person in black and white t-shirt using computer

We hosted our first WP Minute Live Twitter Space covering learning WordPress.

It was Bring Your Own Link (BYOL) style where our guest panelists brought a link to share with the audience. Here were the guests that appeared on the live show:

  • Hauwa Abashiya, Freelance Project Manager transitioning into the WordPress space; Board Member and Volunteer at Big Orange Heart including WordFest and one of the Make Training Team Reps.
  • Joe Casabona, Joe started his career almost 20 years ago as a freelance web developer before realizing his true passion, which is sharing his years of knowledge about website development, podcasting and course creation to help creators, and business owners.
  • Birgit Pauli-Haack,  Birgit is the curator of the Gutenberg Times and co-host of the Gutenberg Changelog podcast with Greg Ziolkowski. Automattic sponsors her work as a full-time developer advocate for WordPress. 
  • Daniel Schutzsmith, Web Manager at Pinellas County Government, one of the Producers at The WP Minute, maintainer of WP Livestreams Directory, and soon to be launched WP Developer’s Toolbox.
  • Matt Medeiros, Director by day at Castos.com; Creating community contributed news and journalism at thewpminute.com part of Matt Report media network. 
Brought to you by Malcare
Visit Malcare

WordPress security for high performance websites. Start protecting your websites for free! Visit Malcare and tell them WP Minute sent you!

Matt Medeiros
|
Tuesday, 1 Feb 2022
|
Reading time:
63 mins
|
Read online
Listen to the episode

Consider Supporting The WP Minute

The WP Minute is an experiment in community journalism for WordPress.

If you want to support me, my team, and all of those that contribute – head on over to buymeacoffee.com/mattreport.

Buy us a digital coffee for as little as $5 OR better yet! Join our community of WordPress newsies, get access to our Discord server, private podcast, behind the scenes on how the news is made, and get your voice heard on the podcast.

That’s it for today’s episode, if you enjoyed please share it on your social media, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Podchaser. Don’t forget to share share share this episode with others and jump on the mailing list 👇

Thanks for subscribing.

Consider Supporting The WP Minute

The WP Minute is an experiment in community journalism for WordPress. If you want to support me, my team, and all of those that contribute – head on over to buymeacoffee.com/mattreport.

Buy us a digital coffee for as little as $5 OR better yet! Join our community of WordPress newsies, get access to our Discord server, private podcast, behind the scenes on how the news is made, and get your voice heard on the podcast.

Episode transcript

[00:00:00] Matt: This event is brought to you by malware and blog vault. Check out mal care.com and blog vault.net, helping you secure and restore your WordPress websites. Quite literally thank them without them. I wouldn’t be able to be doing the WP minute live and Daniel wouldn’t have that nice new gold chain around his neck.

[00:00:18] Moving forward. I’d ask all of you to join the link squad, hashtag link squad, producers, and contributors, and the discord server share, vote and discuss their newsworthy links with others. When you’re part of the link squad, you’re part of making weekly word, press news. And we’re talking about one of the, one of the biggest topics, 5.9, and learning a little bit more about 5.9, Daniel, your segments.

[00:00:46] Daniel: Yeah. And really what we’re doing here too, for folks that don’t know the w the WP minute is that it’s contributor, sourced news. We provide links basically every week of what we see out there in the industry. And so we often have discussions around those links, similar to what you’d see in a newsroom.

[00:01:04] It’s just done a discord. And so we’re, we’re talking with each other and talking about the various things we like about a link or whatnot 

[00:01:11] Matt: WVU minute live is bringing you that discussion right here on Twitter spaces and streaming platforms across the internet, someday discuss hashtag link squad topics with us live and follow at the WP minutes.

[00:01:23] Stay. 

[00:01:25] Daniel: Yeah, given the, the new release of WordPress 5.9, we’re going to focus on this week’s topic, being, learning WordPress. And so everyone’s brought at least one link, perhaps two or three that that share a little bit about learning WordPress. And so we’re going to go through once and we’re going to see how that goes and how long that takes.

[00:01:43] But first, let me introduce our folks here. We already know kind of Matt, Modaris our fearless leader here, director by day at dot com. Creating community contributed news and journalism at the WP minutes. Part of the Matt report media network. We also have how ABA Shaya freelance project manager transitioning into the WordPress space, a board member and volunteer at big orange heart, including word Fest, and one of the make training team reps.

[00:02:10] Thank you for being here. How all the way from London, I believe. Yep. That’s right. Alright. Joe, Casabona coming straight to us from Pennsylvania. Punxsutawney Phil come up soon. Joe started his career almost 20 years ago as a freelance web developer before realizing his true passion, which is sharing his years of knowledge about website development, podcasting, and course creation to help creators and business owners.

[00:02:38] And I’m subscribed to seven of his podcasts. They’re all amazing. So checking out a peer get ball. They have. Beer is the curator of the Gutenberg times and co-host of the Gutenberg changelog podcast with Greg Koski automatic sponsors for work as a full time developer advocate for WordPress[00:03:00] 

[00:03:01] and my cell phone, Daniel should Smith, a mild-mannered web manager at Raquel’s Pinellas county government down here in Florida by day. But I’m also one of the producers at the w few minutes and a maintainer of WP live streams directory, which you may have heard me talk about before. And since we launched WP developers toolbox, so let’s get to it.

