 Hello, everyone. I am Puneet. I run a digital agency. We work exclusively with WordPress and it's called Idea Box. We build WordPress products. We started as a services agency, but now we build a WordPress. Okay. Is it rollable now? This one is working actually. Okay. So, recently there have been a lot of talks about Gutenberg. Can I ask how many people here use Gutenberg already? Okay. How many of you are using it just for blogging or content writing? Okay. And how many do we use page builders here? That's quite a lot. Okay. So, there have been questions about how Gutenberg is going to impact page builders. Because a lot of people see it as a page builder in WordPress core. We are not sure how it's going to affect the market, whether we should stop using page builders now and start using Gutenberg. So, that's what I'm going to talk about. First thing, what is Gutenberg? If you go to WordPress.org slash Gutenberg, it says it's the new editor. This is something we have been looking forward to for the last few years, I think. The existing Visivig editor which we have been using is not actually true. What you see is what you get editor. It has been missing some functionality. We needed more flexibility and those kind of features where you can arrange layout. You can create media rich or customized blog post layouts, which was a bit difficult with existing editor. So, the new editor is trying to solve that problem. The good thing about new editor which I like is it's everything is in blocks. There are no short quotes. You don't want to worry about embeds. You don't have to worry about short quotes. You have to just learn one terminology that is blocks. So, I think for new users who are coming into WordPress ecosystem now, who will start writing content with Gutenberg, they will find it much easier because they won't have anything to compare with. For us who are using WordPress from a few years back, we might find it a bit frustrating initially that we have to learn the new thing and we have to go for a few more extra clicks. But in the long run, if we see it's more of a consistent system which is built around blocks. What are the features which I think I personally like about Gutenberg is, it lets me create content and layout for my blog post. More than pages, I like it using for blog post. If we go to a news website or a magazine layout blog post content, it was not possible or easy to do with the existing content editor. So, what we get here is as a content writer or a publisher, a distraction free writing experience like the full screen mode which existed earlier, it has become much better now. There's almost live preview. I would not say it's completely 100% true live preview because we are still working in the back end and what we publish might look different from what we are writing. But still you get a feel of how the content is going to be laid out and presented on the front end. Media rich content. If you have a blog post which has a lot of images, videos, blog quotes, pull quotes which we usually see on popular blogs like Mashable or TechCrunch or other technology blogs or personal blogs, it's difficult for us to create simply without using a third party plugin right now. But if we are using Gutenberg and a Gutenberg compatible theme, it will be much easier to create those kind of layouts. Another good thing is switching between blog types. So let's say you start writing content and you have created a paragraph block. You can easily switch it to a heading block anytime. So you don't have to rewrite the content which existed with the current editor, but there were a few users who might not be aware of this feature. Like you can easily switch between the blocks from paragraph to heading, heading to list or any kind of text block, similar blocks which can be switched between. If you take an example of image block, you can switch it to a gallery block, you can switch it to a cover block and you can switch a cover block back to image block. Creating layouts with a column-based layout is much easy now. So instead of writing custom HTML and CSS to create a three-column layout in your blog post or creating a table in your blog post or a page, it's much easier because you have the direct blogs you have a visual editor to work with instead of writing CSS or using a plugin for short quotes or something else. And simple page layouts. I think this is a great use for a lot of users who are building websites, hobby websites or just want simple page layouts. Creating a landing page which requires a heading, a few columns, a few images and call to action sections. Those can be done easily without having to install a third-party plugin. You won't need a page builder to do that now anymore. Good things about Gutenberg. Move forward for the WP visual editor because everyone needed something new, right? We have written a lot of content about WordPress. We have written a lot of content about how to write certain kind of blog post. We have written a lot of content about how to improve the content design or everything. But we wanted something new. So this is something new for WordPress community. You have a whole new range of questions to be answered. The most common question is how to disable Gutenberg. So everyone who is writing content around WordPress, they have a new topic to write about, they have a new topic to talk about, and you can educate your users. We can educate our WordPress developers about new things in