163: What WordPress’ Gutenberg Update Means for You with Raquel Smith

In this episode, I talk about finding broken links and we chat with Raquel from WP Tasty, all about Gutenberg. Hey, everybody, this is Bjork Ostrom. You are listening to the Food BloggerPro podcast, which I'm guessing you know because you pressed play. But we are happy that you're here and we are so excited to share today's episode with you, which is brought to you by WP Tasty. And we're actually gonna be talking a lot about WordPress today. So excited to jump in and geek out a little bit on some really important changes that are coming down the line. But before we do that, I wanted to share a quick tasty tip. And for those of you that have listened to the podcast for a while, you know that every week we do a Tasty tip, which is a quick little tidbit that you can apply to your blog. And over time, if you start to apply all these little tasty tips, hopefully you'll have a little snowball of positive effects that come from it. So today's tasty tip is all about Google Search Console. And for those of you that are Food Blogger Pro members, be sure to check out the Happening now video that we did. Because in this video, I talk about the process that we built out, the quarterly process to do a really deep dive on Google Search Console and review the really important elements of it. And on the podcast today, I want to talk about one specific area, and that is the HTML improvements. And if you click on, if you go into Google Search Console and then you click on search appearance and then HTML improvements, there's gonna be a list of different things that you can do on your site that Google is saying, these are improvements that you can make that will help your site communicate more clearly about certain things. Now, it's not gonna guarantee that you're gonna rank higher, and it's not gonna guarantee that, you know, you'll move up in front of other pieces of content. But it's just Google saying, hey, these are some issues that would probably be worth changing. For example, you might have a meta description, which is the little description that tells people what your piece of content about your post or your page that is really short, and that's not a good thing. And Google will tell you if it notices any of those on your site. You could also have maybe some meta descriptions that are duplicates. They say the same thing, even though it's for a different post or page. If you go into Google Search Console in the HTML improvements area, you'll see if Google has found any of those on your site. And the great thing is Google Search Console is free. So the tasty tip today is to make sure that you take a moment and review your HTML improvements and make those improvements and changes and they should be relatively easy to do and you'll clear those warnings out and you can make sure that your site is nice and clean and doesn't have any suggested HTML improvements. So that's a quick tasty tip for today. Brought to you by wptasty, the go to place for for any of your WordPress plugin needs, especially if you are a food blogger. We have tasty recipes. We also have Tasty Pins and tasty links I actually wanted to read a quick testimonial here from Shane Martin. Shane is from Shane and Simple and he has a really cool story. I was actually checking out Shane's site and Shane his little Bio says former 300 pound lover of all things drive thru and deep fried. Now I cook food that is plant based, easy and delicious which is awesome. And Shane left a testimonial for Tasty Pins. He said Tasty Pins is an absolute game changer. Not the most organized person in the world. And until Tasty Pins came along it was so hard to keep up with all the required info for my Pinterest images. Now I can easily add descriptive alt text for my images while I'm editing or constructing my latest post in WordPress. Tastypins has eliminated all the extra steps and saves me a ton of time. Has also helped me increase my Pinterest traffic which increases blog traffic, which increases dollar traffic. Cha Ching. Thanks so much wptasty. And thank you Shane for sharing your testimonial and for sharing your story as well and would encourage everybody to check out shanend simple.com and we'll link to that in the show notes as well. And that is a wrap for the Tasty tip. But we're actually going to be Talking more about WordPress here in this interview with Raquel and Raquel is the person that kind of does all the behind the scenes things and front facing things for for WP Tasty. She leads that effort along with our team there. So Daniel and Anne who will talk about and I'm involved as well. And one of the big things that we're Preparing for for WordPress is this thing called Gutenberg and maybe you've heard about it, maybe you haven't, but it's really important if you use WordPress that you're aware of this change that is coming down the line in the next few months and are aware of how that will impact not only what WordPress looks like and how it works, but also some of those really important plugins that you use with when you are editing a WordPress post. So let's go ahead and jump into the interview, chatting about WordPress and Gutenberg. Raquel, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks, Bjork. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, good to have you back. Uh, you are an experienced podcast guest. You've been on a couple times now, is that right?

Uh, two. I knew at least twice. Two.

