Okay.
Good afternoon everyone.
My name is Sean.
I'll be here on seafood this afternoon.
Hope you enjoyed the lunchbreak with some great food out
there, some great conversation.
I'd, uh, once again, like to thank our,uh, sponsors, uh, insert sponsors here.
Next up though I would like tointroduce, uh, Joe Simpson Jr.
With the back on the block.
My reasons for returning to thefull site editor, Joe is a front
end developer and user experiencedesigner specializing in accessible
enterprise level WordPress solutions.
When a hard event forced him totake a leave of absent absence.
He attended his first meetup beginningan incredible eight year journey that
included giving back to the WordPresscommunity in roles ranging from volunteer.
Speaker, team rep on the uh, makeWordPress accessible Team contributor
day table Lead Community Summit.
Uh, uh, moderator.
WordPress lead organizer at both the localand flagship levels and started three
WordPress meetups, including two in SantaClarita, California and Black Press with
two other opticians after three decades asa public servant at uh, Metro Los Angeles
Transit, managing their blog network.
He retired to present topics onWordPress and open source tech
in emerging and underrepresentedcommunities around the world.
Ladies and gentlemen, Joseph,
thank you.
Thank you.
Alright, before we get started, I'mgonna do a weird dad kind of thing.
So
I'm gonna pass out candy from Los Angeles.
So this candy is, uh, from seas candies.
If you're in LA you passthrough the airport.
You always see this.
But this, these are Halloween things.
So I'm gonna pass one thisway and pass one that way.
So
testing, test.
Hey, jojo.
Remember that time we wenton our first family vacation?
Our daughter was old enough.
We hopped on a plane and we endedup in the Dominican Republic.
And that day you were a star.
All of the tourists aroundthe the pool, they kept going.
Jojo, jojo, jojo, and everytime you jump in the water.
And each time they did it, you didit over and over and over again.
We happened to have a underwatercamera and we took this picture,
or that time we went to, uh, Cancunand we were visiting the mine Ruins and
doing all those of things vacationers do.
But we had an unwelcome visitor.
We were pinned in by a hurricane,and as the staff at the, the resort.
Barricaded us in.
Instead of being scared, he said,dad pointing at the ceiling.
There's a train up in the sky.
You were a big fan of trains, asmentioned in the introduction.
I worked for a transit agency and whenyou were in daycare, we'd ride the train
into Los Angeles together, you are a star.
Everyone on the trainwould come by and say, hi.
The conductor, the engineer, andon your last day at daycare, before
you started in elementary school.
You actually got in the cockpit withthe engineer and honked the horn.
You remember when I used, I would comehome from work and you and Troy would
be met me at the door, would meet meat the door with a book, and before I
could do anything, I'd have to read.
And so every night we'd read the samebooks over and over about trains.
One of my favorite memorieswas when you started school.
Your mom would always take a picture.
Right When we left the driveway, theelementary school was on the corner,
and one of my memories is after afew times when we would get close
to the school, you drop my hand.
You were too embarrassedto hold dad's hand.
Now you may be wondering, whatthe heck does this have to do with
WordPress and why are you here today?
Not to see my photo album,but I wanted to make a point.
These pictures were from the firsteight years of my son's life,
and a lot of us in the community.
There was a point when we decided,Hey, I'm gonna let full site
editor Gutenberg mature on its own.
I'm gonna do this over here.
I'm gonna do page builders,I'm gonna do whatever's new.
And just imagine if eight yearsof your life I, I, well, I would
say for me, imagine not being inmy son's life or, or doing those
day-to-day things for eight years.
You'll miss out on a lot.
So today I'm gonna tell you the reasonswhy I came back to the full site editor.
This is gonna be a veryvisual presentation.
Um, there's gonna be alittle bit of motion.
I, I do a lot of work in theaccessibility community, so I didn't
wanna offend anyone, but I'll have alink to some basic slides if you wanna
follow along, if motion bothered.
As mentioned, I worked for over ththree decades in public transportation,
and our mission was to get folksoutta their cars and onto trains.
The ironic thing aboutLos Angeles is that.
Way back in the day, we had trainseverywhere and when the cars came
around, they ripped them all out.
So my job over the past threedecades was to put 'em back in
and get people outta their cars.
Before that, I worked at, in, incorporate identity and branding
at Fortune 500 companies thatto be going through mergers.
Unisys Corporation, Chrysler Corporation,and at uh, Metro and Los Angeles.
And as I mentioned, I've been,it's been a mission of mine
to give back to the community.
I'm gonna share a story in a minute,but I really wanted to get out and
talk about WordPress and share someof the experiences that I had back
with the community or give back.