Gutenberg. And it's making publishing easy in my opinion. It's making publishing easy in the long run. A new text tag. There are a lot of developers, WordPress developers right now. And it's difficult to differentiate between who is a developer, who is a beginner or who is an expert developer, who is an intermediate developer. And also we have been limited to the same technology stack like PHP, MySQL, a little bit of HTML, CSS, JavaScript for years. But now since we are using React, it opens up opportunities for a lot of developers from the React community or the JavaScript community to come in, bring in some more innovation, some more features, and even it's a good thing for us existing developers to start learning new technologies and work on new technologies and improve ourselves. Core functionality. I think this is one of the best parts because this is a part of the core. So it's going to stay for another few years. When Visvig was first introduced in 2005, I guess, we have come a long way till 2019 with the same editor, or 2018 with the same editor. So if we are looking for the long run, we have a new editor which we can rely on. If we are building some products around it, or if we are building some add-ons around it, or if we are building websites using it, it's going to be there for years. We are not limited to a particular set of plugins or features which are from a third-party developer. Bridging the gap for writers and website builders. It's still in the early stages, but a lot of content writers and website builders can use it to a certain extent. So there's no differentiation between what tools we need to use as a user or as a business owner. If we are looking for an average user who is using WordPress, they can use the WordPress Gutenberg to simply write blog posts. They can use the same thing to build their homepage, about page or contact us pages. Limitations with Gutenberg. What is currently missing and what can we expect in the future? But right now it's a bit frustrating. These limitations are holding us back from doing much more that we can do with Gutenberg. So it lacks true front-end visual editing. As I said, you are still working in the backend and the functionality and the styling relies on your theme. So even if you are adding a blog, it doesn't have its own styling properties. It has limited set of styling options. When you switch the theme, it might look different, which is not the case with page builders. Significantly fewer features. For example, if I am adding a section with three columns, there's no option for me to change the background color or adjust the padding and margins. So again, it's a limiting feature right now. It relies on theme styling. Once you switch the themes, as I mentioned, the layout will look a bit different. Although it might look different in your page Gutenberg editor, like you might pull out the image to the left or to the right, but it eventually relies on your theme, how your theme is going to style that particular blog. And it's a work in progress. So Gutenberg is currently divided into four phases. Phase one is already complete. Phase two is in works. Phase three and phase four are about to come in coming years. With phase two and phase three and phase four, the core team will be focusing on improving the experience for widgets. The widget pages customize their experience and make it seamless for everyone so that every part of WordPress is using blocks. And when this is complete, they will move on to other sections like header and footer. So eventually in the long run, the plan is to make it a complete page builder or a website builder and not just a content creator or a visual editor. So that was all about Gutenberg. Now the question comes, what is a page builder? How it's different from Gutenberg. Page builders have been in market for a couple of years or like five years or seven years. And it has completely changed the way we are building websites. The first one was probably Visual Composer, which is quite popular. Then came in new page builders like Elementor, Builder, Brizzy. There are a lot of page builders right now. So page builders introduced the concept of building websites completely on the front end without having to write any extra code. And this has changed a lot over the time, right from short codes which was used by earlier page builders. Now they don't rely anymore on short codes. They have their own HTML output, CSS output, JavaScript output. Everything is optimized for performance, which was missing in the earlier page builders. And the capabilities of page builder have gone beyond just the pages. Now you can even build header and footer with page builders. So if we are looking for a complete website building experience right now, page builders are doing a good job. You have a true front-end editing, visual editing. What you see is actually what you get with a page builder. When you are styling something, it has its own styling. The page builder retains the styling for you. There might be a little bit conflict with the theme, but the overall output is going to be almost similar to what you are building in the page builder interface. Build custom page layouts. You can build as many page layouts as you want with complete flexibility. And then you have options to build header and footer. Some advanced page builders will allow you to edit those parts of the websites as well. And then there are templates for archives. If you are building