Genesis Shapers: March 2021

David: . Hello everyone. And welcome to the Genesis community live cast. This is our Genesis shapers recap episode for March, 2021 shapers meeting titled core web vitals, compiling and customizing Genesis. Blocks for those that don’t know me. I’m David Vogelpohl. I’ve been a proud member of the Genesis community for over eight years now.

I think I’m ready to change that to nine soon. I need to check the exact date. Um, but I lead the Genesis at WP engine and I love helping the Genesis community get better together with my friends, from the shapers and joining me for this recap episode. Actually I have two shapers to help me run through what we talked about during the meeting.

First, I like to welcome to the Genesis community live cast. Mr Remkus de Vries of serve bolt. Remkus, welcome to the Genesis  community livecast. 

Remkus: Thank you, David. Nice to be here. 

David: Good. Did I get your last name? Pronunciation. Okay. It was a little we’re good. We’re good. Okay, good. Yeah. Was the last name like Vogel poll? I really strive to get those last name, last name pronunciations.

Right. Um, but also joining us here, uh, back for the, uh, Genesis community live casts, like to welcome back Carrie dills of Carrie dills.com. 

Carrie: Hey guys, and I’m here to represent easy, last names. 

David: Okay. Yeah, there’s gotta be mountains somewhere easy is like a relative thing though, based on like your language and experience.

So I feel like your last name is incredibly difficult for a lot of people in the world. Caring, throwing this out here. We’ll just go. How about short, last names? Okay. You’ll wrap the shirt. Last names. I love it. All right. Cool. Well enough with the intro, let’s jump right into the meeting. Uh, w we are meeting took place on March 9th, uh, via Slack, like they always do.

And the very first question we ask of every meeting of course, is let’s get a show of hands for those that were able to make it today. Although I did clarify after many folks using more than hand emoji, that they could also use whatever emoji. Floats their boat to say that they were able to make it there.

And Mike Henneberger of my theme, he replied with the boat. So that was very like on the nose. And then Rimkus and Carrie all were also there. Right? 

Remkus: I was, I didn’t actually wave. 

David: I recall that. Oh, well then you’re not officially there. And, 

Remkus: well, I did comment. I did comment. I was there just, I didn’t wave. I was being rude I guess, 

David: but a comment’s not an emoji.

So I think it doesn’t officially count is where I think this is landing. Um, but no, I think your comments flying room. Cause I just fixed it. Yeah, me too. Oh, you did naturally respond. This is funny. Yeah, but you both have hand waves. Love that. Uh, uh, Ryan Murray, if 3,200 creative, he does the kind of John Travolta dancing emoji.

That was his of choice. Ryan, Ken stra, uh, Genesis custom blocks waving. I’m not going to read all the emoji’s here. Uh, bill Erickson was able to make it Lee, Anthony, and a Y, but Bedolla. Uh, have awesome press, uh, Sally getcha. Uh, you may know her as WP fan girl, Anita Carter of the creative diva. And there were others that joined later.

I guess it didn’t raise their hand. Rob Stenson of Genesis custom blocks. Jonathan Jeter of click here labs. Uh, we’ll spot others as we go through the agenda. Um, but the first question, this one was a bit of a softball, but we asked the shapers if they saw Anita Carter. Carrie bills and Rob Stinson present during a WP engine’s virtual developer event, uh, decode, and then, uh, ask them if they would join me in celebrating the awesome job they did talking about Genesis full site editing and analytic strategies.

Um, Carrie, did you see yourself talk, be code? 

Carrie: I muted myself and was just participating in the Slack channel. It’s always really awkward to listen to playbacks of 

David: myself. That’s one of the things I loved about that event and just like virtual events in general were where you record the session and then broadcast it live because you can actually ask the speakers questions live during their session.

Um, and I thought that was a really cool part of the event. Ramco. You said you weren’t able to see the live sessions. Okay. For those that weren’t able to catch it live. If you just Google WP engine D code, you can actually catch the recordings. They’re all free. Anita Carter talked about analytics strategies.

Carrie talked about full site editing. Carrie, I’m going to tell you a secret, which probably isn’t a secret. If I tell it on something like a live cast was the most popular breakout session. I’m the one you and Rob did. So people really love learning about full site editing and the role of Genesis in that.

That was really clean. Yeah. I’ll 

Remkus: go ahead and 

David: surprise there. I know, right. That’s what we get for sledding superstars. Like carry into the lineup. It’s just really kind of taking over the viewership there. Just kidding. Actually, a lot of really popular sessions. 

Carrie: I was going to say, I think it’s the topic.

That was a big winner. Not the, not the presenter, 

David: the topic, not the talent. Huh? I 

Remkus: was gonna, I was gonna be like, keep it in the middle, but yeah. Uh, I do think the topic 

David: is taught as well. And you shared your full site editing. Uh, Uh, local blueprint in that session as well. Right? Carrie. Um, if you check out Carrie’s blog, she has a link to a zip file that you can click and drag into the software local that will automatically load a full site editing, uh, instance of WordPress, uh, there in local for you to play around with, um, check it out on Carrie’s blogs.

So if you haven’t tried FSC, that’s a great way to do it. Um, but those that were willing to celebrate, we have Anita Lee, Jonathan Jeter, and a Y. Uh, Rob Stinson, uh, Jonathan Jeter twice while double emoji? Uh, no. Why was able to watch them live? He enjoyed the talks. Uh, Sally will have to catch it on the recordings.

Uh, Ryan  giving his, uh, props there. Um, and then, Oh, I also gave you a little sunshine, Carrie, and the Nita and Rob. So that kind of. Yup. Yup. Yup. Um, that really rounded us up there. Um, and for those kind of following along with shapers meetings, we generally have a little bit of a pattern. Um, we have like a series of questions that non-technical shapers can answer a series of questions that talk about like what we’re doing to help the community get better.

Um, and this next question is really falling under that community umbrella. Um, but if you saw the first episode of the Genesis community, livecast reboot, um, episode one, you know, the live cast had been dormant for awhile where you, we kind of rebooted it. Um, but the very first episode was around the contributions, um, by the black community to WordPress and also the challenges that community still faces.

And at the end of that episode, Uh, Anita Carter, uh, one of the Genesis shapers, Sandy Jackson, and then Mike Little who, uh, is the co-creator of WordPress. If you weren’t familiar, we kind of ended that with a bit of a, of an, of a notion around talk is cheap action is what changes things like, what are you going to do?

Um, this really resonated with me personally. I met internally with some folks at WP engine, uh, particularly Tarsha McCormick, um, our, uh, leader, vice president of diversity inclusion. And what we ended up doing was reaching out to, uh, Jill binder of, um, diverse and tech. And Jill runs a course. Um, that helps to train people on public speaking skills, how to get your pitch accepted, how to, um, here, let me actually share my screen.

This might make a little bit more sense, but. Um, how to get expected for your, uh, speaking propositions, uh, or proposals at events. Um, and what we did was we partnered up with diverse in tech and Tarsha McCormick, and Joel, uh, binder will actually be providing a workshop specifically designed to increase.

The number of black speakers in the WordPress community and at WordPress events, um, this course is free for anyone who identifies as black or African-American. And, um, we’ll take place in June. There’s an application on this form if you’d like to, uh, apply, or if you know someone you’d like to share this with who might.

Uh, apply. And really the question to the shapers was, you know, kind of following up on that, but also, you know, asking those folks if they would, uh, would share that with others, we’re nearly to our goal of 50 students, um, for that workshop. So really excited to see that progress. It looks like Sally had already promoted it.

I know Anita had, uh, it looks like Ryan Marie was saying he doesn’t do social. So that was kind of an interesting thread that developed off of that. Um, but yeah, if, if you, uh, do know someone who’s interested or if you, you yourself would like to participate, please check out that post on the WP engine blog, there’s a link to the form to sign up again, hopefully to help us, um, you know, meet our goal, to increase the representation from black people and African Americans, uh, at WordPress and at Genesis events.

So we’re looking forward to supporting that as a whole, and really appreciate the support, um, from the shapers who were able to do that. Uh, next question on the list is recently a Genesis community member asked how he could remove layouts, uh, and sections from Genesis blocks. And then I, I wrote here, there is a way to do that.

Um, but what reasons might you want to remove layouts or sections from Genesis blocks? Uh, before I show the way how to do that? Um, I’m just curious, Carrie, I know you spent quite a time, a little bit of time with Genesis blocks. What are some reasons you could think of why people might want to hide some of those layouts and sections?

Would 

Carrie: you mind doing a screen share? So anybody that’s not familiar could see, um, like what the layouts and collections are. Oh, yeah, absolutely. 

David: I want to describe this visual thing I can 

Carrie: describe. 

David: And here’s, here’s the local, by the way, uh, that I was mentioning earlier. So I’ll just go ahead and pop in to the backend of WordPress, uh, on this instance.

So I can, Oh, I did it too fast. I always do it too fast. It’s got to set up the database first. There it is. Okay. So we’ll go build a page and then go ahead and keep talking. 

Carrie: Uh, I actually agreed with what new, I was saying that if you are a theme developer and you’re offering, um, your own say layouts or collections to match your theme, uh, that are duplicates of what’s provided, um, Organic or that’s already there.

You might want to remove the duplicate to replace it with your customized version for your theme. 

David: The one that’s provided you would want to modify it. So it looks like the rest of the site. Pardon me? The rest of the even theme, if you would. Yes. And he’s taking these core layouts and collections and restyling them for that context and then essentially creating a duplicate version of it.

And so hiding the original version is, is the ask here, like how do I hide that? Because I don’t need it. And this use case is around making sure they all match. Uh, the design of the site that you’re building and you don’t have to go in further to customize the colors and stuff, right? 

Carrie: Yeah. That’s the idea.

And not to get too far ahead in the conversation, it’s not the most terribly efficient, uh, way to have to go about things, to remove what’s there and replace it with what you do. Um, and global styles, which are coming down, the pipeline moves Gutenberg. Would hopefully be a way to, um, set all those themes styles up front and your global styles, and then have those cascade down to, uh, the native collections, uh, or layouts that are provided with Genesis blocks.

Uh, but that’s still in the future at this point, 

David: I have to say I’m pretty plugged in to all things Genesis, as you can imagine. But I was actually shocked in that meeting with McAllister was like, Oh yeah, we’re working on a global style system right now for all this. Um, so that way, uh, sorry you room.

Cause go ahead. I was 

Remkus: gonna say, uh, that was a pleasant surprise as well. Yeah, 

David: super helpful, obviously for keeping that design consistency, um, you may have seen the collections in, uh, Genesis blocks at some point. Uh, this is, if you look at the layout selector, all of these designs are kind of unique and different one with the exception of these, which are actually part of a collection.

Uh, but if you look up here, like the button colors are different. The layouts are different and it’s really there to provide flexibility and the user can go in and you can also do this as well. The developer with the CSS, and you can ma these styles. I mean, that’s fundamentally what, uh, no Y was doing. Um, or, uh, you can also go in and create a custom collection.

Um, now anyone can create a collection, um, but when you create the collection, it can just be the elements. Um, that are included with the collection that either you’re using. So you might think of this as like a themes demo content, uh, content, like all chopped up and ready to use on any page. Uh, but then if you wanted to, like you say, you’re building a site for like someone who’s not very technical and can’t deal with all this choice, or maybe you just don’t want it polluting your views.

You can actually access this article developer dot WP engine.com forward slash Genesis dash blocks for slash layouts dash block. And it will detail how you can suppress, um, uh, layouts and sections that you’re not using, uh, within the site that you’re building. Go ahead and stop sharing since we shared the visuals already.

Um, anything you’d add to that carrier in a Y I’m sorry, 

Remkus: because we look so like yeah, 

David: the same time. Didn’t I wasn’t. It was you date her in the Y yeah. Yeah. I have a photo from 

Remkus: that night. Yeah, that was, those were good times.

No, I, I think the, um, So, especially considering from the, uh, I built a pre-built theme. So it’s a different story. If you’re just building from scratch and you’re designing your theme as you go along. But if you’re, if you’re, uh, distributing a theme, like a premium theme, um, I can fully see that you want to have full control of all the elements because people are going to have questions.

Right. I added this layout and now it’s out of whack. Why is that? Or, uh, look, I’ve got squared buttons everywhere. Why am I seeing around it? But here what’s happening. Uh, all those little things, essentially how reduce, uh, support questions. It also makes your. You know, your end product, much more consistent with how you thought of it.