I tried to speak anywhere and everywhere.
I do a little bit of everything,and it was sort of the over
the top intro to sort of share.
Uh, the idea that we canall give back and do more.
Um, I, I presented at Work Camp Asia,work Camp San Jose and Costa Rica.
I would go anywhere and everywhere totalk, talk about open source WordPress.
My slides will be here.
I'll bring this up again atthe end of the, the session.
But the, again, these are basic slides.
That are just a text versionof what you see here.
I'm a former designer so I alwayshave to do something visual.
So you're here todayfor back on the block.
My reasons for returningto the site editor.
It's sort of a case study mixedin with like some ideas of where I
want to go and learn and continueto grow in the WordPress community.
I would love to hear fromyou, share your experiences.
This is should be a very interactive.
Session, so please jumpin whenever you can.
My WordPress story started wayback, and I'm not gonna say when.
When our lead developer in CSS gotus, they both left our company within
a month of each other, and me andDreamweaver, HTML person dabbling,
you know, from the design side.
I was given a WordPress site.
It was our news blog, the source,which when they launched it, they
wanted to do five stories a day.
It was sort of the.
The news arm of our transitagency was getting a lot of slot.
We were getting a lot of flack for, therewas like a, a part of the tunnel sank and
we're on 60 minutes, and so they wantedto give the other side of the story.
So we brought in some polar surprisewinning writers and they got to it.
So imagine me, a designer typeinherited a WordPress site.
Fortunately for us, we hada little bit of budget.
They were able to send me to theWordPress VIP intensive workshop
in Napa Valley, California.
But I wasn't a designer.
I mean, I wasn't a developer, I shouldsay, but something amazing happened
The first day they asked us to spin upa virtual box, and after I picked my
job off the floor, something amazinghappened in every direction that you could
reach your arm, someone turned to help.
And that was when I learned about what theWordPress community is or what it means.
And so from that point on.
I continued to build in WordPressand, and learn slowly but surely.
As mentioned, I had a heart event in 2017.
Once I did that, I started gonnameet up, getting back into WordPress,
and I did anything and everything.
So this is the before times.
This was what I inherited.
It was a premium theme that our leaddeveloper and and CSS got us picked.
And how many of us know what thebefore times were in terms of themes?
This was a premium theme.
It was called headway.
And unfortunately our CSS got us, theyhard coded it, so, so every time we would
update the theme, it would just go back.
It would revert back.
So I inherited something like this.
Fortunately I was able to goto the VIP intensive workshop
and I started child theming.
Another cool thing was that,um, we were able to move over to
WordPress VIP for a couple years.
We had, we were a government agency.
Our budget is for approved yearto year, and these were some of
the things that they offered.
I have a lot of bulletpoints and I apologize.
I'm not really gonna go through 'em indepth, but we wanted consistent hosting.
Anytime we had a question, especially as Iwas learning, I wanted to have an answer.
Also, it gave me the discipline to commitcode and do it in a certain manner.
With VIP, so it gave me a crashcourse and how to get up to speed
fast, but try to try to build ina, in a consistent fashion that the
Pope folks at WordPress VIP wanted.
So that was a good thing.
This was what we came up with.
They offered a series of themes.
Uh, we wanted our news blog.
We also had a Spanish version.
We were able to leverage one themeand do a child theme for both and do
a lot of features in a more visualformat, uh, using the Bromley theme.
Then something amazing happened backfrom my first word camp US that I
attended in person, the keynote, orMatt's state of the word was about this
thing called Gutenberg that was coming.
And as I sat, as we sat outside theroom, I actually happened to be sitting
next to Ben Ritner who created CadenceThemes, and he was telling me about
this amazing block product that hedeveloped that he was gonna launch.
And that sort of set me up forwhat I was gonna hear later.
At that point, a lot of us in thecommunity said, Hey, I'm gonna let
that mature and I'm gonna stick withthis stick with, stick with that.
During that, uh, work camp as well,there was a, a group in the back of
the sponsor area with a big E on topof their, uh, sponsor booth, and they
were talking about this thing calledpage builders, and it sounded amazing.
So as a designer it lookedlike Adobe Illustrator.
It had some of the, you know,it allows you more flexibility.
So I said, Hey, I wannalearn that at the same time.
Oops.
We first, but before we did Elementor,um, we also looked at Beaver Builder,
which was, uh, out at the same time.
And one of the things that we decidedon in terms of using Beaver Builder
was it had a bootstrap background.
And so what our UX and designteam were interested in.
