Imagine this for a moment:
- You know that it’s becoming increasingly tougher for businesses to compete in the global and digital economy. Technologies like the internet and social media and digital marketing methods like e-commerce, email marketing, online advertising, and affiliate marketing are making it easier for more businesses around the world to set up a global online presence and target customers in your local area via their computers and mobile devices.
- You run a business (or work in one) that has a website.
- You would like to see your website and your digital presence deliver your business better results (e.g. more traffic, more leads, more subscribers, more sales, etc.), while also leveraging your time and resources, saving you money, and making you more money too.
- You understand that, while the global economy is making things increasingly tougher for businesses to remain competitive and profitable, the digital age is also creating many new opportunities for businesses to expand into new markets, products, and services, and offering many new ways and methods to increase their exposure and grow their revenue online.
- The problem with all the above, however, is that for your business to succeed in an increasingly competitive global economy and harness the opportunities offered by technology in the digital age, you need to understand the technology and have control of your digital processes.
If you are a non-technical person working in a business where everyone else is also a non-techie, non-coder, non-web developer, or non-digital marketing expert and your business would like to get better results from its web presence, then how would you build the technology powering your website?
Would you make it:
A) More technical to understand and more complicated to use, or
B) Easier to understand and simpler to use and control.
If you are a non-technical person working in a business where everyone else is a non-techie, non-coder, non-web developer, or non-digital marketing expert and you choose a technical web platform to power your online presence, then you are going to have to keep surrounding yourself with more technical and digital marketing experts for your business to remain competitive in an increasingly tougher economy.
This is only going to make it increasingly harder and more expensive for your business to stay in business, because your business will need to generate more and more revenue to keep paying all these technical and digital experts for their services.
If you are a non-technical person and everyone else in your business is also a non-techie, non-coder, non-web developer, or non-digital marketing expert, and you want to get better results from your web presence, then a better option is to make the technology easier to understand and control, or, better still, make it so that you don’t even need to understand it and it will still deliver you get results through simplicity and automation.
Over the many years that I have been using WordPress, building sites with WordPress, and teaching and helping businesses to get better results online using WordPress, the WordPress platform has been continually evolving and becoming easier for non-techies to build and manage their own websites without having to hire technical experts in areas like website building, web design, website maintenance, etc.
This overview explains why WordPress is only going to become easier and simpler for non-techies to use … even get to the point where you don’t need to understand the technology at all to get the results you want.
Non-Techies Are The Future Of WordPress: WordPress Gutenberg & The WordPress Paradox
The WordPress Paradox
A while back, I wrote a post called The WordPress Paradox, where I made the observation that as more technical web service providers offer WordPress services like website development, web design, website maintenance, etc. WordPress is also becoming easier for non-techies to build and manage their own websites without the need to hire outside helpers to perform services they could easily perform themselves.
In that same post, I also mentioned that non-techies are the end users of the WordPress CMS platform. They are the target audience of tens of thousands of WordPress developers and web service providers and the reason why WordPress exists.
Like all technologies designed to service non-technical end users, therefore, it is inevitable that if WordPress wants to remain competitive and maintain its global dominance as the leading web platform used by millions of websites worldwide, it will have to keep evolving and become simpler and easier for non-techies to use without requiring coding knowledge or advanced technical skills.
WordPress Gutenberg
The WordPress trend toward becoming easier and simpler for non-techies to use and take control of their own digital presence is already evidenced with features like customizable themes, fully configurable plugins, and integrated functions like wizards, visual interfaces, plug-and-play, drag-and-drop, copy and paste, shortcodes, widgets, ‘one-click’ installations and updates, and more (for more details, see Keep Calm And Use WordPress: 17 WordPress Features That Put You In Control Of Your Website).
As you are reading this, the WordPress community is already working on ways to make WordPress even easier for non-techies to use.
This seems to be the case with WordPress Gutenberg.
WordPress Gutenberg (named after Johannes Gutenberg, who invented the printing press over 500 years ago) aims to revolutionize the publishing experience by bringing WordPress into line with modern website building trends, methods, and principles allowing websites, applications, page layouts and web content to be assembled using ‘blocks’ which can be dragged and dropped into any configuration, giving website owners and non-technical users unlimited possibilities for expansion and functionality.
WordPress Gutenberg will be a major step in the evolution of the WordPress platform. Currently, it is still being worked on by developers as there are many challenges to how the new features will integrate within the existing WordPress framework.
WordPress Gutenberg will be released in different stages, with the first stage scheduled for release with the launch of WordPress version 5.0.
The video below was recorded at a WordCamp held in Nashville, U.S.A. in 2017 and provides a good overview of Gutenberg …
(Gutenberg and the WordPress of Tomorrow)
Currently, you can download a plugin that will enable the new Gutenberg editor to be installed.
Note: Do not install this plugin on a live website. It is only meant for testing and providing feedback about Gutenberg features to WordPress developers.
You can also download a plugin that will allow you to restore the ‘classic’ content editor interface if you install the Gutenberg plugin and want to keep working on your posts using the pre-WordPress 5.0 interface. As with the revious recommendation, do not install this plugin on a live website.
We’ll provide more information and tutorials when Gutenberg becomes available. In the meantime, keep in mind that WordPress is evolving and will continue to become easier for non-techies to use, as non-techies are the future of WordPress.
Update: On December 6, 2018, WordPress announced the release of WordPress version 5.0 which includes the new WordPress Gutenberg content editor.
We have created a comprehensive guide to using the new content editor here: WordPress Gutenberg – The Ultimate Guide For Non-Technical WordPress Users
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)