complex websites which need multiple kinds of archives or templates for various post types, custom post types, pages, these are the sections which you can target easily with page builders. Advantages of page builders. Why I would prefer using a page builder at the moment or why I have been using page builder for the last few years and why I am going to use page builders in the coming years. So it's built for website builders and business owners. So if you are building a lot of websites, it has all the options that you will need as a business owner and provide a complete website solution to your clients, which I won't be able to do with Gutenberg right now because of the limited options. Advanced layout and styling options, like I gave an example of row and columns, those options, margins and paddings are missing. In Gutenberg, those are very limited. But with my page builders, I can get more options, more of control for desktop devices, mobile devices, and medium screen devices, which again is missing from Gutenberg. Intuitive UI for building all kind of layouts. The UI for page builders has been simplified for one sole purpose of building websites. It's not targeted towards multiple user bases. It's just for people who are building websites, who are tech savvy, who are not beginners but intermediate level of WordPress users, who know their way around WordPress. So the UI is focused with that approach and it has been built to make your website development process easier rather than just focusing on content. While there are a lot of good things with page builders, there are certain challenges with page builders as well. We have a lot of options right now. It's just not limited. In core, you have only Gutenberg or the classic editor. You can switch between the two. But if you look out at the page builder market, there are several page builders. Elementor is there, Breezy is there, WP page builder is there, there is a page builder by site origin. So there are tens of page builders. And every page builder has their own learning curve. Some might call content block as a module, some might call it as a widget, or some might call it something different. So every page builder comes with its own limitations, its own learning curve and features, sets of features. So it's difficult for a new user to compare and figure out which page builder to go with. Shall we go with the one which provides the maximum options? Or shall we go with the one which is limited to the requirements which we need? It's difficult for beginners to add up to page builders because everyone has their own approach towards building the page layouts. Some page builders are trying to do advanced stuff, providing more options. Some page builders are trying to keep it lean and just focused on certain sets which are required for almost every user. So if a new user is just starting out with WordPress and we give them an option to start using page builders, they will be a little confused because these page builders are using advanced terminology like padding, margins, which a normal beginner user might not be aware of. Then there is a lock-in effect. If you are building with a page builder, you are going to continue with that page builder, using that page builder for your website in the future as well. For example, a page builder that relies on short codes and if you plan to switch it to some other page builder, you are going to be left with a lot of short code mess on your website. So you need to redo those websites because it's not a part of the core. But in case of Gutenberg, it's a part of the core. So as Gutenberg grows, you will have more and more functionality and features as a part of the core. Page builders versus Gutenberg. Now we come to the topic, we have talked about Gutenberg, we have talked about page builders, but how many of you here think that you will go with a page builder instead of Gutenberg? And how many of you will go with Gutenberg? Okay. So those who are going with Gutenberg, are you publishing mostly using it for publishing blog posts or using it for building websites as well? Blog posts. Anyone here who is doing websites with Gutenberg right now? I think there's no one. Okay. So that says, who is the winner here? Page builders. But yeah, I'm not going to declare a winner. It's about picking up the right tool for the right job. So let's talk about the similarities between page builders and Gutenberg. More or less, both the page builders and Gutenberg are using a similar approach towards building layouts. They have certain elements which can be added to the page, pre-built elements. We can call it blogs, we can call it modules, we can call it visits, we can call it elements, whatever it is, everyone has their own different terminology. But the goal is to provide a way for users to use the existing functionality. So if I need an image, I just need to click on the image block and insert it to my page or blog post. And if I need a gallery, I can just insert a gallery block or gallery module or a visit, whatever it is. The same thing can go for a slider or a carousel. The same thing can go for related post or recent post. So the way everything existed in WordPress before was in forms of plugins and visits. Probably that is going to change into the form of blocks in coming time. Then we talk about the way we are creating custom layouts. Both Gutenberg and page builders allow you to create custom layouts. There are limitations with