Genesis Shapers Update: June 2021

David Vogelpohl Hello everyone and welcome to the genesis Community live cast this is our genesis shapers recap episode for genesis for June shapers meeting.

Title post grid blocks and collections, for those who don’t know me, my name is David vogel pole i’ve been a proud member of the genesis Community for over eight years. And I love helping the genesis Community get better, together with my friends from the shapers journey me today we have a packed group here.

David Vogelpohl way more than we normally have which I think is fantastic but joining me today i’d like to welcome back to the shapers recap episodes carry deals if Kerry deals calm carrie welcome.

Carrie Dils howdy howdy.

David Vogelpohl awesome and of course this person needs no introduction, the Co creator of the genesis framework so many other genesis things I think at this point also like to welcome back Nathan rice Nathan welcome.
Nathan Rice hey i’ve been a member of the genesis communities for.

Nathan Rice years or something like that.
David Vogelpohl yeah for a little while right the very beginning.

David Vogelpohl Like what me.

Nathan Rice back when it was just two Members just just me and Gardner that was it.
David Vogelpohl You and Brian like it very small community kind of reminds me of matt and Mike on the wordpress.

David Vogelpohl And I always love it when I ask people their their wordpress origin stories and the people that like really want to impress me they go to CAFE.

David Vogelpohl yeah snug little smile there.

David Vogelpohl love it, though, and also the senior senior software engineer working on genesis products i’d like to welcome phil Johnston, to the to the genesis Community live cast bill welcome.

Phil Johnston hey oh thanks for having me.

David Vogelpohl so glad to have you here, I know this episode this episode and recap, of the meeting in particular.

David Vogelpohl is really good to have phil here, because some of the things that we’re talking about here in the meeting.
David Vogelpohl or things he’s directly working on so really glad to have you here phil to have your perspective on what was talked about in the meeting.

David Vogelpohl The very first question we asked them the meeting is the same one we ask in every meeting, which is, can I get a show of emoji for who is able to make it today phil what emoji did you choose or where did you make it live for this one, oh no you did.

Phil Johnston I did the rocket ship emoji I think.

Phil Johnston yeah but I didn’t did I do a separate one.

David Vogelpohl Now, just the rocket ship you.

David Vogelpohl hamburger Mike hamburger of my themes Ryan kenitra of the product and engineering team bill Ericsson of bill Ericsson fame and why by dolla of awesome press.
David Vogelpohl As well as other ventures there in Spain, why Matthew cardenas from the product engineering team and then of course phil Johnson.
David Vogelpohl All going with the rocket ship birthday cake, we have john brown the why again in cardenas again, it was my birthday, a few days, I guess, before.

David Vogelpohl This meeting so you got some birthday cakes there john brown Ryan, we already mentioned and media was able to show Nick craft.

David Vogelpohl of Genesis explained book travis Smith, Brian Gardner yeah nate the one of the first to Community Members here, he goes, of course, and Sally gets gets rhymes with sketch like kashi has that in the parents article of her name, so people know how to pronounce it.

David Vogelpohl Do people have the Americans have problems pronouncing rice Nathan, I feel like I feel like.
Nathan Rice it’s it’s it’s difficult to say over the phone in lo fi because they always they always want to say, like right or.

Nathan Rice bryce sometimes and i’m like nope so I always just say rice our ice I just spell it out.
David Vogelpohl You have four letters and you have to spell yours too, because I have to spell mine every time.
Nathan Rice I my wife’s name her maiden name was like it was yarbrough so it’s like.

Nathan Rice And you have to spell the whole thing out so it’s yeah it’s it’s i’m very lucky, although.
Nathan Rice I got my fair share of teasing when I was a kid about the you know, having a last name.

Nathan Rice names of food.

Phil Johnston yeah it’s a food.

David Vogelpohl staple food.

Nathan Rice yeah and I didn’t even like rice as a kid so I was like.

Nathan Rice I don’t even like it.