You might be the first person ever to be on the podcast more than two times. So congratulations. You receive your trophy in the mail.

All right, I'll be looking for it. I'll hang it on the wall.

Great. So for those that aren't familiar, that haven't listened to previous podcasts, can you explain a little bit about what you do here on the team and some of the efforts that you lead both with wptasty and some of the things you do with Food Blogger Pro as well?

Yeah. So I'm heading up the WP Tasty project under you, Bjork. So I manage all of our product development, I oversee our support, and I do all of our web development. I do some of the minor plugin development, but the vast majority of that is done by a gentleman named Daniel Bachhuber, who we work with. So I oversee the plugin development and then, yeah, do lots of. Well, I try and write content, just do lots of everything that's involved for running WP Tasty. And then I have a really small role right now with Food Blogger Pro and Nutrafox, but some small web development for Food Blogger Pro and then Nutrafox, some support occasionally.

Yeah. Awesome. And one of the things that you were kind in including me in WPTacey, and I'm a part of it and jump in and out of the things that we're doing and test and we kind of bounce ideas off of each other. But huge kudos to you and Daniel for doing a lot of the implementation, the groundwork for those plugins. And today when we're recording this, not when we release it, actually new version of Tasty Recipes is coming out and this is an especially exciting version of Tasty Recipes. And it has to do with the topic that we're talking about today, but version 1.6.0. Right. Can you talk about why that's such a big deal and kind of that'll be our transition into talking about this, this printing press idea, this thing called Gutenberg. But before we do that. You can talk about this big update that we have.

Yeah. So it actually started in version 1.5.0, which we released earlier this month. And it was kind of a quiet thing. We slipped into that version. But that version did introduce some support for Gutenberg, which is what we're going to be talking about. But there was still a couple things that needed some tweaking, needed some fine tuning. The 1.6.0, which came out today, as we're recording this, today is July 31st. That one has official full support for Gutenberg in tasty recipes.

Got it. And that's a big deal. Took a lot of effort and development and testing. And so Daniel's not on the podcast, but want to give him a shout out. And then Ann, who's the incredible support person on the WP Tasty Team and does a lot of the frontline support, is a huge part of the team as well. So I want to acknowledge her. And so we have this really big release coming out and it's a really big thing in general for WordPress. So we thought, hey, it makes sense. He said, I think it would make sense to come on and talk about this thing called Gutenberg, because for the vast majority of people that listen to the FoodbuggerPro podcast, they are running their site on WordPress. And now there's this new word, there's this thing called Gutenberg that's coming out and we maybe know it's coming out or that it's important, but we don't have a really good understanding of what it is. So let's start super high level and say, okay, we know the word WordPress and we know that's a CMS maybe, but let's take a little bit of time and define that and why it's important to understand that as we dive into the Gutenberg conversation.

Yeah. So WordPress is, like you said, a CMS. CMS stands for content Management System. And it basically is a platform that allows you to create content and push one button and that content magically appears on your website that your visitors can see. And that I think when you are just kind of using it, it's like, yeah, that's how it works. I press publish and it's published. But there's actually a lot that goes on behind the scenes for that to work. It looks totally different when you're writing the content out than it does when your visitors see it. And those pages have to be created on the fly when the visitor loads it. There's just, there's a lot of Cogs that turn in the back end. And that's what your CMS is. It's not only the place where you write your content, but it handles all the publishing of that content onto your live website for you.

Got it. And so a CMS could be something. WordPress is probably the most popular one, but people maybe have also heard of Blogger or they've heard of Weebly or Squarespace. All of those would be content management systems as well, correct?

That's correct.

Got it. And WordPress is kind of this unique CMS in that there's both a kind of a premium version that is, it's kind of a locked down version that maybe doesn't do as much. It's not as flexible, but really, really easy to use. And then there's this other version called Open Source that is basically open to anybody and you don't have to pay for it, but it's a little bit more manual, you have to do a little bit more setup with it, but it allows for maybe a little bit more flexibility. So can you talk about the difference between those two types of WordPress, even though they're both WordPress, what's the difference between those two?

