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Block Editor vs. Page Builder

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Block Editor vs. Page Builder
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When the WordPress block editor was introduced, it raised questions about how and if page builders would still be used to build sites. In this episode, Devin and Aurooba chat about their feelings about the two options.

Monet Davenport:
Welcome to Press the Issue, a podcast from MasterWP. Your source for industry insights for WordPress professionals. Get show notes, transcripts, and more information about the show at masterwp.com/presstheissue.
Press the Issue by MasterWP is sponsored by LearnDash. Y...

Monet Davenport:
Welcome to Press the Issue, a podcast from MasterWP. Your source for industry insights for WordPress professionals. Get show notes, transcripts, and more information about the show at masterwp.com/presstheissue.
Press the Issue by MasterWP is sponsored by LearnDash. Your expertise makes you money doing what you do, now let it make you money teaching what you do. To create a course with LearnDash visit learndash.com.
Our mission at MasterWP is to bring new voices into WordPress and tech every day. The new MasterWP Workshop series does just that. Our new live and recorded workshops on everything from code to design to business, turn WordPress fans into WordPress experts. Find the workshop for you at workshops.masterwp.com. Use the code podcast 10 for a 10% discount.

Allie Nimmons:
When the WordPress Block Editor was first introduced, it immediately raised questions about how and if page builders would still be used to build WordPress sites. In this episode, Devin and Aurooba chat about their feelings about the two options.

Devin Egger:
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another Press The Issue episode. I am Devin Egger here with Aurooba Ahmed. Hi, Aurooba.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Hi. How’s it going?

Devin Egger:
I’m doing quite well. It’s actually springtime here in South Carolina.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Wow.

Devin Egger:
Which is crazy. I feel like I need to open the windows and turn my AC on, but that’s crazy, considering it’s the last day of February, but…

Aurooba Ahmed:
It is snowing up here in Calgary.

Devin Egger:
Oh, the difference a few thousand miles makes, right?

Aurooba Ahmed:
Oh, yes. Yes, indeed.

Devin Egger:
Well, I hate to gloat, but it is beautiful outside, so sorry. I’m sorry about that.

Aurooba Ahmed:
I’m very happy for you.

Devin Egger:
Thank you.

Aurooba Ahmed:
It is really nice. The snow is all very pretty. It’s like gently like floating down. So it’s pretty…

Devin Egger:
I bet.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Here too in a very different way.

Devin Egger:
Someday I will miss snow. Someday, but that day is not today. So anyway, other than the weather, today we’re here talking about the Block Editor versus Page Builders, and it’s a…

Aurooba Ahmed:
Groovy.

Devin Egger:
Pretty spicy little topic. In fact, I’m actually going through a little bit of fanboy syndrome here because Aurooba, I’ve been a fan of your work for a while. And I have been a avid viewer of your new podcast with Brian Coords, who many of you might know, it’s called viewSource.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Yeah. Thank you.

Devin Egger:
Yeah. You’re welcome. And thank you for all the education on it. It’s like you really go through some topics and some actual screen sharing and learning. Again, that’s called viewSource, for all of you interested. On that podcast, the last couple episodes released you really have been going through, in more detail, on the block editor. What you can do with blocks. And it’s actually just mere coincidence that we’re here today recording kind of something on a similar topic. But we’re going to be kind of comparing and contrasting what you can do with the block editor, what you can do with page builders. We’re going to actually use Divi, of course, as the example page builder. Our favorite thing, right?

Aurooba Ahmed:
Oh, yes, yes. We love it so much, with all the experience we’ve had with it recently.

Devin Egger:
Yeah, it’s a treat. So one of the reasons amongst many that I was really excited to do this podcast with you, Aurooba, is that we have been, well, I guess a couple of months ago working together on a project that was a full Divi build. It was basically a fitness website that was kind of transitioning into becoming an app. And the original developer had decided to build it in Divi. We inherited it and they were pushing the limits of Divi for sure.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Definitely. In really weird ways.

Devin Egger:
And there’s definitely some points where you just get to, as a developer, especially with some experience with Divi that you go, “Okay, well, I know that I can’t do this with Divi, so I’m just not going to do it. At least not without a bunch of customization. And we’re just going to try to steer the client away from that path.” But a lot of times that doesn’t work and we have to go down that path anyway. So that’s kind of what I wanted to frame this whole talk around is, building or maintaining a site with the block editor versus with Divi. They both have their advantages, disadvantages. How far you can go with zero custom code. And then, could this be done by someone that is a blog owner, a business owner, someone with minimal development experience? Someone that’s like rather green to WordPress? Just how far those people can go. How far a traditional WordPress developer can go. I’ll define that here in just a little bit. And then, what kind of a developer do you need to really make a real custom Divi or block editor website?

Aurooba Ahmed:
These are all really good questions. I’m excited to dig in.

Devin Egger:
I’m excited to hear your thoughts. I know we had talked about this earlier this week and you would not let me hear the real thoughts. So here we are. I get to hear the real thoughts. I’m very excited.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Yeah, because we got to keep it fresh and spicy for the actual podcast recording, right?

