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In this interview, Nathan Latka and Matt Mullenweg discussed an array of topics, leading Automattic, investing, and his life around WordPress. We transcribed the part about Gutenberg. You can listen to rest of it on Soundcloud.
At timestamp 23:50 Nathan Latka’s asked Matt Mullenweg:
Gutenberg. Why make it your first project when you get back, what is it and how can my listeners go and use it?
Matt Mullenweg's answer
CEO of Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com and Jetpack
Photo: Courtesy of Nathan Latka
First what I am going to say is Gutenberg is still in beta. It’s an open beta. When you search for it in the plugin directory. Search for Gutenberg. You’ll see it and you will be able to install it.
The big idea is that we can move editing post and pages from kind of a document model, where you type a bunch of text in a box, to a model where you take this building blocks. Text, lists, but also things like maps, videos, contact forms, products, and you can rearrange them in blocks, like building things with Legos. So this is how the best websites and the best layouts and everything work. And just we wanted to make something in core of WordPress that made it easy for everyone to do this.
Changing the editor, since that really in many ways the heart of WordPress, is by far the most controversial thing you can do; and the hardest. Because, lots of people are very used to how WordPress worked for the past 14 years and there is lots of opinions on it. And it’s also just technically difficult, what we are building. To build it a way, that works; for the you know, many, many, many, many of tens of million WordPress sites out there. It just tough. It’s much harder than doing it in a plugin.
That’s part of why we decided to tackle it. WordPress has a great set of developer, has a great set of leaders over the many years, particular Helen Housandi, who’s been super incredible. But for this, well, let’s tackle the very, very hardest thing. It’s definitely a stretch both leading core and leading Automatic the company. Both are practically full time jobs. I am working with great folks on both sides, and i am able to have a foot in both.
My hope is once we get some of the most really, really hard things out of the way, that we will setup WordPress for the next decade of what going to happen with it.
Definitely check out the rest of the conversation between Nathan Latka and Matt Mullenweg.
Benjamin D. Esham / Wikimedia Commons [CC BY-SA 3.0 us (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons
