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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