Welcome to a new week!

A shorter week for me, since my wife and I are going on a short cruise and leaving on Thursday. As always, I will be periodically checking email while I’m on the ship, but ongoing project work for clients will be paused. I get back Monday morning, so it’s a shortie.

In this issue…

Have I adjusted my thoughts on digital sovereignty, seeing as I’ve gone back into the welcoming hands of Google? I explain. 😇

Plus, I find myself frequently helping to untangle what I call “frankenstein sites”. You know, the WordPress sites that are a tangled mess and often feel like whack-a-mole because stuff keeps breaking. Well…

Let’s talk about the side effects of just adding plugins to your site from the WordPress repo.

There is a downside.

Evolving Specs of Digital Sovereignty?

I have long considered digital sovereignty to be one of more core principles that shape not only how I structure my own business, but shapes how I work with clients in Concierge. Digital sovereignty has 8 principles:

• Build your online business platform in a way which you own and control.
• Make sure your online business platform is portable.
• Don’t rely on a third-party service without an exit ramp and plug-and-play alternative.
• Ensure that you’re not trapped by a subscription.
• Always backup.
• Focus on building assets you actually own.
• Use services which respect your data ownership and privacy.
• Build financial sovereignty.

When I first got into all this, I was using Google services. Gmail, Calendar, Drive, etc. And as convenient as those services were, I left them because I felt Google was “big tech” and not respectful of my digital sovereignty. Like many, I was using the “free” Google account. That matters.

I went over to FastMail. A service I really like. And definitely respectful of one’s digital sovereignty.

But then more recently, I decided to go back to Google. I am now using Gmail, Drive, Calendar, and several of the other apps. And in fact, I just announced that I’m going to begin using Google Meet for Roadmap calls and client calls moving forward – instead of Zoom.

Did I just change my mind here? And have my views on digital sovereignty…. shifted?

The answer is yes… they shifted. But, they also still remain intact. Digital sovereignty is still a big deal to me.

So, how do I square this up with moving back into the arms of the big G? 😜

First off, my core reason for going back to Google is AI. CLEARLY, AI is a really big deal right now. And in order to make use of AI for some of my systems, I needed access to my data to be simpler. Google is awesome for this. EVERYTHING integrates with Google. Almost nothing integrates with FastMail. Not only that, Google has Gemini built right into their tools, so AI is literally baked into it.

Now, I am not using the “free” Google account. I am using Google Workspace. Which means (a) I pay for it, (b) they must respect data privacy laws because this is an enterprise setup. In other words, they’re not scanning my email nor using my data to train their AI tools. I pay for that.

Lastly, I’ve built backup systems such that my Google account could disappear right now and it would be little more than an inconvenience. I do this using my Synology NAS (network attached storage) here in my office. Basically, it is a server. And one of the many things this device now does for me is to mirror my Google Workspace account practically in real-time. In other words, the data is MINE. Fully backed up.

And now, I can utilize the full benefits of Google Workspace in a digitally sovereign way.

And honestly, Google Workspace is a pretty good deal. It also includes Gemini Pro (their AI tool, which is getting really good really quickly) and all of their Google apps. That includes Google Meet, which will now replace Zoom for me. I didn’t do that to save money…. I did it because Google Meet automatically records calls with full transcripts into my Google Drive. I don’t have to do anything. But, what can you then do with those recordings?

Automatic call summaries and action items (done by Gemini). As well as the easy ability to drop calls into NotebookLM (also a Google tool) and be able to use AI to look for patterns among calls. Client frustrations (that I can then solve), or confusions that come up on Roadmap calls (that I can then handle).

I know that this may just seem like “inside baseball”. I mean, who cares that I decided to start using Google again? Doesn’t affect you! But…

I encourage you to evaluate the tools you are using – especially in this rapidly changing tide of AI. These AI tools can be incredibly powerful for you when used right. But, when you have major pockets of your business sitting in platforms not accessible to these tools, it limits what you can do.