Yeah, so WordPress.com is the managed solution. And by managed I mean they are your host. They are oftentimes, but they don't have to be your domain registrar. So where you purchase your domain name, you can do that@WordPress.com if you use their service. They also manage all the updates and it's also private. So they run WordPress Core just like anybody who uses WordPress.org but they also build on top of that to give their customers different features.

Got it. And so before you get too far in, when you say private, what do you mean by that?

Meaning that it's not open source. So for instance, WordPress.org, which is what I would say most food bloggers use, you can go to the WordPress.org site, you can download the actual files that are running on your website or that you want to run on your website, you can edit them. But more importantly, Open Source oftentimes is open contributor. So that code base lives on the Internet in any way can edit it. There are lots of controls to make sure that there aren't malicious edits. So you know, everything has to be reviewed. But if you, you know, if any listener listening here ever decides that, hey, I want to contribute to WordPress Core, then you can do that. Anybody can do that, which is really cool. It's really a community grown project. WordPress is. So WordPress.org is the open source version. WordPress.com is private. So they, they use, I don't know the specifics, but they use the vast majority of the WordPress.org code and then they build on top of it and they charge a premium for that service. WordPress.com is not the only managed options. There are other similar options like that out there, but WordPress.com is oftentimes the most confusing one because of the name overlap.

Got it. This is not a complete analogy and it probably falls apart pretty quickly, but I kind of imagine the difference between like if you were ordering a new table, getting one from Ikea versus getting one that's like completed and shipped to you, where you're going to pay a little bit more, the shipping is maybe going to be a little bit more, but it's like you get this table and it's all complete and it's set.

Up versus Ikea to like decide where it goes in your house, maybe put a rug underneath and buy some place nuts. But, but in general, yeah, I think that's a decent analogy. We won't take it too far though.

Otherwise we got to stop right now, right?

The proverbial T will fall apart.

Yes, exactly. So why would people not just use WordPress.com if it's easier, if they take care of it? What's the advantage of using the open Source version? The WordPress.org version?

Yeah. So previously, I'd say about a year ago, the big thing was that you couldn't install any plugin that you wanted on WordPress.com they said this is the feature set and you take what you get. And we have a lot of different, they had a lot of different features that would work for a lot of different people, but you couldn't install a third party plugin, for instance. You had to use the features that they had about a year ago that changed a little bit. And so if you have what's called their business account, and I forget what the price point is for that, but it's a premium plan for WordPress.com that has, I don't know, better support more features. If you have a business account@WordPress.com, then you can now use third party plugins. So that was really a defining difference between the two. Now that you can install third party plugins, it's actually a viable option for bloggers, I think, and it is nice to get Support from the WordPress.com team. So yeah, now that you can install third party plugins the difference is not nearly as stark.

Yeah. And do you know where they stand right now on advertisement that I know that was a big thing. Ads and affiliate and affiliates they were there is restrictive in terms of what types of advertising you could integrate with and the type of affiliate marketing you could do. I know that was another big hang up, especially for food blogs, for people that were interested in creating an income primarily from ads and potentially from affiliate as well. I know they're restrictive on that at a point.

So it says on their website, I'm looking right now, it says if you'd like to self manage third party ad networks because they have one called Word ads that you can premium or business plans can use. But it says if you'd like to self manage third party ad networks, those options are available on WordPress.com business plans.

Got it, Got it. So it's interesting, it sounds like they year ago, two years ago, like you said, there was kind of these restrictions that made it more difficult and kind of an obvious choice to say hey, you know, we're not going to go through WordPress.com now it sounds like they're kind of listening and saying okay, maybe there are some things that we're going to change and adjust. But the general idea, historically running A self hosted WordPress.org site allows you for lots of flexibility and not as many restrictions. So that's the reason why many, many people that are, especially people that are using WordPress are using a self hosted WordPress site. Got it. So we understand WordPress, we understand a content management system. We also understand, hey, this is going to be a really good solution for a lot of people. If you aren't, if you haven't started a website or if you're in the beginning stages, it's kind of the go to place because so many people use it. And because so many people use it, there's a lot of options and integrations. But now there's this big thing kind of shaking up the WordPress industry called Gutenberg. So what is Gutenberg? I mean we know historically who Gutenberg was and why the printing press was important. But what is this new version of Gutenberg?