the functionality, but again, the goal is to create, allow users to create layouts without having to write code. So if we are using Gutenberg, we'll have limited set of features, but we'll still be able to create a decent layout and it can work well for a few users. But if your design is using advanced styling or colors or gradients or shadows, border areas or those kind of things, you need more control over designing, you'll be able to use page builder. Visual editing. Gutenberg provides visual editing. Page builders also provide visual editing, but there's a difference between the output. There's a sort of similarity again here. In the long run, we might see Gutenberg providing a 100% visual experience. But right now, page builders are doing that better than Gutenberg. What are the differences? We come back to the same thing. Layout and styling options are different. We have limited set of features with Gutenberg. It's not possible for me to easily drag and drop elements in Gutenberg. I have to navigate using the up and down arrows. And I get that flexibility with page builders. It's easy to drag and drop elements anywhere in the page and take control of every minutest detail of the design, be it for desktop devices or medium-scale devices or mobile devices. I can style every aspect of the website. I can't do that with Gutenberg. True visual editing, what you see is 100% what you get. You are not relying on your theme. You are not relying on any other plugin. Just the base plugin, which is your page builder. It compiles your CSS. It compiles the JavaScript required for the page. It stores it and delivers it on the front end. So it's 100% user-friendly as well. You don't have to worry about something getting changed. Extensive design controls. If we are talking about creating a simple button in Gutenberg right now, you can create an outline button or a solid button, something like that. But what if you want to change the whole state or what if you want to add a shadow? What if you want to adjust the border radius? Or what if you want to change the padding, font size or width? Those kind of functionalities are not available with Gutenberg right now. And the target user is probably the main major differentiator here. Gutenberg is built for everyone. Page builders are not built with that focus. Gutenberg is going to be used by 34% of the websites which are using WordPress. Every website that is built with WordPress is going to be using Gutenberg. But the user base for page builders is limited to people who are building websites for others or people who are already aware of page builders. So it's not for everyone. So you get a better solution with page builders right now. Things to consider. When I'm picking a final tool for my next project or next website, what are the things I would like to consider? First thing is usability. Is this particular solution going to fit my requirements? Gutenberg alone can't do anything. But there are several add-ons which can extend Gutenberg to next level. You can get multiple blocks. You can get extra functionality. You can get extra options for your default editor. And if you are looking for more, if you need a better control, maybe you can look for a page builder. But since this is a part of core, it gives you an edge. It gives you a benefit that everyone is going to build around for Gutenberg and not just for any particular page builder. Then we have capabilities. If you are looking for a functionality where you want to edit the header and footer of your website or where you want to edit the custom post types layout, you won't be able to do that with Gutenberg. You need to use a page builder. But if you are looking for a website where you are going to write a lot of blog posts, let's say you have a blog, you have a magazine, and you want to create a unique layout for every blog post that you are writing, then you are going to use Gutenberg for that. And you can't use page builders on single post post layouts. It's difficult to use page builders just for single posts. That's why they are called page builders and not post builders. Extensibility. As I said, currently we have WordPress core and we have everything built as plugins and themes. So if you want to extend a functionality for WordPress, let's say at a content form, you currently have a plugin. But in future, this can be just a standalone blog. If you want to extend a functionality for WordPress by adding a carousel, currently we are using a plugin. But in future, this can be a blog. So there are plans for a blog directory for Gutenberg. So we will see a new phase of development and a new set of features which will be available for the core editor. And just similar to WordPress plugins, we will be able to extend Gutenberg with its own blogs and functionalities. So that is one thing which is really amazing because it gives you a number of options and pick up the right tools the way we are doing right now. We are picking up the tools which we need to extend WordPress. And the same way, in future, we will be able to do that with picking up the right tools for Gutenberg and extending and installing what we need and using what we need, not just using all of the options, just actually what we need. In case of page builders, if we talk about it, a page builder is built by a few developers, a team or a particular business. So there are limitations like not everyone is going to build around those page builders, a particular