Was having bootstrap involvedin our designing process.
So we started with that and we wanted tobe more in keeping with our design studio.
Our design studio isaward-winning, been featured in
magazines and things like that.
And our brand was very, very,uh, apparent and identifiable.
So we, they really had a lot ofsay around the agency, so we had
to make it look like they wanted.
So this is, uh, some screens from it.
And a couple of interesting features.
It was weird because when designersare in charge, you kind of can
do some crazy things or you'reasked to do some crazy things and
you want toss 'em out the window.
But they wanted things like themenu, each individual menu to match
the page, which is a weird request.
So for example, the green matches here,which is something you never think to
do, but it did force me to, to learnhow to do some different CSS things.
But they wanted more.
Our marketing people, they felt like, youknow, the web guys always take too long.
We need it the same day.
We want to be able to design these thingsourselves, as well as lay out the pages.
Which is a recipe for disaster.
There was one time when one of ourproject leads on our projects team.
Each time Metro doessomething in the community.
Like for instance, when we extendedthe line to Santa Monica or went to
North Hollywood, we would spin up aa we, what we call a boutique site.
Something like a, you know, it'ssort of like seeing a brochure, but
online just for that particular event.
When a grand, when a grand opened and thenwe would fold it into our information.
So each time something spun up.
We would spin up a site.
So one of the downsides of givingpeople access is that she liked to look
around and she actually crashed a site.
So they wanted more control.
But again, we all know that whenyou give too much control without
constraints, you can blow things up.
So we transitioned all of oursites over to Elementor because
they offered even more control.
But one of the thingsthat I always saw, Matt.
Word camps.
I was able to ask questions and theyhad a, uh, an, it wasn't a, just a
premium product like Beaver Builder
back to the source.
One of, one bad thing happened,um, due to its success.
When I set it up, it was really just atool for our editors to get in and write.
I maintained the back end.
It had a, a solid design and theyjust cranked and cranked and.
One bad thing happened, and itwas mentioned in the prior, um,
in, in the prior, uh, speech overhere at the prior presentation.
Um, this, the theme deprecated
one of the bad things about being in a, ina political politically run organization,
our, our, um, board of directors, or likethe mayor of Los Angeles City councilmen.
So each time we would start aredesign process, there would be
some turnover and it would stop.
So during that period.
Our theme deprecated.
It started crashing becausethere were plugin conflicts.
The theme was outta date, andso we were forced a couple years
ago to consider a redesign.
We looked at not just page builders,but thinking about coming back to
Gutenberg or a block builder, and webroke it down into all the pros and cons,
and we came up with this.
Wow.
This is, um, news Pack, which isproduced by the automatic folks,
but it's a premium product.
Um, one of the good things about it wasthat it had a lot of prebuilt things.
So as I was learning blocks, I wouldbe able to see what someone else has
done, see some of the discipline andguidelines that they did, that they used
in terms of building something and I wasable to just quickly get something up.
It was also, um.
It's a product that was reallygeared towards saving, uh, news,
uh, newspapers around the country.
So a lot of publications similarto what we were doing, used it.
Uh, again, here's some of thecons, and the biggest one was that
for an agent, a public agency,we didn't have $750 a month.
So what will we do?
One of the cool things about thiscommunity, oh, I'll jump back a step.
One of the good things about itwas that it had six different.
Outta the box layouts that wecould sort of pick one and sort
of customize it to our brand.
It also had a number of differentblock variations outta the box,
so we appreciated that as well.
As I mentioned, it was a premium product,so how would we use it in our setting?
Fortunately, I saw thisarticle on, um, WP Tavern.
They had a way to self-host it.
But the big downside wasthat how will we update it?
How will we do automatic updates?
So I'm a big fan of updatingconsistently, and again, and when we
use the source, things started crashing.
There was conflicts.
And so for me, I love for thingsto automatically update the
background, um, which may pisssome people off in the community.
But, um, I saw this article and oneof the cool things about our community
is that when there's a problem,somebody writes a, a plugin or a fix.
And so I saw this article and it saved us.
It was a plugin that would goout and check GitHub, which is
where we pulled the theme and theplugins from and update it for us.
So that solved one problem.
This is what we came up with.
Again, it was a newsletter style.
Block base, and one of the coolthings about our agency is that we
have over the lifespan of the source,we've had over a hundred editors.
So it's not just our marketingteam, it's the people that build
the projects, the project heads, thedepartment heads that speak, I mean
that write as editor guest editors.
So they wanted a way to quicklydistinguish all the different
groups and have somethingvery visual like a newspaper.
