and "building" their own sites by pointing and clicking. There's nothing wrong with that, I'm happy for those users, it just isn't the tool that a lot of us originally chose.
@@LearnWebCode Thank you Brad for your answer, I read it all, and will probably read it again the second time. Would you say WordPress has become more like Squarespace and less of a "framework" for developers?
Hi. Do we really next.js or tailwind? They seem like just shiny marketing tricks, wrappers on old dinosaur technologies. Tailwind css is nothing but a wrapper for good old css. Vercel is nothing but a wrapper on aws with a %500 markup. Your new design definitely seems better but you could easily create the same design using vanilla css and js.
@@mlsandreas WordPress has built-in PHP functions for pagination, and search functionality can be customized within your theme's PHP files or by using plugins. If you want to use JavaScript, you'd typically make AJAX calls to the WordPress REST API to fetch and display posts without a page reload.
@@mlsandreasthe video is about wordpress and integrating “new tech” with it. Btw, dont get me wrong I really like this channel and its content, I am just asking questions.
All great questions and ones I've asked myself for years, as I'm definitely slow to adopt any new tech. Regarding Tailwind, I avoided it like the plague for several years because I thought it was just a trendy convenience, but after I actually tried it I understood the problems it solved. I made a video explaining the problems that it's solving here (ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-SsgMnmrTjWo.html). The first 11 minutes are explaining the problems it solves. React on its own requires way too much configuration and boilerplate and overthinking basic tasks, but working with components and JSX inside of Next feels like a great developer experience to me. Yes, I could write my own JS to add SPA navigation while still having real server-available pages at each URL; but architecting and writing that myself each time probably isn't best developer experience. And I'd miss having one templating language and set of components be sharable (JSX) for both the front-end and server. I'd say it's the same thing with Tailwind, I'm not creating anything that I couldn't create without it, but it makes the process of maintaining and growing a project over time more organized and enjoyable in my opinion. As for Vercel; absolutely if you know a lot about AWS then absolutely using Vercel is going to seem like it's not worth it. But for someone who isn't very strong in DevOps or doesn't have the time to architect their own solution I think their platform is amazing. And what's cool is you could skip Vercel altogether and host a Next.js app in a Docker container on AWS :)
Good question. For now, just the homepage area is not using a CMS, but long-term my goal is to feed Next.js content via the WordPress REST API. If that doesn't work out the way I'm hoping I might explore one of the popular headless CMS's, like Contentful, Sanity, Strapi, Supabase etc... Do you have any positive experiences with other CMSs?
I just reworded the description to make that clearer. Right now the only way to access the Discord is by joining the Premium Access option for one of my 3 newest courses.
