Slides from my talk at WordCamp Miami 2019. A review of my proposed process for WordPress product and service providers to begin adopting Gutenberg as part of their WordPress content and development workflow.

1. Content Architectures
In WordPress 5
@jamieschmid

2. Hello.
I’m Jamie and I failed
miserably at Gutenberg. And
I gave up.

4. Why did I fail?

5. Dumb?
Lazy?
Bad at JavaScript?
Am I even a WordPress developer?
What am I even doing here??

6. I had the wrong assumptions about
what Gutenberg is.

7. What is Content Architecture?.

8. Content Architecture is:
● Strategy & Planning BEFORE touching WordPress!
● Data and Content Modeling: Information Architecture
● Content Reuse (instead of duplicating in multiple places!)
● Editorial Workflow & Author Experience (AX)
(the WordPress site you create is the end tool someone has to
use to do their job!)
● Scalability (what will our content need to do in the future?)
● Wireframes

9. Introducing...
A System for Building
Great Content Architectures
In WordPress

10. + An enhanced Discovery Process
+ The Content Model
+ WP Architecture
… UI design
+ Author & Content Stress Test
… development, etc
What does this involve?

11. Enhanced discovery process
We have opportunities here to add much more value to the project!
Business processes
Workflows
Governance
Author experience
Content sharing (DRY!)
Channel distribution
Future scaling
Identify painpoints and places to improve, speed up, accommodate or automate:

12. Editorial workflow & publishing governance
needs?
Do they CREATE content in WP, or create it
elsewhere and paste into WP after it's
publish-ready?
Where should we use structured content,
where can we use freeflowing content?
What is the mental state of the author when
they're doing this: will they have the capacity
for the extra cognitive load of Gutenberg?
Do they have the design skills to make page
level content decisions?
Technical level of author
Do they need flexibility of adding a structured
component anyplace in a post?
Do they need global shared content?
What other channels does this website content
feed out to, what is the
sharing/structuring/formatting needs?
What is the balance between guided & locked
down editorial vs free flowing access to
everything incl plugin installs & gutenberg
Role and privileges of author
Longterm goals for the site: scaling? sharing to
app? integrating with something else?
Look for:

13. The Content Model

14. The Content Model
We have opportunities here to add many more value$ to the project!
Objects
Attributes
Relationships
Duplicate content?
Grouping?
Terminology
Channels: here or there?
What content do you need and why? How is it all related?

15. Governance & Editorial Workflow
Who are your content creators & their technical abilities?
What are their roles?
What are the access limitations?
What is their editorial workflow? Can we do it in WordPress?
Will they be creating content inside WordPress, or creating outside
and pasting it in?
Is the author allowed to delete pages? Publish? Do they need signoff?

16. What does the content look like?
Where does it come from?
Is it structured & formatted (aka you can upload &
map it??)
Similar design styles: your modules

17. WHY start content entry so early??
Does the ACTUAL content fit the molds you’ve made?
Go through the author process with the actual authors. What is
confusing? Where do they struggle? Listen to their feedback.
Is the client unable to produce any content? There may be issues
getting it from them by the due date. Help coordinate. Maybe an
editorial calendar?
Edit & revise early!
Catch content structure problems before they become PROBLEMS

18. WP Architecture:
Understanding Content Types
in WordPress

19. WP Architecture
Good WP 5 Architecture starts with a good understanding of WordPress
Content Types.
Posts & Post Types
Post Meta
Taxonomies
Options
What are we working with? First we must understand WordPress.
Users
Comments

20. The
WordPress
Database
11 tables:
Users(2), Posts(2),
Taxonomies (3), Options,
Comments(2), Links

21. There are 3 basic
types of content in
WordPress
Posts
Post Meta
Taxonomies

22. Core Post Types in WP 5
● Post (Post Type: ‘post’)
● Page (Post Type: ‘page’)
● Attachment (Post Type: ‘attachment’)
● Revision (Post Type: ‘revision’)
● Navigation Menu (Post Type: ‘nav_menu_item’)
● Custom CSS (Post Type: ‘custom_css’)
● Changesets (Post Type: ‘customize_changeset’)
● Custom Post Types (Post Type: literally anything)
● Blocks (Post Type: ‘wp_block’)

23. Posts have inherent attributes.

24. Posts have inherent attributes.
And some attributes are more
efficient to query by than
others, because they’re
indexed in the database.

25. They have custom fields!

26. And ways to group them,
aka: taxonomies!

27. Most of the magic you see in
WordPress every day comes from
just these three content types.

29. (it’s not very popular right now with people
who review stuff on wordpress.org)
:(

30. Why??

31. Why??
So why did we… ?

32. Oh yeah.
(Users!)

33. Author Experience (AX) Matters
You’re not just building one site.
One for your client’s users.
You’re building two.
One for your user: the client.
We are all experience designers.

34. What is the WordPress Experience?
What are our goals as a platform?
Democratize publishing.
Educate & enable.
Improve the internet.

35. How is Gutenberg moving us
forward?

36. ● The_content is actually structured now (really).
● Things we used to use multiple queries to post meta are now
available right inside the content.
● We can define blocks.
● We can share blocks (global content!)
● We can create custom blocks.
● We can create templates.
● We can lock blocks and templates and remove attributes and
override style defaults.
● We can give our users the ability to create that rich, longform content
that Google loves and delights people and wins awards and stuff.

37. But as WP developers..

38. We’re overwhelmed, confused,
unprepared, and resentful.
So we’re not using it.
And we’re letting WordPress happen
around us.

39. ● We need more legacy users &
devs using Gutenberg.
● We need more devs talking
about building with Gutenberg.
● We need more of our peers
talking about successes and
failures with it.
Here’s what we need to do.
● We need documentation THAT’S NOT
JUST GEARED TOWARD JAVASCRIPT
DEVELOPERS: we need to understand
content types, we need to learn
content modeling (deeply), we need to
redefine roles of the tools and
processes and artifacts we work with
daily to structure, style and manage
this content.
We need to start shaping how this new paradigm plays out.

40. Here’s my idea on how to get started:
Block Editor Stories Podcast
WordPress Content Architecture Initiative
● Content Modeling resources & education
● Education on WP content types - for everyone
● Exploring and defining new roles
● Establishing and documenting new patterns for content,
display and development.

41. We are WordPress.
All of us.
Let’s own this new paradigm. Together
we will work to shape the future of the
web.

42. Please join me!
Block Editor Stories Podcast: production help, hosts,
people to interview, stories to tell and problems to discuss
I am also looking for people to help me build, refine and
present the WP Content Architecture Initiative!
@jamieschmid
hello@jamieschmid.com

43. Thank you.
@jamieschmid
hello@jamieschmid.com