Devin Egger:
Spicy. Yes, yes. Okay. So before we get into all that, let’s just talk really quick about some terms. So when we’re talking about the block editor, basically this is Gutenberg, right?

Aurooba Ahmed:
That’s right.

Devin Egger:
So when it first came out, it was a plugin that you’d have to install. Now it’s the default editor. I think they’re going to get rid of classic editor eventually, someday. I’m not sure about that.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Yeah, I think it’s slated for ending support this year or next year. And I mean, for the record, we still have the Gutenberg plugin. That is where active development happens, but it’s also part of core as well.

Devin Egger:
That’s it. That’s a good distinction to make. So when we’re talking about the block editor, that’s what we’re talking about. When we’re talking about a block theme, specifically in this context, I’m talking about a theme that uses… Now they just want to call it site editing, right? Not full site editor. Are we abandoning full site editor as a term?

Aurooba Ahmed:
I don’t know. I don’t think there’s any consensus around it. But basically the block theme is one that uses the site editor and not just the block editor. Because you can use the block editor, but not use the whole site editor as well. So yeah, a block theme is one that uses that full site editing paradigm, even if that’s not necessarily the official name. The official name I think is block theme, that you called it.

Devin Egger:
Okay. So that means that we’re using the block editor for the header. We’re using it for the footer, the sidebar. Every piece of the WordPress website, we’re using the Block Editor to build, which…

Aurooba Ahmed:
Yes.

Devin Egger:
Is actually pretty cool, when we get down to it.

Aurooba Ahmed:
It is really cool.

Devin Egger:
There’s a lot of benefits to this, and I think that the biggest caveat out of all of it is that, it’s still in its infancy. We’re watching this thing grow. And I’m going to place the huge caveat on it here that most of my opinion is based off the fact that it’s still in its infancy. So I am being a devil’s advocate here and a little bit probably judgmental on it in this episode. But I realize that it’s still in its infancy and we’re watching this thing grow. And it actually has gotten way better since I first tried to use it. I don’t know.
Well have been trying to use it. So anyway, so that’s the block theme. So the block theme as it relates to, we’ll say Divi, is Divi. The Divi theme allows you to do the same thing, build the whole website in Divi. The site editor that we’re talking about in WordPress would be very akin to the theme builder in Divi. Basically you have, in the site editor, you have the header, you have the footer. You have all these different components that you can edit. And then you can put those pieces together on your different pages or using your templates.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Yeah, definitely.

Devin Egger:
So then I’m just kind of relating one-to-ones here. So a block would be very much like a Divi module. When you build a custom block that typically goes in a plugin. But there’s other ways, right?

Aurooba Ahmed:
Yes. You can also technically include it in your theme. And in some situations that might be the right call, but usually you want to put it in a plugin.

Devin Egger:
Right. And then so, with Divi the relevant equivalent there is an extension. So if you build a custom Divi module that has to go in an extension. So in, I don’t know, two sentences or less, who would you say the block editor is for?

Aurooba Ahmed:
Block editor or block themes?

Devin Egger:
Okay, you got me. Block theme. The full thing, the whole shebang of a full block theme.

Aurooba Ahmed:
I think a block theme is really great for DIYers who might be building a simple brochure site or a simple marketing site, because it lets you do everything without really touching a lot of code. And gives you that bit of a page builder experience, but one that is native to how WordPress actually works.

Devin Egger:
Awesome. Super stellar answer. I like the DIYer aspect of it, right? Because it assumes that there’s some gumption there. The person…

Aurooba Ahmed:
Yes,

Devin Egger:
Needs to have some motivation to build a website, because as far as I’ve seen now, feel free to correct me on this. As far as I’ve seen, not many of the block themes come right out of the box looking just fabulous.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Yeah. So the way block themes are right now, and they’re a little bit in their infancy as well, in terms of what’s our best practices for what a block theme should ship with. You do need to experiment a little and be brave and try to understand the new paradigm and how it actually works before you’re going to get it looking the way you want it to. But once you get past that sort of curve, that learning curve, I think that it can be really powerful and an empowering way to DIY a little website for yourself. I use it on a lot of personal projects and I really like it.

Devin Egger:
That’s good to hear. I feel like I’m just cresting that little hill there of getting past the initial figuring it out piece. I’ve built just a site with… What I like to do is I like to try to use the 2020 themes,

Aurooba Ahmed:
The default.

Devin Egger:
Yeah. The default themes. Which I honestly, I like that 2023 theme. That’s one I’ve tried to use most recently, and I got pretty far. I mean, it doesn’t look good at all. But I mean, I got it to the point where I understand, “Okay, to do this, I got to do this. To do this, I got to do that.” So first of all, the biggest question I had when I first started it was, “Do I do a child theme?”

Aurooba Ahmed:
Right.

Devin Egger:
And I couldn’t find a great bit of documentation on a concise yes or no. It seems like there is not really an idea of child theme with block theme.

