 Mae'r cwmpaddibillol yn ystafell yn ymdilyn beth yw'r labwn yw'r gweithgwyr cyntaf, ac mae'r labwn yn fawr yn gweithgwyr. Fe wnaeth yn ddewch i labwn o'r ymdill ymdill yw gweithgwyr. Mae'r bwysig yn ffiliol yw'r gwahanol ac rwy'n gallu fawr i'r pari gynnig o'r fawr a'r cwmwysig o'r grwmp iawn ac yw'r gweithgwyr hefyd. Mae ydych chi'n gweithgwyr hynny? Mae'n gweithgwyr. Hefyd! Hi. I currently work at Insight. I am a core contributor and I've kind of been working with Glunberg for quite a long time. So, I wanted to first of all talk about what is a product because I think if people think about what is a product and they probably have different definitions. When you think about the word you probably think about a physical object, a commodity, a thing. Products solve things. Products package up those solutions and they deliver them to customers. This is pretty much the standard quote that you're going to get if you're thinking about products. It's a very simplified definition of a product but it serves fairly well when thinking about the wider and kind of thinking about encompassing and thinking about Gutenberg itself. Products can be small but they can also be wide. They also aren't just things, they can also be a mindset. You can embrace the product principles but that's a thing that I want to be talking about in this talk. How can you go beyond that and really start to utilise it? Another word I want to use is embrace and that's kind of a big word, embrace. It can allude that you're wholly accepting everything and I want to be clear that's not what I'm talking about today. I'm not saying that you have to wholly accept everything to do with Gutenberg. I want to show how maybe you can choose your own adventure here. How maybe you can still adapt and use what you want to here and that's part of the product mindset. Maybe it's one part and maybe it's all and that's going to be something that you are going to know when you consider and you can review and you really can explore. I want someone to do something because I sometimes move. If I move away from this microphone I want someone to wave their hand and say I can't hear you anymore so that would be great as well. By being open to possibilities we really start to embrace what we could be and start to take advantage. So this quote really says that. What advantage you gain is going to depend on what you're really looking for. It might be creating something, it might be contribution, it might be building on top of Gutenberg. Whatever it's going to be moving forward and it's going to be about fitting in front of your journey. I think it's important to recognise that the world has changed and we all are different. This is the first world camp for a while in England and I think that's really important to take a moment here and celebrate as well. That's okay. The project itself and WordPress has evolved to a state where there are many options and many different things to build on. Many different things that we want to create. I'm not going to dwell on it but I think it's really important to recognise that if we don't adapt and we don't create different things, there's this kind of competition fatigue and we have to create in a different space now to maybe that we had to create in before. When that happens and what different market you're competing in really depends on what you're doing now as well. But first, I think the first step is really understanding. Before you kind of do anything, understanding something is really, really important. So, is it just a label? Initially Gutenberg absolutely was just a label. It was a codename. That's what it was. It was a codename for a project and then it became more about compatibility. Many labels have been used over the time such as works with Gutenberg, Gutenberg ready. They all simply mean the product works with the new editing experience. And we're adding even more labels. As a project, we really like labels. We really, really do. Maybe from our blogging roots of tagging. Is this a problem? No, it's not a problem if we recognise that it's a label. But yes, it's a problem if you're trying to sell it. Or yes, it's a problem if you're trying to actually pitch to clients. And yes, it's a problem if you're trying to write documentation. And yes, it's a problem if you're not focusing on the user needs first and you're just focusing on that label. It also becomes an issue of how much is working for that end user. So, is it just WordPress? One of the biggest questions would be what is Gutenberg? I tend to push back and actually say it's just WordPress. That's what it is now. The system, the mindset and the approach has been around for quite a while now. And it is part of core development. It is there. After all, we have gone through phase two and we are starting phase three. And I'm going to get into the phases and kind of discuss that a little bit. So, at this critical one point, I would say that part of that is embracing it and to stop calling it Gutenberg. And part of this is understanding the roots. If you want to create the product quickly, understanding and consider those existing tools and you need to build upon them. Familiarise yourself with those design approaches and the patterns and the systems to extend their use. You need to understand what something is. You need to make sure you understand those foundations. You need to engage into components and really understand how styling works to be able to build upon it. Creating independent components can really be modified for different branding variations or modes once you understand how they are. And they already exist within Gutenberg. And also taking time to understand the tool set used in the project before forming any opinions about it is really, really important. This is going to become even more important as the work gains pace with the design system work that's going to be happening in the admin interface during these current phase that we're moving into. So, part of this starts with