## 125.2 – Eddie Barksdale (Porkbun)

Jesse Friedman: Welcome to Impressive Hosting, where we uncover the core tenets of great WordPress hosting. I’m your host, Jesse Friedman. Before we dive in, remember to check out impressive host. It’s where you can comment on episodes, ask follow-up questions, and submit questions for upcoming guests. You’ll also find all our links to follow, like and subscribe wherever you listen. With me today is part two of our episode with Eddie Barksdale, partner manager at Porkbun. We were having a great conversation about what it’s like to provide support for customers who are getting hosting from Porkbun, but also sometimes on a domain-first journey. And then how you go about providing them hosting and making them more aware of what it is that you’re offering. We covered a whole bunch. We were just talking about Reddit and I’m curious, you know, when we think about the fact that you guys are reaching out to customers and watching what they’re saying on Reddit, you mentioned in the last episode that you’re able to keep an eye on what it is that they’re asking for. And in some cases you’ve been able to really delight them by turning something around real quick. Do you think that customers are, like, there’s value in the fact that when they’re asking for support on Reddit, that maybe they’re a little bit more honest, maybe they’re a little bit more open. Maybe you can get a better understanding of what it is that you’re dealing with. And also do you think it’s a, like, does it actually save you any money, like maybe the community is helping to provide some answers too so you can get to things, get to the answers a little bit faster.

Eddie Barksdale: Yeah, that’s really cool. When I think about providing support where people are on Reddit and in other places. I think you end up getting that amalgamation or you get that community support mixed with you guys. I think that adds a lot of value. But I think one of the things that we’ve struggled with in this industry in particular is that because the WordPress ecosystem relies on thousands of different hosting companies to deliver WordPress, sometimes you have really amazing experiences. Sometimes you don’t, and I think the other thing that’s interesting there too is that the support that you get in the most common places where you have to ask for support can kind of erode your faith in whether or not you can get support. If it’s bad support, so like. I blame Verizon all the time because I can’t stand having to get support for them for like Verizon Fios, right? Or for internet. It’s such a painful experience. They make these assumptions that I have absolutely zero tech experience. Everything starts with instructions on how to reset your router. And because of that, I feel like, like I said before, it’s eroded my faith in whether or not I’m actually gonna get good support. So I think it’s really interesting that if you’re jumping into these other locations or other mediums where people are asking for support and just encouraging them and helping them to feel comfortable to ask support directly, that can go a long way. And I think it’s something that’s really interesting that everyone at home, you know, if you’re running a hosting company or something like that. You could benefit from that because sometimes that’s all it really takes is just to help people feel like it’s not gonna be a waste of their time. So I’m curious, like, do you feel like that’s a big burden on support as a whole right now? Like that if you don’t have the faith that you’re gonna get the help, you just don’t even bother.

#### What are the more common things that people who are buying domains are getting support for?

Jesse Friedman: What are the more common things that people who are buying domains are getting support for? Like, I’m pretty familiar, you know, what the most common support requests are around hosting, but I’m curious, when you just own a domain, what is it that people are struggling with?

Eddie Barksdale: Right. Yeah. I mean, in the first episode we talked about how folks may not necessarily understand the value of a domain, especially if they’re in a younger generation that didn’t come up with the internet as a fun, weird place. Talking about weird places, you’re from Portland. I think Portland is a really cool city and they love the idea of keeping it weird. You were at the, you mentioned that you love having the word camps in Portland, the WordCamp US. How do you feel about the WordPress ecosystem around domains? Like, do you feel like you as a company need to get in and communicate with the WordPress industry differently? Are there any messages that you want to share? Like, is there anything that you’re trying to solve for specifically within WordPress? Or is it, you know, kind of like everybody just really knows what they need to do within WordPress, but they just don’t necessarily know where to buy their next domain.

Jesse Friedman: Right. Yeah. That’s very cool. Yeah, so I mean, in the WordPress space, I mean obviously we have run the gamut right from end customers who are trying to run their own business and do everything else. And WordPress is like the last thing on the, I mean, a website is the last thing on their mind. And so they have to scramble to kind of build it. They don’t want to learn all this stuff all the way to the other side, right? Enterprise level agencies and folks who have been doing this for a long time for a better part of their professional careers. Where would you say, like the majority of Porkbun customers live in that space? Are they mostly super experienced, you know, people who are building websites or is it a lot of, you know, small businesses and DIYers trying to do it themselves?

