Asif Rahman, Konstantin Obenland: The future of WordPress

Okay, we have to speak and I will talk to you. Let's the. There. Okay, let's get a speaker into the what is voting and what will invol in.

Hello, good morning, my name is. I work at Automatic. I have worked for the past five years.

Five years?

Yes. I've been doing WordPress since 2011 and I started out reviewing themes in the theme review team and have since plugins. I become a WordPress 4 emitter. I let it release the WordPress 4.3 release. I worked on the new plugin directory and the theme directory that I rebuilt. Currently my main job is to work on everything WordPress.org related so the platform and last year I spent my year working on the customization focus in in WordPress 4.

Good morning everyone. My name is Hasi. I'm like using WordPress since 2004. I've involved with the community for almost like 13, 14 years before going forward. How are you all actually feeling this morning? No, not sleepy at all. I would like to do like one thing before we actually get started. Like that's what we used to do when I was in school. I was in school in Dhaka, Bangladesh. So in the school in the. I started in the morning. You had quickly performed some stuff before going to the college. So if you want to stand up, stand up.

Okay, Take it down.

Then take it down once again take it down then sit down.

Okay.

I started my company before I went into university and I'm running the company for almost like 14 years. 14 years. And I found WordPress to enable me to do a lot of things that I couldn't have done. It's mainly because WordPress is very easy to get started with. And yes we are making WordPress complex with time. That's part ecosystem goes on. I'm working in a WordPress product company that I build. I run few WordPress product company and that I either like co founded or like invested later on. And my focus in future in WordPress will be more directed with like rest, API and like what we will go forward in like building better experience for the people who are actually the end user.

So now you still continue managing your company in India?

I live in Orlando, Florida so I moved back and forth a lot and I attend what camp like a lot. So I stopped counting after I attended like 50 or 60 webcam so probably the calculation is like very close to 100. Do any of you have beside the core team or the core people? Do you have an idea like how many what camp happen so far in like not the Exact number. It's increasing every weekend. So do you have idea every weekend? Yeah, it's increasing every weekend. So could anybody tell you like tell like how many what can happened already? Any gates? Like thousand. You guys know? I know. No, no, no.

I just came.

So how many it goes to 780. 781.

Okay. Wow.

I really feel you should actually comment more and like share our experience so we could actually inspect the young. Thank you.

Okay. In the topic that we talk like because constantly come from the party. They then we asked him about. We have a new editor for WordPress. Five more. It's called Gutenberg. Can you tell us more about Gutenberg Project, what it's like and how. What frame will use the Gutenberg in the car in the future?

So what it's like. It's a new and improved. It's a new and improved editing experience in WordPress. So the teamwork on Google has been. It has been developing for over a year now. It started in 2017 and in January 2017 it is available as a plugin. You can already use it, right? If you wanted to today.

How many people use Gutenberg R and D already trying Gutenberg.

All right. It is currently slated to be included in the 5.0 release and that is scheduled for I think April or May.

This year.

This year, yeah. So they're trying to get that out in 5.0.

No worries.

Yeah. It fundamentally changes the way that you interact with WordPress, right? When you write a post, when you write a page, any kind of content, it fundamentally changes it. So you go away from like a blank, you know, text area, input field that you have and you go towards a concept of blocks where you just have content types more or less that you use and put together a post or a page. So for example, a heading would be a piece of content that you would add to your post, as well as a gallery, for example, or just a single image or just a blob of text or a quote. All these things are just pieces of content that you put together and that make up your post or page and that is extendable to your, you know, as far as you want to take it, you know. So things like, you know, widgets that, you know, today is widgets like a list of the most recent comics could be just another block that you include in your page and from there on out, short codes. And all these concepts that are currently part of WordPress can be boiled down into blocks that can be reused to make up your site.

This is like a. It's like a Page Builder. But how many people have tried the Page Builder like a virtual composer or site origin?

How many people.

Can you say about the difference of what is the point of view different from Page Mueller?