[00:03:23] We’re going to go through each person. They’re going to share a link. We’re going to tweet out that link. So as you’re going along to speakers, let me know if you’ve already tweeted it out and I’ll go into your profile and find it last year. How you’re up first? 

[00:03:39] Hauwa: So I’ve just tweeted my now. And of course I have to tweet out the.wordpress.org, because I think it should be the number one tweet that goes out anyway, resource for everybody coming to learn about WordPress.

[00:03:53] So if you don’t know about it, it’s a resource that’s been built by the community and we have got lesson plans, workshops, and courses, and we also have social learning spaces on that. 

[00:04:11] Daniel: That’s great. And what what kind of things can we find there specifically, like on courses and such as it, is it like Courses around full site editing and things like that, or, 

[00:04:20] Hauwa: yeah, so we as part of a 5.9, the training team, so I’m one of the reps on their make training team, along with Courtney Robinson and Pooja discharge.

[00:04:31] And we took an undertaking to actually get content out ready for 5.9. First time we’ve done it and, please see that we did get some contacts out there. And one of them has been a course that was done by Roxy and it’s about full site editing. So it’s from a user’s point of view and it’s the first part.

[00:04:49] And I believe the second part should be coming out later this month. And we do have a couple of workshops and lesson plans are out there as well, that are like 0.9.

[00:04:59] I’m just going to tweet out that actually you said I can only do one thing. Can I have the link to the course? Sure. 

[00:05:06] Daniel: We can do 

[00:05:09] Matt: more 

[00:05:09] Daniel: speakers, feel free to ask any questions or give any thoughts to these things. The I’m looking at the workshops here and I don’t know how I missed this, that there’s so many workshops.

[00:05:19] Hauwa: The workshops work came about just around during the pandemic. So we’d always have lessons and obviously the lesson plans have been there to help meet up organizers. You couldn’t get it. Speaker didn’t know what to talk about and you could just go and get a lesson plan and walk through that during your meetup.

[00:05:39] And I believe some people have used it in training general training of law students as well in bootcamps and things like that. I know Courtney’s used it quite a lot as a resource and she has contributed quite a lot. And then she’s in here listening. Yeah. And then yeah, workshops. So workshops, you can watch one of the videos and you can join a social learning space to [00:06:00] discuss it.

[00:06:00] And I know we’ve been doing a lot more with social learning spaces now. So the formats of those could slightly change. It’s experimenting with different ways of delivering special learning spaces.

[00:06:15] Joe: I know that a other kind of core space like websites that have a lot of WordPress stuff have the notion of different. Tracks, I guess like UTA at word camps is, are there plans for that@learndotwordpress.org? Because I know that you cover a wide range of topics. It says here from first-time blogger to seasoned developer will, there’ll be some guidance coming down the pike on if you’re a first-time blogger, where do you go versus if you’re a seasoned developer, where do you, 

[00:06:41] Hauwa: yeah, so we’ve just sending out the latest course now we have been doing some work or the Sierra on looking she started last year in terms of defining what our goals are.

[00:06:53] And I do believe dining, you might be bringing out a link up or on but we’ve been looking at what our goals are in terms of the training team. So one of the things that Courtney has done, she did a high level roadmap, which looked at it. So it’s essentially, you could possibly think about it as planning your own.

[00:07:10] If you are starting from a user or you’re starting from a developer, it’s a one room that you could look at 

[00:07:19] Daniel: that shit.

[00:07:23] I didn’t even realize there’s quizzes on here. Yep. You can take an actual 

[00:07:28] Hauwa: quiz, test you to make sure that you’re doing it properly now. Just checking. Yeah, there are quizzes on there. Each of them have quizzes a week within the lesson plans. We also have exercises that people can follow as well.

[00:07:41] Yeah. 

[00:07:44] Matt: How does one apply to be a teacher, somebody to present one of these workshops, so 

[00:07:51] Hauwa: on Mary with me, we do have, and I will take you to, I wish I could type as fast as I talk.

[00:08:02] Okay. So I would just share it out the link for the high level roadmap that Courtney did. So on. We do have a way that you can contribute and get involved. That link is right on land, but I will share it. And so if you want to be a facilitator and submit your workshop or create a social learning space, there are some guidelines, but essentially you just walk through and submit your application and the team reviews it and just puts you in.

[00:08:44] Daniel: That’s pretty cool. I know there’s a few folks in the community that have said they were at least helping proofread and things like that. And to, technically read to make sure things were correct. And they were put together the past few weeks. So it sounds sounds like I need to get involved, actually [00:09:00] do some 

[00:09:00] Hauwa: stuff.

[00:09:02] Every month we, as a team, we discussed what we were going to do for that month. So we’re looking at, we essentially, we run a sprint every month and we post out on make what we’re actually working on for that month. So anyone came on, they would have seen what we were working on for January. And a lot of it was geared towards five point.

[00:09:23] We’re going to continue with that for February, and also look at some of the things that we identified during our team goal setting. That we’re going to target for this month as well. So that should cause tomorrow, February, so we should be releasing that out tomorrow, but I will post the link just in terms of, if anyone wants to know what we’re working on.

[00:09:44] This is what we’re working on. 

[00:09:48] Daniel: Great. Let’s let’s move on to the next Joe you’re you’re on 

[00:09:53] Joe: deck. All right. I, this feels like shameless self promotion, but it’s something that I think about hopefully as evidenced by my question to how it’s my website, WP learning paths.com where I break down.

