Let's Build a Better WordPress @ WordCamp NYC 2018

Building a better WordPress is more than refactoring code. It’s a 10,000-foot view of what we can learn from the tech community at large, affecting everything from how we build our applications to laying the foundation for what comes next.

WordPress is more than just a CMS. For some, it’s the backbone of their business, it’s their real-estate, it’s their voice, and channel for communicating online.

What can we do to make that experience better?

Let’s explore what Gutenberg could mean for the future of service providers and freelancers. Let’s also explore what the future of SaaS.

I would like to share my research on what I what I believe to be the greatest opportunities for WordPress and the community that supports it.

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2. Daniel Olson DigitalCube, COO @emaildano
3. We develop WordPress
 hosting products.
4. Serverless-Static
 WordPress Hosting Fully-Managed WordPress Hosting
5. Philadelphia, PA
8. Developers Engineers
9. Welcome to Let’s build a better WordPress
10. Agenda What’s this talk about? What is WordPress Core? WordPress Alpine WordPress Developer Edition What can WordPress learn from DevOps? Measuring WordPress What can WordPress learn from SpaceX Technical Debt WordPress 5.0 aka Gutenberg
11. I ❤
 WP
12. WordPress Core
13. WordPress Core isn’t really just just Core. It also has your personal data baked right in.
14. WordPress Core is a super-monolith
18. https://codex.wordpress.org/Editing_Files Note: It is not recommended to change WordPress core files other than wp-config.php. If you must change anything else, take notes about your changes, and store a copy of these notes in a text file in your WordPress root directory.
20. WordPress Core Why can’t we treat it as a dependency?
25. e.g. Ever had to re-install WordPress?
27. I’m not suggesting we force
 the average user to adopt a package manager.
28. I’m suggesting we can learn a lot from how they handle files.
29. WordPress Core Already Does this. Kinda.
32. WordPress as a dependency is not a new idea.
34. Why can’t this be standard?
35. WordPress Reimagined What would you change?
36. I’d have 3 versions
41. WordPress Alpine A lightweight version of WordPress
43. What is WordPress Alpine?
44. WordPress Alpine Is an API First WordPress
45. WordPress Alpine Is perfect for building headless apps
46. WordPress Alpine allows you to pick and choose,
 just what you need.
50. API first is gaining a lot of developers, attention, and funding.
52. Us v. Theme What can they do we can’t?
53. 1. A well defined API
55. They win.
56. 2. Ecosystem
57. We win.
58. 3. Community
59. We win. Again.
60. An API First WP allows us to focus on creating a lean version
 of WordPress that’s more secure and extendable.
61. e.g. Learn JavaScript Deeply.
62. e.g. Not just to for Gutenberg
64. What is WordPress Developer Edition?
65. WordPress DE offers better dependency management
67. SimplePie RSS Feed Parser
70. WordPress uses a lot of dependences but we don’t
 have the tools to manage them.
71. What if we did have better tools?
72. What can WordPress learn from DevOps?
73. DevOps is a software engineering culture and practice that aims at unifying software development and software operation.
74. aka Work smarter, not harder.
76. Three Types of Teams High Performers
 Medium Performers
 Low Performers
77. It measured things like how often they deployed code, 
 how often those deploys failed,
 and the amount of time it took to recover.
78. The Gist Slow and steady does not win the race.
 Data shows that high performers get it all.
79. What’s a high performer?
80. What’s a high performer? It has nothing to do with skill.
81. High performers see 46x more code deployments.
82. High performers also have a faster lead time
 from the first commit to deploy.
83. Why is an aggressive release cycle better?
84. High performing teams are not always perfect but they do publish errors ⅓ less than any other team in this study.
85. Measuring WordPress
86. What data and tools to we have to measure
 the development of WordPress Core?
87. Based on history, a major release of WordPress happens every 4 months or so. Suggest and vote on ideas for future releases at the WordPress Extend Ideas site.
88. What can WordPress learn
 from SpaceX?
89. Statically, teams which a high amount of friction in the development environment has the lowest retention. According to DORA State of DevOps Report 2017
90. The SpaceX model: “go get all the talent.” — Marc Andreessen, interview with Elad Gil
91. Core Contributors Are they writing patches or are they
 laying the groundwork for something exciting?
92. Technical Debt
93. Technical Debt There’s always a quick way to do it, but is it the best way?
95. How do we reduce technical debt?
96. 1. Focus on things that would have the greatest impact.
97. 2. Reduce the WordPress footprint.
98. 3. Better dependency management.
99. Gutenberg
100. What is the primary motivation behind Gutenberg?
101. 30% of all websites use WordPress
102. How do we keep that? Is Gutenberg the the silver bullet or should
 we also be dong thing to attract the best talent?
105. Gutenberg is going to be a game changer.
106. Gutenberg is going to be a game changer. Are we giving it the best possible chance to succeed?
107. What’s next?
108. Questions? @emaildano