Fostering Community Spirit Through Knowledge Sharing

If you happen to ask someone within the WordPress community what’s the perfect place to learn in regards to the Block Editor, they are going to probably suggest the Gutenberg Times. The location presents a dose of reports and opinion pieces from the WordPress community in regards to the Gutenberg Block Editor.

The mastermind behind this platform is Birgit Pauli-Haack, a WordPress Core Contributor. She personally curates the location content with inclusivity and variety of perspective in mind. By doing so, she hopes everyone can profit from it, regardless of their background and knowledge level.

We’re lucky to jot down about Birgit and her project in our first WordPress Expert article series edition. Today, we are going to cover the genesis of Gutenberg Times, how she runs it, and the importance of data sharing in open-source projects.

The Dawn of Time

Birgit got fascinated by Gutenberg the moment it was introduced at WordCamp Europe 2017 – just six years ago.

She felt like she saw a raw diamond. “I believed it might make content production a lot easier and richer. Truly WYSIWYG. I could see once it was merged into the core software, content creators would adore it,” she says.

However the principal reason why Birgit was so focused on Gutenberg was that it allowed users to create or modify templates right from their WordPress site with none code. Which means you not need programming skills to tweak your site. As for Birgit, it simplifies content management for her digital agency clients.

“Once we worked with clients, we frequently were asked to alter how posts look on various pages. For instance, adding categories or removing the creator. It was fast for us to do as we worked with code, but it surely was hard for site owners. The change is now very easy to do via the Block Editor,” explains Birgit.

On top of that, Gutenberg can lock certain design features, just like the color scheme and typography. This manner, you won’t inadvertently spoil the general design rigorously crafted by the design team.

Birgit also discovered that agency developers could use block themes for prototyping the general design and data flow with their clients. That is great for designers who are usually not developers, too. Meanwhile, seasoned developers who’re used to developing with classic themes can easily adapt to the block themes as they follow the identical template hierarchy because the classic ones.

Nevertheless, like many individuals latest to WordPress, Birgit needed help understanding this latest technology. So, in June 2017, she began curating tweets and blog posts about Gutenberg, as she desired to learn all about it and what other people do with it. She collected them in a social networking site, aiming to make it available to all WordPress enthusiasts.

In spite of everything, an open-source project can only move forward if there may be loads of publicly available information.

Half a 12 months later, Birgit decided to create the Gutenberg Times website, so she could have a dedicated space for the knowledge she had collected. Having a web site enables her to arrange her content as she wants.

On top of that, Birgit began getting more organic traffic –people can find her site when looking for Gutenberg-specific information in search engines like google.

Also, people kept asking her if she had a newsletter, which ensured her much more game up her publishing game.

This wasn’t the top of her journey – now, Birgit also hosts the weekly Gutenberg Changelog podcast, where she discusses the most recent Gutenberg releases with WordPress enthusiasts and experts.

“We don’t just speak about what’s in the discharge log – our goal is to go somewhat deeper into that. Sort of being up so far and on the innovative of things. It’s because Gutenberg is the beta version of what is going to include the subsequent release,” Birgit explains.

Recently, Hostinger’s resident WordPress Content Strategist Leonardus Nugraha, was invited to the 81st podcast to speak about WordPress 6.2.

Birgit also holds live Q&As on occasion. Their format is a panel discussion where people can register and ask questions.

Mission: Gutenberg 101

Since Gutenberg’s early days, there was a distinguished debate about Classic Editor vs Gutenberg. It’s one in all the largest changes happening to WordPress this decade. Gutenberg has been always iterated, and never everyone seems to be keen to learn the brand new interface.

Birgit then found that the resources about Gutenberg she encountered online were more than likely talking in regards to the controversy moderately than about what people could really do with it. That’s when she decided to solely focus her knowledge-collecting effort on Gutenberg: in order that she and her readers could learn methods to use Gutenberg to unravel their problems.

Birgit goals to make Gutenberg Times’ content as inclusive as possible, so readers with skill levels can learn what they need. Due to that, each Gutenberg Times’ content category has its own target market.

Those categories include:

• DIY Site Owners – Dedicated to non-developers site owners, with content like tutorials of the most recent Gutenberg iterations
• For Developers – Accommodates in-depth documentation on topics like methods to use the Gutenberg scripts.
• Weekend Edition – This section has something for everybody – it’s where Birgit compiles the news, commentary, tutorials, plugins, or themes related to the block editor and the Gutenberg plugin every Saturday.

As for the Gutenberg Changelog podcast, it caters to individuals who wish to be up so far with every Gutenberg release.

Maintaining a web site with multiple forms of content with different goal audiences is plenty of work. Still, Birgit sees it as a vital task, especially for open-source projects like WordPress.

Besides visionaries and geniuses, open-source projects can only achieve success if someone explains to other users methods to use and construct on the technology.