[00:10:07] Resources based on where you are in your WordPress journey. So I’ve got three resources for beginner, two resources per site builder, and then three resources for a developer. The reason I built this and the most lacking section is actually the site builder section. I don’t, I haven’t come across a lot of resources specifically for the site builders, the no code WordPress folks.

[00:10:35] I was asked in another event the go WP, happiness hour last week who is full site editing for. And I think it’s for a whole sect of no code people who can now make their way to work. ’cause you don’t just need to know a page builder or you don’t just need to know a specific theme to build sites without code.

[00:10:56] I put this resource together. I actually I’m going to be, I’m going to see how far I can get with full site editing with just full site editing, even though I’m a developer. So I’ll be using 2022 to customize this as much as possible without code. So it’ll be my learning journey being built in real life, but it’s also a resource for people who are looking to learn WordPress.

[00:11:21] Daniel: Fantastic. And I mean that, this is awesome. 

[00:11:26] Matt: The ban testing, 

[00:11:30] Joe: this is this is 

[00:11:31] Daniel: something that I’ve been tweeting a lot about in the past week or two. And I hear it. In your podcast to how you mentioned some of the same things and it’s that it’s that path. It just doesn’t, it doesn’t exist for some folks that are coming from outside of the space.

[00:11:48] If you’re not, and if you’re not understanding the WordPress vernacular, if our jargon even the fact that.org.com are different, these are all things to people when they first come in. So [00:12:00] 

[00:12:01] Joe: it’s definitely, I’ve definitely made it a mission for 2022 to get some more pers perspective swapping.

[00:12:11] I’m going to say between inside and outside the WordPress space, because I think you’re right. People coming from outside the WordPress space the straw man is probably people who write WordPress with a lowercase P but it’s the people who don’t fully know the terms. They don’t really know what to look for on the same token, the people who have been entrenched in WordPress for almost 20 years, I started using it in 2004.

[00:12:32] Probably can learn a lot from people who have just started in the no-code space or who’ve been using Squarespace or something like that. So I think my mission is to connect the two this year and help them learn from each other, which hopefully makes a more rich community in both places.

[00:12:53] Daniel: Yeah. Matt, did you have some say some? Did you have something you want to say? 

[00:12:58] Matt: Yeah. I was, there’s actually, and a question for Holly as well as which profile and I think Joe started to address it, but which profile of end-user. Do you, what do you see both of your the official learn path or Joe’s path?

[00:13:12] What type of WordPress user is this? I guess more specifically for how it’s like WordPress sees every type of WordPress user. How do you even begin to prioritize the type of content or the type of educational content that you create, but show first to you developer, web professional end user, like, how are you categorizing your type of

[00:13:49] Birgit: how to use one 

[00:13:53] Hauwa: to get involved? Great bye. Make 

[00:13:57] Daniel: cool. I know there’s a few folks in the community that have said they were at least helping proofread and things like that. And I guess technically read to make sure things were correct. And they were put together the past few weeks. So it sounds sounds like I need to get involved and actually do some stuff.

[00:14:15] Hauwa: Every month we, as a team, we discussed what we were going to do for that month. So we’re looking at, we essentially, we run a sprint every month and we post out on make what we’re actually doing. This is awesome. 

[00:14:28] Joe: The ban, some more rich community. How do they use WordPress training teams 

[00:14:34] Daniel: most I know you need people.

[00:14:36] I know you need people to keep making content, but it’s also, I think it’s a marketing thing too. I’m like 

[00:14:42] Joe: how do I learn it?

[00:14:49] How do you how to use WordPress? Or it could be the official learn path pers perspective actually developer, so great. 

[00:14:59] Daniel: [00:15:00] Let’s let’s move on to the next Joe, you’re on 

[00:15:02] Joe: deck. All right. I, this feels like shameless self promotion, but it’s something that I think about hopefully as evidenced by my question to how it’s my website, WP learning paths.com where I break down resources based on where you are in your WordPress journey.

[00:15:20] So I’ve got three resources for beginner, two resources per site builder, and then three resources for a developer. The reason I built this and the most lacking section is actually the site builder section. I don’t, I haven’t come across a lot of resources specifically for the site builders, the no code WordPress folks.

[00:15:44] I was asked in another event the go WP happiness hour last week who is full site editing for. And I think it’s for a whole sect of no code people who can now make their way to WordPress, because you don’t just need to know a page builder or you don’t just need to know a specific theme to build sites without code.

[00:16:05] I put this resource together. I actually I’m going to be, I’m going to see how far I can get with full site editing with just full site editing, even though I’m a developer. Using 2022 to customize this as much as possible without code. So it’ll be my learning journey being built in real life, but it’s also a resource for people who are looking to learn WordPress.

[00:16:29] Daniel: Fantastic. And I mean that, this is awesome. 

[00:16:33] Joe: The fan 

[00:16:35] Matt: testing, 

[00:16:38] Joe: this is this is 

[00:16:39] Daniel: something that I’ve been tweeting a lot about in the past week or two. And I hear it in your podcast too, how you mentioned some of the same things. It’s that past. It doesn’t exist for some folks that are coming from outside of the space.

