EP456 – Gutenberg: More Than WordPress

Jason Cosper

Jason Tucker
episode number 456 of WPwatercooler Gutenberg more than WordPress.

Sé Reed
[laughter]

Jason Tucker
I’m Jason Tucker. You can find me over at Jason Tucker.blog.

Sé Reed
I thought that was a guillotine. [laughter]

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
Oh hey, I’m Sé Reed. I do stuff. Make WordPress, teach WordPress, preach WordPress, @savethemedium on the things. (indistinct)

Jason Cosper
And y’all know who it is. It’s your boy, Jason Cosper, AKA Fat Moe. We’ll be back at it again on the world’s most influential WordPress podcast.

Sé Reed
What, what?

Jason Cosper

Jason Tucker
Speaking of that podcast, go and find us wherever it is that you listen to amazing podcasts,

Sé Reed
You know, if they’re listening,

Jason Tucker
and you can come hang out with us amazing people over on our Discord. Links in the description below.

Sé Reed
aren’t they already listening?

Jason Tucker
No.

Sé Reed
Is that just in case they’re already not listening to the podcast, you’re like subscribe, right? Just like and subscribe.

Jason Tucker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Sé Reed
‘Cause I mean, they’re listening somewhere or watching.

Jason Tucker
Well, they’re watching. They’re like, wait, this is a podcast too.

Sé Reed
Watching, are you watching? (laughs)

Jason Tucker
Oh, so cool.

Sé Reed
Wait, what’s happening? I never realized.

Jason Tucker
I could totally just listen to this instead of watching these people.

Jason Cosper
Huh? Oh, a song, please. Kick us off. Kick us off.

Sé Reed
You know, you’d miss out on a lot, I gotta say.

Jason Tucker
That’s awesome. Yeah. [ Pause ]

Sé Reed
There’s a lot of expressions and stuff. In fact, I have something I want you to pull up on the screen for today’s topic, but we’ll get to it. Who wants to talk about today’s topic? because I have a song to sing about it. (laughs) I don’t wanna do too much

Jason Cosper
It’s fair use. It’s fine.

Sé Reed
because copyright infringements and stuff. I’m just gonna go, ♪ More than WordPress ♪

Jason Cosper

Jason Tucker
Awesome. To the olds.

Sé Reed
That’s all I wanted to do. That’s it. Just in case the Milli Vanilli references

Jason Cosper
[silence]

Sé Reed
were not picked up. I just really wanted that to be, I wanted to be sure that we all understood because I think that the Milli Vanilli reference is actually very relevant to, it’s not just a clever title, it’s actually deeper than that. That’s what I think.

Jason Tucker
(laughing)

Sé Reed
Well, no, the,

Jason Tucker
(laughing)

Sé Reed
I mean, only in so far as that we know what happened.

Jason Tucker
(laughing) (laughing)

Jason Cosper
[LAUGHTER]

Sé Reed
Like, yeah, so for those who are younger,

Jason Tucker
[LAUGHS]

Sé Reed
are those people listening to the show?

Jason Cosper

Sé Reed
I don’t know, but if anyone doesn’t know, Milli Vanilli was a R&B, I think, R&B act, musical act in the 80s, 90s, somewhere in there,

Jason Cosper
[silence]

Sé Reed
for all us millennial children. And they were lip syncers and they were exposed for lip syncing and not being, basically being a front band, like a band that wasn’t really a band.

Jason Tucker
Now we just have AI that just does all of it in one shot

Sé Reed
It was just one of the first exposés.

Jason Cosper

Jason Tucker
instead of having to just fake another thing, yeah. (laughing)

Sé Reed
And one of the, I think maybe, you know, before,

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
like if someone was like being dubbed or like, like this was different. ‘Cause you know, there’s that whole like Ashley Simpson thing where she like lip synced on SNL. Suddenly this is a pop culture show,

Jason Cosper
Right.

Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper
[AUDIO OUT]

Sé Reed
but I swear there’s a reference here. So like that was a big deal, but that was somebody who would also sing, who was doing lip syncing like people do at concerts

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
or whatever with backing tracks. But Milli Vanilli, just to refresh everyone’s memory about this really important time in our lives,

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
they actually didn’t sing at all. They just pretended.

Jason Cosper
Right.

Sé Reed
They were just the pretty face. Right, right.

Jason Cosper
I think it wouldn’t have been an issue had Auto-Tune been

Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper
thing back then because they would have just auto-tuned their vocals. They would have been just fine. Yeah. Great.

Sé Reed
So it’s like, you know, this is this one kind of moment in time where like the curtain kind of fell back because like they were trying to like really push this act,

Jason Cosper

Sé Reed
you know, that was like not really the act and everyone was in on it. And I just think that it’s interesting. I’m not gonna go too far into the analysis, but if you’re having some time later and you just wanna think about how that could be relevant

Jason Tucker
[laughs]

Sé Reed
to WordPress and our discussions in general, I invite you to think about that. You know what?

Jason Cosper

Sé Reed
I invite you to think about it deeply, in fact. That’s all I have to say.