Aurooba Ahmed:
I think that one of the things to understand about a block theme first, is that it has this new idea of the theme doc json. Which is like a json file where you define a lot of your design tokens. “What are your fonts? And what are your colors? And what are your headings? What are some specific ways that you want the buttons to look like?” And a child theme is really useful if you want to override that. But the way block themes work is, that if you want to make certain changes, a lot of that you can do within the interface. You can layer your preferences on top of the themes preferences using the site editor inside the WordPress dashboard. So in a lot of cases, you don’t need a child theme, because you will just go in and modify the existing theme. And even if the theme updates, your user preferences will still override any of the updates from it.
So I think that a child theme would only make sense if you need to fully get rid of all of the themes settings, and override them all. Or if you’re adding some custom functionality that the site editor doesn’t let you. Otherwise, you can probably just stick with the parent theme, like the actual theme.

Devin Egger:
Which is kind of crazy, right? Because that’s a huge paradigm shift for any traditional WordPress developer. The full stop is just, you have to have a child theme or else…

Aurooba Ahmed:
Oh yeah,

Devin Egger:
Whatever you do is going to be blown away by the next update and you’ll get frustrated and cry and all that sort of thing.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Even in Divi. A lot of the times you do want to have a Divi child theme and not work directly in the main theme. So…

Devin Egger:
A 100%. First thing you do when you fire up a Divi installation is you create a child theme and start from there. So with that, this is the thing I wanted to walk into. I found myself saying about 300 times, “Where do I write CSS? Where’s the customizer? Where’s the custom CSS little box? How do I put custom?” Because I’m not going to put custom CSS in the style.CSS because that’s a no-no, right? In traditional, I’m in a parent theme. I don’t put CSS in the style.css. If I’ve got to add it, I use a plugin or a myriad of different ways. But where’s the CSS? Where do I put it?

Aurooba Ahmed:
Well, one, WordPress 6.2 is coming out very shortly after this episode’s release. And that adds an additional CSS area for, on a block level and on a site level to the site editor for block themes. So that would really help you, I think. But I think that it’s far more important to think, “Do you need to write CSS?”

Devin Egger:
Right.

Aurooba Ahmed:
“Or is there a different way to accomplish this?” Because a lot of the things that you might want to accomplish, you can probably do that once you drill down in the style settings in the site editor, right?

Devin Egger:
Yep.

Aurooba Ahmed:
So it’s a paradigm shift in that sense too. Instead of going straight to the CSS, instead of going straight to the code, how can you modify this with the existing UI controls that you have?

Devin Egger:
Right. Yep. And, that’s what I had kind of come to grips with. I think what I wanted to do was, I wanted to change the display from Flex to inline block to do something or whatever. To just add a little bit to get a… I think what I just wanted to do is get the site name to just sit right next to the.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Logo.

Devin Egger:
The logo. And…

Aurooba Ahmed:
Yes.

Devin Egger:
There’s a setting for it. It’s in there. You can do it.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Yeah. You can definitely, you can group the block and then set up the flow, make it flex on the group.

Devin Egger:
Yep.

Aurooba Ahmed:
I think that when you’re a developer who’s used to working with CSS and knows that terminology really well, going into the Block Editor or the site editor can be a little frustrating. Because it’s not using that same terminology, because they are coming at it from a, “Oh, how will a non-coder try to understand this.” Right?

Devin Egger:
Yep.

Aurooba Ahmed:
So the words may make more sense if you didn’t already know the code. But when you know the code, then it’s like you feel like you’re learning a whole different language on top of everything else you know. And it would be so much easier to just use the language you already know and write a couple lines of CSS instead. But I think that’s how users would feel too. It’s a different language for everyone really.

Devin Egger:
Yep. Yeah. And that’s coming kind of back around to the question of, who are block themes for? Who’s the block editor for? You said something when we were kind of scoping this call out earlier this week or last week that it put the nail in the coffin for me to go, “Okay, that is it. It buttoned up everything that I’ve been trying to say.” Especially when I explain this to non-WordPress people about this kind of big paradigm shift that’s happening in WordPress and why WordPress is such an active and interesting field to be in right now. To me, talking to someone about this at like a cocktail party, it’s very difficult to explain why WordPress is an interesting field right now. But you said that WordPress is like the block editor is trying to mimic Adobe Sketch. Is that right? And Figma, and it made it click to me that, I think, because of what you said. I think that a lot of the direction that it’s going is for designers.
It’s for people that for the last, what? 20 some odd years or however long WordPress has been out there, they know how to make a design. They know how to do it, whether it was starting in Photoshop or InDesign or whatever. They know how to make a design. They don’t know how to put that design into WordPress. And so they’ve needed a developer, which is why Page Builders came along. Which is why there’s Beaver Builder, there’s what? Elementor. There’s Divi. And for me personally, I know designers who use Divi, and I’ve taught normal people, just regular people that are business owners how to use Divi. And they’ve gone a long way. And that is kind of, in my mind, it’s always been the place for those things. It’s like, “Okay, here’s someone that doesn’t necessarily know how to do the code. But it’s very interesting though that it has its own language.” Those programs have their own language, and I think by pointing it out that the block editor is kind of speaking that language just made it make a lot more sense for me.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Yeah. And I think that overall just in interfaces and products that we’re seeing come out, we’re seeing this trend towards things that have sidebars. And everything is communicated through an icon rather than an icon and some text. And things are hidden behind panels and hidden behind settings to create a more minimal aesthetic, so you can focus more on the thing you’re creating rather than the interface you’re creating in. And a lot of that charge is led by design tools like Figma or XD from Adobe or Sketch, that kind of thing. Yeah, I think that you’re right. We are used to WordPress just being a content management system, and then adding the design tools on top of it with things like Divi and Elementor. But now WordPress is saying, “Hey, we see that this is a common use case, so let’s bring in some of those design tools into the core of WordPress so that it’s not just a content management system anymore. It’s also kind of the beginnings of a design tool. Like a design in the browser tool.” You know?