Phil Johnston One of the things that insult you when you’re a.

Phil Johnston kid that.

Phil Johnston I know when you’re an adult yeah it’s like yeah it’s a food.
David Vogelpohl I remember when I was a kid that there was a.
David Vogelpohl toy called the pogo ball and they would you sing the theme song for the song for the toy, but using my last name as the name of the toy so.

David Vogelpohl I love, how we can relive all of our painful childhood memories here on the genesis Community live cast but let’s get into the wordpress stuff first topical question for the group was you know, do you need fresh versions of Genesis kind of blocks and custom blocks pro.
David Vogelpohl And you know a lot of folks didn’t need it because they were actually pro plus customers that it ended up getting those plugins for free, so I thought that was you know pretty cool obviously we have a lot of you know, pro plus customers, as part of the shapers there.
David Vogelpohl But that was pretty much it just you know celebratory I guess emoji there, but the next question up was have you tried, the new post and page grid block in genesis blocks.

David Vogelpohl If so, what feedback and suggestions, do you have for improvement phil do you want to share your screen and show us this post and page block.
Phil Johnston Sure yeah and I can talk about some of the some of the changes that we made to.
Phil Johnston I have to the two versions pulled up here, so this is the old one before the most recent version, which I think is tape points.
David Vogelpohl Can you fill can you we’re going to do a pause and i’m going to cut out the part where he showed us your email and calendar and stuff.

Phil Johnston Thanks yeah.

Phil Johnston was over.
David Vogelpohl Just just here is, if you had been like So here we go.

Phil Johnston Okay cool.
Phil Johnston So here we in these two tabs I have the old version previous to the new release and the newer version with the changes that we made in the most recent version.

Phil Johnston So I can quickly show the differences between the two.

Phil Johnston don’t mind my DEMO content here I don’t have post titles on these ones, but it just pulls in your latest posts by default.
Phil Johnston So actually it’s in page mode right now so normally it’s in post mode, by default, it pulls in your latest posts, and you can order them newest to oldest you can choose a category that you want to show.

Phil Johnston And that was a single category that you could pick here.
Phil Johnston You couldn’t pick multiple categories so that’s something that was new you can now add multiple categories to show posts from.

Phil Johnston And you can choose the number of items that you want to show in the grid, and if you want to.

Phil Johnston Not show your latest post, you could offset it by saying one and now your latest post isn’t going to show.
Phil Johnston Maybe you show that somewhere else on the page already so there’s no need for you to really show that post again so you can kind of offset that, so this is all stuff that existed in the previous version.

Phil Johnston There, there were some some issues with it specifically if you’re in page mode.
Phil Johnston And over here, you can choose pages that you want to show, and you can see, I have some pages here, and one with a couple without actual titles on them so.

Phil Johnston Those are my untitled ones, but anyways they all show up here in this drop down and this works great on my local where I only have about seven posts but we had a specific customer with I think posts or maybe more and.

Phil Johnston I think even more categories and so.
Phil Johnston It started to really get slow for them, because, in order to populate this drop down list we had to pull all the pages into the page like they had to query the database and get every single page, you have and put them into this drop down menu so you’d have pages listed here.
Phil Johnston And that’s not that’s not a fast query to query pages so in the new version i’m actually using.

Phil Johnston A take of their site here for this DEMO which they Let us use.
Phil Johnston Here you can see that if I if I remove some of these pages.

Phil Johnston it’s going to pull in my default pages again, again, I have some DEMO pages that I created here with no title.

Phil Johnston But you can see that, when I click in here there’s no on the right hand side there’s no drop down anymore, and so I have to actually start typing.

Phil Johnston In order, and then it goes off to the server and looks for anything with the word new and so it’s only going to bring back the new things, and this still actually takes a good amount of time because there’s so many posts for it to search through and come back with so.

Phil Johnston It it it’s slow here but consider that the.

Phil Johnston The slowness of this was happening all the time, and now it only happens when you search, so the page is actually usable still I if I want to I could still update it and see how fast it updated so it really kind of.

