Episode 272: WordPress and Gutenberg
Show Summary
Rob Cairns all things blocks and WordPress with Bud Kraus.
Show Highlights:
- Why Blocks?
- Should I use a page builder?
- Cool things you can do with blocks.
Show Notes
Everybody Rob Cairns here. Today we have Bud Kraus of Joy WP.
How are you, Bud?
I’m doing good, Rob.
And you.
Uh, doing well today for a middle of the week as we do this record.
So today I felt we dive into a little bit about Gutenberg, about blocks, about what you’re doing.
But before I do that, I always like to ask people what their WordPress origin story is.
OK.
So how did you get into WordPress and why?
OK, that’s very simple because I know the story. This is one I know. So it was about 2008 or 9.
I was with a client friend of mine, a Grand Central station in New York City, eating at a nice restaurant, and he said to me, you know, but you really ought to get into this.
You really gotta take a look at.
WordPress the IT was funny ’cause.
I had taught him HTML and CSS and he said no, you really should spend time with WordPress.
And I said, Oh no, I’m a Rage Against the machine kind of guy.
I don’t want to get into that stuff.
And he said he looked at me very seriously.
Goes no, I’m not kidding.
You really need to take a look here.
I’ll give you my access to my site.
You poke around, there are these things called plugins.
You know, just play around with this stuff, and that’s how it started. And then about 03 to four months after I had first looked at it, I realized what child themes were.
And from that point on.
I was hooked ’cause once you saw.
Once I could see that, oh, you could make this into anything.
I was in love.
That’s what did.
It for me.
No, I I can understand that.
It’s that ability to make it into anything.
I think it really cool in our space so.
Of course all.
That is changing now.
And I don’t know if that you might lead to this because of theme Jason and and all the differences now with full site editing that the role of the child theme is really as we know it or have known it.
Is going to diminish.
It’s going to change.
It is changing.
Yeah, I, I I would agree with that. I’ve spent a lot of time in the last while there’s to me two big leaders kind of in the full site editing circle and one is the GoDaddy field team and it showed up to those guys.
So a lot of them.
Are both friends of you and I.
And then there’s the WP engine team.
That’s been doing a lot.
Any FC space people like Brian Gardner, who’s been around.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
A long time and you know, thanks to those two teams, my knowledge with the whole FC block space.
He’s just been growing by the day and.
Yeah, well, yeah, I find it interesting that.
And maybe I shouldn’t find it so interesting, but that Gutenberg, and of course full site and even more so with full site editing, has been slow to be widely adopted and accepted.
Now, like I say, maybe I shouldn’t find that so interesting or unusual.
Because these are such rapid, radical changes that happen fairly rapidly that people just could not.
Uh, and would not, and can’t, I guess, adapt to these changes?
Uh, you know, when you have major sites, you know, you know huge sites with thousands of pages and so much content.
How do you going to change?
You know, it’s not that simple.
No, I I think the reason a lot of it hasn’t changed is for people that.
Are old school.
Right.
And haven’t have used the page builder for years.
So whether it’s TV, whether it’s Beaver Builder while it’s elementor, or whether it’s brixey, choose your poison.
Right.
They’re not about to change their workflow because there’s a learning curve and there’s a steep learning curve as far as I’m concerned, but that said.
Once you change your workflow and you get into that steep learning curve, I think you’re better off moving forward personally.
I do too, and I think a lot of studies that I’ve seen suggest that.
For one thing, Gutenberg and full site editing is is much more responsive.
And here I mean performance is better than with all the page builders that you’ve just mentioned. And I, you know, I love elementor because to me that’s a full-fledged.
Fully develop.
Web design system whereas Gutenberg and full site editing or you know, it’s just not all there yet, but I suspect it will be there.
And it’s fast.
So I mean, I I just like the fact that I won’t have to use a plugin.
I could go with the native editor and hopefully.
That native editor will eventually be a full-fledged web design system. Of course, that is the goal.
Yeah, and and I would agree with him.
To give listeners an example, I’ve talked about this before on my podcast when I switched from.
The page builder, which at the time was Beaver built builder.
Two blocks I added.
Right.
No word of a lie.
12 points to my GT metric score overnight, like it was that compelling.
So I think speed for me is one of the reasons doing it and I should add.