set of team, a particular set of developers or designers are going to decide the path forward for their product and maybe a few developers who are going to build their business around them and extend their functionality for page builder. But with Gutenberg, it's more of a community project. So the feedback which we receive from community, the requirements which come up from community will be entertained and we can look forward to a brighter future with Gutenberg and more options and more functionality in the coming time. So the last question is, can page builders coexist with Gutenberg? How many of you think it can happen? Absolutely, I agree with that. So I'm going to use page builders for building websites and for creating blog posts, I'm going to use Gutenberg right now. That's my plan right now. But in future, again, as I said, Gutenberg is built for masses. It's for 34% of the websites on the Internet. So everyone is going to use it. I believe the core is going to be lean and focused around usability for everyone. It should be as simple as using WordPress. So Gutenberg is going to follow that philosophy and stick with the functionality and options that they are going to offer for everyone, not just become a blotted plugin or a complicated plugin, which is not similar to a page builder. But a lot of other developers will be able to extend it and take it to another level. So I think page builders and Gutenberg can coexist in the coming years. So that's all from my end. If you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer. And you can connect with me on Twitter. Any recommendations on the best page builder? I think that's tricky to answer and answering from a WordCamp stage. It will be a bit more difficult. Currently, if we see there are two page builders going on in the market competing. One is Beow Builder and another one is Elementor. Elementor offers a lot of functionality which is available for free. Beow Builder is focused mostly around the pro version, all the functionality you get is in the pro version. And they are targeting, I think, mostly business owners and agencies. I've used both the page builders. We build products for both the page builders as well. And it's eventually about picking up the right tool for your job. If you think you just need a certain amount of features, stable functionality, not frequent updates, I would go with Beow Builder. If you think you are doing more of complex designs and advanced functionality where you need pop-ups and other things, I would go with Elementor. Both the products are doing really well right now. Hi, I'm already coming in. So you talked about, like, you did a versus thing, Beow Builder. Honestly, I would like to know your view about, like, officially, Gutenberg is not even a year old. Yeah, that's correct. And, like you said, base builders are five years old. Right. So what do you think? There is a huge gap, as you said, how narrow the gap would get in the next three years. And how do you think, how close it will get? And I'm pretty much, Sam would like to have more questions on that because he did a Gutenberg thing today and I just want to know how narrow that gap would get and what are your views on, like, three years down the line? As I said, Gutenberg, there are two things. Gutenberg, first, it's built for masses. Like, it's for everyone who is using WordPress. And second thing, it's community-driven. So the gap can be narrowed down, not by the core team, but by the community. The way we are extending WordPress with plugins, the same way community will come around, developers will come around, designers will come up with their ideas and try to bring in as much functionality as possible to Gutenberg. So it will be a community-driven path for Gutenberg and for base builders, it's like a business-driven path. It can be as close to as a page builder in future or a complete website builder in future. But again, the core is, I believe the core is going to remain lean and easy to use for everyone. So if you are looking for a solution which is a complete solution, you will again rely on some third-party developers to complete it or you can just pick up a complete solution which already exists in the market and use it in the long run. My question is the same and from what you just said, my bet would be in three years, you would be up to 75%, just 25%, do you agree on that, that it would be there? It could be there because as I said, the long-term goal for Gutenberg team is to make it a complete website builder, like to have a team which can just request calls to different blocks. They can be a block for header or they can be a set of blocks for header and then they can be a set of blocks for content and then they can be a set of blocks for footer. So these are the theme parts which are going to be built with Gutenberg and then the team just renders those blocks and displays them on the front end. So it can be there, it can be there. But for me, the major differentiator is always the user base. Then again, my idea box makes an add-on for the viewer builder. Viewer builder, yes. Could you see that maybe because Gutenberg allows also people to make add-ons to it, right? Right. So maybe some of the business now just speculating that the page builder could actually move over to something like your company where because you are already covering several page builders. Yeah. So maybe you could be able to make something that would say good for close-up