Phil Johnston allows it to scale to a size that is so much larger and see it now i’ve got my response back so I have the pages that have new in them and see there’s still quite a few here but.
David Vogelpohl It was gonna say a query and like a New York side for the word new.
David Vogelpohl With a lot of athletes.

Phil Johnston Like that’s going to get a little kick to faster one.
David Vogelpohl You have like less post and you’re you’re searching for more kind of specific key phrases those queries go faster, and these are just the standard wordpress queries right these aren’t like you know genesis queries or anything like that.

Phil Johnston yeah it’s just using the wordpress rest API in the background, yet.
David Vogelpohl Have you have you experimented with this on any sites that run technology like elastic press yet.
Phil Johnston I haven’t know and that would be interesting to.
Phil Johnston To see how elastic press would actually speed that up.

Phil Johnston yeah it probably would be a dramatic increase there as well, so it can work with that which is great.

David Vogelpohl Well, I think the functionality of like being able to like put in a keyword and find exactly the post that you’re looking for is incredible.
David Vogelpohl And you know in I think even sites, without a ton of posts still like a drop down that shows, like all your post is still going to get like a hand super crazy so.

David Vogelpohl I think that’s great.
Phil Johnston yeah it’s a I think it’s a really massive improvement there and again if you go to the posts mode, you can now pick multiple categories, so I could add.

Phil Johnston spelled wrong.
Phil Johnston yeah that’s like netflix films, you can add more like.

Phil Johnston A category Jersey, so you can show like a combination of posts from multiple categories, whereas before you can do that either.

David Vogelpohl This live now.
David Vogelpohl Oh wait no, it is okay my bad yeah I was looking at a comment from Anita and I was getting a little confused there.

David Vogelpohl Okay, she writes she writes, I made a few mdm, but it would be great if there was an option, like in featured posts widgets to view more from this category, so I was misinterpreting that it looks I can need a suggestion was like a more button.
Phil Johnston On that’s right.

Phil Johnston yeah I think that that was something that she mentioned.
Phil Johnston In another slack channel as well, we had a little discussion about.
David Vogelpohl My hero customer for this this block, in particular, she has so many great ideas, where.

David Vogelpohl She definitely is top of my list for that one well phil thanks for showing us that.

David Vogelpohl Second, and take a look here at some of the feedback we had that comment from Anita around kind of a more button there, which I think makes a lot of sense.

David Vogelpohl carrie, what is your coming here, plus one, I want your here I don’t have to read it, you tell me what it says.

Carrie Dils yeah well this isn’t necessarily in the new version, it was an old version, too, but.

Carrie Dils phil you didn’t click on the part with the market but there’s a spot where you can change which heading you want an old old genesis they were always H headers which may not have been semantically correct and then it got updated to H threes which was more applicable.

Carrie Dils But for accessibility and seo being able to change those headings to be semantic in any context is is pretty cool.

David Vogelpohl awesome.

Phil Johnston yeah yeah do we do that.
Phil Johnston Or is that something.

Carrie Dils yeah yeah.

Phil Johnston Oh.
Phil Johnston Yes, we think about cool yeah.
David Vogelpohl Working too fast guys.

David Vogelpohl slow down a little bit.

David Vogelpohl With yourselves here.

David Vogelpohl I love it.
David Vogelpohl This is great I love like there’s like these suggestions and they’re like what know that already does that right or it’s done that recently it’s fantastic.

David Vogelpohl Okay let’s see what john brown says, perhaps non question, but these will only be available through my studio press what is he talking about on that he’s taking on a different topic on that one.
David Vogelpohl I think.

Carrie Dils Late to the thread on downloading the latest versions of GB pro and.
David Vogelpohl I gotcha I gotcha he kind of.
David Vogelpohl guys hanging in.

David Vogelpohl There okay gotcha.
Carrie Dils and got coffee.

