What are your thoughts on "Project Gutenberg"

Matt announced they are gutting React on Guttenberg which looks to be due to the licensing issues:

So he isn’t completely ignoring the community and they are planning on a rewrite of Gutenberg. You got to give him credit for that. So that leaves some hope for a better implementation.

I’m moving away slowly from WordPress and will make room for “JAMstack” https://jamstack.org sites.

It’s solves the biggest rpoblem of wordpress, that for every problem you add a plugin, and for that plugins problems you add another one. If the app doesn’t work or the server CPU is 100% we upscale the server/db instead of fixing the app. Thousands of queries/second for loading same thing for everyone? It makes you think of the environment also.

Anyway, JAMstack in short are static sites (but not those we know from the 90s) with a layer of JS (client apps) for dynamic things or (micro)services.

If anyone is interested, look into Gatsby, Hugo (https://www.staticgen.com for more options), Netlify CMS, prismic.io or contenful (https://headlesscms.org for more headless CMS options - yes static sites use a cms as data input), Snipcart or Shopify buy button for ecommerce.

Server? You get better scalability cheaply, you host it directly on a CDN/ S3 and scale the speed globally with CloudFront. Imagine what servers would cost for such a coverage and maintaining them? Netlify.com is an amazing service/hosting for JAMstack and they have FREE tier for personal and commercial sites.

Security? You can’t hack a basic html,css site :slight_smile:

Updates? It will never break, it can’t really. No need for them.

Backups? Either a headless cms or markdown files that live in a git repo (netlify cms does that really well)

I know it may not be for every project, but there are many solutions already in place.

Roots Combo is still amazing and Trellis is great but it’s overkill for a lot of things today. Just look at how complex the roles are and all the tasks? It’s beautifully made but sometimes we need to take a step back and think if we really need all this? Keeping it simple with basic things and doing them really really good will bring much more value to anyone.

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I’ve seen a huge shift from my clients in the last three or so years from “oh, WordPress? Isn’t that bad and cheap?” to “oh thank god you use WordPress! Everyone on our team already knows how to edit that!”

A lot of my clients need to make content changes to their own sites, so a familiar tool is supremely important to us.

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Bingo.

Until any other CMS has a plugin library as deep or an editing interface as simple as WP it’s a no-brainer. I’d love to use some fancy static site generator but can’t imagine pitching to a client that we’d need to custom-develop any additional functionality they request, or they have to look at a file system to add/edit content.

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It’s interesting, because the agency I work with has sort of found the opposite - majority of clients suppose they want to be able to edit their website, but they end up contacting (and paying) agency to make any updates. We use a few key plugins, like ACF and Gravity Forms, but any small functionality beyond what WP core offers and outside of well known and (relatively) stable plugins, we generally build what the client needs. Saying WP has a depth of plugins is true but when so much of it is so poorly coded, it’s hard to use “depth” as a pro, IMO.

I suppose using Bedrock and not allowing plugin installation on production also helps sway that, as it should be. Please don’t experiment with WP plugins on your live site.

To be honest, I’m also looking at what’s available in the static site realm as well. I think for the majority of clients we work with, a static HTML site would be just fine for them. They might have a contact form, and we’d need to figure out something for that, but that’s pretty minor.

Also, it’s important to mention that a “static site” doesn’t necessarily mean it doesn’t change. Prismic for instance has packages that you can use both JS or PHP (and most other major web dev languages) to query the content from them. That means you can have a static site of HTML/CSS/JS and still have it dynamically query Prismic. Still wouldn’t be as fast as a 100% static built HTML site, but still most likely faster than running WP every request and have it build your templates.

You never really know with client’s what their expectations will be when building them a site anyways, even when you cover all that before signing a contract. Some won’t ever touch the site and some will wonder why they can’t completely reconfigure every tiny piece of a site because they used Divi once.

Guess my point is, everyone knows their clients and what may or not be possible, but you also might not have a 100% clear idea of what’s out there, either. And with that being said, I think I’ve steered the topic far enough off topic from Gutenberg that we should return to that topic.

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My biggest worry is what will become of Roots if everyone starts moving off onto different platforms?

I was lucky in that I stumbled across Roots when it was just a starter theme and I was new to WordPress. For me, Roots is what makes WordPress ideal for building modern, SEO friendly client sites.

If Gutenberg causes the Roots posse to lose interest in WordPress then that will be the beginning of the end as far as I’m concerned.

:slight_smile:

I’m more at-ease now that React is out, but prior to the React announcement I was intending to move away from WordPress all together. When contemplating this move it was Roots, project, team and community that I pictured missing the most.