to where the page builders are today. Right. Yeah, because it can be a community-driven project, like maybe a particular business or a group of individuals can extend Gutenberg because it's open source, it's the code base is available to everyone. There are a lot of options that we can add to Gutenberg. We have tried several things on our own as well in our team and we were able to add similar options as page builders. There are certain challenges with compiling the CSS, displaying the output, but those can be overcome. So there are quite few, there are quite some chances that a lot of developers will shift from page builders towards Gutenberg and we can already see a few of them doing that. But this is also quite possible that page builders might eventually come up with something which can let them switch between page builders and Gutenberg. So maybe if you are adding a module, you can convert it to a block or convert a block into a module or use a template inside a block. Those are the opportunities as well. Yeah, right. Thank you. Kind of half answered my question. Following on from those two, we've touched on the future of Gutenberg. Do you have any opinion on where you see page builders actually going? Because they're five years ahead so I would hope that in three years we're going to be three years ahead of where Gutenberg is now. So as well. So page builders started with just page building experience and now they are into theme parts, header footers, everything like almost everything, be it custom post types or archives and with page builders like Elementor they are introducing more and more advanced functionality like animations and popup builders, contact forms. So there are certain page builders who are trying to be a complete website building solution like Elementor itself. Then there's Beaver Builder. So in long term Gutenberg can be a website builder because eventually we are going to compete with users who are trying to move to Squarespace or Wix. So we are trying to build a solution which is good for everyone and we can bring in those users back to WordPress and not let them go to Wix or Squarespace. So with the plugin, with the release of full site editing plugin so Gutenberg has already taken a really large step in that direction of becoming a website builder. So if you look at the past like eight, nine months not only has it become increasingly stable it's now actually allowing users to have a great defined template for contact pages, for product pages, about pages, service pages and you can just add those templates and essentially your site is designed. So I guess my question is with Gutenberg itself like you said it's been built for the many. So it'll service again 80, 90% of that maybe 34% that's out there with those websites and then you'll have a niche market of course always for paid builders I think because of the animations and those things that you mentioned. So given that full site editing has already released it's already launched and it's available do you really think it'll take three years for Gutenberg to catch up? I mean I see that happening much sooner and I just feel that in the last eight months a lot of progress has been made and at Automatic we are testing the full site editing plugin with users already on our platform which is in several million so I think when we see that the result it's had we're really optimistic about it and I know it's a controversial topic but do you see it taking three years or do you see that there's going to be a much quicker uptake as more people get to use the full site editing plugin? Projecting like a complete timeline would be difficult but yeah as you said it's been going at a fast pace especially after it has been pushed into WordPress core so there's been a lot of development there's been a lot of improvements so there can be a set of features which will cater a lot of users in the coming years like the full site editing plugin again it will take everyone in the community to level up with Gutenberg it's not just the plugin itself or the editor itself we need to have Gutenberg compatible themes as well so in future all the developers will have to come together to extend Gutenberg and it will take a while and while things are stabilizing for Gutenberg a few developers are also skeptical about is it the right time to build for it because there are certain challenges if we build it right now what if it changes they asked Matt this at WordCamp Europe and he gave a really good response he said that Gutenberg is going to be the future of WordPress for the next 10 years so if you're a theme developer you're a plugin developer absolutely start developing for it because the next 10 years WordPress will be all about this editing experience absolutely like as I said the last visibility was introduced in 2005 it has lasted for 14 years almost 14 years people are still using it so this is at least going to be there for 10 years we can start building it but I'm not 100% sure if it will be a complete website building experience in less than a year 2 years or 3 years because the way the level which page builders have reached or attained over the last 5 years or 6 years Gutenberg is trying to come up with those features now and plus it has to focus on the usability for everyone like their accessibility limitations which page builders won't probably have to worry about yeah thank you okay thank you alright that's all that's my time thank you very much