 My name is Vikas. I hope everybody had their morning coffee. No But thanks for attending I am going to talk about how to build or how to think about building a plug-in business in the block world Let me All right, if you go on the plug-in repo right now the WordPress plug-in repo You will see there are over 60,000 plugins in the repo and and you might feel the market is saturated and You may be right, but in the block world, maybe not so So during this presentation, I would like to change your opinion if you have this opinion and what might feel that a little bit overwhelmed and go back and not do anything about it So let's change that perception One of my Twitter buddy Justin had and I had a wonderful post about Why this is a gold rush for WordPress? He said block today's are what plugins were ten years ago, right? And he's really on point. I definitely Encourage everybody in this room to go and check out this post Read it and then you will understand what I am trying to talk about Before we move further, let me introduce a little bit more As they said this is not a 15-minute stock. This is a 30-minute stock and I have to talk a little bit more So I said I can talk myself about myself a lot more Anyway, so I am because I have coding since I was 14 I'm a programmer engineer by trade by heart I acquired my first WordPress plug-in back in 2017 and never looked back. I I have Basically, I we run over ten popular plugins and themes I run two remote companies, which is one is Express Tech and another is another is Insta WP Both based on the WordPress ecosystem. I'm also part of the WordPress Bangalore organizing team and we are going to have a word cam next month and you are all invited there Okay, good link going back to the presentation if you closely look at the repo You will see that there are over there are less than 500 block plugins in the repo which gives you the huge opportunity of building a block plug-in Not only that if you especially search for single single use block plug-in Which is less than 280 that gives you even more opportunity to do that Let's talk about how traditionally Forms were built as an example of how the traditional plugins were built and how traditionally we were using WordPress historically So one of the popular plug-in is contact form which I have presented in this presentation To build this contact form the person needs to have at least an Intermediate knowledge of some kind of coding or some kind of HTML, right? Or at least the person needs to needs to be a little bit technical So you build this contact form you copy the shortcode and then you paste it in a page Where it doesn't preview anything? So that is how we have been building contact form we as wordpressers or WordPress professionals We know this but not the new new users which the WordPress block world is now targeting So this is how we have been building and this is not very intuitive. I don't know if you agree on that However in the block world It's completely different paradigm in this changing paradigm The way you do block is you go to your block editor you open the block inserter search for form Automatically shows all the single-use block plugins Currently it is showing one of the plug-ins which we did on the top Click on it. It automatically fetches the plug-in downloads it activates it Then you can drag and drop to the form on the block editor. It's that simple, right? No more coding required a new user a business owner can manage their own site They don't necessarily need coding knowledge to do that And not only that you can manage this form right inside the block editor by just clicking on it It's that simple and then click publish. So that's the way we are doing blocks now and It's a great way, right? So how do we how do you think about building a plug plug-in business in this new era? so What are the different opportunities we have? There are two approaches which I think we should think about one is a block first approach and another is a block Enabled approach if you are a traditional plug-in business owner of your building plugins traditionally For a long period of time you might go with the block enabled approach, but think about the block first approach This approach gives you what you see is what you get which we just had a preview about Doesn't load a bunch of libraries basically not a bloatware Most things happen inside the block editor Which is really really important when you are going for a block first approach But when you do a block enabled approach, which we just saw in the one of the last slides They just slapped a block inside the block editor, but it doesn't change the experience at all Right, so the block enable approach says there's a rapper around existing functionality Doesn't follow true editing experience inside the block editor may load Too many libraries So these are the two approaches you should definitely consider when you are creating a new plug-in in this new block world There is a hidden gem which I think is Still too dead undiscovered which is the block inserter which we just talked about a little bit Let's go a little bit Deeper into this if you search for a keyword inside the block inserter Automatically searches for single use block plugins. You might think what is a single use block plugin because he's speaking about so much a single use block plugin is a special plugin with a schema marked up which says that I am a single block plugin and I can be qualified as a single block plugin So how to build that single block plug-in you go to the WordPress handbook and then you will find the instructions on building That plug-in you just have to put a json file and then Once your plug-in is approved in the repo you have to submit it as a single block plug-in the instructions are clear on that on the Documentation I'll be happy to share it after the call after the talk So once you search for a keyword it automatically searches the repo Once you