[00:16:54] If you’re not, if you’re not understanding the word, press vernacular, if our jargon even the fact that.org.com are different. Like these are all things to people when they first come in. So 

[00:17:07] Joe: it’s definitely, I’ve definitely made it a mission for 2022 to get some more pers perspective swapping.

[00:17:17] I’m going to say between inside and outside the word space, because I think you’re right. People coming from outside the WordPress space the straw man is probably people who write WordPress with a lowercase P but it’s the people who don’t fully know the terms. They don’t really know what to look for on the same token, the people who have been entrenched in WordPress for almost 20 years, I started using it in 2004.

[00:17:40] Probably can learn a lot from people who have just started w in the no-code space or who’ve been using a Squarespace or something like that. So I think my mission is to connect the two this year and help them learn from each other, which hopefully makes a more rich community in both places.[00:18:00] 

[00:18:01] Daniel: Yeah. Matt, did you have some say some? Did you have something you wanted to say? 

[00:18:06] Matt: Yeah, I was, it was actually a question for Holly as well as which profile and I think Joe started to address it, but which profile of end user do you, what do you see both of your the official learn path or Joe’s path?

[00:18:19] What type of WordPress user is this? I guess more specifically for how it’s like WordPress sees every type of WordPress user. How do you even begin to prioritize. The type of content or the type of educational content that you create, but Joe first to you developer, web professional, and user, like how are you categorizing your type of your 

[00:18:44] Joe: yeah.

[00:18:44] My, I mean like the courses that I create, or this site specifically that we’re talking about now, this site specifically yeah, so I’m I’m going to say I’m optimizing it in search, but I don’t know really how to do that properly. But I want this to answer the question, how do I learn WordPress?

[00:19:01] This could be somebody who for a beginner, right? If they’re like, I have no idea how to use WordPress or it could be the developer. Who’s like, how do I make a WordPress theme? So I guess my target audience is people from outside the WordPress space who don’t necessarily know.

[00:19:18] Where to look to find something to learn. I wouldn’t to say that this is probably not somebody who’s like already a LinkedIn learning member, because they’re probably just going to go there. Or not necessarily even somebody who who already knows who I am or my Gutenberg courses, because they’re just trying to answer this question.

[00:19:36] WordPress was dropped in my lap. How do I learn it? 

[00:19:40] Matt: Gotcha.

[00:19:40] Hauwa: Yeah, it’s it just brought me to where I just tweeted out who can learn help. Cause we looked at this a while ago back August because the vision for land leasing and the training team is huge because you can impact so many different people. So you do have your users. Your extended, whether that is freelances or designers or developers.

[00:20:01] And you’ve also got your contributors and your leaders as well. So it’s highlighting, there are many different paths. And I think that roadmap that I shared earlier breaks down in terms of the sort of people that we think learn can help and the different pathways that they could go through or they could come from.

[00:20:20] And to add to that, part of, like I said, when we had our goal team goal setting is looking at well, what are we actually going to focus on? Because it’s so huge and it’s looking at well, we need to have a needs analysis and determine what it is that people want. And by people, just not just our users, but also our employers, what are they actually seeking for in terms of the skills that they want to actually see candidates coming to them have.

[00:20:47] Daniel: There’s so much, there’s so much content to it learn, but it’s almost I know you need people. I know you need people to keep making content, but it’s also, I think it’s a marketing thing too. Like getting [00:21:00] people really to understand that exists there and in a way that, a similar thing that Joe has and here’s the path that you should follow.

[00:21:09] And I do see you have some things laid out like that there.

[00:21:15] Hauwa: Yeah. In terms of, we, we do need a lot of bodies to help. So yeah, we need everyone really. It’s not, the developers, the marketers, the designers, because, at the moment when you look at that and I know after the needs analysis, and there was a UX audit that was done last year, so that look and feel of learning and also change because obviously at the moment, when you go into it, it’s just, you just see lesson plans and workshops.

[00:21:42] So there is work on that needs to be done. But the training team is a small team at the moment. And so shout out to anybody wants to come and join and help me be more than happy to have you. 

[00:21:54] Daniel: And I put a beer, gets link up top there to, for folks to who are interested in becoming a facilitator.

[00:22:03] Matt: It’s funny. I was on a webinar the other day for a piece of software called de script, which was very popular. And in the podcasting space, basically trans transcribed your audio when you edit audio through texts, instead of visually through wave forms and the CEO does this webinar, maybe once a quarter or something like that.

[00:22:22] And I think it’s one of the better pieces of software that I use fairly straightforward, pretty easy to use and understand there’s a slight learning curve like everything else, but it’s not tremendously difficult. And they have a ton of content and a ton of content. That’s actually in the context of the app.

[00:22:40] So wherever you’re in the app, you can always get access to a knowledge base, article, a video. It’s a tutorial and they do webinars all the time. At least two or three a month according to my inbox. And the CEO pulls up a person from the audience to ask questions. And that person says, gee, I wish you could sh I wish you could create more content around using this piece of software.

[00:23:05] And I could see in his eyes, he just wanted to be like, do we not create enough already? And it’s just, every person is going to want to learn it a different way. This particular person was like, yeah, but I want to start from scratch. And he’s there’s a whole course over here. There’s an academy over there.

[00:23:22] There’s this three hour long video on YouTube. And it’s, every person is always going to want something different. And even for an app like de script, the challenge for WordPress is just, wow, there’s just, it’s just a big challenge, I think for WordPress, but you guys are the team and everything is just doing an amazing job.