So currently Hooper is focused on the post content, right? So that database field of post content, that's where everything takes place in the first release coming out of 5.0. Eventually the goal is to be able to do site customization with blocks. So extending Gutenberg to not only cover posts but your entire page. And so eventually you should be able to create page templates with blocks pretty much in the same way as you're used to now from Page Builder plugins.

And actually say something about Page Builder. Can you share your opinion about Page Builder and what it first?

So for me as a developer I always hated Page Builder. I think like all developer could relate. Like I don't like when somebody actually like manipulate what fits in a way that like if you uninstall that plugin, your WordPress doesn't look same. So for many years I ignored Page Builder. There are Visual Composer, we have Visual Composer for over five years, right? And there are even, yeah there are even like far popular Page Builder also like sideways in Page Builder and other things that is very old. So I always hated Base Builder because like you have to like be very dependent on it and if you go beyond promise like then your site will not actually look the same. But I also embrace Brace Builder because like if you look at the origin of WordPress we started as a like simple cafe blog as a like blog platform. Now we moved far beyond that. Now we don't create just only blocks in WordPress. We could have a multi dimensional website. We could served a lot of like completely different purpose. And in my life I try to create everything in WordPress. It's just because my child of ecosystem is just because like I know this ecosystem better. So I also embrace Page Builder because like it gives me freedom. I really don't have to like wait more for my developers to actually create a PhD and my front end developer like Tan City in the markup and like created the best template or something. Page Builder gives me easy access to actually change my design whenever I want. At the same time like I could actually make my even I'm not a developer, I'm a horrible developer. So even I still have little bit chance to make my personal blog even better with Page Builder. But Page Builder and Gutenberg is different, still is very different because Gutenberg is just an editor. So it's all about like how you can serve your content in the website only for the post. For now. For now. And I think like this now will be like extended to all this year. So like now you can't actually build your website with Gutenberg and even actually a lot of people are still not building their website in Gutenberg. So one of our main reason why we want to actually bring Gutenberg in front in this conversation is because for the developers, the people who build website for other people, it's pretty important actually to focus on Gutenberg. And because when WordPress 5.0 release the WordPress normal editor will completely shift to Gutenberg. So there will be a lot of chaos if we don't actually educate people properly because you are used to in writing something then on the next day when you update your WordPress dashboard could look very different. So sometimes people are afraid of change. I completely understand that. I heard a lot of like conversation why we need to actually go through this drug justice change or something. But you see the way technology works. Sometimes you need to make a jump. Sometimes we need to take a like leap of faith and like moving to next phase of changes. So I, I embrace for Pace Builder I embrace like Gutenberg. I don't like every aspect of it but like I'm open to it. So I could see like what we could do together.

And you said that you have a company to do something like SaaS service and like a daily can you share.

Us and all that. Like then I have to actually go back in like 2016 and 17 in WordPress we actually built a complete REST API for WordPress. I think like that was one of the biggest things we have done to WordPress since like maybe custom post time or something in 2011. So though like fulfill a lot of those who are actually mistake because we going back and forth in a lot of different things. But that's how it is the technology, you don't know the right directions. You have to actually choose one and move forward with it. So I feel as a businessman as like as I wanted to have more freedom how I want to build my app. I feel like resting pages. Very great thing for WordPress and going forward it will actually change a lot of different things for us who owns business. We're actually looking for how we integrate like SaaS and a lot of different kind of business model inside WordPress with REST API. It gives us a freedom like if I'm building a solution or a plugin that actually has to do something like event maybe if you look at some of the modern things, the event team. Their post screen doesn't look like WordPress anymore. It's almost like a form where you actually insert certain type of data and when you look at their post it also doesn't look like WordPress. It's just like a different kind of post because we have like custom post type. With REST API it will actually give us even more freedom as now REST API is also like merged with like Admin Dashboard and our endpoint is also available. So in future we would see the theme developers are building not only the front end for WordPress, they could actually build a backend for WordPress in REST API as well. And it doesn't have to be WordPress Dashboard. So you are building like a particular solution for a particular like group of customers. You could actually give you like completely unique experience to your customer. And I also feel like it will give a lot of freedom to all those like app developers because the difference between app and web is actually shifting very quickly. So app developer has like more to do just like because a lot of people I know who develop apps, they use like WordPress as a back end CMS in future they could do even far more than that. So REST API is actually giving us an edge on terms of technology and I think like a lot of innovation is going to happen and as you could actually build whatever application you want in whatever technology you want. With REST API you don't have to even use php. A lot of the peoples are doing a lot of things in JavaScript, whatever like choice of framework they have. So SAS could be our future and like REST API is actually enabling us to experiment with a lot of new things.