click on an entry it automatically installs and activates the plug-in and It's perfect for the block editing world. You don't need to go out search for the repo Click find the plug-in find where it is I think one of the biggest challenge with WordPress is once you install a plug-in You don't know where to go how to configure it Right this solves that problem and this I think and this is how We have built our project which is good and I'll talk about that in a moment how to do paid upgrades in the block plug-in world and Traditionally WordPress has been notorious in promoting with big banners that upgrade today and you will get this and then those are nagging Notifications on the admin panel. I definitely don't suggest that go for more subtle approach Use something like this which gives users some kind of information what they are going to get and there should be a Close button on top which lets them close that notice away, right so that they don't see it anymore It should be well-placed distraction free CTAs If you don't know what CTA means is call to action Smooth checkout experience so make sure and this is this is kind of a genetic advice when you are building a plug-in business If you are letting the the user go to go through your checkout experience Make sure your checkout experience is smooth and they go step-by-step and they get the zip file at the end of the checkout experience Use plugins like easy digital downloads, which is a free plug-in on the repo or a service like freemius to offer pro licenses You can connect your stripe account. You can freemius provides that out of the box So these options are available if you want to build a proper Plug-in business in the block world Let's talk about some of the excellent examples in this in this new block world one of my Twitter buddy Ajay did a poll as What plug-in do you use for building a WordPress site in the in what block plug-in is specifically and the results were kind of Interesting and they were all over the map If you ask the same as a page builder You will get maybe top three page builder, right and the results will be completely different But if you see the most Voted was other option, which means people are trying different libraries Which gives you an opportunity to build one Because people are just trying every other library out there to see which one is good And I will suggest before you start building a block plug-in go out and check out these amazing examples Generate blocks spectra essential blocks co-blocks There are there are many more in the market and they have a lot and a lot of active installations That means there is an acceptance in the market about the block plug-in There are new libraries. We should you should think about key blocks When I talk about these block competitors in a way They give you inspiration on what to build if they are doing something right you can inspire from them If they there is something to improve upon you can read the reviews see if there are something which can improve upon experience their The experience which I talked about how easy is to use that block plug-in and then you can improve on that That gives you an enormous business opportunities on how you you go about building a block plug-in Don't don't just go and start building one first learn what others are doing and then and then have your Path charted out based on that So one of the case study is good Anna, this is a pet project. We are working on this is completely free We are releasing pro plug-in. I think next month But so far it is completely free and we have a lot of features in the free version and that is one of the approach we have taken Our approach is go for single block plugins and this is something I'm giving away as a business secret But I wanted the block plug-in world to flourish right if you do the same We will have a lot of cool options for people to try that helps the workplace ecosystem as a whole We got so if you see on the top right, you will see good Anna forms This is one of the popular form plug-in and it has got 6,000 active installations in the span of three months Which is amazing if you think about it Remember there are 60,000 plugins in the repo and getting 6,000 installations on a new plug-in is very very difficult So we went with the single block approach which enabled us to be on the block insert a market where there is nobody Right, so you can dominate that market that's the hidden gem and We are going with this and then redirecting everybody to our good Anna kid Which is the bundle plug-in like kid ends and other plugins So that gives them an opportunity to install a bundle of libraries if they want if they don't want no problem You can use a single block plug-in Our approach is go for no jQuery, which means going for like vanilla lightweight JavaScript focus on performance because and this is a key secret in WordPress in coming days. I think it has already happened is Performance is something which plug-in authors generally ignore and then you end up using a cache plug-in You end up using your speed optimization. I don't think you should need that You don't need a cache plug-in if you have a properly built Blocks you don't need those plugins At least for the block at least for the UI loading right if the blocks are loading properly if the CSS is lightweight If the JavaScript is lightweight, you don't need all those things Focus on UX as I've as I've mentioned a couple of times already Focus on user experience. Don't just focus on building functionality Think about how users will use your plug-in in the new block world There are some plugins where you click on the block and then you have to do editing on the sidebar I definitely don't recommend that approach because that is already being done by other page builders What are we doing which helps the user edit that form that tab that block faster think about those when you are building this our approach towards building good Anna