When I first heard that word, I was like, what's Gutenberg? I also am not a history buff whatsoever. So Gutenberg invented the printing press. Well, I was looking it up on Wikipedia the other day. It does not say he invented the printing press.

Oh, maybe he gets credit for it.

It says he brought the printing press to Europe in I don't know what year.

Sure.

But that's what Wikipedia says. So I don't know the specifics. Like I said, I'm not a history buff, but Gutenberg has something to do with the printing press in Europe a few hundred years ago. A while ago.

Perfect.

So what Gutenberg is, and the reason it's called Gutenberg, is because it's really a new way of publishing with WordPress. And just as the printing press was a new way of publishing content, you know, back in hundreds of years ago, I don't even know what century it was.

We were in this bookstore and the. It was a theological historical book bookstore. And so they had these ancient books and there's this book sitting out and it was like, guess the day this is. They said it was the oldest book in the bookstore. And guess the date of this book. And it's like Lindsay and I looked at each other and we're like, it could be 1801 or like 1200. We knew it wasn't 1200. But like, I feel like once you go back into, like, the history of publishing, it's like, when did, when did published books become a thing? I think it was 1400s.

That's what I was thinking, But I was like, no, 1492 is when Columbus sailed the ocean blue. So that's gotta be the wrong century.

That's really funny.

So according to Wikipedia, Johannes Gutenberg's work on the printing press began in approximately 1436.

There we go.

So, yes, hundreds of years ago, he really changed how books were published. They used to be handwritten or stamped or whatever. And then the printing press came along and it really speeded that type of thing up. And so it was a total change for how words were published. And Gutenberg with WordPress maybe isn't going to cause quite the shakeup globally as the printing press in Europe did, but it is a giant change in the WordPress ecosystem. So it's basically everything that looks familiar to you when you go to add a new post and everything that's there, that's all totally going to change. And the idea is that with publishing in WordPress right now, it's kind of like you have a Word document. You can type things out, you can bold things, you can underline things, add images, all stuff you can do with a Word document. But if you want to do anything more complicated, it's really complicated. And then I was thinking of an analogy earlier. I was like, how do I explain this? So Gutenberg is kind of like if the classic editor, what you're used to right now using is like using Microsoft Word to write up a document. Gutenberg is akin to opening up Adobe illustrator or Adobe InDesign, I should say, and using a much more powerful tool for making great layouts and complex web pages.

Sure. And one of the things that I would guess would happen is people would hear that. They'd maybe Hear Illustrator or InDesign and they'd think, oh, those are super, super complicated and hard to use. Will that be true for Gutenberg? Do you think people will struggle with it or is it part of it? This combination of making something new, more flexible allows you to do more, but also still easy to use. Because I think that's one of the things that people like about WordPress is that it's relatively approachable.

I think that people who have been using WordPress, when they first go into it, they're gonna be like, what the heck? I don't know where any of the buttons are. This is, you know, this is horrible. That would be my reaction, because when you're used to something, even if it's extremely complicated, that's what you want to do. That's what, like, feels good to you. But I think if someone new is to jump into a Gutenberg website or a Gutenberg WordPress site, they'll find it really intuitive and easy to use. And I think the people who are used to the old way, it'll only take a week or two to get used to the new way. And then you'll really like is simple to use. The things are, you know, it'll just be a little bit of a struggle because things are in different locations and you have to find them. But it should be really simple to use. Definitely not as complicated as something like InDesign is. It's also not going to be as powerful as something like InDesign is for, you know, layout. Not that it couldn't be, but it's just not really necessary. So it won't be as complicated as using something like InDesign. There will be a bit of a struggle for people who are used to the old one, but they'll get used to it.

Yeah, it's like when I. Maybe a different version is when I have an iPhone X. And before, when I had the other version, it would have a little button that I would scan my finger in and that's what would unlock it. And the iPhone X doesn't have any buttons, or at least not to unlock the phone. And I remember getting it and thinking like, oh, my gosh, everything is different. And I've been using an iPhone for however long it was five, six, seven years. How am I going to relearn this? And I found within 24 hours I kind of had picked up on it. But it's like you have to rewire your brain a little bit. And then I imagine with Gutenberg there's going to be some of that brain rewiring to say, okay. Especially if you are somebody who spends a lot of time drafting content, you're going to have these really well carved paths for how you put an image in, for instance, and that's not going to be the same. So is there. What if people want to get a feel for it? How can you. Is there a place you can go to test it or like an example of what it looks like? What would be the options for getting a feel for what this actually looks like and how it works?