[00:23:46] Daniel: Yeah. And to be fair too, there is a. Because I’m doing the WP live streams directory. I’m seeing all the different things that are coming across my feeds that I’m putting into our calendar and the social learning team there. They must [00:24:00] have at least four or five webinars a week, basically.

[00:24:04] That’s our kicking out. So it’s been very fast and furious and they look like really good, attended webinars too. We’re talking like, 70 plus people almost every time. So when people are interested in it,

[00:24:19] Matt: Hey, if you’re just tuning in, this is the first WP minute live session on Twitter spaces. WP minute is an experiment in community journalism and reporting news for WordPress. You can find us at the WP minute. It’s hosted by Daniel shoot Smith. He’s your navigator today. And the hashtag is hashtag w.

[00:24:42] I am the creative genius behind that hashtag that is the value that I bring to the show.

[00:24:51] Daniel: Absolutely. And it works well. Beer 

[00:24:57] Matt: let’s hear from you. 

[00:24:58] Birgit: I’m going right into the social learning spaces, which is a meetup group, and it’s also on the longest learn. There’s a social calendar. But a lot of these social learning spaces, or actually there, I’m here to share a link to the first event of the Gutenberg developers hours an event where developers can bring their the problems, the questions, the code, that demos to an expert panel and then get answers from the various people and February 8th event, we’ll have Nick Diego developer advocate at WP engine and plugin developer and theme developer, and then also Fabiana Kagy who books 10 up and has done quite some Gutenberg demo.

[00:25:48] Development and also some great apps around and always keeps the conversation flowing. And then the third panelist will be Tammy Lista, who is one of the designers of the Gutenberg project. And also now works for SWP and trains developers there and has some interesting ideas on gradual adoption of Gutenberg depending on your skill level.

[00:26:15] So that’s what we’re going to going to discuss on February 8th 11:00 AM Eastern and 1600 UTC. And that’s all on the the repressed learning, social learning group on a meetup, you can do that, or there is also a post on the make blog. Because I put a proposal together to actually rally some experts together who wanted to be participating.

[00:26:40] This is only the first of four events. We will do it every other Tuesday. So it will be a February 8th, then February 22nd, March 8th, and then March 22nd. And we will have a changing panel. And also after that, we do a recap with the [00:27:00] panelists, with the participants and see how we can improve the event.

[00:27:03] And then continue doing that also in an Asia Pacific. Comfortable time zone because this is in the middle of a night for them. So that’s my link today. And I’m just yeah, totally amazed. How far the learn dot WordPress team came with all the content that they put out just about for WordPress 5.9.

[00:27:27] Yeah. There’s a lot of yeah. How to use the navigation, navigate a blog, how to use drop patterns, how to use all those on the site too, there are some great events coming up. 

[00:27:39] Daniel: That sounds great. And that is quite a lineup is so that I hear you. So that’s the lineup for the first one on that changes each session.

[00:27:47] Is that right? 

[00:27:48] Birgit: Yes. Yes. Yeah. Some of them are repeaters. I said, okay, I will do all four. Yeah. We will also have George mama dish villain. Is there also Joni Halabi and I forgot, sorry. 

[00:28:04] Daniel: Oh, that’s great. And next here in the audience. So hello, Nick. The so at this, it looks like you can actually bring your questions that you might have.

[00:28:13] So if you’re trying to figure something out, if you’re looking to get more clarification on something, like actually getting the folks that do this regularly to walk you through it, that’s pretty awesome. 

[00:28:24] Birgit: Yeah. And I think that’s a missing piece on the parts because we develop us, we are mostly trying to figure it out themselves.

[00:28:32] Get some examples, go out in stack overflow or wherever, but there is not a whole lot of there’s a lot of documentation out there, but never for that specific use case. And sometimes you just need have an expert kind of walk you through an approach. Like I want to do this kind of blog or block, what would what would be necessary?

[00:28:50] I do I use the sidebar. Do I use a tube Quantway extend the core block or do I create my own block? Can I do this what I’m doing with custom fields, what I’m doing with custom post types, all these kinds of questions. And yeah, those panelists will have some answers for you that you can make a better decision on how to approach things.

[00:29:09] Because of course there are always 15 ways to skin the cat. But what is the best one for you? Is hard to find out something. 

[00:29:18] Daniel: Yep. And that’s where I’m at as a developer. Like I’m the, yeah, I’m still the PHP based HTML developer. I didn’t hate anyone’s warning to learn JavaScript mowers though. I’m playing catch up as we go along most my, and

[00:29:39] I think it goes back to what Joe was saying before, too, about, the different pathways and people coming to WordPress. I also feel, the questions around JavaScripts specifically in react and how we can use it in the block editor and also FSC I think is really important as well.

[00:29:53] So to have folks that have actually worked on this a bit to give that clarification that’s true. [00:30:00] 

[00:30:00] Birgit: Yeah, that feeds right into, if I may, she has taken link, which is a block seam generator that Carmelina NEMA she has been on the representative for a long time. Also has a website called full site editing and she just published a block theme generator.

[00:30:20] And you can create different levels of the theme that you want to try out. And if you want to have an empty seam, you get the six normal templates like index single page archive for four and search the theme, Jason file. And that. Yeah. No patterns, no block style. If you want to have a more elaborate theme that you want to learn from then you can get the basic theme, which also has a custom template.