is Four parts one is we want to build audience first and this is extremely important when you are building a plug-in business build a free plug-in which people love to use and This is what we have been doing so far so build an audience first build Plug-in which people love to use get them a free installations Get them a taste of what you can do with with your coding skills with your designing skills with your business skills Right that gives you an idea of what good Anna is what your project is Extend core editor principles. There are some plugins who are completely different than the core editing experience If you if you experience a core block, it is very swift You edit it really quickly drag and drop a button you add a text there you go But there are some as I said, there are some libraries. We don't do that at good Anna. We are following that principles The designing principles which we are following is extend the core block as much as possible build on top of that and you can do that as well and Then we talked about block first approach in the beginning a block first approach gives you An opportunity to be a block first plug-in which which so the so the end goal is to Completely differentiate yourself from other traditional plugins. I'm not saying the traditional playing playing sub bar or something I'm saying this is a new era think about in those lines rather than thinking about the legacy ways or the traditional ways and Then build feature parity. This is also extremely important When you are when you are telling that this contact form use go and use this contact form People will expect a lot of thing from that contact form which they have been used to anyway traditionally So it will be difficult, but you will be able to achieve feature parity so understand how they are using traditional plugins and What are the some of the features you can import into your block plug-in? So that is feature parity So this unlocks some of the amazing possibilities once you learn once you know so so far we have learned what are traditional plugins how our block plug-in is different and How to think about in this new world block first era? so This is this slide is one of the best slide in my presentation This talks about democrat democratizing design, which is what what this is all about now So we have a block editor We have block themes. We have block plugins. So what you can do Previously you had to build a custom theme to design So the end goal is to design a website right or design an experience design a solution Which was difficult for a non coder even for a coder. It took a lot of time to design So design and then code and then there is an end result which was like it took a lot of time But if you design something on figma, you just design and deliver it but that figma is a design, right? It doesn't function So going for functional design is what these three things enable you you already have a block editor an awesome block editor Bundle inside what press I know not a lot of folks are very much into block editor They have their own opinion about it. I have my own. I think this is going to change how we use what press And then we have block themes which don't need no coding So you can develop block themes as much as you want you just need a good design sense And then you can build block block plugins as I said if you need one Once we have once you have all these three three key components You can build any kind of experience any kind of solution any website. That's where at instead of loopy Which we are running right now is we are creating a store and this store is going to change the way We look at themes in general so we know about various theme market places they sell themes and that arise over already After the page builder have come to the market and now in the block world that arise completely gone as My humble opinion if you are able to build a good template a good design Which a business can use let's say car shop a dog A pet shop or any kind of business if you if you can design those templates really quickly really easily You should be able to just export it and sell it somewhere and that's what instead of loopy Your story is all about so the era of creating WordPress theme is over combination of theme block and With the editor can accomplish Almost anything because it's it's being developed right the block editor is is getting evolved day by day A new market is emerging is is my point You can use instead of loopy to offer demos of your product So if you have a traditional plugin if you have Even in this case a block plugin you can use a free account on insta offer a demo to your Plugins there is a key. There is a nice shortcut, which we have built if you replace wordpress.org There is what this dot org is not replaceable, but if you replace that you are in the URL With insta wp.io You you will automatically get a wordpress site with your plugin installed in it So that people can experience a plug-in and there is no registration required. It is completely free so you so this this is actually A big point about building audience when you're building audience you want to show them a demo They they may say okay. I have to install this plug-in in my wordpress. It may take time There is a friction about around it. So this gives you an opportunity to show your demo Easy to try is a lot sandbox environments. You don't need to worry about setting up a server. Everything is all set up Alright, so I prepared for a 15 minute talk. So So this is my closing argument Find early adopters. This is key guys If you are if you don't know how to find early adopters, there are some things which is really easy to do Go to various Facebook groups post. This is this is what I have built go to reddit post This is what I have built. Can you guys give it a shot? Post your zip file link post your wordpress repo link It is already approved or the insta wp link anything is fine as long as you are