Introduction
I asked the best WordPress Pro’s to tell us what stack they use when building with WordPress and their answers are super useful and interesting. I asked them 5 questions.
- What are their favourite plugins
- What are their favourite themes
- What is their favourite hosting
- What is their favourite non-Wordpress App
- Gutenberg Yes or No?
I hope you find their answers useful 😀
Paul Charlton
Favourite Plugins:
Favourite Themes: Blocksy / Blocksy Pro
Favourite non-WordPress app: ThriveCart
Gutenberg Yes or No?
Both. Gutenberg is the future of WordPress, so we’ll have to embrace it wether we like it or not. Gutenberg is getting slightly better. But no, because we still have to rely upon third-party tools to make it truly usable for most used cases.
Chris Lema
Favourite Plugins:
Favourite Themes:
Favourite non-WordPress app: ZipMessage
Gutenberg Yes or No?
Yes. Gutenberg gives you the ability to create a block of content, save it off somewhere, and then dynamically drop it in the post anywhere you want. You can add in features like timer, visibility and placement restrictions, or even rules for when it appears. The benefit of Gutenberg is that it breaks everything into these blocks that you can then use and reuse as you like.
Lesley Sim
Favourite Plugins:
Favourite Themes:
- Blocksy
- Themes by Anders Norén
- Themes by Automattic
Favourite non-WordPress app: Clean Shot
Gutenberg Yes or No?
Yes. Newsletter Glue, the plugin that I run, works off Gutenberg. So, we are super tightly integrated with it. Gutenberg is a good project and its exciting to see where it’s going.
BobWP
Favourite Plugins:
Favourite Themes:
- Themes by Genesis StudioPress
- GeneratePress
- Astra
Favourite non-WordPress app: ClickUp
Gutenberg Yes or No?
Yes. Gutenberg has a lot of potential and improves workflow a lot, compared to the old classic editor. However, a lot of people have faced struggles with using it.
Ellen Bauer
Favourite Plugins:
Favourite Theme:
Favourite non-WordPress app: Figma
Gutenberg Yes or No?
Yes. Even though it’s been tough and a lot of changes have happened, it’s important to evolve and keep improving, so that developers can make the best possible experience for WordPress users.
Lee Shadle
Favourite Plugins:
Favourite Themes:
Favourite non-WordPress app: DigitalOcean
Gutenberg Yes or No?
Yes. It’s really light-weight, sites load super fast and it will speed up the process for building and launching, not just simple sites, but more complex sites, as the Gutenberg ecosystem grows.
Nick Diego
Favourite Plugins:
Favourite Themes:
Favourite non-WordPress apps:
- Sketch
- Atom
- Screenflow
Gutenberg Yes or No?
Yes. Gutenberg has it’s issues, as its still new technology, but it is the future of WordPress and there’s a lot of potential in it. There was nothing wrong with the past, but it’s just that there’s a lot of great new functionality that’s coming to wordpress, that from a user perspective will eventually improve the way that we work with wordpress websites. However, there are still improvements that need to be made.
Paul Lacey
Favourite Plugins:
Favourite Theme: Beaver Themer
Favourite non-WordPress app:
- ThriveCart
- ConvertBox
Gutenberg Yes or No?
The Gutenberg block editor is the future of the core software. You can decide to get on board because of that, or you can decide that you’re going to leverage the array of plugins and page builders, or whatever you want that people use to do WordPress the way that they like to do it.
Matt Medeiros
Favourite Plugins:
Favourite Themes:
- Chaplin (and other themes by Anders Norén)
- Neve
- Themes by Generate Press
Favourite non-WordPress app: Simplenote
Gutenberg Yes or No?
Gutenberg is here to stay. It’s taking a lot longer to sort out some of the most obvious issues. Basic things like dragging and dropping blocks into columns and setting up columns is still a struggle. It’s a good tool available to have in core WordPress. Gutenberg is still really powerful, and will give users some stron flexibility and good features for building a website with WordPress.
Keith Devon
Favourite Plugins:
Favourite Themes:
- Twenty Twenty-One
- Anders Norén themes, like Tove
Favourite non-WordPress app: Tower
Gutenberg Yes or No?
Yes. It’s actually fun to use when building websites, even though it has it’s issues. You can do a lot with just the core blocks and some CSS. It gives clients massive flexibility and enables them to do a lot more. It is mostly getting better, however it has been difficult to adapt to using it.
Rich Tabor
Favourite Plugins:
Favourite Theme: Twenty Twenty-Two
Favourite non-WordPress app:
- Figma
- Linear
Gutenberg Yes or No?
Yes. It’s exciting to see what’s coming up next, however, there is still a lot of work to do, particularly around the fine tuning of the editing flow and the full site editing experience all around.
Kim Doyal
Favourite Plugins:
Favourite Themes:
Favourite non-WordPress app: ConvertBox
Gutenberg Yes or No?
Yes. From a content perspective there is a cleaner writing experience, it’s distraction free, and you can add elements into your content super easily.
Vito Peleg
Favourite Plugins:
Favourite Themes:
Favourite non-WordPress app: Atarim
Gutenberg Yes or No?
Both. There is a mindset shift that needs to happen, in order for you to take advantage of the functionality of Gutenberg. Waiting a while more to see how this product evolves before jumping in and changing a bunch of websites that are already designed with a bunch of previous tools.
Joe Casabona
Favourite Plugins:
Favourite Themes: Kadence
Favourite non-WordPress app: Shortcuts
Gutenberg Yes or No?
Yes. It’s exciting to see where FSE will take theme development, and to see what other people are going to make with FSE and theme.json. Gutenberg is the way wordpress is going. The fewer dependencies on external tools and the easier we can make development for people is just all good.
Raitis Sevelis
Favourite Plugins:
- Visual Composer
- Yoast
- Real Media Library
Favourite Themes:
- The Starter Theme
- Kadence
- Blocksy
Favourite non-WordPress app: Sketch, Slack, Zoom
Gutenberg Yes or No?
Yes. Because it’s an evolution in WordPress and pushes visual editors to become better.
Andrew Palmer
Favourite Plugins:
- WP Forms
- Bertha.ai
- Kadence Blocks
Favourite Themes
- Kadence
- Divi
Favourite non WordPress App: Ray ban Glasses
Gutenberg Yes or No?
Yes. It’s the future of WordPress!
Vova Feldman
Favourite Plugins:
Favourite Themes:
Favourite non-WordPress app: PhpStorm
Gutenberg Yes or No?
No Gutenberg is getting better everyday and it is exciting to see what will happen with it in the future. However, it’s still immature and changing too rapidly. So at this stage it’s better to use other, more stable page builders.
Bridget Willard
Favourite Plugins:
Favourite Theme:
Favourite non-WordPress app: Xero
Gutenberg Yes or No?
Both. Always been on the fence about Gutenberg, but what is useful about Gutenberg is the ability to copy and paste from Google Docs, without the spam codes.
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