Yeah, so someone named Tom J. Noel, I'm not really familiar with who this person is, but he made something called Frontenberg and it's basically he finagled things so that when you go to this website, it's called frontenberg.tomjn.com. when you go to that website, it loads up something that looks like the WordPress admin area. And he ported in all the Gutenberg functionality. So you can actually modify content on the page and play with it, see how the blocks work. We'll talk about blocks. And you can really mess around with it a little bit in a very simplified way because there's no plugins that he has installed on this site that you might use on your blog, but you can get a little bit of a feel for how it functions.

Got it. Cool. So we'll link to that in the show notes. If people want to get a feel for how it works, you can go frontenburg.tomjn.com and really cool kind of demo that he's spun up. One of the things you had mentioned was blocks. And when people go to this example site, they'll be able to see that. What is a block and why is that something that's important to know about and how do they function? Why do we need to know about them?

Yeah, so Gutenberg is blocks. That is like the main thing that Gutenberg is. So just as in, you know, if you're using a design tool, like maybe Canva is a better analogy than Adobe InDesign. If you want to add some paragraph, you create a box and you put your paragraph text in there and then you can drag an image in and add an image and each of those elements is a different piece in Canva. And so that's the same. That's kind of the idea of what Gutenberg and its blocks are. So everything is a block. Every single paragraph that you write is a block. And they're really easy to add. You just hit enter, you won't even know you're adding a new block for when it comes to paragraphs, but everything in there is a block. And what that enables you to do is it enables you to add different types of blocks for different types of content that you wouldn't have been able to add before or that was kind of difficult to add before. So, for instance, say on your blog post, you were, you know, most, most people who listen to this podcast are food bloggers. So say on your blog post, you know, above the blog post, you have some, you know, little, little widgets that say what category the recipe is in, and. And you know, what cuisine it's a part of. What if you wanted to put those, like, somewhere in the middle of your blog post, and maybe you wouldn't want to do that. I don't know. But doing that kind of thing used to be more difficult with the classic editor, but now with Gutenberg, you'll be able to just click an add block button and drop it in there, and then you're good to go. So it's going to make publishing a lot more flexible and a lot more powerful. And, yeah, every single thing that's in there is a block.

Got it. So that makes sense. It's kind of like switching from right now. If you use WordPress, you can imagine it's kind of like just one long run on piece of paper. Like, you have it all in front of you and you can add stuff in there, but it's not like it views that necessarily as little separate areas. Whereas with Gutenberg, it's kind of saying, okay, each paragraph, each heading, each image, a quote area. Like, we're going to treat this all as kind of a separate thing. And when you go in and use it, it actually feels nice to have that separated out and just the interface feels a little bit more updated. It feels like you have control over a little bit more. So is that why WordPress is doing this? Is that why they said, hey, we need to move forward on Gutenberg because it's a UI thing? Or are there other reasons why it's an important thing for WordPress to be doing?

I think a driving factor is because WordPress.com, which does contribute a lot to WordPress.org core development, and they drive a lot of New features that an open source community might not take on on their own. So WordPress.com I think, and I might be incorrect about this, but I think what happened is they're like, okay, people really like the visual type editors that you can find in Squarespace. For instance, you lay out your content and then you press go and then you visit that page and it looks the same, same or nearly the same on the front end as it does on the back. So they saw this need and this desire from people and they're like, how do we go about building that? And their answer was Gutenberg. So the idea behind Gutenberg is that you are much more and it won't be a total one for one, but you are going to get a much better approximation of what your content will look like on the front end as you're building it on the back end. And that's what's cool about Gutenberg. And I think it won't be like when Gutenberg really goes into effect, it won't be as amazing as it possibly could. But I think as people start to create themes and plugins around Gutenberg specifically, then we'll start to reach more of that ideal spot where what you are publish or creating on the back end looks exactly the same as what you're publishing on the front.

