Some would say the biggest WordPress event of the week was yesterday, but I’ve also heard rumors it’s actually happening today 😏.
Thank you all for your continued support and feedback I’ve received of the last couple of weeks. Feels good to be back in this Newsletter creating flow. Last week’s newsletter was focused on WordPress and ChatGPT, this week we’re fully focused on WordPress.
🗞 WordPress News
So, yeah… The State of the Word. I watched it yesterday and as I was still kind of forming my opinion on some of the things Matt said.
- I saw Simon’s tweet this morning and it put in words one of the thoughts I was settling on: Themes are being phased out.
Two important, definitive statements in Matt Mullenweg’s State Of The Word yesterday, which you may have blinked and missed:
1. ‘with the 6.1 release and the 6.2 release which is going to be coming in March (2023), we are at the end of Phase 2 of Gutenberg.’ From a technical standpoint, Full Site Editing is considered good-to-go. This will come as a surprise to a lot of the WordPress ecosystem.
And related: 2. Create Block Theme ‘might be one of the last themes for WordPress’. It’s been clear for some time that themes as we have known them are being phased out. Probably still years away, but the end is in sight. But I didn’t expect it to be called out so explicitly.
It took Gutenberg (phase 1) two years to settle down sufficiently for agencies to invest fully in it. The changes to workflows, agency propositions and business models arising from FSE/block themes will probably take even longer to bed in. But the clock just started ticking.
– Simon Dickson
I added the link, but the rest is verbatim what Simon said. And pretty much how I feel about the future of WordPress themes. I think we’ve seen a strong move away from traditional theming with the Site Editor now in place. And with what we have at our disposal with patters, blocks, and global styles, we just need a direction. A starting point.
What do you think? Will we still have theme companies offering non-builder themes in 3 to 5 years? Comment below in the online version of this newsletter.
- WordPress VIP released a super interesting tool that bridges, or syncs Figma to WordPress.
And yes, the slight irony of this item following the previous one in this newsletter is not lost on me 🙃. It’s a great tool, what can I say!
💡 Interesting finds
Google released a neat Sheets add-on. One that brings ML (Machine Learning) to your sheets. They have even published a tutorial that allows you to fully grasp it’s potential. Super neat-o. Shared by Cyrus SEO on twitter in a tweet where he shows how you can use this combined with Google Search Console.
📖 What I am reading
There’s an article that I came across that I’d love to share with you all. It’s one that challenges the notion that you need “1000 true fans”. I’m a big fan of challenging current dogma’s, so I found this an interesting read. Dave Karpf explains in great detail why that 1000 true fans notion is in fact hollow.
🎁 Bonus
The bonus of this week is again about me. Sorry, not sorry. Just wanted to let you know I’ve recorded my very first WordPerf podcast. Of which I hope to do many many more. Bringing WordPress and any and all kind of Performance together.
In that context: who should I have on my podcast? Let me know by either commenting below or replying to this newsletter.
That’s it for this week’s ramblings. Thanks for reading!
Best,
Remkus
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