You said, you said like the API will be the new standard, right? And the team should shift to the API mainly.

You see with page builder business is already becoming irrelevant. Like it's not ready yet. But we have like this builder like Elementor that came like amazing popularity in last one and a half year. They have like over 500000 active install now. So with Elementor it doesn't actually really depend what theme you are using here. You could just select like blank canvas and design everything in it and they give you like a lot of like free templates that there are a lot of like, like other solutions that actually could give like more templates and other things. So I don't feel like this is the end of the business. I feel like they have even more to do because before they are just building the front end experience, now they could feel the back end experience as well. If we embrace the REST API and.

Other things with API, maybe they can create another backend and put the Data.

To the WordPress people are already doing it already. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. And Konstantin, can you share us about this like how WordPress will involve in REST API more in the future, how we change how to interact with the, with the API.

Right. So I mean just like Gutenberg shows us now, which is interacting with, you know, APIs as well, you'll be able to switch a lot more to JavaScript based front ends. Right. That then talk to an API, you know, the REST API in this case to display the information that you know you need. And so the already goes in that direction. And you know, last year we had a REST API focus that was looking at, you know, converting a lot of the WP admin parts that were talking to data providers to switch those data REST API endpoints that go away from Ajax more or less and just using those endpoints to interact with.

It's really new but I heard that WordPress.com already used this technique to create posts and paste and run the API to the context. Yeah, it's not in PHP anymore. So.

Yeah, with Calypso, the. Yeah, CalyPSO is a JavaScript based administration interface that WordPress.com uses and that is exclusively working with JavaScript and REST API. So Orpus.com has like their own flavor if you want of the REST API. Although they have started to switch to core provided REST API endpoints as well and extending those. But that is like one way the feature could look like forward Rest. Right. It's like you have. Yeah, just your face administration interface that then talks to REST API and yeah, you're not as dependent on PHP anymore which also makes you know, it a lot faster and you know. Yeah, better to use for you know, beginning users.

Yeah. And how can you tell us about like in the future when press release the Calypso or. It's not in the plan yet.

So Matt always said that a Calypso like interface has a big change to comma WordPress. I don't know if it's going to be Calypso proper. Right. But I'm pretty sure that something like Calypso will be the future of WordPress. And I mean Gutenberg is already, you know, shaping, shaping that future. Right. You already have a JavaScript based editor experience. Once you're, once Gutenberg gets extended to do site customization, you kind of, you kind of, you know, take over like what the customizer currently does and bring that, you know, to Gutenberg and have like a block based site site customization experience. And so going from there to just having the entire admin experience be JavaScript based built on blocks like that. It's just a very small step.

It's very good to know that like a Gutenberg is not just a plugin right. On PHP to create an editor, but it's also use API to put the API to the WordPress. Yeah, that. That's why in the future we can close this and we have a lot more opportunity to interact with WordPress.

Right? Absolutely. Yeah. It provides a lot more freedom.

Another thing is like for this way do you feel have support from the community or like he like or doesn't like it or. I I saw a lot of bad review for can you share us because you talk a lot of people and you attend in the work for like 49 times. Right. Can you share us about this?

Sure, yeah. So when development of Bloomberg started over a year ago in the early stages of development, feedback wasn't great. People were not really excited about what they saw so far. It was a very early stage of development like I said. And so it was hard for people to see the potential. Right. But over the year and yeah was that 14, 15 months now that Bloomberg has been in development, that has definitely changed. So with Google Perk evolving and becoming more and more mature, people's opinion of it also have changed towards the positive. Absolutely. One of my missions I guess of 2017 was to go to as many workouts as I could, talk to people and kind of share my excitement for convert with them. Kind of show them like the potential for you know, their site, their business, their blogs in a, in a post convert world. And so I did that a lot, talked to a lot of people, not just me, but you know like the tag team as well and, and the team that I work with at Automatic. And so I think excitement is definitely building. You know when you look at work camp schedules nowadays, like every work camp has at least one group related session on their schedule as well. People ask for it. People come up to me all the time ask about group work and so I think the public opinion has definitely changed a lot towards the bottom. Absolutely.

Very cool. And for the business like operating or when you are using the press in.

Your business.

What do you think to be changed one thing like the future of a brand how affect your business and maybe you can suggest a lot of people that doing the business with a press, how we can like learn we can change with Gutenberg many things in in the future like an API rest API Gutenberg or anything Gutenberg like.

One of the main issues like Gutenberg still is not on board. So like you can't actually. It is still hard for companies and enterprise to use it for every day. So we are actually what we are like advising people and what we are actually trying to do. We want to see like how our product fit with Gutenberg. Like if we are using. If you have something to say, if you think like something is not working, if you feel like something should be included, just do it in a proper way like open up a cran or like 4 ticket or like start maybe a as an issue in like GitHub. And if you or your team could actually know and. And if you feel like you need to change or something people actually can contribute in the code and it's actually open for anybody and we actually advising companies to actually like shift more focus into Gutenberg and like help the project to shift and Automattic has taken like a tremendous effort to actually bring like master the process. So it's actually about rest of us, how we embrace them. And for business a lot of things will change. Like I have lot of involvement in publication industry. I run like to build lifestyle magazine in Bangladesh. So a lot of our experience in terms like how our journalists actually write content and how we publish them is going to change. If you ask me like if I'm worried because some of those publication is almost 8 years old or 10 years old. No, I'm not worried. Like I think like I have the bandwidth and like programming like developer resource to actually like make up with the whatever things coming in and we actually have enough time like this is February mid February and like it's like assume that we might actually release close to the what can Europe maybe so we have time could actually still like test and the whole editor, visual editor is still present as an example separate plugin or something. So if somebody really needs it, they still use it.

So you're asking about effects on businesses. Right. So one of the things that I talked a lot about last year too was see Gutenberg as a business opportunity. Right. So you said that the theme marketplace has slowed down significantly with the emergence of page builder plugins. So themes are really not something that. Yeah. So if you're. If you're looking for a business opportunity like looking into blocks that people would be interested in and creating plugins that provide these kinds of blocks like that would be. That would be you know the best way forward. Like there's going to be A huge demand for like custom things, you know, like your, I don't know, your Facebook integration, like your Facebook block. Right, Things like that. I'm sure that there's going to be a marketplace that's to going some point where people pay good money for the right, right kind of block.

Other thing we also see like I also run and we have like meetups quarterback meetup in Dhaka in my city before a lot of like guys who just have like some experience HTML and php. They're actually trying to customize the things and like do like freelancing kind of work. But like with Gutenberg World learning JavaScript is very important. But we are pushing the about like Journey Learning JavaScript since like 2015. Since 2015, what can fast what can be us? So right now like if somebody wants to work with WordPress he should actually learn JavaScript. That's the main advice to any new developers or any people who are like working on themes. Probably they could have like skipped just learning like jquery or something and customizing a lot of things. But now it's important actually non JavaScript.

Properly what a framework of that JavaScript yes to step.