able to find those early adopters Who want to try the plug-in and believe me? There are many early adopters who want to try these things because they believe in the block Editor they believe in the Gutenberg project, which is for the next like I think seven to eight years It's still remaining in that project. So think block first. Don't don't think Traditionally don't don't go on the popular plugins and then copy them instead think Go to the I should not say this but go to the modern Editors like Vicks or web flow and copy them instead because they are providing an experience and that's what we are all about It's providing experience to the user. So it becomes an easier pathway for them to Excuse me to onboard to wordpress Experience before functionality is the same thing Design before code. So if you are not a designer if you're a coder You can copy design ideas from others as I said go to Vicks go to web flow go to dribble Go to be hands search for contact forms see those designs and then copy them instead and then then think about your code and then you will have a successful Plug-in business. I'm hundred percent sure. So I hope I was able to change an opinion If you had one about how do I go about playing? Building a plug-in business in the world where there are 60,000 plugins on the market All the big companies are dominating it I am hundred percent sure there will be a company in the next one or two years who are who will be dominating others Based on the block editor based on the block world. So I hope this presentation was useful. Thank you for attending Thanks for being here Thank you because do we have any questions one Mike's anybody next I thank you for the talk. Yeah, is it possible to just activate single plugins? For example, we're an agency and we do a lot of blocks for clients. Yeah to just activate them for all the clients So the global repository, but just to activate specific blocks that they can search But just the ones that we want every single block plug-in is a plug-in in itself So it's not a part of a bundle so you can activate it on client side without a problem So if you want to activate on a multi-side, is that a question? Well, just a different kind of sites that we are running that we say, okay We want to have a single post block that they can Choose their post post that for example and one of the specific posts of that post That we can say okay We want to build this for centrally for our clients and when they go and search into the blocks they can find it Okay, so you want to enable some list of approved block plugins for a client something like that something like that So yeah, so if you if you do enable them they will find that in the block insert And then they can drag and drop. Okay, so if we just add them as a plug-in. Yes, that's it. Press. Uh, yeah Okay, cool They're just another regular plug-in in the plug-in sense But then if they you enable them then you have to find them inside the block editor Because where would somebody get started if they wanted to build a plug-in? Where would like would be the first step? I think wordpress.org has an excellent handbook on the block editor First understand if you are not if you are new to block editor world First go and understand that how what what all the Various components involved there and there is a great tutorial on how to build your first block All the tools are listed or the development tools are listed. You can go and get started I think I forgot to put a link here, but I will be happy to share after the Yeah, thank you Any other questions? Oh we got yes, and then so second one first What's the process for submitting your single block to the block repository is it quite different to submitting a plug-in? There are two steps involved first is Getting the plug-in approved in the repository, which is like a Which is which has been a process so far. So you go to the plug-in repo search for or google WordPress plug-in ad and then you will find a link where you can upload a zip file So when you upload a zip file they get they approve it and once you get an approval You can submit you will get a link of your WordPress plug-in and then you can copy that link and go to the block submission link Where you will have to just submit your WordPress repo link and there is no approval for that. So the second step is has no approval Just click on okay, and it becomes a block So it doesn't it doesn't get approved like a normal plug-in would through the sorry. I can't hear you So it wouldn't go through the The traditional kind of plug-in roof to ourselves Like you know where it gets approved where it gets some code revisions to while approving They don't check if you are if you're submitting a block plugin. Okay. Yeah Yeah, I can hear you without the mic Hello, okay now. Yeah. Hey, thanks for the talk. Um, you were talking about building like a suit of blocks Yeah, but then also Distributing it, you know single blocks Is there a strategy? For for doing that from the development perspective So I can talk about the strategy which we used Um, the reason which we went why we went for single use block plugin Individually for it for a specific purpose. Let's say contact form or tabs or testimonial or slider Is the reason because they can find us inside the block editor Once they find us they are actually able to use our plugin plugin in an easier way And then we are sending them to our bundle plugin But you don't have to use this approach the reason as I said the reason why I use this approach is for discoverability Inside the block insider If you use like a regular like a cadence kind of approach where you are building a block library Then you will be submitting yourself as a traditional plugin and it will not be a block plugin It will not come inside. It will not show up inside the block insider when you search for it It will it will come when you have activated it installed it activated it the block will