understanding the phases that we are in. And you stay ahead of that by reviewing really these and consider how your product is going to fit in those phases and where your market can for maximum benefit. For example, considering aligning your products or your opportunities for collaboration or maybe multilingual. So, I'm going to take a little bit of a time travel back and then a look forward just to recap them because I don't think they get shared enough. So, I'm going to, if you would give me a little bit of indulgence to share them in this talk. So, my clicker. Oh, my clicker did work and I just didn't see it. I'm over clicking. So, the first of the phases is easier editing. And this phase has been done. This was the starting point and what most refer to as Gutenberg. The new editing experience, not so new now. Technically, it has passed as a phase. But as with anything so foundational, there is continuous work going on with refinement. If you think about the edit flow and you think about block iterations as well. And then we have customization. Previously, this was referred to as full site editing and you may have heard more than you've heard of customization. And building on that from the real work of the site editor, we kind of moved out to thinking about the whole site and not just about creating that content in there. One thing which was key to know is that everyone has learned in this project of the importance of terminology. So, you will see that these terms have changed. And I think that is actually better because easier communication helps with framing and certainly helps when we are trying to sell products and we are trying to build things as well. Customization has moved on and it includes things like global styles and creation of full visuals as we have just seen in the talk before of an interface where previously real pretty advanced code and advanced knowledge was needed. This phase is almost more than was ever thought possible. And really freeing things from concepts to JSON files as well. In principle, this phase has been moved on from now but there is a fair bit of closure going on and I think that that is important to say that whilst these phases are finished, they are also still kind of merging into each other and quite fluid. And then we have collaboration which we are kind of moving into. When this all just begun, just working on a new editor almost seemed enough. But if you think about it now, collaboration feels like pretty much a baseline for an editor. It feels like, yeah, collaboration feels like a normal thing. But back in the day it really didn't seem like that should be something for editing. Where block editors have become the baseline so has collaboration and also other things as well now. This is where we are ending the phase wise now. It's one of those iceberg phases though. That's kind of the way that I would describe collaboration. It can seem really like, yeah, you just kind of collaborate on a document and you just do things and then you think about servers and then you think about every single situation that WordPress interacts with and it escalates to deciding to think about that with performance and the vast use cases of WordPress. A side quest in collaboration is going to be the site admin and this is worth calling out because it's really key for anyone who's looking to build styling agnostic products. It is something that I am very excited about because I feel that it's going to unlock a possibility of products that we have just been waiting for. Imagine that design system that you've always wanted. I've always wanted. It's brewing and the seeds are in core. Those components that you will be able to detach from styling. So that is something that is going to be coming and it needs to come to enable us to do collaboration. Again, these phases need us to be able to do some real foundational work to be able to do them. This phase is growing almost by the amount of posts that's going up, but that's what happens. We have a lot of posts, a lot of ideation and then we distill down to what we're going to focus on. And then we have multilingual. The completion of the journey probably should be seen more as a phase of evolution because we don't know if it's going to be a completion. It's going to be a point. And I think that's something that as a project we have to recognise. Multilingual is without dispute needed. No one's going to dispute that. But there has to be a lot of foundations in place and a lot of decisions on architecture and decisions on direction before we get there. It's key that we do it correctly when we do it. It always seems a really long time to get there and I for one wanted like yesterday but I really think that we need to kind of get into the future and work in as well. And it also means particularly taking advantage of the world has changed, you know, AI, different things are there now. So if we think about what we can take advantage of when we get to multilingual that's kind of going to be really exciting as well. I don't want to get too much into crystal ball thinking into where we go with multilingual because that's a completely different talk. As you can see though, starting to really see the phases and roadmats for the products and see those gaps and start to consider where you can create and what you might want to release. So, you've kind of got all that knowledge so now it's really about taking that understanding and really starting to utilise that. And the first of those is really releasing timely and regularly. Before it's integration into WordPress Gutenberg was released as a plug-in and extensive testing. It really, really helped having that functionality. You can learn a lot from this by releasing your own work in a timely manner, having that cadence. And really you do this because it's important to release when it won't cause any harm and you have that kind of friction point of just enough friction of release, just enough uncomfortable, just enough knowing