Jason Tucker
With that said, let’s get into the guillotine that you were just talking about earlier in the intro. So that is the Gutenberg press, and literally used thousands of times over in talking about

Sé Reed
Oh my God, it totally looks like a guillotine.

Jason Cosper

Sé Reed
[laughs] He had a picture of the Gutenberg press on the intro for those of you who are listening as a podcast.

Jason Cosper
[silence]

Sé Reed
I really thought it was a guillotine.

Jason Tucker
Gutenberg, so yeah, there was that. So yeah, the… You know, we…

Sé Reed
I was like, look, we don’t need that imagery. We’re not coming for anybody yet, yet.

Jason Tucker
So what’s interesting about doing a show like this is that we, you know, two weeks ago we

Sé Reed
Jason Tucker
came up with this topic and now I’m trying to like go through text messages to figure out like why did we want to talk about this?

Sé Reed
[laughs]

Jason Tucker
If you have a thread.

Jason Cosper
No, no, no, I actually, uh, I, I,

Sé Reed
I remember too, don’t worry, we remember, we got you.

Jason Cosper
I stuck something in the, uh, the private chat.

Jason Tucker
Yep. Yep.

Sé Reed
It’s been a big time for Tucker. I just want to, wait, wait, hold on.

Jason Cosper

Sé Reed
I want to, I want to just say it’s been a big time for Tucker. His youngest daughter graduated from high school. So I just, that’s a big monument, not monument, milestone in a parent’s life, in a person’s

Jason Tucker
The last one. She hasn’t moved out yet.

Jason Cosper

Jason Tucker
Oh gosh.

Sé Reed
life when their child graduates high school. So I just want to, you know, take a moment of silence for Jason for that.

Jason Cosper

Sé Reed
Yeah, right. Your empty, your empty nest will soon be here.

Jason Tucker
Yeah.

Sé Reed
What that means to me though, I want everyone to know, is that Tucker will have more time

Jason Tucker
Oh gosh.

Jason Cosper
Yeah, so Dries did his state of Drupal presentation not too long ago.

Sé Reed
for our projects.

Jason Tucker
So let’s let’s.

Sé Reed
So that’s all I have to say about that. But also congratulations, Jessalyn Tucker. Good job graduating. Sorry.

Jason Tucker
Let’s do that so we have a link.

Sé Reed
Drees being, how do you say his last name exactly?

Jason Tucker
What are we looking at here? out here. Dries is awesome. Let’s go. [laughs]

Jason Cosper
earlier. Dries being, uh, I am not even going to make an attempt. That’s cool.

Sé Reed
[laughter] Okay.

Jason Cosper
Um, so, uh, Dries has been the Dries is, is effectively for the word pressers in

Sé Reed
Okay, who is Drees?

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
Mm-hmm.

Jason Cosper
the house. The, the Matt Mullenweg of Drupal. Um, he is the, the main, uh, driving force.

Sé Reed
The main droop.

Jason Cosper
Um, yeah, droop John B.

Sé Reed
Sorry. What’s the name? It’s Droop John B.

Jason Cosper
So, um, yeah, in, in this, uh, presentation that he did, uh, he talked about and, uh,

Jason Tucker
[laughs]

Sé Reed
That’s amazing. (laughing)

Jason Tucker
I’m waiting for you to say a word that I can find.

Sé Reed
Jason Cosper
Tucker, you may have to scroll down a little bit to get to it.

Sé Reed
Jason Cosper
Um, but he talked about how, uh, Drupal is it’s way down there. Tucker. No, I mean, you’ll see bonus announcement and unexpected funding. You

Jason Tucker
(silence)

Jason Cosper
found it. You have to scroll back up just a tiny bit. So automatic. There was a

Jason Tucker
Gotcha. (silence) Oh, hi.

Jason Cosper
proposal. Yeah.

Sé Reed
Did you just like really want this proof there?

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
You’re like, look I am not making this, so this is here.

Jason Cosper
Yes.

Jason Tucker
(laughs)

Sé Reed
I just want you to see it yourself. So for everyone who’s listening as a podcast, as we keep inviting you to do,

Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper
I think it was, yeah, but in Dries’ stated Drupal presentation, just like the state of

Sé Reed
we are looking at a post on a website that talks about the, an update from,

Jason Tucker
[ Pause ]

Sé Reed
was it DrupalCon? Yeah. DrupalCon. It was at DrupalCon. Mm-hmm.

Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper
the word, Dries was sharing, there was a proposal inside the Drupal community to basically

Sé Reed
Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper
uh, improve the Gutenberg experience inside of Drupal.

Sé Reed
Jason Cosper
There are people who have, uh, started to use Gutenberg outside of

Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper
WordPress and in Drupal, uh, to build sites, uh, as a, as a site builder

Sé Reed
Jason Cosper
for Drupal, uh, and kind of have this sort of cross platform, uh, compatibility.

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
Jason Cosper
But, Matt had apparently gotten word that this was a proposal and that they were

Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper
asking for, 20,000, euros in funding, and ended up, like basically saying like,

Sé Reed
Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper
Oh yeah, automatic will pay for that. And, you know, no cost to the Drupal community, no anything else.

Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper
Like we’ll even send some people who are like very familiar with Gutenberg and the implementation to like help y’all out to basically make Gutenberg a sort of like

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
Jason Cosper
also a main experience for Drupal users.

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
Jason Cosper
So it’s kind of interesting how we are at a place in WordPress and now the

Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper
Gutenberg project of other platforms, especially one of the other competitors.

Sé Reed
Jason Cosper
I know that Drupal’s market share on sites around the internet is, is much

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
[LAUGH] I mean, this is what marriage is all about, it’s something we live through.

Jason Cosper
smaller than WordPress’s, but Drupal really is like for the folks who don’t choose WordPress and do stick with like an open source CMS, Drupal is the the thing that folks tend to lean on. So I just

Sé Reed
I mean, this is what Matt has been talking about.

Jason Cosper
kind of think it’s interesting that we’re getting to this like Gutenberging of the open web.

Jason Tucker
[LAUGHTER]

Jason Cosper
Yeah.

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
And you know, it’s funny because even though in the state of the word, Matt has actually said this multiple times and in multiple places that he expects and he thinks, hey, maybe

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
it could be possible that Gutenberg might be bigger than WordPress someday. Like he said that, right? So like, this is not a surprise from that angle.

Jason Cosper
Yeah. I mean, I mean, the main purpose, hoping it’s going to link up.

Sé Reed
And I think that this definitely is, you know, obviously in alignment with that vision. My question then becomes, well, first of all,

Jason Cosper
Yeah.

Sé Reed
I think we’ve always said, right, that Jetpack would be, WordPress would be inside Jetpack. But I think now it’s WordPress is gonna be inside Gutenberg.

Jason Tucker
(laughs)

Jason Cosper
okay.

Sé Reed
We were just, we didn’t know about Gutenberg yet. So we should just switch our things.

Jason Cosper
Okay.

Sé Reed
But this is aligned with that vision.

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
And Gutenberg’s repo right now is still under WordPress’s repo on GitHub. It just checked last week.

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
So it is still actively being developed from the WordPress community.

Jason Cosper

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
There have been some projects that have been developed and are still being developed inside the WordPress community and the WordPress MakeWP umbrella

Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper

Sé Reed
that have been taken away from that structure, specifically Openverse,

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
which is now kind of doing its own thing.

Jason Cosper

Sé Reed
It’s got its own site. It’s still, you know, it still has a make channel, but it has definitely sort of differentiated itself.

Jason Tucker
(no audio)

Jason Cosper

Sé Reed
Not necessarily, I mean, just having a separate website

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
doesn’t necessarily mean that, but just something that I think is interesting and worth noting because, you know, in open source,

Jason Cosper

Sé Reed
you can fork stuff.

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
And I just think that when you get right down to it, like there’s an open ticket right now on the Make Marketing channel called, What is WordPress?

Jason Cosper

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
And it’s been open since like April or something. And, you know, obviously we’re talking,

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
that ticket is really speaking about from a marketing sense, right? Like what’s the tagline? Like, what do you say to people? But if you start to think about it more, let’s say existentially, right? What is WordPress? Then is it like, is WordPress the block editor? Is because it’s, is it becoming the block editor? If that’s what’s happening, right? To WordPress, it is sort of the backend editor,

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
the site editor, you know, themes are being really re-envisioned, re-repurposed, plugins are having a really interesting, just, I mean, I don’t think plugins has been repurposed as much as the themes necessarily has. But I definitely think that there’s, you know, it just has, there’s a lot of growth there that’s changing, like, I’m not sure exactly what direction

Jason Cosper

Sé Reed
that’s going in. But, you know, there’s a lot of conversation

Jason Tucker
Yeah. >> Thank you.

Sé Reed
there. And so I just, it just makes me wonder, like, what is

Jason Tucker
(silence)

Sé Reed
WordPress? Is WordPress the block editor? Is WordPress the,

Jason Cosper

Sé Reed
it’s the core software? Is WordPress the admin that you

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
have because something that’s being talked about for phase

Jason Cosper

Sé Reed
three, which was reminded to me by a friend of the show, Courtney Robertson today, what does Gutenberg or the block

Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper

Sé Reed
editor look like in the dashboard? Like, what does that look like when that becomes becomes the dashboard? Like

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
where, where does Gutenberg stop and WordPress begin? And how

Jason Cosper

Sé Reed
does that, just what does that mean really for the software in

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
general? Like, I think that it is something that is very

Jason Cosper
Means.

Sé Reed
existential. And can I invoke a Greek myth right now? Are we?

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
I’ve been talking too long to invoke a Greek myth. I don’t

Jason Cosper

Sé Reed
know if I have leeway for that, but I’m gonna take it. So

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
Oedipus, no, not Oedipus, was it Oedipus? Odysseus, the guy who

Jason Cosper
Yep.

