I recently had the opportunity to interview Alex Borto, founder of WPTurbo, an AI code generation platform designed specifically for WordPress. We had an insightful conversation about how AI can be integrated into WordPress development to increase efficiency and productivity.

It was great learning more about how Alex and his team at WPTurbo are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with AI in the WordPress ecosystem. As AI capabilities continue to evolve, it’s clear solutions like WPTurbo will have an important role to play in making WordPress development more efficient while opening it up to new groups of users.

You can learn more and try WPTurbo for yourself at their website:
https://www.wpturbo.dev

Chapter Markers:

  • What is WPTurbo and who is it for? [00:02:26]
  • How does WPTurbo integrate AI into WordPress development? What are the benefits for developers? [00:01:59]
  • Walk us through what it’s like to use WPTurbo – do you need coding expertise? [00:04:17]
  • Can I design WordPress websites with WPTurbo? [00:04:45]
  • How does WPTurbo ensure high coding standards for performance, accessibility, SEO? [00:05:34]
  • Where does WPTurbo increase efficiency for developers? [00:07:34]
  • How does WPTurbo address security concerns with AI-generated code? [00:09:00]
  • How do you see AI evolving for web development, and WPTurbo’s role? [00:09:48]
  • What’s new and exciting coming up for WPTurbo? [00:10:21]

Key Takeaways:

  • WPTurbo is designed to be accessible even for WordPress site owners with no coding experience through easy-to-use prompts
  • It can quickly generate code snippets to fix basic site issues or add simple features
  • The AI has up-to-date knowledge of best practices for performance, SEO, accessibility in the code it produces
  • Users can further refine the AI prompts to improve results
  • An upcoming update will allow WPTurbo to answer developer questions about popular WordPress plugins like Elementor, Gravity Forms etc. with greater context

Exciting Upcoming Features:

  • Ability for more targeted code refinement without regenerating entire files
  • Taking into account multiple connected files/plugins for better context
  • Continuously adding knowledge of additional popular WordPress plugins

TheWPMinute interview

TheWPMinute interview

[00:00:00] [00:01:00] Hey, Alex, welcome to the program.

[00:01:30] Alex: Hey Matt, it’s Alex. So thank you for the opportunity, uh, for the interview

[00:01:34] So obviously AI and WordPress is super fascinating. It’s in the news and everyone’s talking about it. I, myself, struggle with really finding. Uh, useful AI experience. I use it for a little bit of research, a little bit of frameworking some writing, transcribing, finding clips and stuff like that, but I don’t find it an integral part of at least the work that I do as a content publisher.

[00:01:59] But how does. [00:02:00] WP turbo.dev integrate AI into the WordPress development landscape. I can imagine that being even more intense to tackle. Um, as a product maker yourself, like, how do I do this? How do I get this in the hands of my customers? How can they leverage it? And then how can they benefit from it? Once they, um, start to use it? So big question, but what are the most significant benefits of this integration for web developers?

Question 1

[00:02:26] Alex: Uh, first of all, it’s, it’s important to know that WTurbo is still in its infancy. Uh, our goal is to build a complete suite of tools for web developers and agencies that makes it easy for them to manage their clients sites, fix basic issues, and generate code snipets for simple tasks, and even more complex.

[00:02:48] Alex: plugins later. Um, although some of our authors have been able to develop simple plugins using the tool, it’s still best for generating quick snipets [00:03:00] to fix basic problems or add basic features. For example, if you want to add a setting page to your plugin quickly, you can generate one in a few seconds.

[00:03:11] Alex: using our AI or our specific generator, uh, on the website. Um,

[00:03:17] Alex: . And then, um, we are going to explore more, uh, complex, uh, plugin generation, but it’s going to, it’s going to, to be available, uh, in the near future, but not, not right now. Um, but right now, uh, the best part is that, is that we are going to release a new version. Uh, approximately next week, which will always have up to date knowledge of the code and the documentation of WordPress and of, uh, several popular WordPress plugins, uh, including, uh, Elementor.

[00:03:47] Alex: David, uh, Gutenberg, uh, gravity forms, and so on. And that way, you can always rely on WP Turbo to give you the correct code snippets for what you need

[00:03:58]

[00:03:58] So walk us through what it’s like [00:04:00] to use WP turbo. What kind of knowledge do I have to have? Do I have to be a WordPress developer already and understand at least the FA the fundamentals of WordPress development. I’m not a developer. I’m not an AI prompt engineer. Do I need to be somewhere in the middle to use this?

Question 2

[00:04:17] You know, walk us through, what do you have to be a real beginner?

[00:04:19] Is it made for beginners? Where’s it made for more advanced users?

[00:04:23] Alex: We want WP Turbo to be accessible to as many developers and website owners as possible. Most of our users are actually website owners who want to quickly fix things or add basic features to their WP site.

[00:04:39] Alex: But, uh, with our tool, you can ask good questions and you can anything WordPress related.

Question 3

[00:04:45] Can I design WordPress websites with this? Or is it strictly just WordPress development?

[00:04:51] Alex: Right now. We don’t offer design rated generation, uh, websites. We have some ideas for the future, like maybe [00:05:00] generating patterns, but, uh, we have to focus on our roadmap first.

[00:05:05] So I’ve tried writing code with chat GPT before. And really struggled with. Creating anything valuable, right? Anything that worked. I tried to do a few things and it was okay. And I wasn’t doing anything really advanced. How does your platform ensure that the website’s being built with AI meet a standard of, you know, WordPress, WordPress, coding standards. Uh, good performance accessibility, SEO.

[00:05:34] Right? If, if code is. Not fully optimized and slow loading, you know, impact site speed, et cetera. So how do you sort of achieve a higher standard with WP turbo?

Question 4

[00:05:44] Alex: If you want to build a website that it’s 100 percent optimized for performance, accessibility, and SEO, definitely you need to hire a team of web experts. And if you try to do it [00:06:00] yourself, as the average user, you only get to maybe 30 percent of the way there.

[00:06:09] Alex: When using a tool like Derivative Turbo, you can simply ask it to improve the performance of your code or make it more accessible and SEO friendly.

[00:06:19] Alex: And because the AI already knows the best practice in terms of performance, SEO. accessibility and so on, it’s likely that most of the time it will follow those best practices. And when it doesn’t, you can just nudge it into that direction.

[00:06:38] Alex: That’s really important that you refined the prompt and interact with AI in order to, to get better results.

[00:06:46] So if you spend any time on, on Twitter or social media, there’s a lot of folks saying that AI is going to replace a bunch of jobs. Uh, there it’s been sort of. Theory crafted that some big tech companies have let go of staff [00:07:00] because of AI, right. And the efficiencies that they, that it brings to the organization.

[00:07:04] And I think that’s. Efficiency is the key word to underline there. I think that’s where we’ll see AI win out. It’s not that it, at least in the next, I don’t know. I have no idea, but in the next two to three years, I don’t think it’s going to replace human thought creativity, exploration. Discovery. Uh, but that it is more efficient to maybe run something through AI than it is to put humans in place.

[00:07:29] And that might be some low-level stuff. Might be some high level stuff. Um, but.

Question 5

[00:07:34] Where do you see WP turbo, increasing efficiency for WordPress developers?

[00:07:39] Alex: Our main developer uses WPTurbo all the time to generate quick snippets, although we don’t have quantifiable metrics, he seems to have saved dozens of hours by quickly generating simple snippets and asking questions to improve them. Uh, it takes away the time it takes to search Google for [00:08:00] the best way to do things and takes out a lot of the guesswork.

[00:08:05] Alex: We are still in the beginner stage of building our community. Uh, so maybe one day we’ll be able to do surveys and simple case studies to see how much our tools have impacted the daily lives of developers with our tool. But right now we don’t have any data about this. We are focused on, uh, building the product first.

[00:08:26] So one of the great things I think about. Developing with AI for WordPress is you’re going to onboard a whole bunch of. Uh, new newbies. Bring on people like me, who kind of have an idea of what they’re looking for. Kind of understand technology and I can use AI to leverage and, and help me build code. As great.

[00:08:45] The bad thing is I don’t know what I’m doing. So how does WP turbo insulate. Uh, one from insulate the developer and the greater web, the users of their platform insulate them against security concerns. Does.

Question 7

[00:09:00] [00:09:00]

[00:09:00] Do you address security concerns at all through your tool?

[00:09:02] Alex: If AI isn’t a part of your development workflow, you are really missing out on dozens of benefits. Having an AI take a look at your code is like having a senior engineer double check your code for errors and security issues.

[00:09:22] Alex: We found that simply asking our AI to check your code for errors is good, is good enough to find some basic errors. So. WPTO can also help you to find security issues in your code and offer steps to mitigate those issues

[00:09:40] Looking into the future. How do you see AI evolving in the context of web development and WordPress and what do you think or how do you think.

Question 8

[00:09:48] WP turbo plays a role in shaping that future.

[00:09:51] Alex: like it or not, AI is here to stay, definitely, and it’s only going to get better every year.

[00:09:59] Alex: At the repeatable, [00:10:00] we want to stay ahead of the curve and offer the best tools and features we can to the developers and website owners community in order to work more efficiently. The repeatable, we want to stay ahead of the curve and offer the best tools and feature we can to do to the developer and website owners in order to work more efficiently. That’s it.

[00:10:21]

Question 9

[00:10:21] Uh, what’s new or exciting for your product in the coming months? Anything you can share.

[00:10:26] Alex: We are soon going to launch a new version of WPTurbo that will be able to answer questions about anything related to WordPress development and the most popular WordPress plugins, uh, with up to date knowledge of the ecosystem, as I was saying, uh, before.

[00:10:43] Alex: Also we are going to, to, to find a way to, to avoid many, um, uh, AI, uh, errors and like in order to, to edit only parts of the code, because, uh, when you ask. The, the, the [00:11:00] AI to, to refine the code, for example, it has to generate all the code, uh, from the, the start of the file. And that’s really not necessary.

[00:11:11] Alex: And we are looking for ways to only edit some parts of the code. And, uh, also we are looking for ways to, uh, take into account. All the files that a project can manage and in order to get all the context of the, of the plugin you are trying to generate or the team you’re trying to, to, to build in order to, to have better answers.

[00:11:37] Alex: So, uh, anyway, we are inviting our users. To send, uh, their feedback about what plugins they work with, um, what they would like to us to integrate, uh, in the repeatable. And we do our best to add them to the repeatable a knowledge. Uh, right now we are going to add, uh, as I said to you before, uh, elemental dv, uh.

[00:11:59] Alex: Some other [00:12:00] page builder, like Bricks, Breakdance, uh, some other plugins like Gravity Forms. Um, tell us what you need and we do our best to, to add them to, uh, to the repeatable AI next. Okay. Thank you very much for the opportunity. Uh, I was very happy to answer your questions and, uh, I wish you the best for the WP minutes.

[00:12:23] Alex: Cheers.

[00:12:24] [00:13:00]

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