I’m not running native blocks, so we all know there’s some block ecosystem add-ons and I’m actually running Cadence walks and it still added twelve points to my GT metric score and access something.
Right.
Right.
So that’s kind of where the speed goes.
I mean, I think with blocks what you need to do is sort of set your.
Stack up or what you’re gonna use up.
So I’ve decided generally I go with Cadence team and cadence parks.
Right, right.
But I’ve got a couple sites running Frost, which is the theme developed by Brian Gardner, which is not supposed to be a production theme, but we all know people know how to fix stuff, run what they wanna run.
So that’s kind of the route I’ve.
I think you have to look at when you talk about performance in Gutenberg and speed.
It’s not just this speed as compared to.
The word press page builders.
But how does it stack up against Wix and Squarespace?
Because you know in many ways that is the competition.
Although of course their market shares are so puny compared to WordPress.
Yeah, I I think the reason why they’re the market share truly is people think they’re cheaper.
So I want and I’ll and I’ll dive into an example of that. Let’s go to e-commerce for a minute and the competitor, the Woo commerce Shopify.
Right.
And people work at Shopify and say, oh, they have a $2999 a month plan, but then when you look at it, that $2999 month plan doesn’t get you much at the end of the day and we’re talking U.S. dollars and then you can kind of look.
Right.
That’s something like GoDaddy.
He has managed WooCommerce hosting where they throw in a whole suite of plugins for 29 bucks a month.
And when you look at it at the end of the day, I think you get much more for the value there of going to a solution like that which is basically managed woo commerce host.
Thing then you do well in the Shopify. I mean you won’t. With Shopify you don’t even get Yoast included unless you buy the add on or you pay $89.00 a month like it’s just silly.
And now with Shopify, you know, I know.
Like for example with Ed, see when you build a site of Etsy, you’re really branded to Etsy.
What about Shopify?
Can you obliterate all their branding?
I mean, I don’t know Shopify as well as I probably started.
It it depends on what you paid, it depends on what you pay and I don’t think like I I know Shopify has this place in the market, but I don’t think.
I don’t want.
To be buying yet?
It really has a place if you want to scale, in my opinion.
Right.
And that’s kind of where I go with WordPress is, you know, Witsen Square.
And I don’t know if those solutions for some people, honestly, because I think they’re better solutions.
It’s it is it going to spin something up quick?
I right, they are.
If you want to scale, I don’t think it gives you what you.
I agree and like square space is pretty simple to use.
At least I picked it up pretty quick.
Uhm, so it’s hard for you know, I say it’s simple to use, but.
I really shouldn’t use those kind of words and usually refrain from simple and easy to use.
It’s, you know, it’s your.
It’s from your.
What are you bringing to the table, you know?
We wish your starting point when you learn something, which is funny because people always ask me how long is it gonna take me to learn WordPress?
You know, and of course my, I have been asked that question for 20 years or whatever I’ve been teaching and and I say, you know, I can’t answer that question ’cause I don’t know you and I don’t know what your start.
Ring from.
So how am I supposed to?
Answer How long it’s gonna take to learn something.
I always find that to be one of the most peculiar questions I’ve ever I am routinely asked.
And I would also add to that just because you learned it doesn’t make you a good designer.
Well, that’s true.
It doesn’t have a good eye for design.
Well, that’s a different matter, right?
It doesn’t make you good at locking down websites on the security side, which we know is a bit of a problem right now and there’s so much in so many moving parts.
That I actually think WordPress has gotten more complicated over the evening.
Oh, there’s no.
There’s no question about that.
Yeah, I don’t think there’s any.
I’m sorry to interrupt, but I.
Don’t think there is any.
Question that things have gotten more complicated and you can.
Add you said that.
Gutenberg was a steep learning curve.
I totally.
I agree.
I mean, look.
How simple the old, you know, tiny MCE.
Now known as the classic editor.
You know how how simple that was?
Now of course you had you had to load up a million plugins to give you columns and this and forms and you know all that stuff.
But people, I think people will no matter what happens.
There people are always going to.
Love the classic editor.
You know, and I mean.
You know, it’s word press is such a.
It’s, I mean.
Well, the web itself and web development is gotten so more sophisticated and complex.
But you know, I I always love this field because it was and is multidisciplinary, but it just keeps getting in all of its different disciplines, more complex.