Sé Reed
took the long trip, right? And was gone for like 14 years or 28 years or a

Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper

Sé Reed
really long time and dealt with all sorts of problems. There’s this, he has a ship, I don’t recall the name of the ship, but one of the kind of philosophical

Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper
[silence]

Sé Reed
questions that arises out of this tale, this legend, is this ship has been sailing around the world for, you know, not hundreds of years, but like, you know, dozens of years, and they have replaced all the parts of the ship as they have been traveling and is that ship the same ship that it was when it arrives back? Like is it the same ship that it was that it when it left? And I think that’s

Jason Tucker
Is the ship still running on PHP or is it?

Sé Reed
a really… Has it upgraded to PHP 8 yet or what? Like what are we doing?

Jason Tucker
I mean, we can, we can ditch MySQL and just go with Maria or go with,

Jason Cosper
(laughs)

Jason Tucker
you know, any other database. We can do that, but does it still run PHP?

Sé Reed
Thank you for the… the actual ship is in the note. Thank you.

Jason Tucker
Or is the whole still,

Jason Cosper

Jason Tucker
is the whole of the ship still deeply in JavaScript? I don’t know, you know,

Sé Reed
This is exactly what I’m talking about. So it’s like, which part is it?

Jason Tucker
You know? Yeah.

Sé Reed
Is it, you know, I would argue, of course, that it’s the community, it’s the open source build that has made WordPress possible, right?

Jason Cosper

Sé Reed
But, you know, I don’t see as much… I’m gonna… there’s a caveat.

Jason Tucker
Yeah.

Jason Cosper

Sé Reed
I don’t usually see as much activity in Gutenberg and in the Gutenberg conversations.

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
But Gutenberg is serving as the…

Jason Cosper

Sé Reed
It’s like not the canary in the coal mine because it’s not like trying to like, see if it’s dangerous, I suppose, but it’s where all the features are being previewed, essentially.

Jason Cosper
Bye.

Jason Tucker
Yeah.

Sé Reed
Like things are being built out in Gutenberg,

Jason Cosper

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
the plugin, and then tested for implementation. There’s even a conversation happening right now

Jason Tucker
I have a…

Jason Cosper

Jason Tucker
(silence)

Sé Reed
about delaying a Gutenberg, kicking, kicking up, well, it’s not happening, but there was a conversation about kicking the beta date a week

Jason Cosper

Sé Reed
so that it would have time to get the latest updates, latest updates from Gutenberg into, you know, 6.3, as opposed to having to wait until 6.4.

Jason Tucker
Hmm.

Jason Cosper

Sé Reed
And that really just struck a really interesting,

Jason Tucker
Yeah, I that has me. That has me thinking a little bit about

Sé Reed
well, just an interesting thought process about, you know, Gutenberg really leading the way?

Jason Cosper

Sé Reed
And are we paying enough attention to it? Are we all just mad at it and we’ve renamed everything? Yeah. Oh, okay.

Jason Tucker
like something kind of that goes along the same lines as this is

Jason Cosper

Jason Tucker
that I don’t know if you saw in the news recently, but Tesla recently opened up or is going to be on a how far into this there are,

Jason Cosper

Jason Tucker
but open it up so that Ford and GM can start using the, um, the charging system that Tesla has made and Tesla made their own charging

Jason Cosper

Sé Reed
Jason Tucker
system. And it’s become like, it’s not the standard, but they’re trying to push it to be the standard. And I’m thinking in the terms of like WordPress with Gutenberg,

Sé Reed
Right.

Jason Cosper

Sé Reed
Jason Tucker
is this their charging standard? You know, it’s the plug,

Sé Reed
Yes.

Jason Tucker
the way that the plug works and how it all communicates and everything.

Sé Reed
Jason Tucker
If Gutenberg becomes that, does that mean at some point,

Jason Cosper

Jason Tucker
is there interoperability between those two systems? Like for instance, could you take posts that are in Gutenberg on WordPress and transfer them over

Jason Cosper

Jason Tucker
to Gutenberg and Drupal and actually still have the post work? Could you copy and paste between them?

Jason Cosper
[silence]

Sé Reed
I want to know, like, so this is related to that. I want to know, is the little tag,

Jason Tucker
Could you migrate your site between one and the other? And so, yeah.

Sé Reed
is it WP paragraph? Or is it like DR paragraph? Really? I really want to know. Like, I don’t know what that looks like. Did they change it? Is it Drew paragraph? Is it like Drup paragraph? what’s their, what’s their prefix? I… [laughs]

Jason Cosper
It would, it would absolutely shock me if there would be no interoperability.

Sé Reed
Jason Tucker
[ Pause ]

Jason Cosper
If, if they’re going to do something that will make Gutenberg a first

Sé Reed
Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper
class citizen on Drupal maybe not the default post editor, but something that has wider adoption in Drupal.

Sé Reed
Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper
If they didn’t have some sort of interoperability where you could effectively bring over a WordPress post or vice versa, bring over a page or a

Sé Reed
Jason Cosper
node or whatever the hell is going on on Drupal these days. Like an end bring

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
It’s creeping.