Got it? Yeah, that makes sense. Kind of this evolution where the first version that people start to use might not be the best version, but the idea being over time it's going to be a little bit more of an actual, they call it wysiwyg. So for those listening that aren't familiar with what that is, what you see is what you get. And many, many sites, like you said, Squarespace or you know, kind of some of these paid for premium content management systems have a pretty good system or have a pretty good editor for that WYSIWYG feel. What you see is what you get. The WordPress post and page editor hasn't always been like that. So this will bring about that evolution, hopefully get people a little bit closer and over time even more closer. So the big thing I think people are wondering is like, okay, this, I haven't really seen it before. Most people listening probably don't have Gutenberg as part of their site. So what does it look like for the rollout to happen and when should we expect to see it with our own sites?

Yeah, so today, July 31st is actually the first stage in the rollout for Gutenberg in WordPress Core. So WordPress Core does not have any Gutenberg code in it yet, and I shouldn't say not any. But the actual code for Gutenberg, what, what really runs it is as a plugin that you can Download from the WordPress.org Plugin repository. And so I think the update 4.9.8 is supposed to go out today. And what that is going to do is that's going to include a call out. So once you update, you'll see a call out on your blog somewhere that says, try Gutenberg. If you don't want to try Gutenberg, install the Classic Editor plugin. And the Classic Editor plugin will prevent Gutenberg from running on your website if for some reason there's functionality on your website that does not work with Gutenberg.

Got it.

So that's. We can jump into that more.

Yeah. Okay, so that's interesting. It's kind of a tiered rollout. So first they're saying you can install this plugin. And one of the things that you'd mentioned a couple times was this idea of WordPress Core. Can you explain what, what that is and the difference between a plugin and WordPress core?

Yeah. So when you just start your website, some hosts will install other stuff, like they'll pre install some plugins, but most of the time or a lot of the time, it's pretty bare bones. What you're running when you first install WordPress is WordPress Core. And it's all the basic functionality. You can publish posts, you can publish pages, you can have comments so that assuming your theme supports them. And then there are themes, which is the paint on your website, how it looks. Sometimes themes introduce functionality, but usually that's left to what's called a plugin. Plugins are additional functionality added on to WordPress core that not everyone will need. So they're not included in WordPress Core for everyone, but that you and other people may need for your website.

Got it. It's kind of like I like to think of a car and you have your base car and then you can do aftermarket parts so you could get like, I don't know if this exists, but a really cool muffler. I've never gotten any aftermarket parts for my cars, but WordPress Core kind of being like the base car, and then you have your aftermarket parts where you could get, you know, spinner rims or something like that that you can add as aftermarket parts. Right now Gutenberg is an aftermarket part, but eventually it'll be part of the base car. Like it'll be the thing that you get when you install it. So do we know when exactly that will happen?

So that there's no official date on that, but the goal is to have it merged into WordPress Core, and that update will be WordPress 5.0. And the goal for that was sometime in August, so I don't imagine it'll be early August, probably late August. I wouldn't be surprised if it was in September, but within the next couple months it should be coming through. And I don't think we'll do another blog or podcast about it, but we'll be talking about it on Food Blogger Pro and on the WPTASTY blog, when that kind of stuff can be expected.

Great. So how do people go about preparing for it? It seems like a really big change, and my guess is that there are some things that people need to do, or can we just assume, hey, things are going to work and it's going to be a change in how the information is presented, but it's not going to actually break anything.

So I can't speak for all plugins because there's a lot of plugins out there, but for the most part, content that you already have is going to stay the same when the user loads it on the page. What's going to be different is that when, when you go to create a new post, you will be using the Gutenberg editor, and things that you expect to be there may or may not be there. So it's definitely not something that I would just install and then hope for the best because it's such a big change. So Gutenberg is a fundamental, complete rewrite of how editing happens in WordPress. And because of that, anything that modifies any plugins that modify or change or enhance the editing experience in WordPress for the classic editor, those out of the box are not going to work with Gutenberg because it's even. I mean, it's so fundamentally different that it's using a completely different computer language or web language. It's using JavaScript, React Index instead of PHP, which WordPress is built with. And so any plugins that aren't specifically making updates to be compatible with the new Gutenberg editor, if those plugins are utilized within the editing functionality of WordPress, then they won't work. So, for instance, with WP Tasty Tasty Recipes, we've been working a lot on making sure it'll continue to work with the classic editor, but it will also work with the Gutenberg editor.