And it’s it’s.
You know it’s not easy.
You know it’s just not easy to make good websites.
You know you can’t.
I just don’t think amateurs can make good websites anymore unless they’re really lucky, or I shouldn’t say that unless they have, let’s say.
And unless they’re keen on design or something, you know, it’s really hard to.
To do good websites.
Because I’ve seen a million crappy websites that.
It’s OK.
This way saying.
It’s a repetition thing, I think, but the more you do, the better you get.
It’s like, it’s like photographers.
Yeah, yeah.
No question. No question.
How how do you get better as a photographer?
You shoot a million pictures and and I think amateurs in websites or DIY people as I like.
Right.
To call them.
They just don’t do enough of it to improve their skill set.
Right.
Exactly right.
I I totally agree and.
To to prove a.
Point I’m exhibit A because I think of like, I’m not a designer, OK?
But I think of like what I how I design things.
Like 20 years ago compared to today.
What a difference.
I mean, it’s a huge difference.
Alright, maybe the tools are better, but not that my skills got better.
You know, my skills improved so.
And the idea too I.
Think there’s also this misnomer.
There’s a huge misnomer.
In thinking that anybody can make a great.
Website You know, there’s a lot.
Of that out there.
The barrier to entry is nothing.
Virtually nothing.
Anybody can do this, right?
Well, I’m not so sure that’s true.
Now, let me let me just say not everybody can do this well.
You know, anybody can make a website, but can they do it well?
Can they make it correctly?
Can they do?
No, they can’t.
That’s that, you know.
Yeah, it’s so true now.
You’re spending most of your time these days training.
Yeah, what is kind of at top of the mind in training?
These days with marketing.
Right, yeah, right.
Right.
Well, right now, actually, I’m not really doing.
That much training and more working.
A little bit more.
I’ve sort of like flipped back a little bit to site.
Like people come to me and, you know, fix my this or that or help you with this or that.
And and I’m also creating videos.
Their first videos for instant WP, so I got hired to do that, so that’s taking up some time, which is fine.
Now I do have two courses online.
One is free and one is a low cost cars called using Gutenberg.
And I think, quite to be quite blunt to myself about this, I think I was a little ahead of my.
Time I just don’t.
See that the market is, I thought the market would be there now to be honest to myself also, I haven’t done the kind of promotional work that I should be doing for that.
So I’ve gotten some business from that, but nothing what I would hope for or expected at this point.
And so sometimes, you know, if you’re like Panasonic, you’re like slightly ahead of your time.
Maybe I’m a little more than a slightly ahead of my time, I’m not sure, but I really do think that the market to learn how to use the black editor will grow.
I just, I won’t shrink it, it will grow.
You mean when you think of all the the force behind the the the?
What’s going on with the black editor?
The market will be there.
I mean, look at every time you install WordPress.
Every new website has got a black editor in it, so you know somebody is going to spin up a new WordPress site or they want to learn WordPress.
You know, could you?
Should you?
Teach them the classic editor?
I don’t think so.
What do you think?
I if it were me and it was somebody new.
Right, yes.
They’re the exact market that Gutenberg and full site editing should go.
I think all the established agencies are gonna be not do what I.
We did not doing what people on the forefront they’re doing where they’re moving now, they’re going to sit back and.
Wait and?
You know, you can see it even happening with the with the company.
So let’s talk about stellar WP, who owns ITHEMES and owns Cadence.
What many people don’t realize is they’re in the process of decommissioning their old builder framework and they’ve been saying they’re gonna get rid of it and they’ve extended it for a while just to appease people or using it and doing production websites.
But builders going away and you say, why would they do that?
Because stellar also owns Cadence and Jim Wynn says their product right now.
And they’re all in, and cadence now has a new shop kit which I haven’t had a chance to play with them.
Right.
My good friend Kathy example wrapped me over the head for this one and it’s to do with woo commerce selling and it’s just been released and dumb.
Right.
Right.
You know, they’re doing some amazing things over there.
So and.
But it also.
I mean that’s that’s good for that.
That’s good in the in.
The yeah, but I also think of what Matt Mullenweg said at state of the word.
In December when? He said.
At the time there were about 50 black themes, and he had hoped that by in a year there would be thousands of them.
There’s not going to be thousands of them unless something radical happens between now and then.