Devin Egger:
And I think that it does show some promise there. I mean, I’ve been a big skeptic of Gutenberg and the block editor for a long time. And actually about a year ago when I wrote the article on MasterWP about Divi and said, ” I’d rather use Divi than the block editor any day.” I tried to build something custom on the 2022 theme, and I just got so frustrated and it was so not intuitive. And since then, even just in a year, I think that it has graduated so much. In fact, I’ve got a new project, a local club that I’m a part of, they don’t have a webmaster. They have a website, but it’s not done very well. I’m like, “Do I want to do this with a block theme?” And…

Aurooba Ahmed:
Yes, you do. Yes you do.

Devin Egger:
I think I kind of do. I really do. I think I kind of do. And if for anything else just to say I did it. And yeah, it is block theme. The question that I have on that is, “If I were to get run over by a bus, is that extendable? Is that something that I can pass down to someone that doesn’t have experience to use?” And so that kind of leads me to my next question, can just a regular blogger… And I think that’s one of the things that is irking some of the audience for WordPress, is that a lot of WordPress audience came from people that, they just wanted to make a blog. And…

Aurooba Ahmed:
Right.

Devin Egger:
All the themes up until… Well, there wasn’t a 2018, up to 2017… In fact, I think 2017 is great. I like that theme a lot. Has its problems, but all the way up until then, I feel like any theme you could use, you could flip a couple of switches, make it look like your own. And have a pretty good-looking blog. 2019 hit and threw that all out the window, in my opinion.
So my question to you is, do you think that using the block editor, if you have a site that’s done totally in a total block theme. Whether it’s 2023 or whatever other one, and I might ask for some recommendations later on. Some good ones. But do you think that someone with minimal development experience could just nail that? And just take it over and be proficient?

Aurooba Ahmed:
I actually think that the people who have no development context are going to be able to grasp the block editor a lot more easily, because they’re not coming in with a full cup. They’re not expecting it to work in a certain way. And they can really absorb that interface and be like, “Oh, okay, so in this interface, I do it like this.” Instead of coming in with opinions, like a lot of us do where, “Why doesn’t it work like this? And I want it to work like that. And this is how it used to work. This is nonsense.” Which I have said many, many times as I was trying to learn it myself. I think that there is still a learning curve with any new tool that you use. But if you are like a blogger, being able to control a lot of this stuff in the dashboard instead of having to open up a code editor or figure out how FTP works. Or have to go through 7 million themes and install them.
Instead, you can just go on the site editor and make a lot of those changes in your existing theme. And make it look wildly different if you want it. I think that’s an advantage, and I think a lot of them will pick it up a lot faster than some of us who are used to the old version of WordPress.

Devin Egger:
As much as I may not want to admit it, I think you’re right. Spicy takes. When you put it that way, I think there is a lot of my previous knowledge that is blocking me from being able to experience this as a brand new user without some judgment, and some ideas of how things should be.

Aurooba Ahmed:
And I think that’s why you working on that local project for your team or whatever, your club, right? Is…

Devin Egger:
It’s actually the Brew Club.

Aurooba Ahmed:
The Brew Club. There we go.

Devin Egger:
It’s the Home Brew club.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Yeah. So working on that will be really good, because when you experiment with something without the pressure of necessarily work, like your actual work life. You can come at it with a little bit more openness, a little bit more ease, a little bit more of a relaxed attitude comparatively. And explore it a little bit better.

Devin Egger:
I like that idea. I think you’ve convinced me.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Yeah.

Devin Egger:
I think I’ll do it.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Yes.

Devin Egger:
But at that point, that also comes with a lot of caveats. Because there’s only so far you can go. I think.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Yes.

Devin Egger:
So at that point is the question of, “Okay, how far can that person go?” I would say probably up to the point of going outside of any one template. You know, like header, homepage, footer, maybe just a single page template, multiple page templates that happen to be controlled by what type of post you’re on. Or anything like that. That’s probably where anyone without development experience stops. And you probably need a custom developer, would you agree? Maybe?