#### What would you want hosting companies to know about domain customers?

Jesse Friedman: Nice. When you think about those customers that are doing it themselves. What are the things that, from a domain perspective, what are the things that you know, you would want hosting companies or agencies or folks working in the WordPress space to know? The things that I’m, I’ll give you an example of something that’s top of mind for me. I went to a small business conference in the UK a few years ago, and from our perspective, when we think about the web, we often think that the first thing that a business owner’s gonna be purchasing or examining what they need to do to run their business is a website. And maybe purchasing a domain is first on their list. But what I learned at this conference was that it was actually, I was completely wrong, that a lot of times what these small business owners are thinking about first is a physical location. Where’s their brick and mortar store gonna be? What is it that they need to rent, what things do they need to do legally, locally, you know, to build a business? Things like that. And then the website becomes, you know, further down the prioritization list there. So I’m curious, like any insights or interesting facts that you know might be worth sharing with folks who work in the WordPress industry to help them understand these types of customers better?

Eddie Barksdale: That’s, yeah. Yeah. I love that. Eddie. In the last, in the last episode, you said that, and correct me if I’m not getting this exactly right, but that you see support as marketing, right? That it’s a way for you to do word of mouth. Now you’re coming in with this awesome, insightful thing that it’s the parking lot test. Can you shout your brand? I like that. It reminds me of back in the day when I was working in design, and you would create a logo and you would shrink it down to a very tiny size and could you still recognize it? These days I need to wear glasses to even make that happen, but I think that’s cool when you distill something down to a simple rule or a fact like that. That’s really helpful when you think about agencies who are working with small businesses. Obviously, you know, if you’re a VIP, like AWPVIP type, enterprise level agency, or facilitator, and you’re working with someone like Time Magazine or Pepsi or UPS, right? They’re gonna have unlimited funds for buying as many domains as they need to buy. But when you’re talking to a small business owner, maybe somebody who owns like, you know, a clothing store or a restaurant or something like that. What do you think the agency needs to be informing them around the purchasing of domains? Do they need to buy every possible TLD with their brand name? Do they need to be a little bit more focused? How do they balance that with, you know, how much money they have to spend around domains? What advice would you give there? And I’ll add one other thing there too. What responsibility do you think the agency has to help explain these things to those small businesses?

#### Do people understand non-.com domains?

Jesse Friedman: Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. One of the things I’m curious about is when dot-com domains started becoming like household, I guess terminology, it wasn’t long before anything that ended in .com, you understood that it meant going to a website and typing that in. Now, of course, when people are linking to things online, it doesn’t really matter much because you’re clicking a link and you’re just being forwarded directly to it. But when we think about putting domains on like physical media, whether it’s a business card or a billboard or whatever it might be, do you think that the general population see a .agency or a .horse or whatever, and think website, or does it add a little confusion if they’re not super familiar with the TLD?

Eddie Barksdale: Yeah. That helps because I think that for a while actually, when I’ve been having to deal with unique TLDs, I often feel like I need to put the HTTPS in front of it just to make sure people feel like it’s a website, you know, and we have a really great domain for WP Cloud. It’s WP.cloud. It’s a two-letter domain. It’s really nice. But it kind of adds a little bit of hesitation in my mind is to like. Is the two-letter so short, you know, that like if I have a little period there, does it sound like I’m saying that it’s more of a brand than an actual domain? You know, so it leaves me thinking every once in a while, but that helps to make me feel a little bit better about the state of things that the general population sees a period as a path to a website. It seems like that’s the case, right? Like dot anything. You’re gonna be comfortable enough with it.

#### What drove Porkbun to evaluate AI?

Jesse Friedman: Now, in the last episode you mentioned that your offering for Porkbun on WP Cloud has AI, has an AI site builder. I’m curious, what made you think, what made, you know, Porkbun start to evaluate AI and, you know, was it something that you guys felt like you needed to do because you needed to keep up with what was happening out there, or were your customers specifically asking for it, you know, what drove you in that direction?

Eddie Barksdale: Yeah, right. Yeah. You know, you’re touching on something. It’s like a creed at Automattic, which is like decisions, not options. Like give, give people that polka dot or that stripe shirt choice. Don’t give them all the configurations ahead of them to do that. And I think that’s really interesting that AI, you know, can come in and I think every company that’s working with AI right now, especially around site building, is approaching it in different ways and trying to solve for different things. But I think at the end of the day, the most important thing is time to live. And I’m curious because a hosting company. You know, when you are hosting-first domains tend to be the thing that you add on when you’re buying hosting. So you go through a typical hosting flow. A lot of times hosting companies don’t even make the assumption that you need a domain. Sometimes they just assume that you’ve purchased one somewhere else or you’re gonna solve for that. So they really drive you down the hosting funnel first. But for Porkbun, it’s typically the other way around. You’re coming to Porkbun to buy a domain. You have an idea, you want to secure something. So I would imagine that you guys actually have a little bit more responsibility to the time-to-live than others. Because with a hosting company, if you’re hosting-first, you probably have a little bit extra motivation and a little bit extra intent. You may have made that decision to solve for something very specific. But when you’re buying domain-first, you may be thinking to yourself like, I have this idea. I don’t even know if I have time for it, but I just don’t want to lose the domain or see somebody else buy it. So I’m gonna buy it now. And now all of a sudden you’re being presented with hosting. I’m curious, like how do you think about that from that perspective? Are you focused on those types of metrics? Are you thinking about it from that perspective, or are you just more trying to be available to customers and provide a good experience.