I mean, we we have a maybe 102 hundred black themes in the theme repository. We’re not.
Going to have thousands.
That’s a that’s a problem for people.
Who are pushing?
You know who are trying to look to the future like me and you?
But I don’t know.
I don’t know if we need thousands of block teams, I think.
Yes, that’s a good point, right.
What we need?
Is lots of patterns and lots of.
Things around that side.
I think one of the things with Gutenberg is patterns are easy to use.
I mean you can import it, learn very easy.
Right.
Right.
That’s a very good point.
You know, you, you know, theoretically you really don’t even need but one theme and everybody can build off of that one theme.
When you think about it, see.
Radically, with patterns, with styling, with their own content.
When you what you think about it, you really only need one.
Big flexible theme.
And maybe that’s what there’s going to be a killer theme out there that everybody is going to.
Use. That’s it.
It could happen.
It could happen.
I I think, you know, I kind of looked at the Gutenberg block ecosystem and say, what would I like?
And one of the things I know in all the conversations I’ve been on.
I’m really key on is what we call block locking, and that means the ability to lock blocks down and come.
Right.
I want the.
We can do it now, but it’s more a broad approach.
I want a more granular approach where we can just.
Start locking stuff down by elements like I really do.
Uhm, it makes it easier so that when a client gets a site they don’t know.
Playing around with stuff that to me.
Stuff like that.
Is more important and then understanding things like.
What a reusable block is.
Most people don’t realize that you that if you use a reusable block and you make one change, it changes it globally on your site.
Oh, it’s power.
Yeah, well, you have to deep.
There’s a way to do it right, but there is a.
Way to detach it.
From the yeah, but people don’t.
Know, right? It’s your.
I understand.
But you know, going back to.
Lacking blocks, and it’s really in its infancy, the thing that I like to see is that you could lock down the actual content within the block, which you can’t do now.
And that’s a real shortcoming, because you might want to say, OK client, you can change some things, but you know you can’t.
Like right now, what can you lock down?
You can lock down, you can’t delete it?
Or I mean, there’s a couple of things.
You can lock, but you can’t lock down the content.
That’s correct.
And that’s got time.
You’ve got to be able to lock down the content.
Yeah, so you’re ending up with that.
You’ll end up with a page where there will be certain sections that that will be like totally locked off or black whatever you want to see roped up, black laptop, and there only being maybe a few little areas in which the content could be changed.
By the client.
And that’s ideal, yeah.
No, I I think.
That’s the way it needs to go because.
And and the.
Other thing is and it’s.
It’s worth mentioning.
Agencies have a tendency.
The client comes in and says we want admin rights and they don’t want to argue, so they give the coin admin rights, right?
I’ll tell you what happens when you do that.
Well, I know.
I had I had a client recently, he.
Right.
I gave the owner of the business admin rights, but I didn’t give the part-timer admin rights and the part-timer couldn’t do something.
So he went to the owner and he said I want admin rights and the owner said use my account.
Well, by the time I got to the site, there was six page Builders, 4 caching plugins, 3 form plugins, 2 plugins, and 22 plugins that weren’t even being used on the website.
Oh jeez.
Oh my goodness.
So the cleanup was dramatical and I just went back and said, OK, nobody gets admin rights and the owner said, well it’s my business.
And I said, well, do you want to pay every time you need to sing?
We cleaned up because.
You can’t do.
You can’t function that way.
So I think part of it’s blocking, but I also think part of it’s giving.
People the appropriate user roles to be able to do it, not to do and nothing more.
Let me ask you a question that you.
Probably know the answer, which is.
With the way the.
Locking works now if if you’re not an admin, let’s say you’re a contributor or an editor.
Some lower level.
Do you have the ability to change the lacking?
No, you need to be in here.
I didn’t think so.
And then it’s like defeats the whole purpose of it, right?
So if I’m like a contributor and you as the admin locks something off, I could still change it?
Yeah, there’s some.
There’s some issues in there, yeah.
Well, that’s that’s gonna change.
That’s gonna happen.
That is, they are, they are working on it.
I mean, what people need to remember is.
You know, three years ago when Gutenberg was announced, I never would have touched it, and now it’s getting to the point where it’s pretty usable.
Uhm, what else would you like to see go into Gutenberg?
Do you have anything?