Aurooba Ahmed:
You could do a lot of templating stuff with 6.2 that’s coming out. You can assign templates to certain taxonomies and create templates for custom post types right within the post editor. Sorry, the site editor. So you can go pretty far. But I think where you stop is when you need more dynamic functionality. If you’re [inaudible 00:24:03] website is mostly a static site, more of a marketing site, you can usually use that. Build all of that with the site editor, and not have to outsource anything to a more dev heavy person. But yeah, I think that’s where the line is.

Devin Egger:
Okay.

Aurooba Ahmed:
The other part about the site editor I do want to mention is that, there’s this locking ability that doesn’t exist very well in it. So when we’re working with clients and we don’t want them to be able to mess things up. The site editor, you can mess things up very easily. So it’s not really ready for the kind of access levels that we might want to give to larger enterprise projects, or larger organizations.

Devin Egger:
Sure.

Aurooba Ahmed:
But for smaller things like the Home Brew Club or a small agency, it’s great for them.

Devin Egger:
Totally. Totally. And this is one of those things where I actually… It’s the thing that ended up selling me on Divi when I was sold on Divi. Is this ability, is the site editing, the theme builder part of Divi.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Right.

Devin Egger:
And I actually started using Divi before that. And I’ve got to always remember also that, when I first started using Divi, I hated it. And I’ve got to remember that when I used to try teach clients how to use it, and they would be so mad at me for building their website in this monstrosity of a thing. That the sections and the rows and the global rows and all this stuff. I had to remember that I’m coming into this with a context, with an idea of building page templates with PHP and building…

Aurooba Ahmed:
Yes.

Devin Egger:
All these different templates with PHP. And then when the theme builder came out, all that made sense. And then I thought what was really nice about the way Divi does, is the visual representation of those different templates, and being able to assign those templates to all these different things. And to give Divi some credit, I think they’ve done that really, really well. And I wouldn’t say that many of the people that I build websites for in Divi could build that out themselves. But if I’ve built that out for them and I properly label what all those are for, I’ve seen many people that have no development experience whatsoever be off and running with that. But it still has that locking problem because I have gotten calls at 10:30 at night going, “Hey, I deleted the header of my website. It has no navigation, no nothing. What do I do?”

Aurooba Ahmed:
Oh, no. Yes.

Devin Egger:
And I say, “Did you do a backup?” And of course they say no. And then I go, “Okay, well I’ll be right there.” And, you know.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Yeah. I think the site editor solves that particular problem of not having done a backup before deleting something really well. Because you can revert a header to the default that the theme provides. Which is really nice.

Devin Egger:
Oh.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Yeah.

Devin Egger:
Well, that’s interesting. So at least you don’t have nothing.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Exactly. You just will lose what you had done, but you can bring back something instead of having absolutely nothing and having a totally broken site. So that’s really nice, actually.

Devin Egger:
That is. That is quite nice. I think you could probably do something like that with Divi, but I don’t think it would look good.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Yeah, I agree.

Devin Egger:
It wouldn’t have that very Divi feel. Which I guess, here’s another point I just thought about is that, what I have noticed is… Well, how do I say this? So if I see a Divi website out in the wild, it is beyond obvious. I’m like, “That’s a Divi website.” There’s just so many little markers that is like, “Okay, this is the arrow. The button where you hover over and the little arrow pops out.” Or whatever. There’s so many markers that it’s like, “Okay, that’s a Divi website.” For me, for some reason, that’s always been a no-go. Like I always try to remove any of that. I don’t want people to know that it’s an Astra theme or a Divi theme or whatever.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Yes. Yes.

Devin Egger:
I don’t see that, actually. I don’t see that a lot with block themes. The block theme.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Oh, it’s there.

Devin Egger:
I’m sure it is. But I haven’t noticed it too much. What do you see?

Aurooba Ahmed:
So it’s a lot more subtle, which I really appreciate. And I think that that was very thoughtful way to go about it, to make sure that the site editor and the blocks that are being provided are not so opinionated that you can’t change them. But for me, one of the dead giveaways of a block theme is if you make the theme smaller, so the window smaller and you see the mobile menu icon. The hamburger icon. It’s that very thin, very specific two line one.

Devin Egger:
Yeah.

Aurooba Ahmed:
That is the only built-in one in WordPress right now for the menu. And you can change it, but it’s a process. And a lot of people will not change it, because it doesn’t make sense to do. So you can always tell by that.

Devin Egger:
The little two line one where the top line is bigger than the bottom line, by a tiny bit.

Aurooba Ahmed:
No, no, no. They’re equal. They’re equal.

Devin Egger:
They are? Okay.

Aurooba Ahmed:
They’re equal, but they’re like narrow. They isn’t that much of a space between them.

Devin Egger:
Okay.