Um, so yeah, I, I think it’s, um, uh, especially giving the later comment by Mike, uh, saying, uh, we’re working on a global styles. I’m like, yeah, that’s, that’s the missing component. Um, cause you then, then use it. I’m I’m assuming you’re defining your global styles and whatever pattern or layout, whatever that you’re using a will then.

Use that as a base. And then I guess the only thing that is, uh, you might want to change is 

the 

David: image. Yeah. I’m sure 

Remkus: there’s a solution for at some point, but, uh, essentially, uh, you get everything on brand. Um, I like that, I think that, uh, that greatly helps, um, people understanding the flexibility that Gutenberg offers them.

Um, I still think we’re a couple of years in now. I still think the vast majority of people have no idea that power that they have in the default WordPress editor. 

David: Yeah. I feel like people are just now waking up to that. We see more people using the block editor in the production version of their sites over time, but it’s still very early days.

And I think a lot of this is even things like this global styles issue, which seems obvious on its face are just now kind of coming into play in a lot of these contexts. Would you, um, like I know you built sites maybe even still do for like clients. Um, would, would you think you would favor, like only giving them access to blocks layouts and, uh, sections that match the style or would you.

Kind of give them the smorgasbord of things. 

Remkus: I think it depends on who the end client is really. So if it’s an incline that really needs all the flexibility and there’s plenty of those who know how to behave themselves, so to speak, I’m more than happy to provide them with, with all the building blocks that they actually need.

But if it’s a client that really doesn’t understand quite well what they’re doing, but they need this and some variation. Then I, you know, done a limit, but, uh, um, um, and it also depends on the type of person, if you can, like you, like you alluded to, if you can handle a lot of options, Why not give it to them, but there’s also a lot of people who just get they’re like, ah, so many options, make it stop.

Just get, just tell me what to do. And there’s like three things I need to click on. Just, you know, that’s my selection that’s, I’m done. I don’t want to do any, anything more. And those two groups kind of overlap in the same area. Um, but yeah, I think having that control is, is crucial in making, uh, Making sure that the way you, as a developer intended it to do it actually ends up being that.

And, um, we’ve all seen the, the, you know, the, the days before Gutenberg where, uh, if you needed a fancy solution, um, uh, people installed entire page builders who are just one specific layout. And once they had that in everything, uh, You know, I, I I’ve seen people having three page builders installed to solve one thing, 

David: and I’m like, that seems a little bloated.

Remkus: Uh, I would go, uh, I would go a little firmer on that. That’s the front of the bloated, but it all stems from people just wanting to have a thing fixed. So the more we can do that from a central, uh, type of implementation Gutenberg with all its, its its uh, options now with the layouts and the collections and everything that Genesis block blocks adds to that.

Um, the more you can formalize on that, standardized on that, on being as native as possible, the better it’s going to be. You’re going to service both, both crowds. The one that I want, all the flexibility and the ones that just go like, you know, just give me what I need and that’s it. I’m 

David: done. All right.

While the thoughts, I think they kind of mirror Sally Getches thoughts here, where she says on one hand, uh, the website is the clients. They should be able to make decisions. Um, and that was really interesting because the way Novi was thinking about it was like completely torching it for the non-technical user where they couldn’t invoke it again without code or his help or the team’s help.

She says on the other hand, Uh, they are buying a theme and she’s talking about theme purchasers right now for premium themes. They want a certain look and are not designers, too many different styles might confuse them. Uh, Carrie, I’m going to go with you on this one. Do you agree? Disagree like is too much choice confusing, particularly for non-technical users?

Well, 

Carrie: you know, the, the, the old WordPress saying decisions, not options. Uh, to help narrow, uh, you know, it’s easier to choose between three things than it is between 12 things. So to some extent helping narrow down is helpful. Um, I do think though how that’s implemented in Genesis blocks will be interesting because what you wouldn’t.

Want for instance is for Genesis blocks to behave from a user sprint perspective, behave differently on one site from another. So, um, maybe there’s a settings panel. I don’t know, just off the top of my head, a setting span all where you can enable, uh, the default Genesis layouts, or you could enable the theme specific layouts.

