Gutenberg, Contributing and Community With Birgit Pauli Haack  ## Metadata - Author: [[Open Channels FM]] - Full Title: Gutenberg, Contributing and Community With Birgit Pauli Haack - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/274c9e7c-60a6-4ce2-86cb-c46af80994c8 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Birgit's WordPress Origin Story** - Birgit Pauli-Haack's WordPress journey began in 1998 with a non-profit internet service provider. - She became its president in 2009 and discovered WordPress while searching for a new CMS. Transcript: Birgit Pauli-Haack Well, Birgit, thank you so much for having me on the show. So my name is Birgit Paulihaag and it's spelled exactly the same as Birgit also, its first name. So, yeah, and we had both probably a hard time teaching people how to pronounce our name properly. And, yeah, so I came to WordPress through a whole different nonprofit organization, but they needed a new, it was a nonprofit internet service provider, and they wanted to give other Nonprofits a place for their websites. And that was in 1995 or 1998, so very, very early. I've been a volunteer with that organization since 1998. And 10 years later, like in 2009, I became the president, and all of a sudden I noticed, okay, that content management system that we had is highly outdated. You can only access it as with Internet Explorer. So yeah, how gruesome is that? And so we were looking for a new content management system and I discovered WordPress after we tested, I don't know, 20, 25. Yeah. And then since then 2009, 2010, I've been working in WordPress. We also switched our company's content management system, what we base on our websites to WordPress. And in 2017, so yeah, big jump forward. I saw in WordCamp Paris the new thing, the new Gutenberg thing, the blog editor in its first version, which was highly experimental back then. And in January 2018, I founded Gutenberg Times. So it was a newsletter where I kind of looked at what the space is doing around the blog editor, about React, about JavaScript, and what the creativity is sparked with this new thing. And it was very interesting to see how all of a sudden there came this new plug-in methods out there and new way to create content. And Gutenberg Times is now in its seventh or will become seventh anniversary. And it has always been quite inspiring to me to put a weekend edition together every week, almost every week, unless I'm traveling or on vacation. And in 19, we started also a podcast called The Good and Look Changelog, which is now in its 111th episode. So yeah, that's what I mostly do. 2021, I was 20. There was this whole thing that kind of changed the world of everybody quite a bit, especially online. And I got burned out with my company that was in that time, 18 years old. And I kind of thought, okay, maybe I don't want to do this anymore. And I applied for Automatic that had a position for developer advocate. And that's what I'm doing now. So they pay me for my time that I spend in the community doing what I think would be helpful for everybody to learn about the new, well, not so new anymore. Yeah, right. 2018 was also the year where the block editor made it into WordPress core. So that's what I do most of the time. I go to WordCamps. I speak at WordCamps. I do emceeing if it's needed. And otherwise, I talk with a lot of people about their work with WordPress. That was a long introduction. I'm sorry. No, ([Time 0:01:19](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8a91483e-8fbd-4f90-ad4f-9d5eb100b5d6)) - **Staying Updated with Gutenberg** - Stay on top of WordPress updates using resources like the 'Keeping Up With Gutenberg' index page and the Gutenberg Nightly builds. - Focus on merged PRs and skim GitHub insights for relevant changes. Transcript: Bob WP But yeah. And how do you stay organized with all the Slack messages, with all the GitHub, with all the track tickets? When contributing to WordPress, it feels kind of really overwhelming, especially for someone who might not be familiar with all the terms and information. How do you structure your life with that and your content to stay on top? Birgit Pauli-Haack So I started, yeah, well, I totally get this. And I have that too, the overwhelming and I miss a lot of things. But you just need to say, okay, what's important for me or what do I find important for the readers or the subscribers or listeners? So I start out with keeping on top of the make blogs that are around Gutenberg. So I started in 2020 a Keeping Up With Gutenberg index page on the core handbook. And that's now in its fourth year. I'm going to switching over to 2025 pretty soon. And that helps me to kind of go almost every day or every other day to look at things that are published that are about Gutenberg. And you can't only do this on a daily basis. Not everybody has time for that. So that's why I'm here. So you don't have to do it. And then I also have with Andy Fragan together and a lot of communication help from the core contributors on the Gutenberg Times, you can get a Gutenberg Nightly, which is, so not everybody Wants to download 202.7 gigabytes of NPM modules just to run, build a plugin zip file in between normal releases. So I do that and it's on Gutenberg Times and it's called, if you need a zip file from master or from trunk, then you can get it. And there's a link to use it with Playground. And that also gave me every day kind of a look at, okay, how much has been added to the Gutenberg plugin merged? So I'm mostly interested in merged things, merged PRs, of course, because they make it in the release. And sometimes I go into GitHub and look at the insights and just skim the list of PRs that were merged in the last two or three days or last week. So it's more like a triage kind of process. And with the things that I do every day, like doing the Gutenberg Nightly, looking at the Keeping Up with Gutenberg, I at least get the most important things on my radar. And then I have a feed to multiple websites who have published about Gutenberg and who continue to publish. I look at YouTube's videos. And I must say in the last two years, there has been quite a few changes that come out of the official developer blog and