I can’t speak to your concerns but wanted to mention that.

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Don’t worry, I sort of doubt this will happen. WordPress isn’t even really part of my daily work anymore, it’s more extra work I do, but I stick around. And Scott hasn’t actually done a WP project in YEARS… if ever… I’d have to ask him again. But he basically started Bedrock and Trellis. So whatever comes of Gutenberg shouldn’t affect Roots much at all.

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Yes, the React climbdown makes me feel better too, mostly because it shows that those in charge of the project are taking the community’s concerns seriously, and also respecting the letter of the GPL.

I still have my worries though. I think Greg Schoppe’s alternative roadmap for Gutenberg raised some excellent points, and I’m not happy about the changes to metaboxes, but hey ho.

Well that’s awesome to hear. I feel like I owe all of you guys.

I’ll just keep on buying the t-shirts :tshirt: .

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I found this linked on Reddit (don’t judge me… okay judge me)

Ultimately I would hope to not have to rewrite this stuff over and over for each block, but this at least gets me started thinking.

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Maybe this is also the reason for the opposition that Gutenberg faces - as being too WYSIWYG / live, albeit in the admin area.

Yeah exactly, that’s the thing.
The admin area is a punch in the face compared to modern UI and slow like hell, plus there’s a complete lack of live editors or an official builder.

So basically they mixed the whole thing together without a sense instead of:

  • adjust the UI of the dashboard and clean it up
  • create a standardized builder within the editor
  • create a live editor or at least enhance the actual customer, which was close to Shopify

To split it in 3 different concerns is the basic of a project development.
They are creating a monolith with frameworks which work in components.
That’s a whole no sense.

Saying WP has a depth of plugins is true but when so much of it is so poorly coded, it’s hard to use “depth” as a pro, IMO.

Poorly coded plugins for few money is a match.
It’s good to have a wider spectrum of options for people and companies interested in quick and cheap results, beside as developers that’s a torture.
However compared with the real world, you would not always buy the most expensive tool, house and so on. This concept cannot apply in any kind of market and Wordpress is exactly a cheap way to build a website, without know anything of code, design, SEO, etc.

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VOOG.com
Estonian made WP like service with kit for local dev (ruby cli), pretty popular in here

I see Matt’s post as a reminder that the Roots community needs to lead by example and contribute the solutions we have here directly to the WordPress codebase.

I’m personally documenting and critiquing Trellis / Bedrock / Sage to the fullest extent I can, to then train about 8 other developers, to then weekly contirbute to the WordPress core so we can move it forward.

I would love to work with this community to get everyone (or as close as is possible) to contribute directly to core but with a unified agenda.

Imagine if we all stood up together, and said “Hey Core team… we are a community of 100 developers who want you to accept our pull request for ONE feature.” and then record that win.

Rinse. Repeat. Over time we earn respect and trust from the leadership as a COMMUNITY. So then we’re permitted to say “Hey Core team… we have TEN pull requests we want you to accept.”

At that point we have momentum and we can have a great influence over it’s future.

While Matt certainly has pull and influence, I think it’s more of an empowering influence then one that actual dictates the communities future - IMO. It is a democracy after all! :smile:

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Just a update React will be MIT licenced. I guess Matt’s post was heard and things are shaking up again :slight_smile:

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Eh? Source for this?

N\M I’m in the woods camping and missed this.

Honestly, I know it’s probably not going to happen but I hope the core team sticks with the decision to ditch React.

I hate Facebook, so I’m biased.

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I would be interested to hear what people think of the ongoing Gutenberg débâcle.

Things have not been getting much better from my point of view. In fact things are so worrying that I even started reading about Drupal 8 earlier today. That experience served to remind me of why I used WP in the first place.

I honestly hope that somebody will fork WP before Gutenberg hits the ground.

The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. There is such a huge community of developers out there that a crowd funded project would have a very good chance of success IMO.

So my only exposure to Gutenberg has been the hysterical outcry to it. Until today. Loaded it into a test site as a plugin and I think it’s absolutely fantastic. Excited to build blocks instead of ACF + Page Templates and for clients to actually see content in place instead of in form fields.

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Exactly my thoughts.

Been working with it and loving it so far!

Something interesting and perhaps Sage related is how you apply editor styles. In the past you can just dump your theme’s entire CSS file into the tinymce iframe, but that method will break the whole dashboard in Gutenberg.

In my gulpfile on a custom theme I’m developing at the moment I have one CSS file made of all my SASS partials and a Gutenberg-specific one which includes just the pieces I need.

Dev’s really need to get a look at Gutenberg now, and not just assume their theme will be okay when it launches.

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