Aurooba Ahmed:
And once you’ve looked at it, you’ll notice it, and then you’ll always know, “Oh yeah, this is a block theme for sure.” Because using that menu of icons…

Devin Egger:
Good to know. Good to know. So I’ll have to look for that. There is some. Talk to me about this. So a lot of times when we talk about getting real custom stuff, we’re talking about custom post types, custom fields. How does the block editor handle that? Custom templates, post types, custom fields, custom templates built off of custom post types, stuff like that. For me, I know that I really like the way Divi handles that stuff up to a point, but how do we handle that with the block theme?

Aurooba Ahmed:
Well, with block themes, you can create custom templates that are connected to custom post types. Custom post types are still something that you have to create yourself, in the way that we’re all used to.

Devin Egger:
Sure.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Although there is some talk about being able to create custom post types within the site editor. So.

Devin Egger:
I heard this, yes.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Maybe we’ll see that drop. We’ll see. But yeah, that part is pretty similar and I think it does handle it pretty well. And I don’t know if there is a lot of special things. But I will say custom fields in the site editor, in the block editor just in general, are second-class citizens. So it’s very difficult, I guess, to work with them naturally, because the idea is that you build blocks and you don’t use custom fields. And that’s like a whole different paradigm shift. And if you’re not a developer, you’re not really going to know how to easily add custom fields and that kind of thing.

Devin Egger:
Yep. And so, as in juxtaposition with Divi, there are some things that just work with custom fields. They work pretty well. And when you get up to a certain point.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Yeah.

Devin Egger:
Up to a certain point, and then trying to go any further, any sort of repeater field, forget about it.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Yeah.

Devin Egger:
Anything like that you got to install, then you can either custom plugin, you got to pay more money for. Or developer, which is kind of like my final question on the customness of it is, okay, so I’ve decided that I need… And this is kind of where that website that we were working on was at, right? Is…

Aurooba Ahmed:
Yeah,

Devin Egger:
Is, we needed stuff that goes way outside of the box of Divi. And would probably have been best for a custom Divi module. Which I think we get to a certain point with building custom blocks. Now, the one thing that I think that you just showed, you and Brian just showed the world how to do, the ACF blocks.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Yes.

Devin Egger:
That seems like a nice little in-between, because we really don’t need to know how to do React too much to do a ACF block. So a traditional PHP developer, like what I would consider myself, got a couple of years JavaScript experience, not too super heavy into the modern React libraries and stuff like that. To feel comfortable, I could just sell that to a client. ACF blocks seem like a pretty good option.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Yeah, definitely. I think they are a great middle option for someone who’s coming with a lot of PHP background, but wants to start to slowly embrace the new block editor paradigm. And even that can be still a jump. We’re so used to thinking about things in terms of custom fields, but really we need to make the jump to thinking about things in blocks. And smaller blocks and not necessarily just big components. And it’s a design and it’s a mental shift for sure, but I think it’s for the better, for how much flexibility it offers rather than custom fields per se.

Devin Egger:
Okay. Okay.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Yeah.

Devin Egger:
And so then beyond that, and this will be true with both Divi and the blocks…

Aurooba Ahmed:
Block themes.

Devin Egger:
Is, beyond that, you’ve pretty much got to know React. You’ve got to be comfortable with Field Scripts.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Yes.

Devin Egger:
You got to be comfortable with MPM, installing packages. All of that stuff you’ve got to be pretty comfortable with doing. Working your way through JavaScript files includes all of that stuff. And we’re talking about this because that’s the level of developer that you have to hire to get the job done with a custom website, right?

Aurooba Ahmed:
Yes. So I want to say that with a block theme, you really need to know React and all of those things if you want to make the custom stuff you’re doing editable inside the dashboard. Inside the block editor. But if you didn’t want to do that and you wanted to hardcode it, any block theme still supports PHP. You can still add lots of PHP functionality and that kind of thing, to it. You’re not excluded from using that. But if you want to make it work with the block editor and use the block editor sort of design language and how it’s teaching the users to work with the site now, then yeah, you need some React. Or maybe a lot of React.

Devin Egger:
Got it. Got it. And that is true for a lot of page builders, Divi included as well.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Yes.

Devin Egger:
I mean, you can still write stuff in PHP. You can still hard code a thing, and you can use custom post types, you can use Daloop and all that stuff in there. And this is something that I think we kind of filled the gap with on that website, at least I did, was short codes.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Yeah.

Devin Egger:
And how… You sound like you have so much disdain in your voice when you say that.

Aurooba Ahmed:
I don’t like short codes.

Devin Egger:
I can tell. They’re a ‘gets the job done’ kind of option.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Yes.

Devin Egger:
When you need to have it. How does short codes work with the block editor?

Aurooba Ahmed:
You can use short codes, but I mean, you can definitely create short codes, and I think that they’re a really great stop gap, even now with block themes. But ideally, if you need to build a short code, you can probably make that into a block. And it would be a better experience as an F or a user and for you. For everyone really involved, to be able to do that. Because short codes are written like code, and that’s not friendly for…

Devin Egger:
Right. No.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Non-developers. They can get used to it, but they really shouldn’t have to. It’s not an optimal experience.