That's the like long not ending battle. Like what that like JavaScript framework. Like people should choose. Like I do not want to recommend anything but like there are few things that people need to keep in mind. WordPress and Gutenberg is almost written in like vanilla JavaScript. So you are actually open to use whatever you want. But we have a lot of forecasts in like React and a lot of companies in WordPress already like given like good like forecasting React. Me in my company, we choose Vue JS. It's just because like we like writing JavaScript in JavaScript. Like I feel like React is more like Instagram. It's like it's like like the learning curves a little bit higher. At the same time I accept like React is far bigger ecosystem and like if you like if you want to build app or something native. React Native is actually amazing platform. So like if you have to learn like Vue js then have to do the app and React native, it doesn't make sense. So it's actually up to you. I will just Advise like learn JavaScript properly. The choice of like framework probably just shift from job to job, like project to project and embrace the technology. And you don't have to learn everything together. Just like learn one thing and like do it probably properly. That's what it takes.

Okay. Okay, thank you. Thank you. In a short like the future is like a WordPress view will become to the API oriented like everyone interact with API. Then the new way of creating theme or creating website will be move on JavaScript.

Right?

Yeah.

And you have anything else more and.

Let'S see like Gutenberg also in another way like all of us who are already using WordPress we know how to use WordPress. Rest of the people who use something else like Tumblr or a lot of different kind of experience. We will probably open a new door to a lot of people who are afraid of HTML who doesn't look at web in the old way. Everything for them is actually drag and drop and put things together. That's how they are using used to. So instead of like looking we are actually. That is actually scary for some people. Look at the way that we are opening a door for a lot of people. I understand. I feel as a developer our work is getting complex. Working with WordPress is getting complex with time. But that's how it is, that's how we evolve. It's actually 2018. We came a long way from where we started. So that's like the part of technology growing.

Do you have anything to share how we should change our mind to do the API? What to start?

Yeah, yeah. I think, I think the best advice that I can give is go look at the plugin if you're a developer, you know, look at the code like. Like you said, like it is. It is pretty much vanilla JavaScript. It's not. It's not too hard to learn the underlying infrastructure is written in react. Understand Gutenberg because that will be the future of WordPress literally. And if you are looking for WordPress based jobs in the future, understanding how this works is going to be essential. Other than that, don't see Gutenberg as a threat. See it as an opportunity because it is, it really is. And see like the upsets of it. And I'm excited for you know, May and the rest of the year when we start working on site customization that is block based.

Okay, thank you so much for our speaker and for this time. Do you have any question for the future of the press for the Gutenberg for the API? Anyone have a question, anything, anything to share about this?

Yeah, just a quick question about like plugins like advanced customer fields or types or those kind of plugins which have like you know, sort of blocks in a way. Developer, site creator, site developer would help their like myself, I'm using WordPress but I'm creating child theme or a custom theme using advanced custom feed.

Right.

So With Gutenberg, we're able to switch completely to Gutenberg only leaving Advanced Custom fields behind or, you know, or so future of that.

All right, so the question was with plugins like Advanced Custom Fields, how do they behave in a Gutenberg world? And I'm going to be able to use it or leave it behind and just use blooper. So yes and no.

Right.

Like, it depends. It depends on what you do with those custom fields and what kind of content they are. Right. So if they're like more kind of metadata. Right. You might not be able to use custom fields in the way that you're used to.

Right.

But this might be something that you might be able to extend Gutenberg with and create like a post meta sidebar item. I know with this specific example advanced Custom fields that they're also working on getting their plugin Gutenberg ready. And so depending on what type of data you have, they might just convert it into a content block. Right. If it's something that is content that can be displayed in a post, and if it's more meta information, it will live in the sidebar that you already have in Bloomberg. So my answer is it depends.

And then we really have to create another API for this view. Right. Because that is custom field for that post.

Right. So I'm pretty sure that, you know, the folks over at Advanced Custom Fields that they, you know, they have a vested interest in maintaining, keeping their plugin relevant as well. And so they will make sure that it will stay usable with Uber and not break back its limitability. On the other hand, the Gutenberg team as well. Right. So like the whole idea of post meta boxes and maintaining those in Gutenberg was a very contentious piece of the development process. But they're really close to a solution there that, you know, is working for developers.

Okay, any question, last question for now because we have to move if you.

Want to.

Any questions, please.

Also, if you have questions after, please feel free to come find us and ask them. And I want them happy to answer anything.

Okay then thank you very much for achieving.

Thank you.