that something's going out. Those regular releases really keep products fresh and iterative. Consider also having more usability testing and product usability reviews as part of those releases. That's something that we started really having during the editor work and has continued and it's really important for more products to start doing that within the WordPress space and I've seen it and I just really am delighted when it happens. Or too often in WordPress there's this chase for features and I think that that's something that we really should chase down and look at the features that are important to do as well. Gutenberg actually has a lot of refinements along with features counter to what is actually said sometimes that it's always chasing features. A good example of that is Edit Flow. Edit Flow and the iterations of the performance have been slowly, painfully in a best possible way worked on and improved over time to really be from where they were, which wasn't super great and were the best they could be to incredibly good now from where they started. And that constant refinement and reviewing is really, really important for us to do and not just accept that something is done and shipped. Once you have a solid grasp of the basics then you can explore those exciting new possibilities. You can use those established guidelines and regulations as a foundation to experiment with fresh ideas and broaden your horizons and incorporate all those new ideas. Remember though once you understand the rules you can venture but you have to understand those rules before you go beyond. It's like of anything. If you know those basics you can mix things up. If you know how to cook you can then kind of start to really experiment as well. There is work going on as I've mentioned in the design system. So knowing how to use that design system you can start building upon it. And it might seem easier to use a library or a framework from your theme or your product. But is it really? Is the maintenance burden going to be too much? It might be in valuation that you still decide that's okay but really try and be how native you can be for the first time and see if that works. Gutenberg offers various options for editing but it chooses a default setting that aims really to provide the best possible experience such as full site editing. Once some users may prefer this feature or that feature take that mindset of really offering what someone needs at the time that they're going to do it and know that journey as well. Yes you could have a thousand toggles but I would say that that has been one of the problems with a lot of WordPress products deaf by a thousand toggles for example. Noble needs that toggle paralysis. What really is the job that someone's trying to do with that product. What really is something that they're trying to get done. Set it a full and maybe offer a few settings but stop offering that kitchen sink. We need less kitchen sinks in WordPress and more users achieving what they want to do. The more aligned you are the easier it's going to be of course. And this doesn't mean that you have to have a single aspect with a core process. Again once you know you can deviate. You have that empowerment. This goes back to being aware making that conscious decision with education and with knowledge. Having awareness from the scripts from testing scripts even to how core loads variables and knowing that there are colour variables and components that you can build on within the editor that could save you time could really help and boost. It also means that you can have a say when these posts come out on make and you can give input to the people that are creating this with and collaborate and really move the project forward together. Because once you do that you can go beyond. I want to share some ways that we can all go beyond when we're creating things. The first is realising that everything isn't blocks. It's a block based editor but there's an opportunity to create and extend beyond just blocks. If you think about the editor itself if you think about creating you think about WordPress and the interfaces really it's brought in so many different ways and so many different aspects and so many different potential products that you could create. We have to shift out of our thinking of blocks. We've kind of got this narrow mindset on blocks and blocks are great but they're not everything. We also have to look outside of WordPress. Gutenberg was created actually by looking outside of WordPress. It wasn't created by looking within. It was created for being inspired by editorial places and realising that they couldn't be done within WordPress at the time and seeing that as a challenge and seeing how we could actually achieve that. It draws on interfaces and products that are diverse. You need to take that mindset into what you create. WordPress is incredible but it's just one space. By looking beyond you can take those lessons from the new editor and how it created in that product creation. You don't have to be inspired by products or technology either. Look at how art and different things are creating. Look at games. Look at different things in the world. Consider the experiences of supermarkets for onboarding for example. Gutenberg was fuelled by all of these different experiences and this community is amazing but it's really small and narrow in where we tend to look when we look for inspiration. It's also not everything. There is a vast open web for us to set sail on. Another thing is about removing as much as you add. Think about how you can simplify the interface. Gutenberg has effectively reduced visual clutter through features like side panels and leading to a more streamlined experience. What can you remove from your product today that isn't being used? What could you do? I would challenge anyone who has a product and say you absolutely can remove at least two to three things and your users wouldn't miss them. When developing a solution for WordPress