Devin Egger:
Yeah, that’s always an interesting conversation with a client is, “Okay, I figured out the solution for this and basically for your budget, for where we can go with it, you’re going to have to get used to this. You’re going to have to put this whatever you want, this value into this and say this, inside this thing that says short code. And sorry, not sorry, you’re just going to have to do it.”

Aurooba Ahmed:
Yeah. And we’ve seen certain plug-ins that use short codes, try to circumvent that by creating Short Code Builders. You’ve seen that before, right? With Gravity Forms in the old classic editor. You could click the add form and check a few boxes and it’ll generate the short code with the right settings for you. But yeah, that’s what a block is doing. The block is making it so it’s a nice UI for you to be able to edit this. Instead of you having to look at the code in your face.

Devin Egger:
Yep, yep. Okay. So you can still use them, but we both agree that the usability there is just not great.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Not the best. Yeah.

Devin Egger:
Yep. So I have two kind of final questions, and I guess one more. So three final questions on this and then we’ll kind of wrap it up because we’ve been talking for a while here. Two big pieces that I think that are not direct experience, but they kind of make the experience. First one is accessibility. Divi is notorious for not being great at accessibility, either as an authoring tool or just in the code that it spits out. And then unfortunately, because it is so bad with accessibility on the front end, most developers that use Divi will have to apply a overlay. Which is just a nightmare, and it’s just a bad reinforcing system. So I would say that with accessibility, Divi does not get a win. How does accessibility look in the block themes?

Aurooba Ahmed:
When the block editor was first imagined there was a lot of oversight in terms of accessibility. But they are trying to fix that and trying to be more cognizant of it as far as an authoring tool. So it’s not the best, but it is improving. And there are a lot of things that you can do now with it and more easily, with assistive devices and that kind of thing that you couldn’t before. As far as the front end code goes, I think that the front end output, while still not as clean as I would personally want it to be, is still pretty good. And they do care a lot about it. For example, the new navigation block from the site editor, it’s using a very accessible modal. And it’s really easy to navigate with voiceover or any kind of screen reader. And, yeah. So the front end I think is pretty good, and ultimately it will still depend on how you actually use the tool to create that front end to make sure it is accessible.
But as far as whatever they could bake in accessibility wise, I think they’re doing a really good job with that, and trying to be really cognizant of it. The block editor itself, the site editor itself, it still needs work, but there is progress for sure.

Devin Egger:
That’s good to hear, that they’re actually, they’re making a stronger focus on this. And I know that that is one of the biggest complaints I see from the accessibility community at the start was just like, “Hey, this was really overlooked at the beginning.” So that is really nice to hear that there is more consideration being paid to it. I personally haven’t had the chance to dig too much into the front-end output, but it ends up being also one of those things where there is so much to do.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Yeah.

Devin Egger:
Especially when it comes to things like forms and things like accordions, which are always just really tricky. It is a process to get all that stuff right. And a lot of that is going to rely on people that are making the blocks, right?

Aurooba Ahmed:
Yeah.

Devin Egger:
Because there’s not just one person that’s making a block. And so there’s blocks out there in the wild that are better for accessibility than others.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Definitely, and I think that can be said about any tool or any plugin that you might use on top of WordPress. Ultimately, WordPress itself can’t be ultimately responsible for all of the accessibility. Everything, every feature, every new addition you add on top of it has to be considered independently based on who built it. So when you’re building a site with anything, whether that’s Divi or a block theme or anything else, it is your job as the author or the creator, using these tools, you are ultimately responsible for the accessibility of it. But of course, we want our tools to help us do that as best as they can. Right?

Devin Egger:
Right. That’s an extremely good point too, because I think that too often we as developers try to slip that responsibility off, right? On to something, “Oh, but it’s the tool. It’s the tool” Last kind of point to think about with, as a developer, using these tools is, the documentation. So I just recently personally have gone through both the documentation on creating a block as well as with Divi creating a custom module. I think the documentation for a custom module was from 2017 or 2018, and I don’t know if it’s been updated. Because they don’t really put dates on their blog posts and their documentation. But I found on Divi’s end the documentation while it got you there, it was rather lackluster, as a lot of documentation is. That said, for me personally, and I haven’t tried to extend too far, just in the starting of getting a custom block started, documentation got me there pretty well. And did a good job of explaining why we’re doing the stuff we’re doing. What do you think?

Aurooba Ahmed:
I think that a lot of people still have a lot of complaints about the documentation overall. When you start to dig more deep into block editor stuff, I think that’s still a little bit lacking. But everyone is trying to make up for it. It is after all an open source community.

Devin Egger:
Right.

Aurooba Ahmed:
We are all volunteering and trying to do our best. And the documentation team needs a lot of help, because there’s a lot that you need from documentation. But yeah, I think Divi, because it’s paid, I feel like they could probably do a better job about their documentation and should. But documentation is something that we overlook as a community of developers, a lot…

Devin Egger:
That’s true.