Um, so that. A theme developer. Does it have the ability to fundamentally. Make Genesis blocks look different from, uh, what the plugin actually is. I don’t know if that 

David: makes sense or not. Yeah. I think thinking about like, basically like knowing what you’re working with, being able to turn off the customization so you can have the base state, but then apply customization based on the use case you’re building.

Did I get that right? Yeah. Okay. No, that totally makes sense. I’ll have to provide this recording to McAllister if he’s not watching live, uh, as he works on those global styles, um, it looks like Sally was definitely in favor of the global styles. That was a popular one. Again, that was a bit of a surprise for me, uh, in that meeting.

So we’ll, I’ll, I’ll get more info from Mike on what they have cooking. We’ll talk about some of that in a future live cast and with the shapers, of course. Uh, and just on the blogs. So folks can kind of have a view that we’ll get, we’ll give them. Cause space to do his, like, you know, research nerd thing, where he gets like super deep on it.

Um, all right. On to the next question. Um, we had some great questions from the audience about compiling CSS and JavaScript with Genesis custom blocks during D code. The question is how does everyone here, how do the shapers typically compile build their templates, assets for themes and blocks? Is there anything you would like us to be thinking about along these lines?

Uh, as we improve the plugin, uh, All anyone talked about was post CSS. Uh Rimkus I don’t know if this is a topic that’s, uh, of interest to you or something you feel strongly about, but what are your thoughts? Yeah, I, I 

Remkus: also, uh, I seconded, uh, uh, uh, Ryan’s a mention of post CSS. Um, I think there’s, I think there’s more than just that.

Um, I think the, the question is easier to answer when we’re specifically talking about a theme. Um, why? Well, because of the theme you are in full control and this particular plugging, I am not. So, um, if we’re talking about how to, uh, uh, how to compile it, um, I think the question behind is why would you need to do that?

Um, and that’s an optimization of. The stuff that you actually load in the front end. So be as relevant and be as minimal as possible on every single, excuse me, on every single view that your site has. So that’s the end goal. Post CSS helps you in cleaning up a lot of stuff. Um, and, uh, it’s just easier when that’s, uh, um, done by integrating it 

David: in a theme.

Why, uh, for those unfamiliar, could you explain what post CSS, the stuff that it helps to minimize? 

Remkus: So, uh, post CSS and I’m just gonna Google it, so I’ll give a better answer. Um, but it’s essentially a tool that transformed your CSS and JavaScript into making it a, uh, it essentially helps you. Um, optimize your CSS in the best way you can.

Right? So that’s not just, uh, making sure that your using the right CSS, but it’s also in the direction of, um, if you have specific stuff that needs a browser P prefix, uh, for specific browser, it, you define one and it just automatically fills in the rest. Um, it does pretty much any magic that you wanted to do, uh, on compiling from SAS.

Um, it’s just a full-blown how do I do my CSS? So the, the end rendering, the compiling of the actual CS says that you need, how do I do that in the most optimal way? Uh, it takes a lot of the headaches away from you and just, uh, you also need to configure it. Uh, but once you’ve done that, it’s just a 

David: smooth sailing competitor to pest CSS.

Why did, why is it the only option that any shapers voted on or thought was a good idea? 

Remkus: Um, I don’t know if you know it’s okay if you don’t. I think a competitor could be cold kid, for instance, 

David: they’re SAS 

Remkus: or just playing SAS. 

David: Gotcha. What are your thoughts, Carrie? 

Carrie: Uh, I didn’t try him in on this one. I was, I haven’t actually used post CSS, uh, excuse me, one second.

While I Google the answer,

David: the summary is like something you use all the time in someone’s like, explain it to me. And you’re like, uh, Right. 

Remkus: Like five-year-old 

Carrie: Rimkus was saying, uh, you know, you write all these styles for, uh, for specific blocks or specific layouts or, uh, maybe there’s JavaScript that supports that. And when you look at any particular page, you don’t want all the, you only want what you need for that page.

Otherwise you’re just increasing, uh, page, load time. Um, And post CSS is a tool that can help you strip out what’s what’s excess. Um, That’s that’s the nutshell. 

David: Thank you for that. Um, you know, it’s really interesting when we get these questions ready for the meeting, you know, we’re thinking about like how long each one will take to answer how many we should ask and things like that.