There is a really Speaking of lacking blacks now, you know, it’s funny because.
You see, you’ll see a plug in like 1 of.
My favorites is black visibility.
And that gives you the ability to hide blocks or show blocks based on whether a user is logged in or not, or.
You know, particular.
Day or time or whatever, they have different conditions.
But you know.
I’d like to see that in court, but.
You know, everybody has their favorite and you all.
You just can’t put everything in court and then starting to defeat the whole purpose.
So I mean that’s.
One of them.
Uh, I don’t know.
I can’t think of another one right now that comes to top of my head that I would like to see in there.
I would like to see.
Well, here’s my dream.
I talked to some people about this.
I may be with you and maybe others.
I just don’t think this is.
I mean it was you, but.
Where the were were the full site editor and working on a page were merged.
So they could be really confusing to.
People, but I don’t like the fact like for example.
If you take elementor.
They basically are merged.
So you know, you have your blocks, also known as widgets, in elementor, but then you have a whole your whole design structure for the site or the page is still built on that one screen.
You don’t have to go anywhere and I like.
Now, and maybe forever, you will have to go out of the if you want to change the template.
Going to have.
To go out of the screen that you’re working on, the page or the post or whatever.
Post type you have and then go into the full site editor and start changing the templates and maybe that’s a good way to do it so that there’s a mental separation in people minds about what’s the difference between working on a page and working on a template so you can see just.
The level of complexity now that’s been introduced to all this, wow, see, I really do think that there is a big opportunity for people who do training.
To tackle these these issues and because it’s become much more.
Complicated, I you know, I guess.
You know.
In the beginning, when I first started using it, there was an ease of use and I think that’s kind of gone.
For good or for bad?
What do you?
Would you?
Would you agree or?
Right.
I think it’s way, way more complicated and and kind of the way I look at stuff now in my stack.
So I’ve already said I used cadence and cadence box, the other block plugin I used that I absolutely love.
Right.
Right.
Love is a editor plus by extend, define and yeah right and and the reason I use that are process if we want to remove headings or footers off a page it makes it real quick and easy to do so you don’t have to do a lot of.
Right.
Playing around with stuff.
Right.
And I’m not a big fan of taking all the stuff and throwing it in core. The purest was they always getting in the course. We don’t have add-ons.
Right.
Right.
Isn’t the whole purpose using WordPress to get the flexibility that we’ve always had?
Yeah, yeah.
And how do you get the flexibility if it’s all in?
You know, you know, maybe we’re going to need like for example, you’re talking about removing headers and footers.
I mean, you can do that now with templates, but people don’t even know how to use, you know, it’s like what?
I I don’t know.
We have a long way to go, I think before people can really feel comfortable with this tool.
It is complex and there will be some people who will.
Be turned off by it?
There’s just no getting around it and there’s they want something simpler, or they want a page builder, or I would.
You know, it’s funny.
I I didn’t get this project, but I was really thinking if I got it, you know, I never got to the stage where I would just.
It was a big project and whether or not.
I’d be using the block editor.
Or elementor? Or both?
And dumb.
Of course, I never got around to that discussion with this prospect, but.
I’m not.
It’s really, you know, and you.
Really have to do this a case by case basis, so if you get a new.
Client are you going to use which one?
You know how are you going to do this?
There’s no easy.
Answer to this because there’s so many factors that have to be uncovered before you can make a decision.
There is just no one answered.
There’s definitely no one answer.
No, it’s true.
And and that’s what makes WordPress so powerful is there’s multiple ways to skin a cat, so to speak.
And and that.
But you look powerful.
And flexible and all other people caught confusing.
It’s true. It is.
It it is, but I but I think you got to realize that.
The more flexible something is, the more confusing it is.
Yeah, unfortunately that.
That and that’s.
Pretty well the norm.
Gets true.
I mean flexibility means more options and more options means more confusion.
It’s sort of like, you know, I remember when I was a kid, you’d go to a grocery store and you’d get like, orange juice.
OK, now there’s high calcium, low calcium.
This calcium let you know you going like I, I can’t take.
It I just want orange juice.
Yeah, you know what I mean.
We have choices in everything and and certainly word press does give us choice choices that can be bewildering.
What do you think about?
One of the things in the community that’s been talked about a lot is to stop naming the themes with the releases by the year and just come up with a block mean.
