On Monday, 05-Feb-2018, the Philly ‘burbs WordPress Meetup focused on Gutenberg, the new content editor within WordPress. Over the course of the evening, the group enjoyed an overview of Gutenberg, what it does, when it’s likely to be incorporated into WordPress core, and where it’s heading in a technical sense. The evening then turned to a panel discussion about what Gutenberg will mean for the individual panelist’s respective businesses.
What Is Gutenberg?
Online educator and host of the How I Built It podcast, Joe Casabona, opened the evening by walking us through Gutenberg from a technical perspective. Here are a few of the take-aways that Joe shared:
- Ultimately Gutenberg will replace the content editor within WordPress
- Gutenberg replaces the basic content editor with block content: a block for an <h2>, another block for an image, a separate block for each paragraph, etc.
- Gutenberg is currently a WordPress plugin; it’s not yet ready for use on a live (production) site, but it’s getting close
- Gutenberg is due to be incorporated into WordPress core, launching with WordPress 5.0
- The target date for the official launch of Gutenberg is April 2018
The above list is short, but Joe’s talk was video recorded. It should be online before too long. We’ll post it here once it’s online.
What Will Gutenberg Mean for Your Business?
After Joe’s talk, the evening moved to a panel discussion of the business implications of Gutenberg. The four panelists (from left to right) were diverse:
- Brad Williams, Owner and Co-Founder of WebDevStudios
- Jessica Reilley, Owner of A Mix of Pixels
- Tracy Levesque, Co-Owner of YIKES
- Jason Coleman, Owner of Stranger Studios, whose lead product is Paid Memberships Pro, a WordPress membership plugin
Over the course of an hour-long conversation, the four panelists discussed how they were preparing for the formal introduction of Gutenberg into WordPress, and what they were doing from a business perspective to be ready for it.
The panel discussion was also video recorded. (Our apologies for the sound quality in the video. It’s definitely very crackly. Yet, the conversation is so valuable that we wanted to share the content despite the sound quality issues.)
Philly ‘burbs WordPress Meetup
Founded in May 2012, the Philly ‘burbs WordPress Meetup is a collective of people who rely on WordPress for their businesses or careers. The group was co-founded by Liam Dempsey, who has run the group since it started. To learn more about this meetup, please visit meetup.com/philly-burbs-wordpress-meetup/.
Photo of the panelists by Reed Gustow. Used with permission.