And like the great thing about one answer questions is, you know exactly what people want. Uh, but then it just cuts down the time, which maybe isn’t a bad thing because you get out of the meeting early. But, uh, this one is a really quick one. I think, whatever we at here, let me see here. Oh, it’s like a four minute gap between like me asking the question and just ending it.

Cause like everybody said the same thing. That’s really funny. All right. On to our next question. If you’ve been paying attention to what Google has been up to, this is probably on your mind. Um, but what are you doing about core web vitals scores with Google’s upcoming algorithm update in may. And I’m going to show you what that looks like here in a minute.

Um, but what areas do you think a WordPress Genesis product should change in order to address this? Um, and then the question should. WordPress or Genesis change because of core web vitals and the algorithm update on the Google search side. This is a media topic and the responses were very detailed and opinionated here.

I’m going to share my screen for a second, just to show you, I’m not making all this up. Uh, this is search engine journal, uh, which, which does a really good job of updating what’s happening. Um, but the core web vitals really consists primarily of these, uh, three KPI. And there’s ranges that, you know, Google finds acceptable or not acceptable if you will.

Um, and we’ll be using that, um, within the search signals within their algorithm. This article does kind of show you the ranges for like largest Contentful paint. Like what’s good. Needs improvement or bad? Uh, the same for first input delay in cumulative layout shift. Um, and the question went to the shapers was what should change?

Should we be reacting to this from Google? Um, and so I guess I’ll just start with, with, uh, we’ll start with Carrie this time, Carrie. Uh, what sh should these changes? Should we people be following or Google does, let me just ask you that question. You start. Yes. 

Carrie: But not in a panicky way, um, because it creates a better user experience.

I don’t, what are the most annoying things is when you go to a website and this is more true, uh, on mobile or touch devices. But when you go to click on a link and before you can click on the link, the layout is shifted and all of a sudden you’re clicking on the wrong. Thing. Um, so I think what Google’s trying to do is ultimately create a better user experience, which is a good thing.

But in terms of being panicky about, uh, you know, how these core web vitals are gonna impact rankings, um, I mean that the Google’s telling us now, but I think it’s maybe supposed to be another 20, 22 before they actually start rolling out. Uh, some of these 

David: changes. So Google’s like has their view of core web vitals and what you should get on each of these tests are largely conducted in lab environments and data centers, and aren’t necessarily a true reflection of how our customers experience a page.

And there’s other ways to make your site faster, more enjoyable than the ways Google defines. I’m just curious from either of you, uh, like w why should people do it Google’s way. 

Carrie: Well, cause everybody wants that better spot. 

Remkus: Yeah, I think that’s, uh, that’s most likely the highest motivator for most people.

Uh, I don’t think it’s the most accurate one to achieve. Uh, I think it still works the old fashioned way, um, um, where if you’re providing better content and more enjoyable site, Uh, in which the content is repped, people will enjoy your site literally, and that will in turn, make them to click to the next page on your site.

And that’s a big indicator. Um, but I do think what Google is doing here is, uh, um, so they’re forcing, they’re pushing, uh, and I’m generally not a big fan of them pushing. Um, I don’t like their push for amp too much. Um, 

David: Andrew magically solves your core web vital scores. Yeah. Yeah. And it died. Ironically, it 

Remkus: does solve certain things.

I don’t, I just, I don’t, I, I, I disagree that that’s the way it should go. Um, This particular push. I do enjoy that. They’re really going for it. Why? Because it forces people to think differently about what their website is about. So yes, the content is still the most important thing. Yes. The general enjoyability of your site is still the most important thing there is.

But then how do you quantify the general enjoyment of your site? So. Um, the content layout shift is a great example of how annoying that is, especially on mobile. Uh, but it happens on desktop, just the same. 

David: Um, 

Remkus: uh, and as well as the first meaningful content, like when does that actually, uh, become a metric that you can visually see the difference of?

So having optimized quite a few sites, uh, in the last couple of months and literally working with. How does this page, you know, how can I create a better version of this? What is loading too much? What is, what is impacting it? And if you just go by the metrics, uh, you will end up with less kilobytes to download.