Jason Cosper
that over. But an interesting thing and something that we kind of touched on in our, our group chat, like, you know, before the show, a couple weeks ago that

Jason Tucker
[LAUGH]

Jason Cosper
that Tucker was alluding to, is like, there are all of these other places that

Jason Tucker
[laughter]

Jason Cosper
Gutenberg is creeping into and it’s, yeah.

Sé Reed
I was going to say creeping. It’s creeping.

Jason Cosper
Yeah.

Sé Reed
It’s creeping.

Jason Tucker
Silence.

Sé Reed
Do do do do do do.

Jason Cosper
I mean, look, look at, a little bit.

Sé Reed
It’s creeping. It’s like a pink slime mold. [mimics the sound of a fanfare]

Jason Cosper
Yeah, no, absolutely.

Sé Reed
Just the way that it’s like kind of like just spreading. I don’t know. That’s how it feels to me. Also, I need to just real quick, while we have a quick lull,

Jason Cosper
I mean, it were extreme.

Sé Reed
I need to make a correction because I feel very bad. “More Than Words” was not, not a Milli Vanilli song, and I totally thought it was.

Jason Cosper
Yeah.

Jason Tucker
(laughing) No.

Sé Reed
It was extreme, and that is an error on my part. I still think that Milli Vanilli is relevant in terms of metaphor, but I mixed up my 90s, 80s bands or

Jason Tucker
That’s all right.

Sé Reed
whatever they are, so I apologize.

Jason Tucker
(laughing)

Jason Cosper
Yeah. You know, mill, milly vanilla is, is short for million vanillium and that’s

Sé Reed
Anyway, you should go listen to all of those songs today.

Jason Tucker
(sobbing)

Sé Reed
That’s all.

Jason Tucker
(sobbing)

Sé Reed
Go ahead. Please proceed.

Jason Tucker
(sobbing)

Sé Reed
[laughs]

Jason Cosper
what I will leave it on.

Jason Tucker
(sobbing)

Jason Cosper
Um, so yeah, million vanillium.

Jason Tucker
(sobbing)

Sé Reed
Millium Vanillium?

Jason Tucker
(sobbing)

Jason Cosper
Um, it’s, it’s, it’s, uh, yeah.

Sé Reed
[laughs]

Jason Cosper
So what I was, what I was getting into though, what I was getting into though,

Sé Reed
Oh, Wikipedia and I are going to have a date later. [laughs]

Jason Cosper
What I was getting into though, was that effectively Gutenberg is kind of

Sé Reed
Like Tumblr. Tumblr. Tumblr.

Jason Cosper
creeping into these other projects. And a lot of them are automatic owned projects. You have Tumblr. Yeah. Day one, which Apple might be trying to Sherlock by, you know, by, by putting

Jason Tucker
>> Day one, yep. Put their journal up.

Sé Reed
Wait, what what does that mean?

Jason Tucker
Simple note, simple note might be one.

Jason Cosper
putting the journaling app in the new iOS, but day one is still out there being

Sé Reed
I mean, I feel like that seemed hmm

Jason Cosper
cross platform and everything else. But that has Gutenberg at its core. I there are a few other projects I haven’t even dug that far back in our what’s that? Yeah, but I use I use simple note and I haven’t had to put anything into a block

Jason Tucker
Simple notes, an automatic project, Maybe that might be. But there’s also that one project that just came out

Jason Cosper
in there. Yeah. Right. Okay. So, I’m going to go ahead and get started. So, I’m going

Sé Reed
I just realized an alternate title for this show could have been all Gutenberg everywhere. That’s all.

Jason Cosper
Right.

Sé Reed
That’s like… The block notes thing?

Jason Tucker
not too long ago, which was the block notes thing, which

Jason Cosper
Right. Right.

Sé Reed
That’s what I was going to talk about.

Jason Cosper
Right.

Jason Tucker
literally–

Sé Reed
So that is…is that…

Jason Cosper
Right.

Jason Tucker
that can literally be it.

Jason Cosper
>> Oh, absolutely.

Sé Reed
Yeah, that is a side project by an automatician.

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
But it’s a kind of side project. one of the main developers for Gutenberg, like so working really exclusively on Gutenberg from what I know, developed a little side project that we can probably link to in the show notes. Yeah, I know Tucker, you were using it.

Jason Cosper
– Absolutely.

Sé Reed
I didn’t download it, but essentially it is a notes

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
I installed it.

Sé Reed
taking app, you did, had some problems,

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
but that’s, you know, it’s beta. Essentially it’s a note taking app based off

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
of WP Playground. So it’s like an instance of WP Playground

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
that is called up every time you open, this is my understanding of it anyway, every time you open the app,

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
and then it connects to whatever you’ve got it connected to and shows you your stuff, or if you add content, will pop content into your various installs.

Jason Cosper
[no audio]

Sé Reed
So it’s basically like a fresh spin-up based off of your settings. I know Tucker, you were having problems

Jason Tucker
It’s like it’s like notes.

Sé Reed
with that actual connecting.