Got it. I was just going to say this may be the ultimate example of a plugin that uses the editor, and not only the editor, but it's a really, really important piece of the piece of content. If you have a food blog or recipe blog, the recipe kind of is the thing, and it's all done within the editing interface. And so if you have a plugin like that, it's probably the kind of thing where you'd want to reach out to the plugin developer. Is there any way that you could test it to see or if people want to give Gutenberg a spin on their site? What if they just installed it just to see how it works? If they do and it doesn't work, does it kind of blow everything up? Or what does that look like in terms of testing it out? Or should people wait just as long as possible?

I don't recommend waiting as long as possible. It's not imperative that you do it immediately, but I really would. I would try and make sure that everything's gonna work as you expect it to, as soon as you can. So I wrote a blog post about this on the wptasty blog, and you can go to wptasty.com Gutenberg to read that blog post. And that walks you through these steps that I'm going to talk about. So if you get lost or you want some more information, then you can head over there. So what I would recommend is I would recommend setting up what's called a search staging site. And most hosts offer staging sites. You know, any of the large hosts, you're going to be able to set up a staging site. And what that is is they take your blog post, or I'm sorry, they take your website as it is and they port the content over to a different website. And then you can make changes to that different website at the staging URL and test how everything's working using all the plugins that you're currently using, the theme you're currently using, everything is the same excep. That's not your live website. So you can test changes there. So I recommend getting in contact with your host, figuring out how you can set up a staging site and then install the Gutenberg plugin, which we'll also link in the resources and install that and give it a shot, see how it works.

That makes sense. One of the things I think that's important to point out is this idea that, like you said, as soon as possible, you want to see what's working and not working, but you don't want to do that as soon as possible, possible on your live site, because that's going to be a Lot more stressful than if you have a site that's not live, that's, that's hidden, that's kind of your test site. It's your playground. It's where you can go and you know, kind of kick, kick the dirt and not worry about getting the walls dirty. Uh, and analogy, feel free to use that however you want. I have no idea what type of room would have dirt and walls, but if there was one, the comparable analogy.

Of analogy and bad analogies at that.

So you can, it's like kicking the tires but kicking the dirt against the wall where you can get a feel for it, make sure that it's working okay and then know and feel confident that when it is included in WordPress Core that it's not going to be this scramble. That's going to be something that's really nerve wracking to implement. So what about with themes and plugins? Let's say you install it and, and we talked about tasty recipes, how that was a really big thing today that we pushed out compatibility for Gutenberg. But how do people know if their other plugins and themes will work with Gutenberg?

Yeah. So what you're going to want to do is go to your installed plugins list and look at every single one of the plugins that you have and think critically about does this plugin affect my editing experience? When I am creating a post, do I interact with this plugin? So an example of a plugin or three plugins in fact that interact with the WordPress WordPress editing experience are tasty recipes and tasty pins and tasty links for that matter. So all three of our plugins do you're creating your blog post in the Post Editor and then when you want to add a recipe as you're in the post editor, you click the add recipe button. That is functionality inside the editor. With a plugin that doesn't really interact with the post editor would be something like Akismet, which is the spam comment moderator. So that's a really important plugin, but it doesn't really need Gutenberg support because you don't do anything with the editor with Akismet. So look at all your plugins and see which ones actually that you actually use in the post editor and make a list of those. You know, open up a Google Sheets document or Excel if you use desktop apps and make a list of all your plugins, which ones are affect the editing experience and then go open a new post in your staging site. And this is after you've installed Gutenberg, of course, and then go through each one of those plugins and try to use that plugin. You know, see, is there a block that I need to add for this plugin if I would expect it to be a block. Does that blog exist? Just because a block doesn't exist for a certain plugin doesn't mean that it doesn't have Gutenberg support. Not everything is a block. So for instance, tastypin's functionality won't require its own block. It'll just be, you add an image and then you'll be able to add your Pinterest text to the image just like you do now. So we're still. That isn't fully ready to go with Gutenberg, because we still have to introduce support for that. It just doesn't get its own block. So really just go through your plugins and make lists or make notes in your list, in your little spreadsheet and see which functionality exists that you would expect to exist, which functionality doesn't exist, which things don't work quite right and keep some good notes and that way you'll know which plugins of yours are going to work with Gutenberg and which ones won't.

