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The WP Minute brings you news about WordPress in under 5 minutes -- every week! Follow The WP Minute for the WordPress headlines before you get lost in the headlines. Hosted by Matt Medeiros, host of The Matt Report podcast.
Matt: It's the WP Minute.
I'm back from vacation, catching up on
all the news, probably just like you.
Let's see what's happening with
WordPress this week, coming up.
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WordPress is amazing, not just because
it's a great tool to publish words on the
internet, but that it has the potential to
encourage you to learn more about the web.
If you want.
If you remember the
golden age of automobiles.
Enthusiasts would change their own
oil or make the repairs themselves to
avoid bringing them to the dealership.
An act to save a few bucks or
just because you love the idea
of doing the work yourself.
Back then, cars weren't powered by
computer chips or electronic motors.
They were mechanically pure.
This was your rig.
You rolled up your sleeves, got
out your toolbox, and slid under
the chassis of your daily driver.
Not only were you learning how cars
were built, you were extending that
knowledge to work on other cars as well.
Industry knowledge that led folks
to have a career in automobiles,
wherever that took them.
There was a whole economy of DIY auto
mechanics, a whole industry, really.
Chilton Books used to publish guides
for the DIYers Which included detailed
diagrams of the cars they were repairing
until the internet, accompanied
by the production of more complex
cars, laid waste to their business.
Breaking apart a car to learn how it
worked just wasn't feasible anymore.
You could even draw the parallels of
open source WordPress to the likes of
closed source Webflow, for instance.
Sure, you can learn how to build
and design a website with Webflow.
In fact, you kinda need to know
how before you dive into that.
But the mechanical
purity is what's missing.
In other words, you can't dismantle
Webflow and see how it's doing its
thing, but you can with WordPress.
You can't bring closed source systems to
a different hosting server and reconfigure
the stack to get it dialed in for optimum
performance, or to change where you store
your data, but you can with WordPress.
The big debate happening right now is
understanding who WordPress is for,
what kind of software are we building?
It's certainly trending towards a more
competent website builder for the everyday
user, but I also think it's ushering in
a new type of developer class as well.
Look, developers are finicky.
They're mostly stuck in their ways,
have their preferred tool set, and
come equipped with strong opinions.
Artists, in the very sense, I'd say.
Your typical development stack for
WordPress, along with the definition, has
been challenged over the last five years
as page builders became more nascent.
If you're not cracking open
Notepad to change your theme,
are you even a developer?
Advancements in the Site Editor and the
Gutenberg project aside, Automattic has
been quietly changing the way people
can get started with WordPress faster
than ever before thanks to Playground
and their recently launched Studio app.
Now, to the point of the
article, this is how WordPress
is helping beginner developers.
See, with Playground, you can
export the site you build right
into the browser as a zip download.
Want to try a new feature that is only in
GitHub and not committed to the release?
Pull it from GitHub and try it out.
Studio lets you run multiple
WordPress installs locally on your
Mac, with Windows coming soon.
Along with a full file
system to interact with.
Want to share your customized
site with somebody?
They'll give you a temporary
hosting account on WordPress.
com to share the site you built.
This onboarding into WordPress
is light years ahead of where
we used to be in the past.
Even if you're a curmudgeon developer
stuck in your ways, you must admit,
it's never been faster to start
exploring WordPress than it is today.
I haven't even told you about the
Block Theme Builder plugin, which
allows you to design an entire theme
inside your WordPress install, allowing
you to package it all up into a
nice distributable WordPress theme.
I love software that
makes me feel powerful.
A power user that isn't quite a full blown
developer, but I can see the other side
of the fence and I want to get there.
This is what I love about WordPress.
I'm not saying this experience is
fully baked and it might even change
course, but I think we'll see a whole
new fleet of WordPress developers
on board because of these efforts.
A true open source no code
solution may be coming soon.
Let me know what you think.
What if I never posted the news again?
I'm just catching up on all the things
back from vacation so I don't have time to
wrangle all the newslinks again this week.
Which makes me wonder, what if
I never did the newslinks again?
Hit reply and let me know how you
feel when you first hear that.
Do you come just for my weekly
five minute take on the state of
WordPress like you just heard?
Do you like the curation of links?
Or are you getting that fill from
some other WordPress newsletter?
Hit reply and let me know if we didn't
do the weekly news roundup anymore.
How would that make you feel?
I'd still cover major things
happening in WordPress.
I probably still link up some
important Articles from time to time,
but if I shifted away from
just being a pure news source,
how would that make you feel?
Go ahead and hit reply and let me know.
Or if you're just listening to this, go
ahead and email Matt at the WP minute.
com and let me know, or
head over to the WP minute.
com hit the contact page or tweet at me.
However you want to get connected.
That's it for today's episode.
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Thanks for listening.
We'll see you next week.