the official WordPress YouTube channel come quite a few new that Hadn't been before. So we have more content there and more streamlined content. So yeah, it's really interesting to see how that all comes about. And of course, in the Gutenberg changelog, I look through every Gutenberg plugin release and just the enhancements and the bug fixes and maybe a little bit about documentation, but The rest is, it's not so much there. That ([Time 0:06:12](https://share.snipd.com/snip/78b71306-daf1-48e0-90dd-35509fcc0e5c)) - **Contributing to Gutenberg** - Start contributing to WordPress by testing new issues or reviewing other people's PRs. - Contribute to documentation, especially by clarifying unclear passages or fixing typos. Transcript: Bob WP And how would you say that someone who is interested into maybe contributing to the Gutenberg project or to the blog editor itself, and where should they go first to get involved into This? Because I think there's a lot of stuff which needs to be done still. What would you suggest would be the first place besides Gutenberg times? Birgit Pauli-Haack So for those who need to be up to date on what's happening without the contribution part, like agents and developers freelancers, I think the best place is to subscribe to the developer Blog or use your RSS feed to the monthly roundup post. So there's every month on the 10th is a what's new for developers review of what happened the last month. And that has been a new thing since February 23, I think. Yeah. So it's now two years as well. And there's quite a routine in there. So it really is focused on the developer, not so much on the user interface. But that is definitely a place where you get started every month on what you need to do. And you need to pick the things that are relevant to you. It's divided up into themes and plugins and the playground platform. Would be to test things and to kind of do part of the triage team on Gutenberg, because then you see what's coming in and where the bugs are. And testing new issues is one thing that's certainly high impact, because we need to make sure that the cause and is really can be nailed down to a certain sector in the huge code base. And also to see if we tackle one problem from a different angle, if it still shows up. So reproducible and then maybe have a little bit more insight on the issues that come in. That's one thing. I know that the core contributors are also going through that, but they also list good first issues on the repo and good first reviews. So the issues would be to solve them or to at least start a conversation on what would be a good approach. And everybody will help there to figure that out in the discussion on the issue. Or if you're not yet ready to kind of contribute code, which would be in a PR, you could look at other people's PRs and see, okay, is there something? But you need to have some skills there in terms of React. You need to know a little bit more about the code base itself, how it's on this architecture. And the Gutenberg, the handbook would definitely be beneficial for that. It's on developer.webpress forward slash block editor. It's the block editor handbook, has all the APIs in there, but it also has a guide and a contributing, how to contribute code, design, or documentation. And documentation is then the next step. Contribute to documentation. If you read through things and you don't get it, and it's not very clear, that's the first sign that you could contribute to documentation and make it more clearer. So these are kind of the warm-up pieces. And when you contribute to documentation, it could just be a typo, but what it makes you do is go through the process of forking the repo, creating a PR, or making the change, find the file, Which is another thing, find the file, make the change, submit it as a PR, and then merge it. That process needs to be like muscle memory. And the best way to build it up is kind of solve something easy, like a documentation, and then get through that and get your local system up and running. There are multiple suggestions there how to do that, but you need so many things to contribute to Gutenberg. So it's definitely not the first place where I would say I want to contribute to WordPress. I go, I dive into Gutenberg. It's certainly, yeah, I wouldn't necessarily recommend that. But yeah, anybody who wants to do something is definitely welcome. But reading the documentation about the contributor guidebook would be helpful because then you save the person who reviews your PR quite some time. And you kind of stay within the rules and at least for the first 15 PRs or something like that. ([Time 0:10:48](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a940a7ac-ed35-4797-acd2-284092100021)) - **Generational Gaps in WordPress** - Younger generations face barriers to contributing to WordPress due to career demands and family responsibilities. - Onboarding needs simplification and AI could make it easier. Transcript: Bob WP Just visit woocommerce.com and find them in their marketplace or at weglot.com. When you think about, since you're involved a long, long time, how do you see the current WordPress project evolving in terms of generations? We are not getting younger, all of us. I think there's a big gap. And meanwhile, in terms of getting new, younger generations, not only using WordPress, but also growing into the contributor role. Because a big project like WordPress nowadays needs more people to contribute to the project. As you said, code base is one, but there are so many other areas which also need a helping hand, especially with documentation, testing, etc. When you think about how can we approach also younger generations to be more inclusive for that? Birgit Pauli-Haack Because do you have any idea on that? Well, I have a few ideas. Of course, I have an opinion. I travel. So I come across a lot of people on WordCamps. And there are some WordCamps where the average age is a little older on the 40th side, but there are WordCamps where there are actually younger people there. And the WordCamp Asia is a great example to see what the younger folks in WordPress are actually doing. At the product people, when I look at the engineering people