Do you have any thoughts?
You know, I don’t really care.
I just kind of feel it’s funny you mentioned that ’cause. I always feel like self-conscious I guess.
I shouldn’t, but you know how it’s really funny how when people like.
What I’m getting at is like.
If the theme is 2022, you have to write it out 2020.
Two, you can’t.
Just use the numbers 2022.
It’s sort of like.
How I don’t use the numbers, how you spell it out 2022, because I feel self-conscious. I should, you know, ’cause. That’s what everybody else.
It’s sort of like, now this is incorrect, but there’s a lot of people who who’s no better.
Who save WordPress and they don’t capitalize the P.
And there used to be a whole lot of crap about that.
I’m sure you remember this and.
Maybe they’re still in spelling?
There’s a list.
Yeah, but I mean I hear the way my take on that.
Is if you.
Know better.
You really should put the capital P.
If you don’t know any.
Better who cares?
You know, so you know.
No, it’s not.
The end of the world?
You know, I mean chiefs.
But you’re right, there are people that will.
Just get, you know?
They’ll get tortured because they put in a lowercase P.
I think we need not to get bogged down on the little things and concentrated big thing and you know, I was.
Yes, of course, yeah.
I don’t know if it was with you or somebody else is having discussion that.
One of the biggest problems with all the spark stuff is it’s changing so fast and the documentation isn’t up to date.
Yeah, you would need, I think.
Yeah, you’re right.
You’re right about that.
And it’s becoming a bit of an issue because people wanna, some people wanna learn this stuff and they’ve got no documentation.
You know, Speaking of, I don’t know if we were, but one thing that I think should be really interesting and I don’t.
Know where this is going to go.
My mind is not that.
Forward thinking, I guess, is the effect of AI.
On WordPress, I mean, are we going to get to the point where we can speak to our computers and say build me a template?
That does this that you know.
Uh, is it possible?
I guess it is, I guess.
I mean, look, we have these.
You know Jasper AI and all these other.
AI writing tools now?
Wouldn’t it be possible that?
You could create a WordPress website with artificial intelligence in minutes that would have taken days to make.
It just becomes what kind of bull the AI will add to the website.
So the people who still hand code all the WordPress websites in CSS and JavaScript maintain.
Right.
The reason they do that is plugins add book.
So that argument will just not go away.
Right, no, I understand that.
But if there’s a way that AI could create websites without all this additional bloat?
I don’t know there will be a role for AI in WordPress.
There’s no question that I don’t think people yet understand or know what.
It would be.
How could they?
It’s still a little too early to know that I.
They will be wrong.
There will be a role.
It’s just to what degree.
And as I say, I think we’re already seeing it in the.
Editing tools.
The biggest one is birtha dot AI.
If you know.
I just.
Heard of that? Yeah.
Which is?
Oh, that’s a griffitt.
You could there’s a plugin right that goes into WordPress that you could do the AI inside of.
Yeah, it started as a WordPress project and then Vito.
Vito, Pale Egg and Andrew Palmer branched it out to a sass product, so it’s now really a sass per say.
But is there still a plugin I would think that they maintain so that if you haven’t Bertha account, don’t know there’s no plugin anymore.
No, there still is a plug in.
There is and so would that plug and then connect to their service so that you can use it.
Right inside of WordPress, correct?
And there’s many, there’s many programs like that that aren’t AI.
For example, one comes to mind is male polling, which automatic now owns is male poets, an e-mail platform that runs within WordPress and and the plugin connects to their service.
OK.
See user Mailer.
Yeah, well, there’s so yeah, it’s like I.
Tell you, I remember.
1012 years ago there was such simpler things and now everything.
All these plugins.
Are attached to third party services.
It gets so.
You know, all this stuff is just gotten.
I don’t know.
Maybe it’s just me, Rob.
Maybe I’m just getting old.
No, I think it’s just progress.
And yeah, the reality of it is, is people don’t like change and people don’t like progress and.
I don’t think it’s you.
I think there’s a lot of people that don’t accept that, and that’s a bit of.
Rapid you know, it’s happened all so quickly that it’s so hard to.
Uhm Digest all this stuff?
I mean, I did start with Gutenberg from the very, very beginning.
Uhm, it wasn’t that I was making websites with.
It it was that I was just.