Jason Tucker
It’s like notes and having the

Sé Reed
Yeah, it’s like notes. Right.

Jason Tucker
database stored in iCloud and then if you open up another device it looks like iCloud and iCloud is

Sé Reed
But it was able to,

Jason Tucker
the source of truth. So yeah, it’s able to pull that in. No, nothing to do with WordPress.

Sé Reed
so it was or it was not posting directly to your WordPress. Right, exactly.

Jason Tucker
Yeah, and it makes it.

Jason Cosper
>> It —

Sé Reed
Okay, so that’s it.

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
So it is like Gutenberg by itself. It’s like isolated Gutenberg. And there is really in my mind, why wouldn’t it be able to be platform agnostic and do those connect at the end to Drupal

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
Yeah.

Sé Reed
or Day One or WordPress or whatever it happens to be as an ultimate notes thing for all of

Jason Tucker
Yeah.

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
Yeah. Like it makes, so when you make a post in it,

Sé Reed
those sites. Like a content — I don’t even know what that would be called.

Jason Tucker
what it does is it makes a file called whatever the title is dot block.

Jason Cosper

Jason Tucker
And then that contains the Gutenberg, you know, um,

Sé Reed
Jason Tucker
comment system, you know, methodology to kind of make all of that stuff get displayed.

Sé Reed
Which is on the track, I mean, that’s WP Playground, right?

Jason Tucker
And so it stores it there. Now I don’t know, Cosper if it’s putting a database in there someplace, maybe the database is hidden someplace in there to, what was the database that they were using? That’s the local. Yeah.

Jason Cosper
That’s QA.

Jason Tucker
SQLite. So like, yeah.

Sé Reed
Is SQ, SQ lite?

Jason Tucker
(laughing)

Sé Reed
I always wanna say SQL lite. Are there not two Ls?

Jason Tucker
(laughs)

Jason Cosper
Nope.

Sé Reed
So frustrating.

Jason Cosper
All you’ve got is your hello word post, your hello word post, your about page, and your first comment, right?

Jason Tucker
(laughs)

Sé Reed
Oh, SQ lite.

Jason Tucker
It’s in.

Sé Reed
It’s like PHP, PHP. Like what are we doing? PPHP, I don’t know. I just feel like that is just, yeah, it’s gone. It’s all gone. Thoughts are gone. Just like a fresh install that erased all of your data. Not connecting to the database.

Jason Tucker
(laughs)

Sé Reed
[laughs] Yeah, I wasn’t able to connect to my database.

Jason Tucker
Right.

Jason Cosper
All right.

Jason Tucker
I will say that one thing that,

Sé Reed
Sorry, I’m under server error over here.

Jason Tucker
one thing that Courtney was talking to me about,

Sé Reed
Oh, my gosh.

Jason Tucker
you know, just in comments and stuff was hopefully

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
something like this will kind of trigger a better understanding of how Gutenberg works on mobile. Because if you’ve used Gutenberg on mobile, it’s rough.

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
Oh my Lord.

Jason Tucker
And if you try to use site editor in mobile, it’s like, no.

Sé Reed
So this is, you know, y’all, this is a big deal.

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
(silence)

Sé Reed
Like I feel like, oh, I get so frustrated.

Jason Tucker
[ Pause ]

Sé Reed
So a friend of the show, Courtney, who you also just mentioned, is doing a talk this weekend at WordCamp Montclair. Hope you don’t mind me exposing the title of your talk, Courtney.

Jason Cosper
[AUDIO OUT]

Sé Reed
It’s called We Are They. And it, and this is something that I really noticed at WordCamp Europe. Everyone’s like, “They gotta do this. WordPress has gotta do this.” And I’m like, “Oh Lord, people, can we understand please?”

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
And just really just let it sink in that we are WordPress and standing outside of the room

Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
and complaining is just silly. Like, I don’t know what you’re doing. Like if you’re out there and you have ideas and you’re like, “This is silly. We should be paying attention to what Gutenberg is.”

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
Or, “I could fix that.”

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
So it doesn’t, you know, blank out your, whatever. Like, you don’t have to do everything. just come in and provide some sunshine. Like literally, like the antidote to secrecy

Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
is always going to be more eyeballs and people. That’s literally it, that’s all there is.

Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
We need those people in there. We need people in these conversations. Like this is a software that we all use and have as part of our livelihoods.

Jason Tucker
(silence)

Sé Reed
So if we know there are problems

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
or we know there are areas that need help, like Gutenberg or like mobile, which is something that I talk about a lot in MakeWP,

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
which really needs help. We haven’t even moved over the, like the WordPress mobile app does not currently have documentation

Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
because all of the documentation for the app was part of Jetpack’s app, the mobile app, and it is on wordpress.com. There’s an open ticket in docs to be like, hey, can you help us move this content? Like literally there’s like one or two people who are working on moving it so that the WordPress mobile app has documentation somewhere. Like this is not how we are going to get good adoption of the mobile app by ignoring it completely

Jason Tucker
Yeah.

Jason Cosper
>> Right.

