 presentation is about the power of leaning into the WordPress block editor and it's a little bit of a personal history it relates to how I got into WordPress and how I feel about the block editor and how my experience in WordPress informs my opinions on the block editor how I feel about it and things like that so we won't be diving into as many technical like specificities but I do have a local site up so I'm probably gonna have time at the end because I talk quickly and if anyone thinks I talk too quickly just say slow down just yell it out slow down I mean could you all yell out slow down okay you might need to use that so let me know but yeah so the reason I wanted to talk about the power of leaning into the WordPress block editor and why I'm optimistic about it and optimistic about the future is because it receives a lot of criticism there's a lot of like negative experiences that that I've had and that others have had with the block editor I don't remember I gotta slow down I don't remember exactly I think it was like a two-star rating on average or something but the plug-in that introduced blocks to us in the WordPress editor have a lot of negative reviews and then it was rolled into the core because change is pretty painful oh yeah oh yeah yeah is that is that a better volume that hope okay cool so for years we had the classic editor and I'm sure has everyone in the room pretty familiar with the classic editor and using that framework and so if you wanted to have a two-column layout you needed to use HTML or maybe a page builder you'd install an Elementor beaver builder divi and it unlocks all the things that you would have needed to do in the editor like creating columns dragging dropping images and creating a more intuitive interface to work with for people who want to have more control over the design who might not necessarily know how to code that even in HTML so along with criticism there are merits to using the editor I have a blog post here from Yoast WP beginner about just some of the merits of creating these layouts some of the things we're talking about the tiny MCE editor is what that classic editor was called where we have like the bold italics HTML but we can't really customize much more in an intuitive way and yeah like the benefits explain pretty technically what the changes are that are coming to the product but on an abstract level I think there's so many more things that are of interest like for developers in the room using a react as a framework for development rather than using like PHP or leaning into PHP as much it is becoming like a big abstract thing in WordPress as end users we might not know what the interface we're working with is coded in but there are some benefits to us as end users from modifying what the editor is built in for example JavaScript or react has some front-end components and things that can be loaded on the front end rather than PHP is going to load everything on the server then send it to your computer so there are some long-term gains that we could get from moving platforms over like that but let's talk a little bit more specifically about the changes from this interface to the block editor interface that we're now all interacting with so when I launch the block editor every six months or so and something changes I'm I have all these questions like what is what is this like what is the group what is the symbol I see this around sometimes like why is there a group grouping these things together you know what is a row how does that differentiate from a group I have all these same questions when I open the interface and it's like totally different like what's that error message and how do I fix it like do I tell my developer about that is something wrong it's like there's a lot of new stuff being thrown at us a lot of new symbols like the styling interface over here that little like half moon not fully sure what it is but that's where the style settings are located and when you first enter this editor if you're familiar with that classic editing experience or launching a page builder it might be a little bit confusing to navigate but when when full site editing came out we now have this as a template for some people in the room may have used 2023 themes like that I know at the company I work for lifter LMS we launched a theme that uses this full site editing framework and for anyone who doesn't know what full site editing is that's where you edit your headers and footers in blocks and also sidebars which are kind of not there sidebars aren't there we just create them as like a 30% layout if you wanted a sidebar so there's new frameworks coming not only for editing the content area of the page but also for editing your head or your footer and other theme elements and that introduces templates as well and if we want a more specific example of how to use any of this at the end I'd be happy to dive into that and this slide illustrates we've had page builders for years this is an example of Divi that's an example of Elementor we're getting more used to using that drag-and-drop framework to add our content to the web and long term it does make it more accessible to enable the block editor in WordPress to allow people who don't necessarily know how to code to be able to have more power over what they create and so I'll dive back into that here in a second but I want to take a quick pause and talk a little bit about my background with WordPress I started working in WordPress with a company called lifter LMS I've been with for about seven years now and I go live talking about WordPress teaching people how to use WordPress multiple times a week and a lot of our users are new to WordPress from the start so we're teaching the block editor we're teaching should they be using Elementor should they be using Divi we're teaching them from the ground up so I I've been very fortunate to have a lot of experience with new WordPress users as well as experienced WordPress users who know what they're looking for and they know you know exactly what they're trying to build and I can diagnose exactly what they need but new users have been really interesting for me to see with the block editor how are new users responding to the editor versus existing users because change is always painful if you got