Uh, uh, most definitely, uh, less megabytes, but most oftentimes even the kilobytes optimization is, is there. So you have, uh, a page that is smaller, which is always the goal. Um, if you then whatever, you’ll ask that you’re loading, you’re, you’re doing the proper way. You’re lazy loading. You’re making sure that not everything is loaded all at once.

Uh, especially for pages like your team page, where you’re, you know, everybody has their avatar. Um, but if you start going down every single page on a site that matters, like I want this to be as, as, as snappy as possible. Uh, so great hosting is where it starts, but you then have to, you can have a terrible website on great hosting.

So this is fixing that. I think that’s, that’s the, that’s the focus, uh, Um, that everybody who is creating content, uh, should also be aware of. So if you’re adding all this extra stuff, what is it, what does it actually do? And if you’re a loading 15, 16, uh, JavaScript, uh, files, just because you want to have a date picker, I dunno.

Um, Is that the smartest thing to do? 

David: Uh, this is kind of getting to the root of it for me, I think. And just to be clear on my own opinion, I’m with Carrie. I think that regardless of what I think of all the other parts, um, you know, the sites that I manage and participate in, you know, search results are important.

Um, and you know, this being a factor in the August, starting in may, uh, thus makes it important to sites I’d like that I like to be successful. Uh, David Vogel, pole.com. I’m not worried about, cause I don’t monetize it and don’t care what happens there. Um, I, I think I’m pretty good on ranking for the term David vocal and Google on that one, even without, uh, even with a bad seed WV, but like, This to me really gets back to the root of performance optimization and site optimization in general is I think about it as the balance between suffering and joy, um, the joy of adding new experiences to your site, but the suffering that introduces in terms of page size, wait times and visitor experience, but the things you add themselves are visitor experience.

So. The part that makes me a little weird is when some third party comes in and says, well, no, you can’t do this. Um, you need to chop off all these parts, anything more than this, I think is a bad webpage. Uh, but my observation is that that web page might be doing the exact job it’s supposed to do for the people who were there to enjoy it.

And that minimalist page might not even be the right choice for the visitor and context. 

Remkus: So I don’t think so. I think there’s a misinterpretation there. Uh, on what the end goal is, end goal is not supposed to be everything. Everybody has a minimum website. That’s absolutely not a, an end result of optimizing for a quarter of our web vitals.

Um, a lot of people mistake it for that because essentially that’s what amp does, right. It just reduces everything. And it’s just a slim down version of what your site is. Um, you can have a very media rich site. With like, like a photography site, like one of the worst things that you can have with in terms of bandwidth.

So the only thing that still is, should be of concern of you is limiting the bandwidth. 

David: Um, 

Remkus: but if you’re just looking at what the goal is and what type of sites, uh, what they could look like in order to have that goal met. That can be a very, very rich site with a lot of stuff going on. I don’t, I don’t think that’s the limit that there is.

Um, I know plenty of sites that used to. So much and yet are highly optimized and our snappy are fast and load. Uh, um, I’m looking for the nice words to use here. Um, but load a boatload of, uh, of stuff on screen and yet perfect scores. It is possible. It just requires you a little, think a little bit differently and this in no way should have influenced the quality or the richness of the site itself.

David: All right. That’s a really good point of view. Um, really important, important point to underscore, uh, by the way, Rimkus we can bleed outwards. Um, who is our bleeped word person again? Carrie? Who do we believe the word on? Uh, Oh, Nick, the geek. 

Carrie: I was like, I remember what the book was. I don’t 

David: remember who.

Yeah, we’ll have to bleep out. Rimkus is word boat. So people think he says something else, but, uh, 

Remkus: that’s, that’s perfectly fine. It’s not my first nor my second language every now and then I’m just caught up in whatever. 

David: How many languages do you speak? Uh, 

Remkus: comfortably, uh, four and a half. Five fish. All 

David: right.

Poly Lang. I like it. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Well, we’ll get back to the Genesis stuff here, but that’s good to know. Um, bill Erickson, he had an interesting comment. He says we found the biggest cause of CLS shifts and our themes, um, has been the use of Google fonts. And he goes into more of the specifics there. Um, during, when this thread was happening and then even after, uh, we actually audited the studio, press names, particularly ones we make, not necessarily the third party ones.