Jason Tucker
Yeah. The mobile thing, the mobile thing that interesting there is the fact that

Sé Reed
or thinking that someone else is handling it.

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
Yes, someone else is handling it. And you know who it is? The person you complain about all the freaking time. I just, ugh.

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
[Groans]

Jason Tucker
mobile people,

Sé Reed
I just saw a post about that. Did you see it? Yeah, I saw a post about that. One of a, someone in

Jason Tucker
people assume mobile means the latest and greatest mobile device and they never ever think about places that don’t have the latest and greatest mobile device.

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
they could have the most cheapo in a plastic container pop open. Yeah, that was on, on mastodon. Yeah.

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
Yeah.

Sé Reed
WordPress like had a temp, has a temp phone, right? Like they like had a burner phone essentially

Jason Tucker
Uh huh.

Sé Reed
between getting their new fancy phone and they’re like wow this experience is bunk and that’s not even using wordpress right like right and you know for example i i can’t speak to all countries

Jason Tucker
And now try to use JavaScript on there where the holding thing runs on JavaScript. Like, come on, that’s not going to work. And when you’re seeing yeah.

Jason Cosper
Silence.

Sé Reed
whatever but i know for example in kenya um literally the internet is like 80 it is not a a real statistic, but this is just anecdotal, but like it’s all mobile. It’s all mobile. That is how

Jason Tucker
Yep.

Sé Reed
people connect to the internet. And I don’t know about the phones or whatever, but if the concern

Jason Cosper
– Bye-bye.

Sé Reed
is WordPress adoption, and we all know that we’re all carrying the computers in our pockets and we

Jason Tucker

Sé Reed
want WordPress, like we all know we need to design websites for WordPress. Like what are we doing?

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
and then I get comments. Yeah. And I get, and I, you know,

Sé Reed
We got to stop leaving this up to other people. We have to do this work.

Jason Tucker
I complain about it on, on social and then people say,

Sé Reed
Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
you actually use this stuff on your phone. Why would you do this on your phone? And I’m like because I don’t sit at a computer all day when I’m at home,

Sé Reed
Sit on your back patio.

Jason Tucker
when I’m at home, I’m at home.

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
I’m not sitting at a computer like I am at work because I actually go to a place and work where some people just like work from home. So it’s a, it’s a different situation for them. But for me, I don’t want to sit in front of a computer.

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
So I’m gonna bust out my phone and I’m going to sit there and try to figure out how to get, try to figure out how to get Gutenberg to work on my phone.

Sé Reed
And here, I want to point this out, you are using a fancy phone.

Jason Tucker
And it’s just, it’s just not going to work.

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
It’s like, have you ever tried to move a block? Like try to move a block. Yeah.

Sé Reed
Like this is a fancy dancy phone.

Jason Tucker
Yeah.

Sé Reed
This is not, and this is good, solid internet.

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
Yep.

Sé Reed
Like this is, this should be your experience using Gutenberg or the block editor or whatever

Jason Tucker
Should be amazing.

Sé Reed
we’re talking about on the phone that’s top notch.

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
Because you update like, you know, you’re cutting edge.

Jason Tucker
Yeah, I want to update water cooler post.

Sé Reed
I’m Luddite and you’re like, yeah, right.

Jason Tucker
I want to update water cooler post. I just want to yell at Siri and say, okay, Siri, here’s all the things I want you to do and then have it do it.

Sé Reed
Right, so I think that that is,

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
But I can’t.

Sé Reed
I just, I know I just went off

Jason Tucker
(laughing)

Sé Reed
on a contribution tangent again,

Jason Cosper
Yeah.

Jason Tucker
Yeah.

Sé Reed
but I do think that that is really part of, it’s part of what’s happening right now. And we need more people to be part of this conversation that is not being led by, in a void, let’s just say.

Jason Tucker
I could potentially complain about it five hours a week

Sé Reed
If you just come complain,

Jason Tucker
and I could do five for the future. I could do five for the future, just complaining about it.

Jason Cosper
Yeah

Sé Reed
like can you just come complain in the make chat

Jason Tucker
(laughing) Yeah.

Sé Reed
in like in the Gutenbergs? Like I do, before we end,

Jason Tucker
Mm-hmm.

Sé Reed
I do wanna talk about a very important discussion that is happening in Gutenberg right now

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
that is part of this, like I don’t see a lot of activity happening in Gutenberg a lot, but right now there is. There’s a huge discussion happening about a new component

Jason Tucker
Yeah.

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
of the WordPress admin, which is currently called the command center, but, or the admin notification.

Jason Tucker
because I can’t do it on my mobile.

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
It’s like this whole world, right? But eventually the thought is it could be an AI optimized area to help people do things. So you would be able to say,

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
hey, build a block, put it this block here, and it would, you know, some might do that. There’s a giant discussion.

Jason Tucker
So, I’m going to do one more.

Sé Reed
Yeah, there’s a giant discussion happening

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
about what to call that thing. And the, you know, the, with an eye to internationalization, can this, can these terms be translated? There’s a proposal on the table to call it the Wayfinder,

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
which many people in the community are having issue with for a lot of reasons.