WordPress is it's had the 20th anniversary so if you got involved with WordPress maybe five years in you've had 15 years of experience 10 years of experience with WordPress and now something's totally different it's painful to change it's it's like a really painful experience so what kind of justified that pain should we engage with that pain of learning the new user experience and integrating with full site editing themes or should we use Elementor Divi beaver builder what we've been using for years and just leave the block editor or get extensions to the block editor and so jumping back to 2003 when WordPress was first created this is what the web the web looked like interacting with the internet right our hardware looked totally different and this is what a website might might look like in terms of style design and this website would have had to be made with someone who's computer science expert would have to make something like this in order like using a machine like this in order for us to view what they're thinking on the internet and so in that spirit of democratizing publishing we've come a long way and I think sometimes when there's a new release of WordPress and something changes maybe full site editing we have to learn how to use a new interface to edit our headers and footers it's pretty painful and we're like things are changing too quickly this change hurts I want to resist this change taking a 20-year look back we have actually come a long way thinking back to 2003 this is the type of media that was being published we had news articles from websites that would be built with high-end developers we had magazines were still a big deal newspapers were still in full force and big companies like Disney would be producing movies so this was the media that was being created and by massive companies with highly specialized individuals to be able to publish their contents to the world and so when Matt created WordPress it looked a lot like it does before we switched over to the block editor we had this classic editor tiny mce editor framework and not much had actually changed in that 20-year time span from like 2003 maybe 15 years to 2018 when we introduced the block editor WordPress generally looked the same even though we did have some style upgrades it was the same editing interface to publish content of the web so it was following that blog post framework and so skipping forward to 2016 was my introduction to WordPress I'd worked with it a little bit but this is my serious introduction to WordPress when I started my career and this is what I looked like at the time and this is what WordPress looked like at the time and I feel like I grew up with the WordPress editor for anyone who doesn't know I'm just turned 22 years old so I feel like I grew up with WordPress right WordPress is 20 and I'm 22 so we basically grew up together so I like to think in 2016 is kind of when we're coming into adulthood in some some kind of metaphorical way so this is me at my room at my mom's house reading like a self-help book I try to look cute for Instagram this being like a smart I'm trying to look like a smart kid and and this is WordPress trying to do its best to help people publish content on the internet but the way we go about thinking about what we do is going to change in a big way at this time as I entered my career and WordPress entered the block editing framework so through my job I was creating YouTube video tutorials for people about how to use the editor because there were a lot of questions on Facebook and I would see questions in forums and clients would ask me questions directly so I started creating YouTube content about how to do certain things as I learned them I attended my first word camp word camp Minneapolis with my mom who got me into WordPress she worked at Lyft or LMS and that's how they learned about me and then I started dabbling in WordPress and have come a long way into the company in the ecosystem sense but WordPress was on a similar journey it had the classic editor it longed for something else some kind of change because page builders were overwhelmingly being used by WordPress users so it was one second I got to tell myself to slow down and take a drink but page builders were so prevalent that you know we needed to have some kind of way to edit in blocks in the core because this is clearly what the users of our platform want to be doing is editing in blocks editing in a more intuitive way getting their clients into the back end of WordPress and building as their clients may have experienced with maybe like a Wix or a Squarespace integrating these drag and drop builders so drag and drop seemed to be the way of the future and introducing the Gutenberg plugin was very uncomfortable got a lot of negative ratings and then it eventually became part of the core and so it was on a similar journey but it was also a chaotic journey and speaking of chaos with the year 2020 so from 2016 to 2020 I had been creating tutorials doing freelance work and stuff like that as WordPress was evolving and figuring out what it was going to do for the next period of its lifetime and so in those four years I was able to save up enough money to buy a house I had to tear like the house I bought being like 18 was falling apart like you kind of have to take the deal you can get when you buy your first house and you don't have a lot of money so I had to learn how to do a lot of things like ripping out the moldy ceilings and stuff like that a lot of bug fixes for the house and WordPress was undergoing a similar journey where maybe a block editor release would be made and there would be some kind of like error like we saw earlier on a slide like just random error messages that end users would get not know how to solve I was fixing my house at the same time WordPress was kind of fixing itself creating itself an environment in this new block editing expectation for how to build a website in the world I was doing something similar in that way but we were both going through this painful evolution process so the painful evolution for me was just coming into my own in my career and WordPress was coming into its own at the block editor like full site editing was something that was far future of time and now that is among us and will be more