Carrie Dils And then came back and answered late.
David Vogelpohl Oh, that happens, sometimes I noticed people like have those replies are typing out and then I asked the next question like i’m it to do that right.
David Vogelpohl But yeah the issue that john was bringing up is for around pro plus customers who received access to genesis blocks pro and custom blocks pro and the studio press portal.
David Vogelpohl Future updates to those plugins will also be distributed to those folks through that portal exactly like theme updates are distributed through that portal today in the wp admin side there’s a little error message that will pop up on the plugins view.

David Vogelpohl If you’re using that plugin without a license key which handles the auto updating and.

David Vogelpohl that’s, the only thing that doesn’t work if you don’t have the license key in, there is the auto updating so pro plus customers will need to download updates via the portal, just like with themes, and so there were threads you know where people had questions around this.

David Vogelpohl We don’t currently have a you know anything in in flight to you know kind of change how that works.

David Vogelpohl We have some ideas around how to make that process more palatable to pro plus customers.
David Vogelpohl But one thing to consider is that pro plus customers have forever accounts right you signed up for an account you always get access to that account and the themes, so any keys we assign.
David Vogelpohl would be in a sense, forever keys, unlike people that pay for genesis pro and an annual subscription if they stop paying the key stops working.

David Vogelpohl And so that’s kind of the backstory behind why during launch you know in even now, of course, there are no keys in this pro plus customer versions of those plugins so.
David Vogelpohl I thought it’d be helpful to explain that here, I don’t know.
Nathan Rice It I think it is and it’s good to it’s good to not just ignore it, I mean the fact is that this is, this is a pain point it is something I can just say that you know internally we are.

Nathan Rice Discussing there are reasons why the solution that probably is like the first thing that POPs in a person’s head well we’ll just do this like there are, I promise, there are reasons why those things just don’t work like that.

Nathan Rice That it’s difficult to to achieve those at least without a huge effort on the part of the engineering team so we’re in active discussion right now trying to figure out, what are the best ways to actually resolve this for for people for pro plus customers.

Nathan Rice Without completely derailing our engineering efforts for future development of some really cool stuff that we’re going to be working on so that’s the that’s the catch there but it’s it is something that we’re aware of, and then we’re we’re trying to figure out a resolution so.

David Vogelpohl Sure, I think the other thing to acknowledge is just speed, we were able to get this done faster and get that value in pro plus customers hands quicker.
David Vogelpohl You know, by following this approach so thanks for clarifying Nathan really appreciate that.
David Vogelpohl next question on the agenda was have you tried building your own collection lat yet like West strom did you don’t know wes check them out.

David Vogelpohl str a ch ar m on Twitter he’s building some cool stuff but then we said, if so, what feedback and suggestions, do you have for improvement around building your own collection.

David Vogelpohl let’s take a look here carrie you’ve built some custom collection just one or several.

Carrie Dils I did just one and if anybody tunes and i’m not sure when this will be published, but and might be showing it off it’s my summit talk next week.
David Vogelpohl Either Devon banana summit i’m not even cross plugging [email protected] wonderful one I mean carry deals is the number one draw for the event frankly.
David Vogelpohl Some other wonderful presentations with people not nearly as cool as carried out so but you’re going to show off maybe a new collection.
Carrie Dils I am yeah and it’s I mean it’s mostly just to demonstrate how it’s done and rob stinson wrote just an amazing tutorial over on the studio press blog walking through conceptually what it was, and then showing the code snippets and that’s really a pretty straightforward process.

David Vogelpohl i’ve sent a link to that studio press dot blog it’s titled the ultimate guide to building custom collections and justice blocks it he has come a companion articles that talk about like bundling that collection into a plug in.
David Vogelpohl I feel like it’s really approachable the way he did that documentation just outstanding job I thought from rob there.
David Vogelpohl So i’m gonna look forward to seeing your end down there it’s summit carry that’s going to be an exciting one.