[00:30:46] Has two template parts three block patterns, and then also custom block styles that you can put in the sidebar as well as additional styles for the form elements. And the theme gees on that comes with it has quite a few different variations there that you can adopt there, be it custom colors or being dual tones or being stylings for for specific blocks on a general basis.

[00:31:12] And the best one to learn from is probably the advanced theme that you can download there. That has seven templates has four. Templates for pages and posts, but also seven block patterns. Custom styles shows you how to include Google funds, how to create a unregistered block styles and patterns, and also how to ha have filters on there.

[00:31:36] That’s a quite learning tools when you know how to code, but you also want to look at code and see, okay that’s interesting how she does that, or that’s interesting. I’ve never thought that would work. Yeah. But here it works. And these are great examples. 

[00:31:52] Daniel: That sounds great. I’m going to check that out.

[00:31:53] Matt, did you want to say something? 

[00:31:56] Matt: Yeah. So just quick question, maybe maybe you’re just using zoom for now, but I’m curious because of the lack of WordCamps and meetups around the world. Is there a different tool being used other than let’s say just the zoom of screen-sharing something that is more geared to, when I think back to work camps, when obviously when the most powerful thing is being in person, but I would just see people, sitting side by side laptop.

[00:32:18] Side-by-side, here’s how you code this, pointing to that. Obviously in person, much easier to do that. Is there a different tool in place for this sort of like side-by-side coding, learning, or maybe not yet? And just sort, just zoom sharing for now? 

[00:32:31] Birgit: No fun for now though. You mean you couldn’t work developer hours?

[00:32:35] Those are zoom meetings. They’re not webinars so we can see each other. Everybody can share when they want to. And but it’s relatively informal, but it’s not a kind of sit next to me and to coding, what you, what is out there are several Twitch streams. I know Ryan Welsh. Has Ryan Welches, R Y a N w E L C H E R.

[00:32:59] On [00:33:00] Twitch. He does every Thursday morning at 10 30 Eastern. A livestream about two hours where he codes certain yeah. Problems. So yeah. Approach a certain things. Here’s done yeah, block, how you create a meme block or how you create a poll block and how to yeah. Walks through on the Gutenberg release kind of thing.

[00:33:21] So it’s and it’s interesting to see how he approaches every project pretty much the same way. And then leads down. Okay. Yeah. For this blog we need we need to enter some PEX controls. We need some we need to add work with data. We need to display something like for a poll you need to display some hierarchy some bar charts and all that.

[00:33:41] There are quite a few interesting Streams out there they’re recorded. And then he puts them up on the YouTube channel on his YouTube channel. If you follow the Gutenberg times weekend edition, I most, most of the time I have his link in there. So you can go to the Gutenberg times the last Saturday, a weekend edition, and you will see a few links that you can follow on the Twitch stream.

[00:34:06] I know Helen who Sandy did a Twitch stream on where she tried to figure out full site editing for own blog. It was last summer, so there were still a few bugs in there, but there was an interesting of yeah. Follow along. So that kind of thing is out there right now. Yeah,

[00:34:27] Joe: one of the things. That I think going going back to learning JavaScript and code one of the things that excites me a lot about full site editing, especially as we look at the preliminary roadmap for 6.0, is that I feel like we’re getting back to basics, right? Justin Tatlock had a really good article on the, on WP Tavern.

[00:34:53] This is, if this is modern WordPress theme development, sign me up where he was happy that he didn’t have to spin up no JS or whatever, anything. And that, that really excites me too. Cause like I’m a. I had Pippin Williamson on my podcast like ages ago and something, he said that stuck with me. And it’s like the thing that I carried through as a developer is if he dropped his laptop in a lake, he wanted to be able to walk into an apple store, buy a new one and have it up and running in an hour or less.

[00:35:27] And with some of these developer tools, I don’t know if that’s possible. So it’s cool. That theme development is getting easier. I think it’s going to decrease the the learning curve, especially for first-time WordPress theme developer. 

[00:35:41] Birgit: Yeah, I totally agree, Joe. There is no built step in there.

[00:35:45] There is no note jazz. There is no big rap pack kind of thing. It’s really relatively clean in HTML CSS and maybe a little bit PHP for the functions PHP, if you need it. But other than that, you [00:36:00] could do this. You could even create a theme in the full site editor, the site editor on once you log into WordPress and then export that and then use that same on another page or site Rather it’s not completely perfect yet.

[00:36:15] Of course, it’s the first first version that’s I don’t think it’s ready for production. And it still has the beta level beta label. But it’s going there. It does not need the full JavaScript on, but it also means that theme the, a lot of themes have a lot of plugins territory in their theme packed in like custom post types and additional custom fields and all that kind of build into their themes.

[00:36:44] So this method of theme developing is more for. Let the theme be a seam and everything else goes in plugins a way. And that’s right. Yeah. Joe, you got it. It’s back to basics. That’s what a seam theme supposed to be. 

[00:37:01] Joe: Yeah. I love that. That’s something I thought too, is that this is, I think this is the next step in the, the great decoupling, the true decoupling of themes and plugins and layout and functionality, which is great, which is absolutely.

[00:37:14] Daniel: It’s a big a big proponent. I love the whole MVC framework, the whole concept of you have the model, you have the view viewer, and then you have the control and basically it’s separating those different pieces to it. And we always had that with WordPress, but not completely, but now it really feels that we’re going into that direction, that you truly could separate, the functionality from the design especially with what we’re seeing with the Jason and all that.