prevalent in themes in the next ten years but there's that that period of change that period of development that that WordPress had been going through and the entire time the WordPress ecosystem was asking the question is this change worth it should we be using page builder should we be using block packs or themes that disable it and use the classic editor but I think the philosophy of making things more democratized in publishing is being created through the block editor because for example my aunt Pam works at Ernst and young in New York and they build website small WordPress projects to promote certain things and the block editor makes it more accessible for people who are less tech savvy to create more complex applications in the web more complex user experiences so it's generally democratizing that idea of creating things that other people can see so the power of creating complex layouts is becoming easier for more people and it's a very complicated time of change and it's a very uncomfortable process in that change but when we see companies like White House dot gov word NASA using WordPress we can see that big organizations care about the the ideas and fundamental philosophies of it and of course it powers like 43% of the internet so we have a lot of ideas and data around why generally democratizing publishing is a good thing not just publishing blogs we're moving into publishing web applications using certain plugins to maybe create a store or an online course site or something like that we're creating more complex websites and allowing more people to create more complex websites as a general idea of publishing so that's why I am enthusiastic about the block editor and WordPress and through that process of change WordPress tells a story and there's a lot of like there's a learning curve to that story and it can be painful but as Jason who's here with us made the WordPress wrap Jason Coleman owner of Lifter LMS in 2012 so over 10 years ago was a little bit further in WordPress than me now but inspired me with the idea about what would make the coolest story so even though our journey through life for me or in WordPress may be painful looking back at the story that we're creating and the memories and friends and all that stuff in the meantime is the experience like creating things for the web democratizing publishing even through that this comp like times of change where we have a lot of questions and stuff like that creating that that story is how I find I can stick with complicated change and learning new things and things like that so that's the heartfelt part of the presentation and in addition to that this is what the WordPress media library looks like this hasn't really changed very much since the inception of WordPress but this media library sort of tells my story of coming into WordPress and the people I met and how things have changed from like my mouse this was like my first online course that I made how I learned to use WordPress to eventually making YouTube videos and meeting awesome people and integrating into a company but the WordPress block editor experience integrating into WordPress sort of mirrors my experience integrating into WordPress and my journey growing up so I don't know I feel like like WordPress gen 2 or something but not having a lot of experience with the classic editor but this is like some general high principles high level principles about why I'm optimistic about the editor and I think all of you for giving me a platform to talk about it because usually I talk about it on a very low level day to day I'm answering questions how do I fix this error how do I create this layout how do I do these things but this is why I'm specifically excited for the future in like a bigger way not only from the development frameworks of using JavaScript as a future framework where we might be able to load more stuff on the front end and create more interactive experiences for people to create more things but also from a general we're democratizing publishing and it's working because if my grandma starts using WordPress like I know something's happening to where like it's accessible for her to be able to to do something that used to be only exclusive to companies like Disney or newspapers or general publishing is just becoming more democratized and so I see that kind of in a big way and just wanted to highlight that and this is a group of WordPress people so you all may have already known this and felt this and that's like what the community is about but but yeah so thank you for creating with WordPress I'm open to any questions I've got my my website there magicalmiddleton.com I work at a software company and lifter but yeah I'll pass it around the room for questions and if anyone has specific questions about Gutenberg the block editor don't be afraid to ask those as well but I hope hope it was a cool presentation cool any questions about like none of these any any questions are good like you could say that made no sense who are you what it what is this about but any questions about WordPress block editor Christian the block editor a place where the average person can really make a high-quality website or do you think it's still kind of about that point where it's fun to play with maybe good for a blog but maybe not enough features to really make a good corporate website yeah so like just to rephrase your question the is the block editor a point where an end user could create an effective website maybe without a page builder plug-in or or without having to rely on other tools that's a good question and we still rely on themes so you're gonna have to have some kind of theme and the WordPress core involves 2023 2022 there are some default themes that could be used and I think that creating a complex website still relies a lot on what theme you're using even if we abstract away the page builder where you can create any kind of layout with a block editor assuming you can learn how to use it and all the nesting and all the stuff that goes on with groups and rows and everything if you can wrap your head around that you're still going to be reliant on some kind of theme which is why I think WordPress is moving in that full site editor direction where each theme would use the block editor to edit your header in