Jason Tucker
Command Palette.

Sé Reed
Like one is, what does that mean? And two is, does that translate at all?

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
even to like the most like Eurocentric, you know, Latin based languages. And it does not,

Jason Tucker
That’s it. [ Pause ]

Sé Reed
it basically does not translate in English. So I don’t know why it would translate into any other language well. But there is a lot of conversation happening on that ticket. And this is the point where like the community needs to weigh in. Like we need to weigh in

Jason Cosper
Right.

Sé Reed
or things are gonna get named and things are gonna get slapped with labels that we’re struggling with. Like we are still struggling with the Gutenberg block editor

Jason Tucker
Okay.

Sé Reed
full site editor.

Jason Cosper
Yep.

Sé Reed
I think it was Leslie may have posted this in the comments. Like we’re just naming things abstractly is just trouble down the line.

Jason Cosper
Yep.

Sé Reed
And we definitely have a tendency to do that.

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
And this is one of those areas where like you don’t have to do any coding. You don’t have to show up to a bunch of meetings. You don’t have to like do anything, but say, hey, here’s my opinion about what we should name this component of the software that I use every day

Jason Tucker
Mm-hmm.

Sé Reed
and what I’m gonna be explaining to my clients to use

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
in two years, like chime in.

Jason Tucker
Yeah.

Jason Cosper
Yeah.

Jason Tucker
Yeah.

Jason Cosper
A friend, friend of the show, a host, um, he said, uh, I don’t know what the big

Jason Tucker
Yeah.

Sé Reed
[laughs] Mm-hmm.

Jason Cosper
deal is with calling it wayfinder.

Sé Reed
I don’t even know what that means, but it just sounds confusing.

Jason Cosper
Uh, hosts is speak Spanish. Uh, I can’t find anything wrong with translating wayfinder to Ellen Quinter Caminos, like, yes, it is.

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
That is the point, like…

Jason Cosper
Put it into Google translate, put it into Google translate.

Sé Reed
[laughs]

Jason Cosper
And it’s a bunch of damn gibberish.

Sé Reed
Well, this is, we really need, like, so there’s so much, and like I said, we’re talking about

Jason Cosper
Right.

Jason Tucker
>> Command pilot, just call it command pilot and we’ll be good. That’s all I’m thinking.

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
in the phase three of Gutenberg, we’re talking about collaborative editing, we’re looking at the redesign of the admin.

Jason Cosper

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
This is like structural stuff, renaming things. And the whole, like, we have like put Gutenberg behind us in theory, because it is now the block editor or whatever, it doesn’t matter. But it does. It still exists. It is its own repo. It is its own plugin. It has its own development cycle. And it is leading the charge of where WordPress is going. So if that is, like, once it’s in there and functional, it

Jason Cosper
Mm-hmm.

Jason Tucker
Yep. Mm-hmm.

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
is coming into WordPress. This is not, it’s not not coming into WordPress. You know what I mean? Like, this is the point at which the say, the say is important. That’s funny. This

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
But this is important, the point where the weighing in, the community opinion, the real information,

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
Yeah.

Sé Reed
the real contribution can happen and is important. And we ignore Gutenberg at our peril. That’s all I’m saying is like, it’s showing the way

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
and we need to be part of that conversation, even if not just to assure ourselves that things are going well

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
or that we know what’s coming down the pike, right?

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
Like it’s not even always about stopping bad things from happening. It’s about just understanding where we’re all going

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
and stopping the thought process of, this is someone else doing this and they are doing this.

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
Yeah.

Sé Reed
You know, I’m gonna promote Courtney’s thing again

Jason Tucker
Just let me know when we figure out who them are.

Sé Reed
and say, we are they, and she’s gonna be talking about that this weekend. And hopefully we’ll get that up onto WordPress TV

Jason Cosper
We are the ones who make a brighter day, so let’s start giving.

Sé Reed
something so we can you know get that out. But let’s gooten ourselves. Yeah who is them?

Jason Tucker
As long as we figure out who them are at some point, then we should be okay.

Sé Reed
We are they. We are we are them. It is us. We are the ones. We are the world. We are the children.

Jason Tucker
But we always blame them. Oh, here we go.

Sé Reed
Wait was that by Millie Vindalee? Just kidding.

Jason Tucker
We’re going back to the 90s again. (laughs) (hums)

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
Oh yeah. Okay that’s a great note to end on. Everyone has a YouTube, uh YouTube, uh or music

Jason Tucker
I don’t know, man.

Sé Reed
streaming assignments today. You have More Than Words, Millie Vanillie, and uh We Are The World.

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
They’re gonna have to like load up like Real Player or some crap to watch that stuff. (laughs)

Sé Reed
There’s your playlist for today. Enjoy.

Jason Tucker
Here’s our outro.

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
Spotify, YouTube, you’re here, I’m here. Also on TLI vids. So come and chat with us in discord

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
Bye.

Sé Reed
because we want to hear what you have to say. Oh yeah.