Got it.

Great.

And like you mentioned, that would probably be something that would be good to do, not necessarily like you have to do it today, otherwise everything's gonna blow up when your site switches over. But hey, if this is gonna be something that's included in WordPress Core, it's gonna be part of the editing experience for sure. You wanna make sure that stuff is prepared and that you have a good understanding of how your site will work and what things will look like when that switch happens sometime in the next. We can probably confidently say. And by saying probably, it doesn't mean probably confidently. Probably confidently is naturally not confident. You can probably say within the next few months. It's hard to say because there is talk of Gutenberg being earlier than it is right now. And I wouldn't be surprised if there are delays with that, even with the expected launch of what it is. But within the next few months, ish, we can say that's what happens by.

The end of the year.

So it's important to know and important to understand what's happening with it. So if people want to follow along with Gutenberg, if they're feeling a little bit nerdy and are interested in paying closer attention to that, where would they go?

I actually subscribe to the WP Tavern, which is run by WordPress.com I think it's actually Owned by Matt Mullenwig, but I subscribe to their newsletter and it's general WordPress news. But I found that to be the best source of up to date Gutenberg information. Anything big that happens, they'll write a blog post on and I get a little email about it. So I think that's a good source. Yeah, I will. Anything big that happens. Like I said, we'll be posting about it on the wptasty blog. But yeah.

Awesome. And Raquel, if people want to touch base with you to connect with you somehow, what would be the best way to do that? Obviously we have our support, but that's not necessarily for just connecting with you. Is there a way that people can reach out to you?

Yeah, you can email me raquelptasty.com and that goes. That goes to me for anything that's not really support related. If you have a support related question for our plugins, obviously you can go to or you can email hello@wptasty.com or if you have questions about Gutenberg, head over to WP tasty.com gutenberg and you can leave a comment on that blog post and I can help you out there too.

Awesome. Raquel, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. You are officially our number one guest on the podcast. Actually, Lindsey might be right up there with you, so she might have you beat. And then right after Lindsay.

I think she's technically a co host though.

Yeah, she would maybe be the co host. So you, you are officially the most popular guest on the Food Blogger Pro podcast. So thanks for coming on.

Yeah, sure thing, Bjork. Hey guys.

Alexa here bringing you the Food Blogger Pro podcast reviewer of the week. And I just want to say that we love this section of the podcast because so much of the of what we do relies on you as listeners, as members, as creators, as doers, as get stuff done. Ers. We just so appreciate that you're along for this journey with us and we want to highlight you and celebrate you. So this review on itunes comes from kim@kickassbaker.com and it says, I'm so happy I found Food Blogger Pro and this podcast. I'm a brand new blogger and the amount of useful information, tips and guides from Bjork, Lindsay and the Food Blogger Pro community have accelerated my launch into this space so much quicker than I could have imagined. For me, the absolute best part of this podcast is Bjork's ability to share his knowledge and extract knowledge out of his guests in a way that's incredibly useful and easy to apply his and Lindsay's generosity in sharing with their community what they've learned and continue to learn makes me want to be more generous and give back as well. Thank you for continuing to inspire us every day. Kimickassbaker.com well, thank you so much Kim and I absolutely agree. I love that Bjork and Lindsay are just so open with all of their knowledge and all of the lessons that they've learned, the good, the bad, the ugly and the super helpful. So I really love that you appreciate that as well. One last thing, if you are a Food Blogger Pro member right now, Bjork and Raquel will be doing a live Q and a this Thursday, August 16th at 1:00pm Eastern or 12:00pm Central to answer all of your questions about Gutenberg WordPress plugins, all of that fun stuff. So you definitely don't want to miss it. You can go to foodbloggerpro.com gutenberg to register and ask your questions and we'll see you there. Thanks so much for tuning in. We appreciate you all so much and from all of us here at FPP hq, make it a great week.