Tracking what it was doing, and Speaking of tracking, I was on this train trip, you know, around the United States.
I think was.
This was pre.
No, this was after the initial. I think this was after 50.
So right after five, oh, I took this train trip and.
It was about.
I figured out my. I think it was 19 days or 29 days. I forget.
It was long and I started using Gutenberg.
I started using it just to see how far I could, what I could do to make a website.
It wasn’t all that much, you know, you said.
Like I want.
To do this I want it yo no.
No, you know, no.
Plugins just straight Gutenberg, but it started.
Getting me into.
Working with blacks and it was so limited compared to what it is now, it really is come such a long way.
It has.
You know that that’s true, but it has a long way to go and what I would like to see, since you asked me for what I would like to see, I would like to see more polishing of the product.
Before they go on to the third phase with with their international collaboration.
I really want them to spend more time making that a more polished experience than what it is now.
There’s just too much.
That is just not as good as it should be, but they’ll go on because Matt will make them go fine.
It’s because they have this road map and they’re going to stick to it and that’s.
It and they’ll.
They’ll circle back to take care of.
The things that I’m talking.
Actually, it’s funny.
My my biggest thing I’d I would love to see them do is redo the media library.
But you know I it’s not gonna happen and the media library hasn’t been touched in over probably 10 years, so.
Yeah, yeah.
See, there’s so many things.
Like that, you know that could be made better, right in core.
That they should, they should address.
But there ain’t no money there.
I mean, there’s that’s one of the, you know, there’s no, that’s why they’re not doesn’t get any attention.
You know, it’s it’s not the future.
Who cares about the media library?
It’s just a.
Bunch of files.
But there’s there’s a lot they could do like they could do, like an easy way to to remove orphaned images, you know?
Yeah, it’s like, you know?
Yeah, you know, I.
Know there are plugins.
That do that kind of stuff, but.
You know, I mean, all you’re doing is just taking up server space for unused images, and there you really could do it much.
There’s so many things that they could do with what they already have.
But it but I also think I think some of that when you talk about things like removed images in that I think the problem is webmasters and site owners.
Need to take some time every couple months to kind of take stock of what they have.
So one of the things I like to do with sites that I maintain this goal will cut the plugins on a site, say.
Is this not being used?
Then why Bill here and do the same thing for the images and do the same thing and do a clean up?
Right.
Yep, right.
And and and then run a data.
Base compression tool to clean up the database and I don’t want it.
Or take out table tables and aren’t used anymore because the plugins were uninstalled and they didn’t clean themselves up.
Or, you know, they didn’t give me the option to clean.
Up the data table.
Well, you should assume what the database looked at with this site with 22 unused plugins on the table. That was done with that one, right?
Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah.
And and most people don’t realize it’s not just a functionality problem why we do these audits.
It’s also very issue to like.
If you’ve got stuff running around you’re not using, you potentially have security problems.
Absolutely. Yeah, I know.
You know, thinking of Speaking of which, is there a plugin is here?
You know you’re talking about removing unused plugins that are still active that but you’re not using?
It’s really hard to detect sometimes whether or not you’re using a flight.
Now you have to go through them the best ways to go through the time right now.
Hard to do.
Yeah, there’s no plug.
In to say you’re not really using this plugin.
No, there’s not, unfortunately.
I don’t think there could be.
But that’s that’s a role that.
AI could play.
But it’s also role.
Having a good Webmaster on your team would poison.
I know, but not everybody does. That’s, you know take what you’re talking about takes time. That takes time to go through all plug and say you know this is. I have 25 plugins and.
I suspect this.
Plug-in over here is not being used, but I don’t really know and I can’t really find out.
’cause it’s buried somewhere, you know, and it’s a single maybe I just used it for one instance.
You know, maybe it’s a plug in that’s got like.
You know 30 different features to it.
I’m only using one.
And I don’t know where.
I’m using it, so you know that’s what staging sites.
Are for but.
Yes, yes, yes.
Yeah, so it’s that’s what a staging site does.
No, I have a couple I was running right now.
Yeah, yeah.
I understand.
Yeah, so but what? What?
Are you working on in the next 12?
Well, right now I’m not, I’m.
I’m really trying to finish up this week everything I need to finish because.
Uh, Saturday I’m going to Italy.
And I’m going to go to Italy for about 11 days, so I have to like power down.