that are there, also the leadership, that kind of team leads or that are on the project that come out of Asia section, they're All already quite younger than the average, I would say, American WordCamp or even the German or the European WordCamps. I also see this at Automatic. There are many, many people who are much, much younger than I am. And so there is a good mix there. When I look at the stats from the audience of my podcast, you're right, we have 37% and 39% are over 35%. But the younger group is 13.8%, is yeah like a six yeah it's it's it's a good portion contributing to wordpress is some it's not something that you do out of out of college yeah out of college You need to create you get you need to get the skills to get a job you need to kind of figure out how you want your housing and all that. You need to figure out, you need to really invest in your job to be good and make a career. I think that these are also barriers to young people to contribute because they have a job to do and they have to be really diligent. Some have young families that need to have a roof over their head. The market is definitely not all that good for those who are looking for work. So I'm kind of a little bit, should the young people contribute? Do they have the time for it? There is a training there, the training team, and they do some great work in their learning paths to create beginners developers, beginners theme developers, plugin developers. That's a good foundation to actually make a living with WordPress to learn all that. But if you want to contribute code to the WordPress project, you need some experience as well. It's not something that you can do out of a code camp or something like that. So I see it a little bit hesitant to say, okay, we need young people there. We don't have enough young people. It's really hard. But yeah, we need young people using WordPress to build their websites out of it. And that's, I don't have an idea. I'm kind of, yeah, it needs to be easy. And onboarding is really hard. And we need some more efforts in onboarding people to use WordPress. I know that there is some AI in some hosting working with artificial intelligence to build websites, to make good suggestions for people who want to build websites. And I think that's the next way to go, to make the onboarding experience for WordPress as easy as TikTok or Instagram or you ([Time 0:16:42](https://share.snipd.com/snip/7b35182b-f94e-420b-b86d-d8ba6c2cbc4e)) - **WooCommerce and Block Themes** - WooCommerce needs improvements in its block-based approach for better integration with block themes. - Hiring Ellen Bauer as product manager is a positive step towards addressing these challenges. Transcript: Bob WP And you have the control over how this data is handled. But how do you see that is WooCommerce adapting this block-based approach, given the basic plugin, and how to make agencies or freelancers a life easier to build custom pages with that Better experience? So I think the WooCommerce team has done a brilliant move in hiring Ellen Bauer. Birgit Pauli-Haack She's a longtime theme developer out of New Zealand and they hired her to be a product manager on the block themes because she has ample experience in making WooCommerce sites with themes. And she has a few ideas and kind of pinpoints really specifically what in WooCommerce needs to change from the block part to be helpful to blog themes. She started a series with a developer experience team to talk about themes and is there to start a conversation on what is missing in WooCommerce blocks to make it all work well with blog Themes. And I think there were multiple teams creating blocks in WooCommerce. And there wasn't, because the core didn't have a long time, a kind of a standard way to style things. Now they do with all the design tools, but some of the WooCommerce blocks predate that. Yeah. So how can that all be then together in a standard? That's a conversation that needs to be done with the extenders, with the freelancers and agency developers. But I think the right person is at the right spot with Alan leading the charge there. It can only be an iterative approach, although WooCommerce has really a nice onboarding experience already. But how can theme developers be a better advocate for WooCommerce with a blog theme? That definitely is the next step. Blog themes have been around for quite a while, but it only now, well, the last month, the WordPress repository has went over the threshold of a thousand block themes. And that shows that there is now a real big movement going to block themes because it makes things a lot easier for site owners to change the look and feel. ([Time 0:23:52](https://share.snipd.com/snip/79b44799-d5be-403e-8549-688cac17d982)) - **Future Trends for WordPress Agencies** - Agency owners should focus on the block bindings API, interactivity API, and plugin template registration. - Explore tools like the Create Block Themes plugin and Playground for enhanced workflows. Transcript: Bob WP And especially with all the patterns already created, which makes the life also easier to build a website in a brief moment of time. And you were talking about using AI to have some kind of a bare-bone skeleton to create on top on without all the work. But still, with all the evolution of WordPress, what trends do you foresee in the future of WordPress and WooCommerce that, for instance, agency owners should start preparing for? Birgit Pauli-Haack Well, definitely look at, for agency owners or developers in agency, look at the block bindings API that is now in the third release. It started at 6.5 and 6.6 and 6.7. Now we have actually as UI to add custom fields to a page or a template for a certain block type, for certain, just custom fields. And that is actually an evolution, which I see, I think in 2025, we will see that there will also be user interfaces to create custom post types and have their own custom fields creation Process. And at this point, you still need a developer to register the custom post type and the custom fields. But once that's done, you as a site owner or as a designer, you have all the tools available to integrate those for the front end. So you don't have to write extra templates