Um, Genesis sample has a CLS shifting issue. That’s actually being updated as this is being recorded. By the time you see this, it might even be live. Um, and then we’re gonna make our way through the next top 10 themes now, but Genesis framework itself. Um, has no issues. It really, if you have issues with core web vitals, it’s most likely, um, cumulative layout shift relative to the theme, and it would be a code in your theme if you will.

Um, that would be creating that, you know, negative, negative score, their failing score. If you will. Um, Carrie, I don’t know about on your side, have you done much digging on core web vitals and which themes you’re using that are working or not working well for that? 

Carrie: Um, just kind of starting to, and it works.

I was doing it less because of core web vitals and more just running like page insights and seeing where optimizations could happen. Uh, I do want to do a quick corrections corner. I said 20, 22 for poor and vitals being a ranking factor. Um, and you said may and I believe it is may when they’re, they’re rolling out.

Um, 

David: Yes. It’s and everyone’s freaking out, Oh my goodness. I liked your point. Like calm down. It’s it’s fine. It’ll be, you’re not going to tank tomorrow and this launches, but I think it’s important. Um, you know, it’s really interesting as you think about the algo, Matt, uh, what’s his name? I was going to say Mullenweg, uh, Oh, my goodness.

I’m blanking. Yeah. Then that, uh, the famous Matt, uh, around Google and SEO. Oh my God. I can’t believe I’m blanking on it. Yeah. Matt Cutts, he had given some insights into this in the past, particularly around page load time. And he talked about it more like a tie breaker. Where it was like, if both sites, all SEO factors were equal, this would help you break the tie, Google help to break the tide.

He, in that video commented that happens on like one in a thousand searches, which is actually a hell of a lot of searches. When you think about it, we’ve 

Remkus: actually seen, uh, results already 

David: from corporate vitals or page all the time from, from a 

Remkus: Corvette vitals improved and a ranking 

David: improved. Okay. Um, like or organic ranking, the site got a better ranking and all you did was improve the core web vitals?

Remkus: No, not at all. Um, but it’s, it’s one of those things, but, uh, most definitely that was a, that was a key element. 

David: All right. Well, that’s good to hear. I know with SEO, it’s oftentimes challenging to understand what changes had, what affects, but that’s good to see you getting those results. Uh, early on, I 

Remkus: would say for now it’s mostly the highly competitive stuff and I, I, my suspicion is that on, uh, on may, is this becomes the thing for 

David: everybody to enjoy.

Do you know if the Google results and, uh, do you feel like the algorithm updates for Google come quicker or slower in the Netherlands? I don’t know if you have any insights on that. Uh, as far 

Remkus: as I know, uh, it, uh, it’s not specifically slower for Dutch. Um, I think the algorithm, uh, configuration is as far as I know, is a global one with local, uh, spices for specific areas.

David: Interesting. Yeah, I don’t keep up with, uh, you know, it’s funny here in Austin where like the, uh, the demos city for all kinds of stuff. So we always get the weird search results and Netflix experiences and stuff like that. Um, Carrie, any other comments on core web vitals? 

Carrie: Uh, I, I think stay, stay tuned, do what you can to optimize, but don’t freak out about it because content is still being.

David: like it. I like it. I like it. People read people, read websites now, not search engines. People spend money on websites, search engines spend zero money on writers. They didn’t drive some money to websites. That’s kind of important. All right, well that was it for the agenda. Um, the rest of the shapers were definitely, uh, kind of looking towards core web vitals.

We’ll be producing a blog post soon on the studio, press blog. That detail is our advice on how you should take care of it with some more specifics, Carrie dills, helping us out with that. Um, thank you Carrie, for joining us here today. 

Carrie: You bet ya. Thanks for 

David: having me again and REMCOs thank you as well.

Thank you for having me. Awesome. If you’d like to learn more about what Kerry is up to please visit Carrie deals.com with one L for dills. And if you’d like to check out what Rimkus is up to go to serve bolt and check out everything he’s doing there. Thanks everyone for listening. And please stay tuned for future episodes of the Genesis community.

Livecast again, this has been your host David Vogel poll. I am a proud member of the Genesis community and been that way for over eight years. I lead the Genesis, uh, The efforts at WP engine. And I love helping the Genesis community with my friends, from the shapers.

Yeah.