Future Siloing of WordPress Site Creation

[Benjamin]

As I dig deeper in many of these "page building" webinars we have been having here at WPStudio, I'm beginning to grasp a vision of the future of WordPress site creation. That future is both good and bad. There are a number of camps that are evolving out of this future outlook. I'm curious as to what all of you think of the future.

Default Core WordPress

This is the direction Automattic is taking WordPress. A "block-based" total site design system. I see this as the future of anyone who simply wants to write content on the internet and wants a "space" of their own to do it from. Whether you self-host (.org) or get hosted (.com), the experience will eventually be exactly the same and Automattic will continue controlling the narrative. The key thing here is Design and Content get all mixed up and are no longer separated in their storage... which could make for a disaster with future tech.

Enhancing Core WordPress

This is the realm of a few page builders (Beaver Builder, Zion Builder, Elementor(current), and a few others) that provide the design on top of core WordPress. It doesn't really matter whether you use Classic Editor or Block Editor for content writing because design and content are stored differently. Everything that works in the base level of WordPress (Loop, Query, Template Hierarchy, Hooks, etc) also works within the page builders providing future-proofing. The key thing here is the attempt at keeping "design" and "content" stored separately.

Siloed WordPress

This is an area many WordPress developers are happy about pursuing. This is the lock-in system that gets users into a specific system and then makes the pain threshold too high for anyone to "leave". When someone "buys" into one of these systems, they have all their solutions provided for them within that system. It's either their way of doing something or don't do it. Now to be fair, many users will be extremely successful within these systems because everything "just works". (Think Apple ecosystem). Several examples of these systems are Brizy(future), Divi, Elementor(future), Oxygen, etc. The key thing here is that the systems "change" the way a user interacts with the WordPress database and structure.

Final Thoughts

I think all three "silos" will continue to operate and grow. But I think the greatest flexibility and growth will be found within the 2nd silo because both the first and the third silo have the opportunity to grow so independently that they will "leave" the confines of the WordPress structure and continue doing their own thing. This is why I see the future with Zion Builder/Beaver Builder/Elementor on top of Core WordPress and utilizing Themes that operate within "best practices". This is also why it is important for developers who desire to be successful to understand the WordPress Loop/Query, to know how to harness Conditional Logic and Template Hierarchy, to have a firm grasp on CSS and Javascript, and to embrace a system of building sites that are accessible to both current and future indexing systems.

Future Thoughts... Is blogging dead?

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