David Vogelpohl looks like know why responded here I knew he had built a collection for two of his awesome oh so Empress themes, but I didn’t realize he had done it for three so congrats to know why.
David Vogelpohl he’s got some cool stuff that we’re going to be, you know featuring in the studio press marketplace and coming weeks.
David Vogelpohl Really excited about that I think that’s also another cool thing about the changes to the marketplace and not you know selling themes for third parties directly but rather linking to them.

David Vogelpohl Is it makes it much easier for us to get new themes in the marketplace and you know kind of spread the love with genesis product and theme makers.

David Vogelpohl A see why and Sally you first carried already mentioned that and then it looks like some just like General banter around that.

David Vogelpohl You you were talking about using generate wp for the ui of your plugin structure.

Carrie Dils It was just it was not any critical feedback, it was just like wish list so if anybody hasn’t used generate wp it’s basically a.

Carrie Dils graphical ui for creating the code or custom post types or taxonomy or or whatnot and because the block generating a collection is pretty straightforward code wise I was like that’d be pretty cool if you could just type in like your labels and whatever and it would just.

David Vogelpohl pop out.

Carrie Dils For you.

David Vogelpohl I didn’t fully grasp that comment I just fired it when you said it sorry carry a lot of Sub threads.

David Vogelpohl So all right.

David Vogelpohl let’s see good tip I like that one.
Nathan Rice One of the things that.
Nathan Rice I think is interesting is that john Paris mentioned that you know he’s like hey phil I think this is unfilled radar and it is internally our team, the within here our engineering team.

Nathan Rice Actually uses a tool that phil bill called we call it genesis studio and it’s it’s sort of this this tool that allows you to create.

Nathan Rice And package course now we’re packaging on obviously for them to be included within genesis blocks, but create and package up collections.

Nathan Rice together and it’s really cool it’s obviously not a consumer product, this is, this is a, this is a professional level product that phil built, but.

Nathan Rice It is something that I know phil and i’ve had one on one conversations about like, how is it possible to get this in a in a.
Nathan Rice More consumable format, so people can you know, a whole lot of the stuff that he’s built into this thing really does make the process of building and packaging collections so much easier.

Nathan Rice So it’s something we’ve talked about definitely.

top of what I T.
Phil Johnston yeah it’s a we love it like I yeah it’s so I don’t know i’ll give you a quick really quick one if you don’t have to create a page to make a.
Phil Johnston Block you can pull it pulls it straight from your files and saves it straight to your files, so you don’t even need to go into a post or a page in wordpress to create a pattern like a blog pattern a section or layout.

Phil Johnston You call your collection what you want to call it, you put the patterns in it that you want you hit save and it puts it right into your your files wherever you decide your files are going to live so.
Phil Johnston it’s pretty cool.
Carrie Dils Hope it last one for.

Carrie Dils Bringing that into market.

David Vogelpohl All right.

Phil Johnston I was pretty excited about your comment carry so.
Phil Johnston We I was just biting my tongue in there, because I was like.
David Vogelpohl I didn’t.

David Vogelpohl Fire it you didn’t.

David Vogelpohl I don’t know if he really works.

Phil Johnston I don’t know how to use slack no i’m just joking.

David Vogelpohl Oh of it alright cool um next question on the agenda here is, do you have something cool in genesis wordpress you’d like to discuss in a guest post on the studio press blog or as part of the genesis Community live cast episode.

David Vogelpohl And after an uncomfortable amount of time, I feel we finally get Mike hamburgers saying he would like to do it, I guess, for some of the stuff he’s working on at biz Betty.

David Vogelpohl But I felt like like free PR that people would be clamoring to respond right away, but I think they were waiting waiting for someone else to break the ice was my guest.
David Vogelpohl What is your opinion Nathan.

David Vogelpohl We have a shy crowd I feel like we don’t.

Nathan Rice know I don’t think it’s that I think that maybe they just maybe.
Nathan Rice That maybe.

David Vogelpohl My self promotional here.
Nathan Rice yeah you know the genesis has never really been about I mean i’m sure there’s more like a interpreted the question is like Is there something that you would want to talk about versus like Is there something you’d want to promote and I think.

Nathan Rice You know, so I you know take some time to think of a good question that’s good like good discussion generating questions.
Nathan Rice But there were some good one, I mean obviously like there’s some things that people would want to like gardeners working on something that’s that’s you know a little bit interesting.

David Vogelpohl We are gardener we got Mike and then.

David Vogelpohl My you know it’s funny I need his response here is not really per se on that, but it’s kind of event tori and, in that, after all, of the launches and changes I would love to see another genesis camp and then there’s twinning comment thread following and tons of emoji around that.
David Vogelpohl We don’t currently have a genesis camp planned.

David Vogelpohl Following that thread, and this this always happens when genesis camp comes up and for those unfamiliar and I forget the year I want to say it was or so maybe or Do you remember Nathan, when when genesis camp was how.
Nathan Rice I don’t remember the the year, but it was very cool very cool.

David Vogelpohl yeah it was a hour event, so there is a one hour presentation every hour for hours, so that way people from all around the world can enjoy content, you know within their own time zone.

David Vogelpohl You know the hour schedule is a little daunting to pull off again, so I don’t know if we do that again if we were to do this.
David Vogelpohl But that is something that are kind of noodling on behind the scenes and seeing like what would be an approachable way to do that again.

David Vogelpohl Before the pandemic, we had been having kind of in person events at we’re in Camp you know major word camps primarily US and Europe and then I guess Asia would have been Asia, I guess, before they cancel it to the pandemic.

David Vogelpohl But we are, we are kind of noodling on that to see if it’d be an approachable way for us to do that.

David Vogelpohl In the meantime we’ve been bringing tons of Genesis content to the wp engine virtual events in particular we had our decode event on wearing the T shirt right here, actually.

David Vogelpohl A few months back tons of content there and then we have our wp engine summit coming up on June

David Vogelpohl attended wp engine COM, we have a session from rob stenson covering custom blocks carry deals covering collections.
David Vogelpohl i’ll be showcasing bunch of Genesis stuff in our innovation showcase keynote that i’m part of, and I think there’s a couple of others actually.

David Vogelpohl But come check it out it’s free wp engine COM Oh, and we have a real big news about local so if you’re using local wordpress favorite local development tool, make sure you attend because there’ll be some cool announcements around that.

David Vogelpohl Alright next question if you run a genesis theme store how have things been going, since you started distributing genesis for free, and I was shocked at the answers so many of the theme authors had not been distributing genesis for free yet did y’all notice that.

Carrie Dils I did, I was kind of surprised by it, too, but I figure I mean there’s probably a lot involved on their end to change their their flow and maybe they’re just taking their time doing it.

David Vogelpohl yeah I mean everybody’s got you know a lot to do, of course I didn’t know, I think it was I guess I won’t mention this person by name, because I think they do me this information, but they’re like I thought I couldn’t do it until.

David Vogelpohl The date, you made it free because we’re you know they’re very female authors are now distributing genesis as part of the themes from their store, which I think is fantastic.

David Vogelpohl But, but she thought she couldn’t do it until it was distributed for free on studio press, and it was mainly just after it was announced that was the point, and so, and unfortunately for that person, they were like well I guess i’ll do it now, but they’re all excited about that.
David Vogelpohl Is this a joke from Sally guess what’s in the funnel when it’s at home.
Your.

Carrie Dils Your responsive, is that a dad.

Carrie Dils Had me rolling on the floor, I think, well go back and explain what the icky funnel is.

David Vogelpohl yeah the icky funnel is when a genesis theme seller on their own theme store their own website would tell their clients by my theme for me, but now you got to also go by the genesis framework from studio press.
David Vogelpohl And like their customers would often yell at them like what is this bait and switch are you trying to steal from me, what is this.

David Vogelpohl And I just the name I came up for it was the icky funnel so.

David Vogelpohl When when you know participation in the studio press marketplace was no longer pegged to those theme providers forcing their clients to come by the framework from studio press.

David Vogelpohl This was the icky funnel problem going away, I always love, how you think of the audience carry like when wondering what this icky funnel may be.

David Vogelpohl All right, well let’s keep rocking and rolling.
David Vogelpohl Are you working much with the block editor on e commerce projects and, if so, what kind of custom blocks are you making or wish were available to you.

David Vogelpohl Sally thought wus native blocks were a little underwhelming so far.

David Vogelpohl Ryan cancer thought that was interesting way to contribute, right now, just kidding.

Carrie Dils He was taking notes i’m pretty sure.

David Vogelpohl You feel what have you seen cool in the world of E commerce blocks.
Phil Johnston yeah I mean I I, I had the same thought I think we built a collection with e commerce with woo commerce specifically and used woo commerce blocks and.

Phil Johnston We had a lot of the same thoughts, when we were using them at the time, which was yeah this works, but, and you can do so much cooler things if you made E commerce blocks, I think, and if and why aren’t there cooler blocks, yet in woo commerce.
Phil Johnston And you know it’s I had some of the same thoughts that I think some other people had one of them was like.

Phil Johnston Automatic onto ecommerce it’s kind of like mats thing to make the block editor come to fruition, why not push it with woo commerce with awesome E commerce blocks, I had similar thoughts to, I think.

David Vogelpohl yeah sure like.

David Vogelpohl I gotta and i’m going to invoke your own or your your own teams words here like I feel like the roadmap right.

Phil Johnston is like.

David Vogelpohl As they’re thinking about what to attack, at least in the womb roadmap right like.

David Vogelpohl leaning into the block part might not be the part that has the biggest impact to the wound users, it is interesting, you know, to think about it from Max perspective and his role and core and his role and whoo and things like that.

David Vogelpohl And you know I think the other benefit of course for whoo is the ecosystem around it.

David Vogelpohl In the fact that there’s you know folks like us, and others contributing blocks, you know that help to make whoo more powerful, or at least make the block editor more powerful when working with with.

David Vogelpohl And, like the things i’ve seen I thought that were the most interesting is in it’s actually from you know what one of these examples is from the spin collection but it’s the notion of like.

David Vogelpohl i’m going to write about a set of products or category of products and maybe I want to pull in those products automatically.

David Vogelpohl And so, as I think about that, like in terms of a content marketing perspective.

David Vogelpohl And you can sometimes have this issue where you’re like writing a landing page or writing a blog post and you’re like oh yeah we sell amazing T shirts.

David Vogelpohl And then on the right, you want to talk to give an example of one of your shirts, but you may end up sticking in a product.

David Vogelpohl That gets deprecating six months from now, you know archived or whatever, and then your old blog post has something in there, that no one can buy.
David Vogelpohl And so I think these are the dynamics I don’t think people fully understand with ECON blocks is like.

David Vogelpohl You know what are those use cases, why are they helpful and then in the in the integrated sense, particularly with things like sharing product list and product examples is future proofing your content.
David Vogelpohl Because I don’t know how many crusty old blog articles that rank for good keywords have out of date or invalid products on them, and so I thought that was a nice like clean example of how like blocks and commerce can work together to do something cool.
David Vogelpohl What are your thoughts Nathan.

Nathan Rice I mean that when we when we developed the collections, we used.

Nathan Rice phil you can kind of correct me if i’m wrong here, but we used either we use all core blocks genesis blocks and then I think we did use a couple of woo woo commerce blocks correct yeah so you know and we’re obviously we’re using that in the context of building homepages.

Nathan Rice Product pages things like that, but yeah I hadn’t really thought about using you know dropping a product purchase block into.

Nathan Rice blog content, you know and really leveraging that that sort of that.
Nathan Rice That content creation.
Nathan Rice aspect of have a website to drive sales that’s interesting and.

David Vogelpohl You know it’s such a critical part of ECON because when you stick an ad out there, particularly on social you know you’re telling a story, and so, when you link back to a product page as the destination for the story you just told.

David Vogelpohl That they’re kind of can have a big disconnect.

Carrie Dils At funnel.

Phil Johnston it’s me that is such an icky fun.

yeah.

David Vogelpohl I gotta get an icky funnel hat, like those Hello world hat.

David Vogelpohl I don’t know if that would give me a very many friends, I guess, when I went out so.

David Vogelpohl But it’s this notion of like yeah it’s icky right it’s like you’re you’re you’re using story based marketing but you’re landing people at a very kind of outcome based page.

David Vogelpohl And so, when I think of the block editor in general and I love you phil on our engineering team, but it’s like get those marketing get those marketers out of your Dev teams backlog jail right, like every landing page request doesn’t have to be a Dev ticket Oh, my goodness, like.

David Vogelpohl And look I know there’s some developers that love coding landing pages, but like let’s face it, for a lot of them.

David Vogelpohl it’s soul crushing work right they want to do something cool and unique and interesting they don’t want to build the same you know different kind of variants of the same page.
David Vogelpohl To tell a different story over and over and over.

David Vogelpohl They want to kind of push the edge and do cool stuff and your marketing team doesn’t want to sit and wait for landing page Dev tickets to get done.

David Vogelpohl And so that’s what I think the fundamental value of the block editor is is allowing those engineers to empower those marketers to move faster and leave more time for themselves to do cool stuff.

David Vogelpohl And so, if I think about that in the E COM sense, you know and i’m trying to advertise.

David Vogelpohl I don’t know whatever electronics or or clothing, or whatever i’m going to say things on social media like get your far fall wardrobes it, you know, David sweaters or something.

David Vogelpohl And you know or I don’t know I may have a fall wardrobe one with a set of products and another one was something else, but like when you land on the page i’m going to complete that story right the leaves are turning and stuff is about to.

David Vogelpohl Come so by stuff to keep you warm i’m obviously not the leading copywriter wp engine but.

David Vogelpohl You know my my my idea with the blocks, is that by pulling in that content with your commerce, you can tell that story, but in kind of a future proof than dynamic way.

David Vogelpohl Because you’re reacting to the products in your inventory versus like putting in an image that something that may not even be around two months from now yeah.

Phil Johnston And that’s actually something that’s nice about the fact that the the woo commerce blocks that do exist are dynamic blocks.

Phil Johnston you’re not hard coding a product into your blog posts like like you said and.

Phil Johnston The blocks could have been built that way where there it’s a hard coded took the thing, and if you and if you’re not using a roadblock you are hard coding that into your blog posts so.
Phil Johnston It is nice to have that dynamic kind of server side rendered thing that just pulls your latest product instead of hard coding specific product, so I mean that’s a really cool description you just gave that you know I think that’s valuable to think about so that’s cool.

David Vogelpohl awesome well, thank you all so much for joining us here today, it was awesome I guess i’ll Thank you one, at a time, thank you K.
Carrie Dils My pleasure.

David Vogelpohl awesome and Nathan thanks again.

Nathan Rice awesome to be here.

David Vogelpohl so glad to have you here, I love this is your second time Nathan, you better watch out it’s going to be a thing phil Johnson welcome or thanks again forgot me.
Phil Johnston Thank you yeah.

David Vogelpohl awesome I really appreciate your insights there was really valuable we’d love to have you back and, of course, thanks everyone else for.

David Vogelpohl watching today, and please stay tuned for future episodes of the genesis Community live cast again i’m your host David vole pole i’ve been a proud member of the genesis Community for over eight years, not like Nathan here.

David Vogelpohl But I love helping the genesis Community get better, together with my friends from the shapers.

David Vogelpohl alright.

cool.

David Vogelpohl Oh wait I forgot to record it can we do that again.
Nathan Rice that’s like oh wait you.

Carrie Dils where’s your head dancing.

David Vogelpohl I think we had time for it.