Last week, my inbox got a bit of a hammering after people noticed I’m part of the ‘outside leadership’ advisory board for Etch.
If you haven’t heard yet, Etch is the latest project in-development from the team behind ACSS and Frames (both affiliate links).
It’s fair to say Kevin Geary had the WordPress community buzzing last week—some ‘good’ buzz, some ‘pitchforks’ kinda buzz—as he kicked off an early presale campaign for Etch.
(If you’ve been off-grid lately, Kevin’s the founder of ACSS and Frames.)
During those live presale calls, Kevin dropped the image below, featuring my face.
And, well… I wasn’t quite expecting the reaction it got.
A lot of the messages I received were lovely to hear: congratulations, glad I’d be helping shape the project, that sort of thing.
But it seemed to whip up a few concerns too: like, wondering what my involvement with Etch means for my using and teaching Bricks builder.
So, let’s get to it. I want to clear up a few things and hopefully put those concerns to rest.
So, what’s Etch?
To be clear, Etch isn’t even a product yet. Right now, it’s a big, ambitious idea—a new kind of page builder that’s still in the proof-of-concept stage.
Unlike most third-party page builders, which are a separate layer on top of WordPress generating their own proprietary code, Etch is being built directly on top of the Gutenberg Block Editor, tightly integrated with Gutenberg.
Think of Etch as an alternative UI for Gutenberg. Blocks you create in Etch will be native Gutenberg blocks, and any blocks you build in Gutenberg will work seamlessly in Etch.
The code will be 100% compatible with Gutenberg blocks, promising to help mitigate the vendor lock-in we all worry about when using third-party page builders.
Etch also aims to bring all the core functionality you need for web design into one unified interface. You’ll be able to create custom fields and post types, manage media, design your layouts, etc—all within the same UI.
And obviously, still with the ability to use any plugins you like.
In some ways, the idea has a bit of the Webflow vibe for me.
One of the things I loved about Webflow (which I started using for a while back in 2020) was how it had everything I needed in one place. No context switching between disparate tools.
Of course, I came running back to WordPress a couple of years ago because the community is awesome, the open-source nature of WordPress is too important to walk away from, and WP’s plugin architecture is unrivalled.
But, the unified aspect of the Webflow UI was a pleasure to work with.
There’s a lot more to say about Etch, but I’ll save that for another time. You get the gist.
How did I get involved?
About five weeks ago, Kevin reached out to me with the big idea for Etch and asked if I’d be up for providing some advice and input into the project.
It’s no secret I’m a big fan of ACSS.
So, the chance to contribute to something new from the same team?
Yeah, I was in.
(And no, I’m not getting paid for this role.)
I’m not oblivious to the fact that my involvement doesn’t hurt from a marketing perspective. A few people have told me they invested in the presale at least partly because I was involved.
But honestly, I agreed because it’s an interesting and ambitious project, from a team whose products I use every day, with a lot of potential and some big challenges ahead.
The thing I’m most excited about is having the chance to advocate for my own audience—non-techie, non-coder designers who’d love to stick as closely to core WP/Gutenberg as possible, but can’t get on with the block editor UI as a design and dev tool.
But… isn’t Etch vaporware?
I saw a few people getting pretty worked up last week, calling Etch “vaporware”, that it was outrageous for Kevin to ask for investment in something that’s “no more than mist or hot air.”
Yes, there were no working demos or screenshots during the live calls.
And that’s because the product doesn’t exist yet.
I’m not sure how some people haven’t come across the idea of a presale before. Presales are a very common practice, especially in our industry.
I’ve been running presales for my own courses—taking pre-orders for something that doesn’t exist yet—for over eight years now.
A presale is a great way to gauge if something is meeting a real need (no one’s gonna fork out their hard-earned on something they don’t need), and they help fund a project in the early stages (I mean, wait till these people hear about Kickstarter….).
The deal is quite simple: if you’re up for investing upfront as an early adopter, you do. If you don’t, you don’t.
(And anyway, “vaporware” doesn’t mean what the vaporware accusers think it does. But let’s not get into semantics.)
Wait, does this mean I’m done with Bricks?
As soon as Kevin’s first presale call wrapped up, I started getting messages like this:
“Now that you’re on the advisory board for Etch, does this mean you’re ditching Bricks? Are you not going to be making Build With Bricks 2.0 any more?”
Some people were genuinely worried that being on an advisory board for a product means I’ve switched allegiances and won’t be using Bricks any more.
Some were worried they’d invested time and money into learning Bricks, only to assume I’d be telling them to switch gears and learn something new.
One person even ‘blamed’ me for ‘making’ them choose Bricks, as if my advisory role with Etch meant I’d tricked them into picking the ‘wrong’ tool.
Sigh.
Let’s take a deep breath.
First, as I mentioned earlier, I’m not being paid. I don’t have any kind of allegiance or agenda in terms of marketing. I have no vested interested in whether you invest in Etch or not.
I see my role on the Etch advisory board as being critical, poking holes, and advocating as best I can for the needs of my own audience of non-coder designers (and yes, I know Etch will be focused on coders in the first stages).
Being an ‘advisor’ does not mean I’ve suddenly become an exclusive ambassador for a product that doesn’t even exist yet.
Here’s the thing:
In my web design toolkit, I use what works right now.
And right now, Bricks is my 100% go-to.
I love Bricks. I use it every day.
I’m also gearing up for a major update to my Bricks course—Build With Bricks 2.0—as soon as Bricks 2.0 is released.
The Road To Bricks roadmap posted by Thomas (lead dev for Bricks) looks fantastic. I can’t wait.
If I really have to be on a team, well, fine: I’m definitely Team Bricks. I’m not actively searching for something to replace it.
Sure, Etch might eventually become my builder of choice. It might not. Who knows what’s coming down the pipe?
I’ll be keeping an eye on it, just as I do with many other WordPress builders.
But right now, Bricks is working beautifully for me.
The thing about web design tools?
They change. Constantly.
If you think you’ll be using the same software to build websites two years from now (heck, even one year from now), you probably haven’t been round the web design block too many times yet.
Change is the only constant in web design.
For me, Bricks replaced Webflow.
Webflow replaced Elementor.
Elementor replaced GeneratePress.
GeneratePress replaced Genesis.
Genesis replaced Craft CMS
Craft CMS replaced all manner of WP themes I don’t want to remember.
Those themes replaced ExpressionEngine.
ExpressionEngine replaced TextPattern.
TextPattern replaced Movable Type.
Movable Type replaced Big Medium.
Big Medium replaced me trying to hack together a CMS system from scratch in PHP.
And as for Microsoft Front Page—well, thank goodness I’m not still using that to build websites.
(And I’ve most definitely missed a few other builders and CMS’s I’ve forgotten along the way.)
It’s funny, I remember a similar thing back when I stopped using and teaching Elementor.
One guy especially was furious with me. He told me he’d be “Elementor forever,” called me a traitor, and hoped my teaching business would die a death (true story, sadly).
I have no idea if he’s still clinging onto Elementor, sporting a big ‘E’ tattoo across his chest.
But change is part of the web design game, and it’s something we all have to navigate.
Enjoy what we have today, and stay curious about what’s coming next.
Not a bad motto for life, if you ask me.