or something like that for that. It's right there in your site editor. So that was a big step for WordPress. The interactivity API is progressing also pretty fast to create fast reacting sites. So reload from the server is less and it's all kind of done in JavaScript. And we had this concept of a single page application has come to WordPress now in core. It's really an interesting way to do that. Now, plugin developers can also register templates for the site editor. So designers and site owners can modify them without going through hoops for that. That's definitely a good API to look at. And this just was in the last three WordPress versions. I can see that the data views, as they call it, they're the admin pages that are in the site editor, looking at pages, patterns, and templates actually makes it to posts. Not more like opt-in than by default, because that's the section where there needs to be a lot of care for backwards compatibility. When you go on the admin section, especially for posts, so that will be something to opt-in. But I see that coming. I see that there are even more sections. So patterns are now also sections, and you can create style variations for it depending on your color palette. And that is a huge creativity jump for theme developers or theme builders. And I can see that some of the features that are in the feature plugin, there's a plugin out there, it's called Create Block Themes, which kind of bridges the gap between what's in the Theme files and what is in the database because they are adoptions from the user, which are all stored in the database. How do you get them back into your files to then get it into version control? And there is this wonderful plugin called CreateBlockTheme. There is a method there to save everything back to the file directory or file system. And then if you use Playground, you could actually also register a PR for a GitHub repository of the theme. So these toolings will come together in a much more seamless way. I know that Playground is going to play a big role next year for WordPress because that's WordPress out of the box. You can test anything in a browser and you have a full WordPress site there. That's kind of mind-boggling for anybody who has worked in with PHP, with server, with database servers, with Apache and Nginx kind of configuration files. That's just amazing. Yeah. And I'm really glad that they're working on some data liberation projects. So you can kind of point Playground at a non-WordPress site, identify some of the headers and everything, and then it kind of puts it all in a WordPress site. That's kind of the idea. But that's really amazing. So there's big things coming, yeah. Sounds really amazing. ([Time 0:26:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/afd2806b-cb1d-4c54-bd2e-e9ddafebce00)) - **Improving Global Collaboration in WordPress** - Support local meetup organizers and listen to communities from diverse regions, like Uganda's initiative to use WordPress in schools. - Encourage companies to contribute to WordPress through programs like Five for the Future. Transcript: Bob WP How do you see the global and multi-generational nature of WordPress community? And how do you think we can improve in better collaboration and also knowledge sharing across different regions, cultures, age groups? Because I think there's some still heavy US, North American influence on the project itself. But you mentioned also the generation and the communities and Asian regions, there's difference alone from culture, background, etc. How do you see how we can incorporate those better within the WordPress project itself and ecosystem? I know it's a big question. Birgit Pauli-Haack Well what i learned from yeah my yeah now 14 years volunteering for or working with wordpress no i'm in my 10 year anniversary of contributing so it's kind of really interesting and yeah Having that question so i'm i know that meetups are an incredible great resource to get to the local community, organized by locals. So supporting local meetup organizers, I think it's one of the big steps we have to do, especially now after the pandemic. We had a great network of meetups all over the world. But due to the pandemic pause, we lost a lot of organizers that are not. And there is only now coming back quite a bit of, oh, yeah, maybe I can organize something like that. I know that, for instance, in Uganda, there is a great initiative with the local government to get WordPress into schools because they have in their digital education, all the teachers That teach IT have selected WordPress as their tool to teach kids on how to write online, how to have a community project through the website. And they are actually making great strides, but we need to listen to those and kind of be involved in that and not make them a little bit more part of our bigger community. But I know that in WordPress WordCamp Europe, there was a talk about it. Abraham White, I think was his name. He talked about that, African. Then we have contributor companies, like Multidots from Asia. They just contributed a great feature to the collaboration effort or the collaboration phase of Gutenberg, which has three phases. First was post editor, site editor, collaborative editing, and then multilingual. And they had a plugin where they already went there for having block-based comments. And the whole team that built that for the company, for the plugin, said, okay, let's contribute that to core. And there was a project manager there. And with the core contributors together, they decided to path forward and have integrated quite a few new contributors from one company. And the experience that those have, they will travel to other companies. When they leave the company, they will still have that contribution effort. And I think we need to broaden that spectrum quite a bit to help companies to participate in the contributing effort, like the Five for the Future program. I think we can actually quite be much more proactive there to help onboard some of the contributors that have a given amount of time. But it needs to be a project and not ([Time 0:32:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8ce8ee8b-024b-4e78-a3b9-1b12fac5e4e9))