come But actual suggestions from the repo will not come Does that answer the question? Yeah, I was thinking more of like How do you handle it like is it a mono repo that then branches out into you know the single block? Oh, you mean technically Yeah, that's a good question. What we have done is we have used git sub modules To bundle all because we don't want to do uh multiple development on this branch and that branch So each individual plugins are separate git repo and those are merged into a master repo with git sub modules Okay. Yeah, I think that's the answer said and and on the master plugin we automatically detect What are these single use block plugins and then load them? Inside the block editor Okay, so the chute contains all of them, right? Exactly. It's the same code Okay, it's just bundled together exactly and it is actually online on github you search for good and a kit All right, you will find them so you can actually see the code. Okay. Thank you Any others? Oh very very top who's got it Okay I think you can just whoever save without the mic So thanks, uh, is the technology behind blocks still evolving? Are there any major changing changes to expect? So if we now start Developing a block and two years later have to develop new or so I think okay. Is the question about stability of development process Okay, so I think that has been a complaint in the past Every time there is a new release of Gutenberg or wordpress. There is some kind of major change On how you are developing and then you have to do a lot of development But that I think is passed already Budget is here. I think she can answer a little bit more on that but as per my knowledge There is not a lot of breaking changes Seen nowadays and it's pretty stable So I we don't expect a lot of changes which which which will hamper our development process So it is pretty stable. Yeah, you can rely on that Yes I was wondering, um, do you have statistics on how many Websites or that are using like Gutenberg editor and blocks versus like Elementor beaver builder And then sorry and just to follow up with that would be Um on my side clients, you know, they they find it difficult to use the editor to edit themselves So when I look at uh, Gutenberg editor and blocks Um In then looking at beaver builder, it's easier for them to understand beaver builder Do you see a future with that on the client side because on a development side a coder can understand it But I think on a client side. That's the most important Yeah, I think that's a That's a very valid question. I don't have specific statistics on other page builders. Uh, you can see their active installations I think they are in millions But for the block editor, I think there are about two plus percentage of user who are using the I may be wrong. So I don't have the specific percentage on that But I do have an opinion on the follow-up question When you train a client on a specific page builder, they become comfortable with that. It may be Elementor. It may be beaver builder Um, have you seen specific problems by using block editor? Is it too complex? Is it or they're already trained on a specific editor so that it is it is a learning process for them So, uh, yeah, definitely with the blocks um in their head, they're not designers or developers So when they have to design something, you know, they if they can visually drag and drop it That's kind of where beaver builder is I think way ahead is that they can easily create something or save out rows Columns all sorts of things like that. They also have every, you know a responsive Editor so they can see the tablet as well as mobile view So, you know, if they go from that or try to learn on blocks or try to lay something on blocks You're usually coming back to us to to create that page Which is which is fine. But in our sense, we do a lot of management plans. So we include that So we try to not You know have the client have to come back to us for everything that they can't figure out All right makes sense I think means beaver builder and other page builders have a lot of time in their hands to build those kind of experience in the past couple of years and Gutenberg and block editor is comparatively new and every release you will find a new improvement Which will help the end user use it. I think this is one of the biggest challenge right now And I think the WordPress team as a whole or the community as a whole is focusing on that So I don't have a specific answer to solve that right away But I believe in the project that they are going to solve it as the time pass And that that's where I think some opportunity can come in like having that responsive editor or something that can be built in blocks that can Exactly and some of the block. Sorry to interrupt you Some of the block Plug-in authors are going in that route. So even they are using the block editor You don't necessarily need to use block principles right the core of principles Like for example, some of the block editor have have provided their own mobile tablet and responsive settings Which the block editor believes in more fluid settings. So they have provided these kind of responsive Breakpoints, which we have been comfortable with over the years, right? So this is the approach you can take it's it's as I said means learn about your audience If they are more comfortable with the with breakpoints then fluidity go for that Okay, yeah Any other questions? At least there are some questions without without there will be no question and be prepared one Yes, exactly Well, thank you that wraps us up Thank you guys so much for coming out first session day two That's a big deal. So congratulations for coming to session nine and by nine. I mean nine a.m But that wraps up our session. So you guys are free to go. There'll be quite a break in between now and the next session And thank you so much. Thank you because thank you for having me. Thank you for attending guys You