“The exchange of ideas, problems, and solutions is crucial for an open-source community because it hurries up growth and software quality,” she says. “There are things I’d not have known until I attempted. After I finally know methods to do it, I would like everybody else to understand how. So if you share it, you help everybody else within the project to change into higher.”

On top of that, Birgit finds that explaining tech problems and solution to others helps her as well.

“My website is a public place, but it surely’s also a spot I can return to. For instance, “How can I get a JSON file into Excel?” I even have to look it up each time, but because I wrote it, I can come back to it anytime, and that’s very time-saving.”

Behind the Scenes of Gutenberg Times

Up to now, Gutenberg Times has been solely run by Birgit herself. She’s been a full-time WordPress contributor sponsored by Automattic since 2021, and running the Gutenberg Times is now a part of her day job.

“Starting out, I’d not have dared to dream that after five years of Gutenberg Times, I’d have the opportunity to proceed to publish as a part of my work, full-time, within the open-source project.” She’s grateful to all supporters who subscribed, listened, and, most significantly, shared their very own ideas and suggestions.

When asked in regards to the struggle of running a web site alone, Birgit admits it’s difficult to search out some quiet time to place every little thing together. “Every part is just so fascinating! Sometimes there’s just an excessive amount of to do.”

Nevertheless, Birgit doesn’t see that as a struggle in any case.

“I believe the struggle probably will come when every WordPress outlet and all of the talks on WordCamps are all in regards to the block editor,” she reckons.

Birgit recalled when her friend questioned whether the Gutenberg Times could be obsolete once Gutenberg merged with WordPress’s core software. She believes the Gutenberg Times will stay relevant so long as it evolves.

Well, WordPress is 20 years old, and Gutenberg continues to be five years in development. Looks prefer it’s nowhere near obsolescence.

So how does Birgit carry on top of all her tasks – creating various forms of content in a streamlined way? Gutenberg has a new edition released every two weeks, in order that have to be plenty of stuff to review and update the web site.

“I make an effort to ascertain in on what’s merged in Gutenberg’s GitHub repository every other day,” Birgit explains.

She also keeps a habit of immediately creating notes when future publication ideas pop up. For instance, she all the time works on the weekly Weekend Edition articles because the previous week, collecting ideas daily.

“When I even have an idea fresh in my mind, I note it and judge whether it goes into the podcast or write it as an article.”

Birgit points out that for those who make it a every day habit, it’s going to feel like a small piece of labor. Then, schedule if you will process that certain set of ideas. “The Weekend Edition is published every Saturday, so I’ll check my notes on Friday afternoon and see what I even have flagged for this week’s edition, after which I’ll assemble it.”

Sorting her ideas like that especially helps since Birgit also works on another Gutenberg-related documentation. For instance, she co-edits the What’s Latest for Developers monthly roundup for the WordPress Developer Blog, and edits the Maintaining with Gutenberg Index within the Core Handbook every week.

She also funneled the fabric from the official documentation into the Gutenberg Times’ Weekend Edition and Gutenberg Changelog podcast. This manner, she kills two birds with one stone as she adapts the identical information for various channels.

Is Block the Future?

Since its first release in 2018, the Gutenberg project has undergone several phases. Phase 1 was the birth of the Block Editor, Phase 2 was all about merging full site editing into WordPress. Now in 2023, it’s time for Phase 3, which is able to deal with collaborative editing.

At its starting, Gutenberg might appear to be ‘just’ an option available to present WordPress users more creative freedom. But as time goes by, it becomes quite clear that the Block Editor, blocks, and latest interfaces will in the end take over the present WordPress in various facets.

“It may well still take a couple of years until all of it involves pass. It’s a gradual change, but they are going to come. And for a few years, the Classic Editor won’t go away.” says Birgit. “If you happen to’re within the web-building business, change is the one constant in your life.”

Birgit also emphasizes that WordPress won’t just take out the Classic themes. WordPress will all the time have backward compatibility for its features, plus the Block Themes actually follow the identical template hierarchy because the Classic ones.

Nevertheless, she suggests developers should adapt and familiarize themselves with this Gutenberg-powered website creation to push the boundaries of what’s possible.

The Block Editor also opens up vast possibilities for everyone with a creative streak, even in the event that they don’t have a technical background, to create Block Themes with a plugin. “They’ll do it right within the editor, export it, after which you have got a theme. You don’t must code,” Birgit underlines the no-code future that’s now opened more inclusively.

And for Gutenberg enthusiasts on the market who also wish to share their knowledge with the community but are still determining where they are going to share it, there are several alternatives. Certainly one of Birgit’s suggestions is to contribute to the open-source project by filing bug reports from Gutenberg’s GitHub repository.

That is a crucial task because sometimes users experience a feature in another way than the developers.

“There are numerous ways to handle certain features, and we want to determine all the various ways people use things,” – Birgit says. This manner, community members can construct on one another’s knowledge and improve each their skills and WordPress development.