[00:37:38] So it’s a very, it’s a very exciting time to be working with that. You get, was 

[00:37:42] Birgit: there something else you want to mention?

[00:37:46] Any questions? 

[00:37:47] Hauwa: No. I just had one thing to add to when I think Joe was asking about, or maybe it was UMAT about the different streaming platforms. We do have a post out that is asking for guidance on that. We recognize that, it’s not just that when people do want to use Twitch and whatever other platform you want to use.

[00:38:06] So there is a person I think Courtney’s shared it out on the space. So if anybody wants to contribute to that, so things that we just need to consider around, if you’re using your logo use and subscribing asking people to subscribe, that sort of stuff, but just the different platforms that people want to actually use.

[00:38:23] Birgit: Just a comment from Courtney Robinson that she would love to see learned over P kind of work with code spaces and be as code and have a way to actually have code along that line. I think that’s an interesting idea. Fabulous. Yeah. And I know that Favian, Peggy was also working on a tool that lets you when you do a tutorial that lets you embed some code with all the yeah.

[00:38:49] Where you can change it on the browser. And then copy paste that into your own environment, but you don’t have to just to do the example, you don’t have to spin up all the things that you need [00:39:00] even for block development, but he’s working on it. And I talked about it on the latest, a change log because he was.

[00:39:07] I guess on there. And it’s a very promising development there. He got the inspiration from the react documentation beta that they have published right now. And that is definitely going these places. Yeah. Thanks for the reminder, Courtney. 

[00:39:26] Daniel: No, while we’re, while you’re mentioning it too, I think react is another area that I just keep thinking has so much potential to bring in a flood of new folks into WordPress.

[00:39:38] And I figured this, something around that to me is very interesting and almost exciting about the fact that it’s this wide open frontier, but, we really haven’t had any, large as far as they know any large, JavaScript agencies come in or any of the larger movement other than, the, we.

[00:39:59] The whole concept of Gutenberg around react. But now it’s if you think about opening it up to people who were doing other types of status apps and the types of things out there, and they realize the potential that they can do inside of WordPress with what they already know about react, that’s where I’m, to me, I really hope that we can attract those audiences as well and bring them over into the fold.

[00:40:19] They’re

[00:40:26] very 

[00:40:26] Birgit: exciting.

[00:40:26] Daniel: Let’s see. We just had me left. Matt, did you want to reset the room? Are we good? 

[00:40:32] Matt: Let’s reset. Because we’re professionals around here. This is the WP minute alive Twitter space talking about learning WordPress with WordPress 5.9. That happened last week. There’s less alert and we’re excited to have three great panelists on to to help us learn WordPress.

[00:40:50] You can expect to see us maybe once a month around here doing some live Twitter spaces with Daniel shoot Smith at the helm. Join the hashtag link squad@thewpminute.com. The WP minute.com. Your experiment in WordPress, community, journalism and news. I think now, if anyone has any questions about learning WordPress or any reactions responses to what our panelists have shared today, feel free to raise your hand request to speak.

[00:41:20] And as long as you don’t come at us like crazy folks in the movies on. We’ll bring you up on stage. 

[00:41:30] Daniel: Yup. No pitchforks. And also too, if you have a link that you’d like to share, feel free to tweet that out and then hop on here to ask the speak. I’ll go and do mine now. So share mine.

[00:41:40] And I got to preface this by the fact that none of us talked about our links ahead of time. It just so happens that a lot of shows like that were from the make team and the specifically learn WordPress team mine as well. So mine was specifically about the training team goals. And again, you’ll hear [00:42:00] her name mentioned a lot, but Courtney was the one who showed this to me.

[00:42:04] And I think it was maybe even yesterday or the day before that That the trading team goals for 2022 there’s some really great things in here talking about the represent representation of stakeholders and making sure they have the right the right people at the table to be able to be involved.

[00:42:18] Also talk about the different methods and priorities and what obstacles they’re dealing with. But one of the things that really stood out to me, and it was almost a footnote that I heard was the whole concept of certifications that that we are experimenting, or looking into kind of certifications in Q4 20, 22 around around learned WP.

[00:42:38] And this is something I think that’s, everyone has their own opinions about certification. The reality is people do get attracted to having certifications, especially if it’s done by a body that, that everyone sees as the expert or the lead, body and whatever that industry is.

[00:42:52] And so to me, it just opens up another avenue of just, professionalism and also just the that capability there to attract, those folks coming from other industries and other areas where they’re focusing on web development to now realize that they can do this type of thing over here.

[00:43:07] I know it’ll be a slow roll and it’ll be something that’ll have to be done over time. But I think it’s just very exciting to see that coming, seeing that as a possibility here and putting things together. And Courtney is actually requesting, go ahead, Joe. 

[00:43:22] Joe: I just want to provide a little bit of context for this cause I’m sure Courtney you’ll probably remember, but.

[00:43:29] Actually, I don’t, I can’t remember if you were at the 2015 community summit, but we we talked about certification, like official certifications. At the community summit where you there Courtney? I 

[00:43:42] Courtney: was, yes. And so community summit, if people are listening that aren’t familiar community summit happens every few years before one of the international level word camps, I would say.

