About this episode.

On the podcast today we have Benjamin Intal. He's the founder of Stackable, which is a suite of custom blocks.

Benjamin decided early on that his company was going to take the possibilities that Gutenberg offered seriously. They had previously developed a page builder plugin, but felt that the opportunity presented by blocks was something that they could not overlook.

During the conversation, we talk about why Benjamin decided to devote so much time and energy towards creating blocks, at a time when there was almost no certainty about the status of blocks, and the block editor. Indeed, there was no clarity on whether blocks would become a core feature in WordPress.

As we now know, blocks are an increasingly important topic in WordPress, and so Benjamin's decision, with a little hindsight, appears to have been a wise one.

We talk about some of the difficulties that have presented themselves over the last three years, and how they overcame them. These ranged from having to develop in the absence of documentation, to creating bespoke solutions to problems which were later handled by WordPress Core.

We also discuss how they went about iterating their product in a technology space which was new. What methods the team used to ensure that they were building features which their users really needed.

We also get into whether the block system is now fully mature and ready to support a growing ecosystem of developers. Is it a good idea to create 'smaller' blocks with a limited use case, or a large suite of blocks which work in harmony with one another? Are we entering a future in which the 'there's a block for that' mentality might lead to sites with 'block bloat'; sites with multiple blocks, with overlapping features.

It's an interesting chat and gives an insight into a transitional moment in the history of WordPress. A moment in which blocks are taking on much of the heavy lifting in a WordPress website. A moment in which reputations are being made.

Useful links.

Stackable

Gutenberg Times

Make WordPress

About this episode.

So the podcast today features Anne McCarthy. Anne is Developer Relations Wrangler for Automattic. Her work is focussed on the WordPress.org space, and she is leading the Full Site Editing Outreach Program.

Full Site Editing is an endeavour to make it easier to manage how your WordPress website works. It’s hoped that tasks which once required a fairly technical understanding of the WordPress code, will become available to all. Creating headers and footers, deciding what information to pull from the database and where it should be displayed. These will become part of the Block Editor interface. Complexity replaced by simplicity; or at least that’s the goal.

This, as you might imagine, is not an easy task. Now that WordPress is pushing beyond 40% of the web, there’s a lot to consider, and that’s what Anne is doing. She’s part of the team trying to work out how this might look, how it should work and when it will be ready.

We start off with an introduction from Anne and how she became involved with WordPress and the Full Site Editing initiative in particular.

Then the discussion moves to an explanation of what Full Site Editing hopes to achieve. Which areas of a website are intended to be made available with Full Site Editing?

We then get into the specific details of what constraints the project faces; and there are many points to consider. Backwards compatibility, accessibility and how commercial and free plugins feed into the project roadmap.

Towards the end of the podcast we get into the process of how Full Site Editing is moving forwards, who is making the decisions and how the WordPress community can get involved in shaping WordPress’ future through endeavours like Anne’s Outreach Program.

It’s a very timely episode. Many of the areas discussed will be landing in WordPress soon.

If any of the points raised here resonate with you, be sure to leave a comment below.

Useful links.

Full Site Editing is moving fast. Since the recording of this episode, there's been some movement. To get the latest information and learn more, see the following links:

Full Site Editing Outreach Program

Full Site Editing for WordPress Overview

Full Site Editing Go/No Go | April 14, 2021

Full Site Editing Go/No Go: Next steps

About this episode.

The podcast today features Josepha Haden Chomphosy.

Josepha is the Executive Director of the WordPress project, and as such, she has been at the forefront of WordPress' evolution for many years. For the last six years, Josepha has worked full time on the project, and has been the release lead, as well as being involved with community events.

Many of the WordPress updates that you've seen recently have been under her stewardship, and she's heavily involved in the project's roadmap, and so talking with her about the past, present and future of WordPress seemed like the perfect topic.

Briefly, the points discussed are:

Josepha's discovery of WordPress and its community;how she considers that community in the many decisions she needs to make to push the project forward;who can be involved and how one can join in;the release of Gutenberg and how the turbulence of its introduction into WordPress core led her to rethink how the community is involved in such releases;the concern that contributors are sometimes working in ways that are not sustainable;how Josepha wants to ensure that contributors have the tools that they need to do their work; andhow she wants to leverage LearnWP to make it easier for WordPress' growing audience to make the most of the software.

If any of the points raised here resonate with you, please leave a comment below.

If you have any thoughts on what we should include in future episodes of the podcast, please go to the podcast contact form and tell us what you think.

Mentioned in this episode.

Josepha's 'Big Picture Goals 2021' postSite Editing MilestonesMaking WordPress Releases EasierWordPress Contributors Discuss Scaling Back Releases: “4 Major Releases Is Not a Viable Plan in 2021”The first episode of Josepha's podcast, WP BriefingJosepha's personal blog