#### How’s the AI site building going?

Jesse Friedman: Right. Yeah. So you’re strategically using the propagation time to help give them a little bit of an opportunity to learn about what services you have and what you can solve for, but not forcing them down a certain path. And so how has, how’s it been going with the AI site building? Do you feel like customers are finding it to be a lot easier, a lot faster. The reason I ask is because a lot of times, you know, we early adopters, folks like myself who tend to just try and grab onto the newest technology and utilize it as fast as possible. You see all these promises that things are gonna be faster, easier, you know, all that, but then, you know, it ends up being a lot more configuration, or you have to do a lot more things, or you have to reset things. I’ll give you an example. Like I fell in love with Google Homes when they first started coming out. And I had actually visited Google and they gave us a Google Home as a gift to take home. And so all of a sudden I had the ability to turn on my lights with my voice or ask questions or schedule appointments or whatever. But then over the years, and if Google’s listening, I hope they’re gonna fix this stuff. But over the years, it’s actually become more work for me than actually flipping on and off a light switch because. You know, the light bulbs become unsynced and they’re no longer programmatically connected or an update happens and you end up creating layers of burden for yourself that just end up adding more and more work in spite of the fact that it’s promising less. And I think AI site building is really interesting right now because it’s on the cusp of being absolutely revolutionary. But I’m curious, like, how are your customers, like, do you feel like they’re really getting something amazing out of it just yet, or is it just kind of on the cusp of being great?

#### Using AI for domain exploration

Jesse Friedman: Yeah. Right. That’s really cool. So actually, dive into that a little bit because, you know, the whole search engine around how domains are explored is very interesting to me. So, you know, for folks at home when you go to search for a new domain. It’s pretty simple when you have a very specific brand, you know, if you’re Pepsi, you’re typing in Pepsi. But if you’re not, if you’re trying to run a clothing store or you’re trying to run a hair salon or something like that, and you don’t know what the name’s gonna be, these types of displaying and uncovering the available domains can actually help you to understand what it is that you want to build your brand around. And you’re, so you’re saying that you’re actually using AI to help the exploration there. Is that becoming more helpful in helping customers to describe what it is that they’re doing? Because I think that’s one of the areas where WordPress is gonna see the most success from AI, is that you can have these conversational-based descriptions of what it is that you need help with. And instead of trying to force fit, you know, configurations and choose options, you’re able to say like, I’m gonna run a business and it’s gonna do X, Y, and Z, and I need your help choosing a name. I would imagine that would be actually a lot of fun working through that with an AI to try and help you in that way.

#### Parting advice about domains

Jesse Friedman: Yeah. Right. That’s really cool. All right, well, we’re just about at the end of this second episode. This is really great having this conversation with you. I’d love to have you back on and we can talk more about the AI site building when you have more customers using it. I would love to get some more insights around domains. What would you say, it’s like a parting gift, like do you have any advice or anything that you’d want to share in terms of helping anybody in the WordPress ecosystem agencies, folks at home like. Any advice around domains?

Eddie Barksdale: Yeah, I was hoping you were gonna say that ’cause that’s exactly the advice I’d give too. I think people don’t understand the value of domains right now as much as they should. And I think that there’s a lot of fun to be had. So if you’re doing anything online. Maybe you don’t control it, like we’d said before, like maybe you have an Instagram profile and you’re telling people how to, there’s always this awkward moment like, can I get you on Instagram? Okay, well here’s my username and I don’t know how to type it exactly. Right. And it has a weird zero because I can’t get, go buy a domain, you know, go buy, you know, Jesse, you know, Jesse’s instagram.com or something like that. And that way when anybody wants to find you on there, you can just point it directly to that. I think it’s a really interesting way to carve out a section of the internet for yourself and be able to point it to whatever you want. Even if it’s an article that you wrote, you know, like an editorial for the New York Times or something. And you don’t want to have to tell people that long domain every single time. Just buy a domain and point it at it. You can own these domains and point them at anything you want. So it’s a lot of fun to be had out there.

Jesse Friedman: Very cool. All right. Thanks so much, Eddie. It was great having you on.

Jesse Friedman: Thanks for joining us on another episode of Impressive Hosting, where we uncover the core tenets of great WordPress hosting. Do you have a follow-up question for today’s guest thought or comment on anything? We talked about a future guest suggestion, a hosting horror story. What do you think makes great WordPress hosting all your comments? Shape the show. Drop them on impressive.host. We also appreciate you following us on social media and subscribing to the podcast on your favorite platform. Finally, do check out our list of open source projects that need support at impressive.host. Whether it’s code, community, or cash, you can make a difference. See you next time.