Aurooba Ahmed:
In terms of how we support ourselves and each other. And also our users. So documentation, documentation, documentation. I’m always about, please make sure there’s documentation. “Oh, you’re creating this internally. Document that. Oh, you’re writing this function. Have a doc block.” Make sure you’re doing your part because you can’t expect good documentation from other people if you don’t even give it yourself. Right?

Devin Egger:
Wow, preaching here. I love it. For real though. I mean, that is such a great point. And especially bringing it back to, again, an individual person’s, individual developer’s responsibility of, “Yeah, you’ve got to document your own stuff if you want other people’s stuff to be documented.”

Aurooba Ahmed:
Exactly. You can’t complain about someone else’s code if they go into your code, and it’s the same thing.

Devin Egger:
So true. So true. Okay, so final question before we wrap it up. And I guess we already have that answer from you. Would you, right now, would you use 2023 or any other block theme to build a website? And I guess you’ve already answered this, which is a resounding yes.

Aurooba Ahmed:
I guess I have, yeah. For a lot of personal projects, like smaller things. Like, I run a book club and the book club’s whole website runs on a block theme. I have a little cookbook website for my family. That runs on a block theme.

Devin Egger:
Wow.

Aurooba Ahmed:
For smaller websites, brochure websites. It’s a really great fit, and I love that I don’t have to touch even a single piece of code to make a really nice looking site that is user-friendly and works great out of the box for people.

Devin Egger:
Wow. You like the fact that you don’t have to touch a bit of code?

Aurooba Ahmed:
When you want to do something really, really quickly, and you just want to get it up and have it look not ugly? Yeah, I like that, wouldn’t you?

Devin Egger:
Yeah. I’m just checking. I mean, I know that you love it. I mean, you’re a software developer extraordinaire here.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Yeah.

Devin Egger:
You heard it straight from Aurooba, that you don’t have to touch the code in order to get a website done.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Yeah, and that’s really nice in certain circumstances.

Devin Egger:
Do you have a particular block theme that you gravitate towards?

Aurooba Ahmed:
Well, I really do like the 2022 theme and the 2023 theme. A lot of people really like the Wabi theme from Rich Tabor, which is excellent.

Devin Egger:
Okay.

Aurooba Ahmed:
It’s a great blog theme, by the way. If you’re just looking for a blog, it’s a great theme for that.

Devin Egger:
Okay.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Yeah. Those are the ones that I really gravitate towards the most right now.

Devin Egger:
Okay, cool. And I guess my answer to that is, I guess I’m going to have to.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Yes, you are going to have to. And I want to know all about it as you do it.

Devin Egger:
I will. And I think what I’m going to do is I’m just going to use 2023. I’ve already got a start…

Aurooba Ahmed:
Yeah.

Devin Egger:
And I’m going to use 2023, and I’m just going to see just how far I can get this. As tempting as it would be to use something like Cadence. Cadence is a pretty interesting theme that is somewhere in between a block theme and a page builder.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Definitely.

Devin Egger:
Or like Astra, as tempting as it would be to use Divi, because I can just whip out a website in two hours with Divi if I wanted to. I think I’m going to have to. I’m going to just rip the bandaid off and just do it.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Yeah, I think should. I think eventually, you’re going to be like, “Yep, this is awesome. I’m happy that I can do this without installing any extra plugins.”

Devin Egger:
Okay. Okay. I’ll trust you in that. And I’ll inform you how it goes along the way.

Aurooba Ahmed:
I look forward to it.

Devin Egger:
Okay. Aurooba, thank you so much for joining me. Again…

Aurooba Ahmed:
Yeah.

Devin Egger:
Software developer, podcaster. If people want to watch you and Brian on viewSource, how do they find it?

Aurooba Ahmed:
It’s https://viewsource.fm. Or you can just Google it on YouTube, because we’re on YouTube too.

Devin Egger:
Woo-hoo, YouTube. [inaudible 00:45:14]

Aurooba Ahmed:
Thanks for this, by the way. It was fun.

Devin Egger:
Yeah. Thank you for coming on. I really appreciate it.

Aurooba Ahmed:
Yeah.

Devin Egger:
All right. We’ll sign off there. Thanks for listening, everyone, and we’ll see you next time.

Aurooba Ahmed:
See ya.

Allie Nimmons:
Hey there. Welcome to a new segment of Press The Issue Listener Mail. We want to know what you think about this topic. Specifically, how do you think WordPress as a community and project can bring the next generation into the fold? Tweet your response to _MasterWP or email your response to podcast master wp.com. Then, tune in to our next episode to see if we read your response at the end of the show.

Monet Davenport:
Thank you for listening to this episode. Press The Issue is a production of MasterWP, produced by Allie Nimmons. Hosted, edited, and musically supervised by Monet Davenport. And mixed and mastered by Tehran Bullock. Please visit masterwp.com/presstheissue to find more episodes. Subscribe to our newsletter for more WordPress news at masterwp.com.

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