your footer so that having that understanding of the editor would be all you need to create anything that you want but I think the theme is still important I think the default WordPress themes are perfect for blog sites but what if you want to create a restaurant website or a link tree or an e-commerce store or something more complex something that serves dynamic content a little bit more smoothly they're working that into the full site editor via templates and things like that to be able to create a full full website so I think the theme is still the hang-up so Elementor has things like motion effects it handles things like dynamic content very well Divi as well the similar things but I think that theme is still critical yeah hopefully does that answer thank you yeah so what kind of block sets would you be using what kind of themes would you be using we companies like Astra super popular theme probably most of the people in the room are familiar with the Astra theme they have spectra as like a partner product that they're they've created to integrate into the block world so spectra is one of those block pack examples cadence blocks is one that I use all the time most of the websites I build are like LMS websites they have a lot of dynamic content online courses and memberships and things like that so cadence blocks and spectra are the two that I'm using a lot recently but that's that's the awesome thing is that anyone can create block packs to sort of supplement what theme you're you're choosing so I've heard of maxi blocks has made a big splash MAXI maxi blocks and anyone can create a block pack that's what's really cool is I didn't cover this at all but you can export blocks that you create in a JSON format so if you were to create custom blocks or customize blocks in a way that other people might like you could export that that JSON file and then sell that on your website so now it not only does it democratize publishing it democratizes the ability to help other people publish just one step more because now with my example of my grandma's website if she had her testimonial blocks formatted in a certain way with like certain color sets and and things like that or maybe a pricing page she could export that block pack and export that page and then deliver that as an asset to somebody else maybe her friend is creating a website or maybe she wants to start a business selling blocks there's more opportunities that are are coming to that base level of WordPress that weren't there before but are there any other block packs that people have found success with any other WordPress block editor integrations that you like I know dynamic content support was a big one that one's not fully integrated yet when you use the full site editor framework there's a block called post content that will take all the content of the post but I'm hoping that the dynamic content where you can take specific fields from the post will become more of a a thing in the future but yeah any other block packs any yeah so you said that most of your experiences in building child things off of other WordPress stands do you have any experience building your own things or your own coding yeah so my integration into WordPress was as like a freelancer offering basic client services like transcription and content entry and stuff like that so that's how I integrated into Lyftr LMS and then I learned WordPress from the front end to the back end and I'm still like in my developer journey like starting to write my own plug and starting to write my own themes so I'm not fully the developer level I just manage sales and success for a software company in Lyftr currently in Lyftr in WordPress called Lyftr LMS but my experience with themes and my favorite full site editing theme right now is either going to be the 2023 theme or Lyftr LMS sky pilot just from our company that's just the one I have the most experience with but even having an experience with a full site editing theme has really changed how I view building websites because I don't think about the theme as much when I'm building a site because I know I can do almost anything within this theme you know theme forest and certain websites have a bunch of themes listed out as to like you know do you want your site to look like this and do this that sort of framework I think is going to break down a little bit as we can do anything with the WordPress core a little bit more themes might become more of like color sets and presets but they would be using frameworks in the block editor I see that more I don't know if that answers your question like perfectly or is there any other like yeah oh yeah so day to day I'm going live with customers on zoom and stream yard and our Facebook groups and stuff helping onboard people into our product and learning WordPress learning how to build core sites that's my day to day so managing support building documentations making youtube videos managing the team things like that yeah go back to the uh five oh yeah absolutely is go block editor so I thought I could put a forward slash in a WordPress page so it was like forward slash go forward slash block editor but it the WordPress core just corrected my permalink to that so it works as go block editor you know so it kind of worked out but that is a tip for anyone who does affiliate marketing is when you structure your links have like some kind of word here so you might have a landing page on your website magicalmiddleton.com forward slash block editor maybe I have an online course about the block editor or something but then if you introduce this sort of sub folder here you can then categorize maybe affiliate links so you could have an affiliate or a maybe a go daddy landing page as to like promoting their hosting or something if you were doing that and like where you're creating affiliate links for hosts and you're recommending on a bunch of pages you would have each of them in a sub folder so then you could have a landing page as well as an affiliate link on the site that was a really nerdy rabbit hole I'm sorry I love diving deep on WordPress a starting resource to learn about the block editor would be using the block editor like opening it on your site and just fidgeting around with it is how I learned that's I'm like kind of a hands-on