it's really important to consider that if you do that you can then focus on either new features that really people do want or you can actually reduce your maintenance burden. Keep in mind that Gutenberg needs to do a variety of use cases but you don't have to cover everything with what you're creating. And experiment. Make it yours. The Gutenberg of today isn't the Gutenberg that was released at the start in both form and function. This is a good thing. Taking this mindset into what you create is really, really vital. Be okay to experiment today and try and even pivot out. That editor has changed and that's great. We should also change with what we're creating and really adopt that ethos of creating and changing our products as well. The start of the project saw some pretty out there thinking in what we were doing and that has continued. What while thinking are you currently doing within your products? What could you start doing? What could you be experimenting with? I would encourage you to start doing that. What could you be doing that you aren't thinking about? So to fully utilise Gutenberg it's important to understand the principles and select which features to use. It's important to discover. It's important to understand. To embrace that product and explore its potential beyond just those blocks. Because those opportunities do await. There are things that haven't been done yet. There are so many things that haven't been done yet. So many problems haven't been solved yet. If I had one wish right now it would be to see more products built and experimented using Gutenberg. I honestly don't think there were enough. Extending the interface and really pushing what could be. There was so much room to do that. But these products also and I'm going to allow myself to have two wishes needs to then give feedback to those people creating Gutenberg. Because with that feedback they can then create things and agnostic styling and better components so that things can be built easier. And then we have this beautiful cycle of product creation and it's amazing space where we can create some awesome stuff together. As each phase evolves the product grows so should the market of things grown from it. And I'm excited to see what can be created from each phase and the future projects built using the product formerly known as Gutenberg. Now known as WordPress. Thank you. I think I've got some time for some questions. When did it die? I started lashing actually. Did it die halfway through? No just right at the end. It decided no more questions. I can shout. Can you hear me? Hi. While you were talking about one of the early design principles of WordPress was decisions not options. Which was very, very important for a lot of earlier on design decisions that were made. And you alluded to that later on when you talked about plugins and there's just way too many options. I consider myself a WordPress user more than anything else when it comes to the software and I try to build the sites the other day or I try to write a post. And I find it very difficult because there's so many options. So I was wondering like is that no longer a design principle of WordPress was a decision made for that to no longer be there? Is it just like are you still talk about that as a design principle? For me like I personally do I think we've maybe forgotten about it collectively as a community and I would love us to get back to it. The reason being I think I love the concept of as a user and user journeys and there's this story arc of user journeys it comes from like screen writing. What is a user trying to do? And they're not trying to play whack-a-mole with toggles right? So yes, that's incredibly important. I should have repeated the questions I just realised. Are you making noises with the microphone? I am. You are. Thank you. So I think I don't think from a core perspective I think core is really doing that quite strongly but I think there is a disconnect between core and building at the moment and I think that needs to realign. A realign a little bit. What do you mean by building? People who are building it aren't necessarily aligned with so in core there is almost a stripping away of options if you think about the side panels almost to the point of friction for some people like it's gone too far there. Whereas you look at a plug in it's like everything's here everything's there a good example is we actually have an options section in the editor now we have a style book we have all these sections we definitely have those places for things that before we did not have places for but I consistently see the wrong things in the wrong places so there's a chicken egg documentation all these kind of I'm just like okay I need to do this thing and I'm like is it in a customiser and there seems appearance I don't know how to use WordPress anymore and that's a kind of a big change from someone who is like whoa I can make a website with a fun kit. I think what you're digging at which is one of the things which I've been inflecting on at the moment which is we still expect WordPress to be the same experience for everybody you have the same entry point and you do the same thing I think that probably has to change over time so you are going to write you go into one point you are going to style you go into one point I think that's something that needs to change over time so that it just goes away and gets out of the way so you can do the job we are not there yet and that is the ultimate decisions and options is I am trying to do something just let me do it we do not do that yet I may be really far down on the decision options now I've kind of really jumped down there but mainly because I just feel that nobody has time for the extraneous things anymore nobody has time for landing on a page where would you like to do 20 things? no I'd like to do the one thing that's in my head you'd like to do that to read our minds I just want Wapu Clippy to help me any more questions? thank you so much