Now when I come back though, I’ve got a whole bunch of.
Webinars on schedule.
I’m going to launch something called WordPress group therapy.
Which will anybody can join and it will sort of like be a open help really.
It sort of will be like a help desk.
You know, maybe I’ll start off and talk about it one topic for about 10 minutes or so and then try to resolve people problems.
Or not just have me do it, but other people as well.
So I’m playing around with that idea and then as far as my site goes, I want to do some more promotional work on the using Gutenberg course.
As well as I’m thinking of building a third course.
And just plain WordPress.
In other words, I am totally new and it’ll be a short course, as short as I can make it.
What is WordPress? What is wordpress.com? What are plugins? What are themes? What are just the basics? There’s a lot of people out there that still.
The basic information and I’m thinking about doing make that free.
I don’t think that’s going to.
Be a paid course.
Because no one because you can get this.
Stuff all over the place.
And that’s really a problem with paid courses, period, is that you know the thing about the paint.
Courses, though, or at least my it’s curated.
I spent a lot of time thinking about like what you should be doing, what order should be, you know?
And if you go to YouTube.
Yeah, you can learn a lot of stuff.
I do but.
It’s so uneven, you know?
Like some stuff is really good, some stuff stinks.
You could spend 1/2 a day you.
Know looking for something?
So, you know, I I still believe in these.
Course at WP.
101 OK, excellent. You know that or make you know?
Well learn WordPress initiative.
They keep asking me to do stuff which I.
Will you know create?
A video for them or do something.
So there’s there’ll.
Be plenty to do, but right now I’m sort of.
Like getting ready to go to Italy.
Although I have said this, this is true. I really wish I were going to work camp USII know, it’s, you know.
It’s kind of strange to.
Say, where would you rather go to?
Italy or san?
Diego and I probably rather go to San Diego.
I hear you.
Yeah, you know, yeah, you know.
I I won’t be there either.
So I I hear you on that one.
I’m not.
I I know and I’m not going to get up in the middle of the night to do live streaming.
So but.
I’ll when it’s all.
Said and done, I’m sure I’ll check out some of the excellent talks, or at least parts of them in on WordPress TV so.
It’s a resource that many people forget about as well as learn.wordpress.org. I mean, there’s a you know?
Other resource, so.
Well, let me say that my site joyofwp.com in addition to having the.
The training videos.
It also has a blog and there will be a place to sign up for the WordPress group therapy stuff.
So if anybody is listening and you want to check that out, you certainly can. And my e-mail address is there as well. It’s joyofwp.com.
And yeah, and you’re also on, uh.
You’re on the Mkewordpress.org slack.
Oh, that’s right.
Yeah, go ahead.
You’re on Twitter.
I’m everywhere.
And what about?
What about WordPress global community?
Oh yeah.
You’re there.
Two on LinkedIn.
I’m linked it right, so I get around so I’m not.
I’m not impossible to find, you know, I I’d like to think that I I kind of make it easy to find me, but at least I.
So I I would I would agree you’re not hard to find it.
When they want the conversation, start on one network and go to the other one that tells you something.
So the front, yeah.
Well, you know what’s really funny is that they write these three people from the WordPress community wrote this article and I mentioned.
I don’t know if I mentioned the beginning or somewhere.
Did I mention it before anyway?
We wrote this article that’s gonna be published.
In I guess the word camp U.S. website and also something to do with a World Accessibility Day I.
Don’t know what.
It is, and it was all about me.
And they never interviewed me and they just did all this research on the Internet and they wrote a very.
Very accurate piece.
They asked me to like Fact Check it and I had a couple corrections, but I was stunned at how much information there is out there on me.
You know, whether it’s trucks that I did or it’s really, you know what once.
It’s on the Internet.
They ain’t kidding.
It doesn’t.
It doesn’t go away.
So be careful.
Yeah, so.
Bud, thanks for joining me today.
Thanks for chatting Gutenberg and WordPress and what you’re doing it.
It’s always such a pleasure.
Really appreciate it.
It was my pleasure, Rob, and thank you so much.
For inviting me to do this.
Now we’ll do this again sometime.
Thank you.
Oh, that’s great.
You take care.
You too.
PocketCasts
Radio Public
Spotify
Stitcher
Apple Podcasts
Amazon Music