Or an online magazine that youcan quickly jump in and quickly
get an idea of what was going on.
What I also tried to do was provide someflexibility in terms of projects come
online, go offline, things like that.
So they had the ability to changeeverything on the page through the editor.
Again, these are the differentsections or groups, and they
were all featured on the page.
And if they wanted to highlightsomething, like for instance.
There was a bus strike, or therewas during the pandemic service was
canceled, they would want to sticksomething up in the left hand corner.
So there was a definite hierarchyin terms of information.
Um, one of the things that they,and we all work and we're, the out
of the box search kinda sucks, sowe just took one little step up.
Again as a public agency.
We just used Jetpack search, whichimproved our search quite a bit.
Um.
And we went through and cleanedup the tags and we did the, so
I did a lot of that work to tryto improve our search as well.
Again, it was based on theprojects and categories.
One of the downsides about creating aproduct for a client and letting them
just run with it, it was at, I think wehad like 20, 20,000 categories and like
a hundred thousand tax over 20 years.
So I cleaned all that up and itimproved our search quite a bit.
This is a sample of one ofthe pages once you drill down.
Again, it was sort of newsletterstyle with big, bold images, uh,
a way to interact with the group.
We also had estimated time.
We, we did a lot of things that weren'taround 18 years ago, and again, these
were part of the blocks or pluginsthat we're able to, to utilize from.
The community.
Another thing about la it's a verydiverse city, and one of the edicts
or, uh, specifications or requirementsfor our, our web information is that
it has to be in multiple languages.
So, um, I propose to have a translatein the menu as well as on each page
that an editor can drop in, in casethey wanted to really emphasize
something in a specific language.
And again, these were.
Uh, blocks that I createdso they can reuse them.
Uh, again, learning about blocks,uh, learning to try to leverage it
and improve the editorial process
on the backside.
This was a big change forour editors in the community.
There was a big backlash and a lot ofpeople wanted to keep the classic editor.
Um, we transitioned our team over.
They were a classic editor users,but a couple of the benefits was,
uh, the ability to work within.
Your editing area before, and oneof the problems with our previous
site was that we had to have, itwas so old, and again, don't laugh.
Um, we had to plug in to bringin a YouTube video or add a
p, you know, it was that old.
So now it was a big adjustmentform to be able to just click on
something in the menu and drop ina video or just copy paste a URL.
So again, this may befunny to us as a community.
But for the editor who's nottechnical, this was a big change.
So again, there was a little bit oftraining that we had to put together
for our team, but again, uh, they weresuper and they were pretty receptive.
Another thing at a government agency,um, and those of us to follow the news or
try to avoid it, politicians are alwaysbragging about what they've achieved
and then our agency is no different.
So they always wanted the ability to say,Hey, for this post, we had this many.
And, and keeping with thisholiday kind of thing.
So they wanted the ability tosee stats quickly and easily.
And so we found a, a plugin thatwas tied in with the theme because
again, this theme came with a bundleof plugins that they recommended.
And again, it was, um, run by automatic.
So we trusted a lot of those.
And this is the Google site plugin.
One of the things that is thedownside is that it's a, uh, this is
generally a wordpress.com product.
But for me, being sneaky as a, asa organizer and meetup leader, um,
a couple of Word Camp Ys ago, uh,one of the community, uh, people
during the q and a, they said, Hey,why can't meetups have free hosting?
And so Matt said, okay, if you have ameetup, we'll put you on wordpress.com.
So what that allowed me to do was nowI can test out a lot of the features
that are in wordpress.com and learn.
While using an active life siteor in a test environment as well.
So this was our, um, our meetup page.
So I suggest today for all of youthat hopefully not many of you're
still not still, uh, a lot of you areusing the full site editor, but if
you're not, just take another look.
Um, a lot's changed alot can, you know a lot.
You can incorporate a lot to make your.
Your skillset better, but alsoimprove what you put out in, into
the space and stay in sync withwhat's going on with WordPress.
One of the things I fear in using likea page builder or something like that
is that they deviated so far away from ablock solution is that they'll be so far
at a point that they can never come back.
So what do you do at thatpoint, especially as a business?
So here are my reasons.
Summed up quickly.
I always hope that whateverI learn, I have the ability
to learn from someone else.
So they, they put out a lot ofgood pathways on wordpress.org
as well as on.com from a lot ofthe folks that you'll see in the
community, a lot of familiar faces.
Uh, so these are some greatresources in terms of learning.
So that's a big one, especially if Ihave to turn around and teach someone.
I want the ability to quicklylearn and grasp concepts.