WordPress News & Updates

Kinda crazy how much AI is working it’s way into everything. And this last week was no different…

• FluentBooking – Minor Release. FluentBooking was updated to 2.0.05, fixing a few bugs and improving security. See the announcement.
• WordPress 7.0 Release Schedule. WordPress 7.0 is slated for release on April 9th, with various beta releases coming out weekly before that date. You can see the full schedule here. You can test out beta 1 for yourself now.
• OpenClaw Creator Joins OpenAI. Peter Steinberger, the creator of OpenClaw (formerly Clawdbot) has officially joined OpenAI. OpenFlaw will move to a foundation, remain open source, and stay independent. The irony here is that Anthropic (the company behind Claude) really dropped the ball on this one. They had an opportunity staring right at them, but they met it by threatening to sue over the name. And now, OpenAI secures it. This could go down as one of the great blunders in the world of AI, on the part of Anthropic.
• FluentCommunity 2.2 And FluentPlayer. FluentCommunity has been updated to 2.2, introducing a new smart media player (called FluentPlayer). The real-time chat has also gotten a full re-write, a new lesson builder for courses, comment pinning, and more. Click here for the full release announcement. The FluentPlayer system is a great little addition. It looks like it will eventually develop into a worthy alternative to Presto Player
• Matt Wants To Hide WordPress.org Hosting Negotiations. In the ongoing lawsuit between Automattic and WP Engine, Mullenweg has asked that negotiations between him and hosting companies for endorsements remain redacted. This has to do with the official hosting page at WordPress.org, which is some incredibly valuable real estate. But, companies pay for that. It isn’t really based on merit. Something Matt would rather you not know, apparently.

“Just Add A Plugin”, They Said 🤪

“Just add a plugin” feels like the fastest path in WordPress. Need a feature? Install something… move on.

But every “quick” plugin decision adds invisible cost. Not all at once… but it stacks. And over time, those small shortcuts are exactly how Frankenstein sites are born.

What you’re really buying when you install a plugin

A plugin isn’t just a feature. It’s new code running on your site, plus a new dependency you now have to live with.

That usually means:

• More weight: extra scripts, styles, database tables, cron jobs… sometimes loading site-wide even if you only need it on one page.
• More conflict potential: plugins don’t just “add” things… they hook into WordPress and change behavior. More moving parts means more collisions.
• More maintenance: updates, compatibility with your theme/builder, PHP version changes, WordPress core changes. One abandoned plugin can hold your whole stack hostage.
• More attack surface: every plugin expands the number of possible security issues. Even good plugins get vulnerabilities… the question is how quickly they patch, and how responsibly they’re maintained.

“Quick” is rarely quick long-term. It’s deferred complexity.

The trap: installing random plugins from a search result

The WordPress repo is a gift… and also a risk if your process is “search, install, hope.”

Common problems:

• Abandoned plugins that are still downloadable, but barely maintained (or not maintained at all)
• Wildly inconsistent quality between plugins that claim to do the same thing
• Support gaps where the plugin works until it doesn’t… and then nobody answers
• Plugins that sprawl: admin clutter, upsells, extra modules, tracking, and “helpful” features you never asked for

It’s not that the repo is unsafe. It’s that “random plugin roulette” is a bad operating system for a business website. And it WILL create a frankenstein site that breaks often and feels like whack-a-mole.

It’s usually a chain reaction:

1. Install a plugin to solve a small problem
2. Install another to patch a side effect
3. Install another because the first didn’t fully work
4. Now you’ve got overlap… and you’re not sure what’s safe to remove
5. Eventually the site feels slow, fragile, and unpredictable

At that point, even simple changes become scary because nobody understands the full web of dependencies.

A simple gate that prevents most plugin bloat

Before you install anything, run it through this filter:

• Is it doing way more than just what you need? Installing a plugin that does a whole lot of things when you only need one of those things is adding a lot of bloat for little reason. I see this often in plugins that add new Elementor blocks, for instance. The plugin will add 20 blocks but the person only needed one of them. And, often, didn’t really need that one, either. 😜
• Can WordPress already do this? Blocks and a solid theme eliminate a lot of “plugin needs.”
• Do you already have something in your stack that can do it? Overlap is where problems multiply.
• Is it actively maintained and reputable? Frequent updates, good support history, clear ownership.
• Can it be built? I see a lot of people installing plugins for one little thing that probably could have been done using a simple code snippet. Don’t forget, using AI tools like ChatGPT can often help you create copy/paste code snippets that alleviate the need for a big plugin. Use with your eyes wide open, though, because I’ve seen AI tools build stupid things, too. 😜

Definitely, though…. be really careful installing random plugins from the WordPress plugin repo. You could end up with very unexpected results.