[00:43:56] So for a continental level, they’ve held it in us. And also EU I was not present for EU and I was petrified my mind during that conversation. And there are those that have spoken about WordPress governance that were very involved with. That was terrifying me at that point in my journey. I will be the first to tell you as a side note I later went on to teach at a bootcamp and my bootcamp organizers, where I advised how much PHP individuals would need even front end devs seeking beginner entry-level roles in the WordPress product space and that involved sufficient amount of PHP for plugin troubleshooting type of things.

[00:44:40] And we went through a course about underscores and learn the template hierarchy and template tags, but the students still were not yet at a skill level where they would be able to. Apply and pass the tech screening questions for one of the plugin companies. I’m not [00:45:00] naming names in this one, but they wouldn’t have been able to pass that exam.

[00:45:03] And I told my bootcamp, organizers, look, this is problematic. If we’re tacking WordPress development onto a front end bootcamp. And they’re like we need some official direction or guidelines for that. And I am very thankful and fortunate that my role now means helping create some of those resources for outside of the WordPress bubble.

[00:45:25] Those that would do that training. 

[00:45:29] Joe: Yeah. Yeah. I was. I remember I remember everything that you spoke about. I was pretty warmed up at that point because we also talked about dropping the B this is the first time that we had like a real community discussion. Banning certain venues for word camps, local word camps.

[00:45:45] And I was pretty heated about that. So this was like a cakewalk for me. But I know the big question was who would be the the kind of arbiter of certification, right? Because automatic was ruled out because this was more of a open source community thing. And there was no real arm or a governing body, to use maybe not the best term, but there was no arbiter for that.

[00:46:11] It looks like, learned that WordPress is the thing that could serve in that capacity as the place that can determine what is certification and it’s backed by the open source project and the foundation. But I know there were a lot of concerns around. Who’s going to be the person who says that this is a certificate, right?

[00:46:28] Cause like Microsoft can give out certificates for Microsoft CIP systems and Oracle can give out certificates for Oracle systems, but who’s going to say this is an official certificate for the open source project. 

[00:46:41] Daniel: Yeah. So 

[00:46:43] Courtney: in that context, learn is a great segue for that and why the training team will be conducting first a needs analysis and then forming a curriculum advisory board.

[00:46:57] And then further down the road, we’re only talking in Q4 about doing discovery and discovery would look like learning what has worked and what did not work from other open source and proprietary organizations that have pursued certification or what was great and what was not great. And. Tapping into other places that have navigated those waters and also hearing the concerns for instance of web development related careers, the training programs for those.

[00:47:31] So whether people take a pathway of design, develop content marketer, factoring in what the needs are for guidance from those types of organizations, what do they need to get their trainees up to jobs, sufficient, ready to apply. And I think that’s a really big area to consider. And I always say you could get the jobs, whether you have gone through and gotten the degree or taken a couple [00:48:00] of Demi courses, LinkedIn learning courses are great to books, whatever method it is that you learn, you can still get jobs without these certifications, but I see certification as more of a framework for here is what would help someone be proficient in various.

[00:48:16] John pathways. 

[00:48:18] Joe: Yeah. It almost goes back to answering the question that we opened this whole space with. Which is what, who are you? And where do you go to learn? What? If you have a certification path, then all right, I want to be a WordPress content editor. Here’s the path I want to be a WordPress developer.

[00:48:35] These are the things that according to the open source project, or according to whomever that you should know to be a proficient WordPress developer, I think that’s, I love seeing that on the roadmap for the learn team or the training team. 

[00:48:49] Courtney: Yeah, but we’re interchangeable, but I, again, a huge, thanks.

[00:48:53] I see quite a few people that drop in through the training team. And Joe, I know that you were part of the training team in those early years, too. We were a group that was centrally based out of DC and all of those areas. So it’s been exciting to see the work that this team has put in and the meetings that took place to form that goal-setting were three weeks, three hours ish, each time.

[00:49:20] So there was a lot of work. I want to make sure that others are credited and attributed to that. That’s not just Courtney sat down and whipped out a post. That was a lot of effort across at least a dozen people there in the meetings.

[00:49:38] Daniel: That’s great. That’s, if it’s things like that, that I think it’s really exciting to know that. There are folks that are interested in this kind of thing. And if any of you are interested in this, we talked a lot about learning WP here, and we’ve put different links up top there that you can also get involved with some of those things.

[00:49:56] Matt Madeiros any final parting thoughts? 

[00:50:01] Matt: No, this has been fantastic. I learned a lot as I normally do. It’s pretty easy for me to learn from smart folks that come together on Twitter and in the WordPress space. So I appreciate a beer get Joe and how how I can’t wait for you to start a podcast because you have the podcast voice.

[00:50:16] It’s about time. You start the podcast. But I appreciate everything that you do there. Everything you share on the WP minute same with you, a beer get with all of your Gutenberg knowledge Joe give or take, but Daniel, thanks for hosting today. It was fantastic. Everyone follows. Daniel beer, get Joe and Howard on Twitter and follow us@thewpminute.com.

[00:50:40] Daniel. Thanks again for everything you do here. 

[00:50:44] Daniel: Oh,

[00:50:48] Joe: thanks everybody.

Join The Newsletter

Get your favorite 5 minutes of WordPress news for busy professionals every week — 100% Free! Join the WP Minute Newsletter below 👇

Hidden