learner person but if you wanted like a course to help you with that that framework I think watching a full site build tutorial on YouTube I know Christian back there has made some full site build tutorials that Craylor made and at Lyft or LMS we do a lot of tutorials but if you really sit through one of the full tutorials you'll get the framework for how it all works and how it all comes together and that is probably the best way to learn because then you'll see from start to finish how blocks can build an entire site and then from there as you learn about new individual blocks it'll just plug into the frameworks that you already understand yeah yeah learned out WordPress so if you happen to check that out there's new stuff there all the time yeah but I think to really get the block editor you have to see it all come together from scratch so that's why I like the the full tutorial but there's a lot of good stuff coming out yeah oh so that might be a plug-in that adds more blocks so when we open the editor and click that plus button there's like something like 40 blocks like picture columns things like that but if you wanted to unlock like testimonial slider block you might find like a block pack or a plug-in that adds more blocks for you yeah there's not a statistic I have about that on hand as to like how fast the block editor loads versus like the classic editor but the way that the data is structured like I'm just getting into development so I love talking to developers who contribute to core and and build their own products think about things like that on a technical level like loading time and stuff and I think a lot of the thought process for me right now is on interoperability and sending data and downloading my blocks and sending them to other people so I don't have a lot of speed statistics for you but I know like I know high level principles about how loading things in PHP and then sending it to your computer is going to be a little bit slower than just sending you the files and having the files load on the client so it's generally moving towards that framework even though we're still loading everything in PHP right now we'll load PHP load the JavaScript load make sure the PHP is good with everything and then send it to your computer so generally things are moving in a faster direction and I think like you mentioned there are statistics out there about how it's currently faster but I'm not familiar with any off-hand words yeah yeah so uh just so I make sure I'm understanding your question correctly like as a designer what is the the interface like for customization is that kind of yeah so this is a site I'm using with oh no problem yeah I mean it's for me no questions too basic um this is a local site I have spun up let me uh span yeah so or here on the left is where we would click this plus button to get access to all the blocks and if you've worked with a page builder like Elementor Divi before you're familiar that there's some sort of sidebar where you have all your options to select from and there are some deeper level subjects like patterns these would be like pre-made layouts that you could import but as a designer you're probably going to be more interested in building something from scratch so we have like the page title and then all of these blocks we can work with and then if you had a block pack or a plugin that would add more it would be also in this list of like slider beaver builder would instead relaunch this entire editing page in its own interface and so it would be like you're using the block editor here or you're using beaver builder so some plugins like page builders are going to be an entirely different editing interface and then some plugins that are like block packs would just extend what's available right here instead of trying to replace it entirely oh yeah and and this is part of yeah and this is part of the learning experience is like when we're in this interface it's like what's going on what are these symbols and what do they do and so that's where those tutorials are like super helpful to figure out because once you know you kind of know but before you know it's like really confusing to navigate so that's why I like the full site build approach where you can see it come together but uh yeah so this is going to be the general page settings that we're used to like the publish status the url of the page and then this will become important in the future is the template that the page is using this is a feature in WordPress that I've ignored for years the template feature but in full site editing that's a going to be a pretty important thing as to what header and footer are we using and how is this page laid out it's going to be determined by the template and you can build custom templates that's something you couldn't do before is maybe you had blog posts in one category that are supposed to look one way blog posts in another category are supposed to look different like maybe one blog post category has a header that's blue one blog post has a category header that's purple you can now do that in the full site editing framework is sort of make differentiations I hope I didn't lose you there but these are general page settings that we've always had oh block so this is going to be specific settings for the block you're working in so like if I have a heading block little site and then I open the the block settings this is going to be like what color is the text for that block yeah it's it's a lot to to work with but if you watch like a 30 minute one hour tutorial you'll see how people like Christian Taylor and how how we use the editor oh yeah so this is going to be just customizing the post content for this page so you're not changing your theme you're not creating a child theme you're just customizing the content of this specific page so so if you were to change your theme from 2023 to 2024 you wouldn't have to reformat everything because it's all going to be in that full site editor framework you might have some more design options maybe like maybe themes would include block packs or something like that but you wouldn't have to rebuild your site by changing theme yeah I guess thank you everyone so much for coming and listening and if there's any other questions feel free to stick around and ask