Build Your Future On Your Own Platform, Not Someone Else’s

hey there it’s David H Lawrence the 17th
and I am currently in the process of a
pretty major overhaul of the vo2 gogo
comm site and presentation and product
mix and things like that it’s been a
while since I’ve done it and the website
has gotten a little big and a little
slow and so what I’m doing right now is
I’m doing research and doing some
inventory on the things that I really
really need and that my clients really
really need and the things that at the
time I saw them look like shiny
butterflies flying around like oh that
would be good let’s do that how about
that that sounds great you know you get
a little carried away sometimes and over
time those little tiny things can mount
up so in the process of doing that I’m
looking very hard at two things number
one the speed of my sight I want my site
to be blazing fast so I want to keep it
as lean as possible and second I’m
looking at all the different
technologies that I’m now relying on
that really belong to others so I’m
looking at those technologies and
processes and options that I’m giving
you and my other clients access to that
are actually built on someone else’s
platform and I see artists making this
was a mistake all the time and you’d
think ok you know this why are you
making this mistake as an example I see
artists using website builders like
Squarespace and Wix and even
wordpress.com as opposed to an install
of WordPress on their own site you know
Facebook learning management systems
like if you teach something you go to
teachable or udemy Orca Javy and the
thing is when you do that when you build
on someone else’s platform yeah it’s a
lot easier I mean sure it’s easy to go
to Wix or to Squarespace and with a few
clicks and maybe
you know a couple hours worth of work
you can have a fairly reasonable looking
site up that has a lot of great
responsibility
functionality but you’re at their whim
if they go out of business or they
change the settings like Facebook does
all the time you know we built our
private groups on Facebook and I’ll have
more to say about Facebook and private
groups in I think tomorrow’s video I’m
gonna do it next video I do um they can
all fail they can go out of business
they can be hacked
you know we ever had a service where you
you had your stuff on a service and it
got hacked it can happen and you have no
control over it you can’t fix it you
can’t call up whoever you purchased the
the product from because usually it’s
free and say hey fix this because you
have no standing right and you know to a
certain extent people say this all the
time I hear this all the time and I’m
passing it along to you don’t build your
product don’t build your your income on
someone else’s platform well to a
certain extent it’s kind of hard to
avoid unless you are a software
programmer and can do all your same
stuff and what brought this up is I am
I’m pretty sure I’ve decided on using a
particular set of themes that is
designed for speed and in those themes
there is a learning management system
that I’m going to convert all of the vo
to gogo classes over to from learn –
I’ve loved learn – for a long time and
it’s got some great functionality but
what I really need is to be able to
deliver lessons to my clients that’s
what I need to do I need to do it in a
fast and easy way and so there’s a
feature of this all just in this one
plug-in you know I have a website that
has about ten times as many plugins as
it should have I kid you not the average
website built in WordPress has nine
plugins my website has 92 and some of
them are active some of them are not but
it’s definitely slowing the site down so
that’s one of the big reasons I’m doing
you still have to rely on vendors for
some of your stuff you know if if
learned ash has an error in it or if one
of the other plugins that I use in
WordPress has an error in it I can’t fix
it the the manufacturer has the vendor
has to fix it and sometimes very rarely
but sometimes vendors themselves get
hacked and/or they do the hacking
themselves there’s a little controversy
going on right now in the word Plus
WordPress a theme and plug-in community
about a company that very quietly
inserted code into their themes that
would allow them to hack their customers
sites for information to shut them down
I mean it’s a big deal they’re claiming
oh no that’s not what that’s for but
that’s exactly what that does you don’t
know that right cuz you’re not I’m not a
programmer how would I know how could I
look at the code and know right so to a
certain extent you have to rely on some
vendors but my my advice to you is when
you can avoid it build on your own
platform build stuff for you don’t go
the easy route when going just a little
bit more difficult and installing
something yourself or using something
yourself or designing something yourself
on your own computer would work we’re
relying on somebody else and paying them
or getting a free version which may have
limited functionality might not serve
you so well in the future and we’re in
the process right now I was watching a
video for the theme the theme set that
I’m looking at for for WordPress and the
guy who created the theme set had a list
of the stack that he was looking for to
be able to teach courses and it’s very
much what I do with VOD gogo and with
some of my other sites as well in the
near future so as he kind of went
through that I thought yeah you know
this is really something that I need to
share with you that we sometimes take
that easy route we go to a particular
place that has a way to implement
something that we want to do and we use
theirs instead of creating ours and
one of the big ones is Facebook and I’m
gonna talk about that in tomorrow’s
video so stay tuned for that um I wonder
if this is a little too technical for
you I’m sure for some of you it’s like
oh yeah I get this and for some of you
like wow what and I get that so if it is
let me know in the comments below but
also let me know if it’s something that
you can see applying in other areas of
your life if you can see the application
of relying on a third party rather than
doing it yourself rather than rolling
your own as they say so let me know in
the comments below if you’re watching
this anywhere but @vo to go go comm pop
over to vo to go go calm because we’ve
got some great stuff for you they’re not
just these videos but also lots and lots
of free tips and tricks for you and your
performance career voice-over acting
technology business it’s all there for
you so and that’s where you should leave
comments as well I mean I do check the
comments on YouTube but I kind of really
favor the ones that are on the vo to go
go website and if you’d like to sign up
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YouTube will play it for you I’m David H
Lawrence the 17 thank you so much for
watching and I’ll talk to you tomorrow.