And the other great thing is that ifyou look to your left or right, there's
a lot of people that are makers sittingnext to you or very talented people.
Um, so again, the cool thing about thiscommunity is that a lot of times if you
ask a question, people won't answer it.
For example, when I was at work Camp us,I, I participated in contributor day.
And so I wanted to talk to the learn guys.
So the faces that werein the video was there.
I saw Nick.
I asked him a few questions.
I also saw Wes, I askedhim a few questions.
So again, this community is sosupportive in terms of you learning.
Just look to your left or right,and I'm gonna put her on the spot.
But sitting over there is one ofthe most incredible teachers that
I know in this space, Courtney.
So again, they're always sowelcoming and encouraging and
they help empower you to learn.
So
the other thing is that as these newtools come online, again, we may have
excuses just on.com, et cetera, et cetera.
A lot of things are still happening.
So again, I would encourage you to, toplay around with some of these things.
Um.
Playground or site studio are reallycoming along and offering new options
that, again, that allow you to testand learn right in on your local device
or integrate with a service like.com.
For me, as a graphic designer, turn webguy, it's important to have some sort of,
uh, connection back to the design side.
So I, I love the style book.
Um, it reminds me of creatinga brand manual back in the day.
Or, um, just looking at brand standardsand trying to implement them on the web.
Um, again, for our local meetupsite, having the ability to do things
globally as well as visually, uh, inthe style book is something that's cool.
And for example, when we're spendingup our word camp for Santa Clarita for
next year, and this is a weird hobby ofmine, I love to draw type, so I drew the
type and I incorporat, I imported it.
So there's a number of differentways things have changed.
But it also makes it a little easierto do a lot of the things that we
had to do through code in the past.
So again, learn, learn, learnis sort of my philosophy as to
why I, I've switched over again.
This is another screen from thestyle book that allows you to see
the type, the different colorsthat you chose for your brand.
And then of course, AI is coming.
So, um, a lot of good thingsare happening, but again, if you
don't really stay on top of it.
Um, you'll have to catch up.
But one of the cool things, again,when I was at us, uh, Brigette was
there, and she's one of the Gutenbergfolks, and she was just walking
by when we were having a coffee.
Like generally when we're at work camps, Itry to get our group or you know, anybody
from Southern California, anybody wantsto attend or should do a coffee thing.
And she was just walking byand she came in and did like
a little a MA for our group.
So again, a lot of the things thatyou wanna learn, people wanna share
it because again, our community'sonly as strong as what we build.
And what we share with each other.
So again, try to see ontop of it, try to learn.
And these are some of theresources I mentioned.
This is Bri GIS podcast.
And again, some of the new things thatare coming are distilled down in the, uh,
her podcast is more technical, so again,I'm more develop, uh, designer style.
But if you're a developer.
This would speak to you,
uh, Tammy Lister duringthe month of October.
She is building somethingwith telex each day.
So this is an interesting experimentso you could see what someone in the
community is building and interact withthem, ask questions kind of thing and
see what they're doing with blocks.
That website was Block Tober Fun.
Yeah.
And it's, you missed the address.
Yep.
And it'll be in my slides also.
And yesterday, uh, Ryan did partof contributor day and he had
a couple of sessions on, um,doing things with the blocks.
And I think he's going after me today.
So again, I see my role as sortof, this is where you should
look to find more and learn more.
So I would suggest if youreally want to learn more.
About the behind the scenes of blocks.
Check him out next hour.
Here are some resources.
I always like to sh share a lot ofresources, uh, when I do these talks.
And again, uh, again, likeCourtney mentioned, block Tober.
There's a link there.
There's a link to theGutenberg Change Lock podcast.
Ryan's.
A YouTube channel with a lotof his cookbook in terms of the
block developer and then so on.
Again, if you're just new tofull site editor, there's some
beginning level courses on the linklist, as well as, uh, some things
that are a little more advanced.
And again, if you really want to justburn a weekend of your life kind of
thing, you can go through all the lessons.
The next thing is to contribute.
Again.
Contributor day was great.
The interesting thing was thatif you're into ai, the most
popular table at the past twocontributor days was the AI table.
So again, reach out to thefolks that know everything about
AI
and learn more.
Um, but also a importantthing that I always try to
get across is to get involved.
Um, I was on the make accessibilityteam and one of the things.
That I, I felt guilty about and thatI always talk to Joe Dolson about to
this day is that I was a designer andhe was always asking people for people
to te test and help test and help test.
So the past two contributor days, I'vebeen going to the training table and the
testing table to learn how to do more.
So again, if you have someskill in, in development or you
just really want to help out.