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Epsisode 342: A New Way to Make your Blog stand Out – Invest in Speed, Strategy and Design using Gutenberg with Madison Wetherill

In episode 342, Megan chats to Madison Wetherill about how to get the most out of Gutenberg blocks in order to streamline our blogs and make them fast and easy to navigate.

We cover information about how Gutenberg will help you level up in blogging without knowing coding and HTML, it will allow you to make sections of your blog page pop to the reader, it will help you to create a template outline to make writing new blog posts easier to write and when you can anticipate the Classic Editor discontinue receiving updates.

Listen on the player below or on iTunes, TuneIn, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast player. Or scroll down to read a full transcript.

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Guest Details

Connect with Grace & Vine Studios
Website | Instagram | Facebook

Bio
Madison is a food blogger turned web designer running Grace and Vine Studios. She works with her clients to connect with their audience through strategic web design and brand strategy. She is the host of The Vine Podcast, a podcast about strategy and design for food bloggers. Madison, her husband, two little boys live in Phoenix, AZ.

Takeaways

  • Gutenberg or the Block Editor, breaks it into components so content is customizable by section.
  • What you see is what you get, editor. It’s an improvement from the classic editor where you had to preview changes to see what was altered.
  • Gutenberg is the standard for WordPress now.
  • Classic editor plugin won’t be supported in 2023 so it’s valuable to learn now.
  • Gutenberg editor you’re now able to customize individual blocks without knowing HTML code.
  • Reusable blocks is a template for content you use regularly, are time savers and useful for popping your content out to the reader such as pro tips, cornerstone content or a call to action.
  • You have to convert blog posts from Classic editor to Gutenberg individually but it’s very easy and goes quickly.
  • There’s no 1 click switch over to Gutenberg.

Resources Mentioned

Want More?

Check out what Madison Wetherill shares in episode 140 about filtering through the noise in the food blogging space.

Transcript

Click for full script.

EBT342_Madison Wetherill

Madison Wetherill: Hi, this is Madison Wetherill from Grace and Vine Studios, and you’re listening to the Eat Blog Talk podcast. 

Sponsor: Hey, awesome food bloggers. Before we dig into this episode, I have a really quick favor to ask you. Go to your favorite podcast player. Go to Eat Blog Talk, scroll down to the bottom where you see the ratings and review section. Leave log talk a five star rating if you love this podcast and leave a great review, this will only benefit this podcast. It adds value. And I so very much appreciate your efforts with this. Thank you so much for doing this. Okay. Now onto the episode. 

Megan Porta: Hello, food bloggers. Welcome to Eat Blog Talk, the podcast for food bloggers, looking for the value and confidence that will move the needle forward in their businesses. This episode is sponsored by RankIQ. I am your host, Megan Porta, and you are listening to episode number 342. I have Madison Wetherill today with me. I’m so excited to talk to her for her third Eat Blog Talk interview. Today she’s going to impart all her knowledge about streamlining your blog using Gutenberg.

Madison is a food blogger, turned web designer running Grace and Vine Studios. She works with her clients to connect with their audience through strategic web design and brand strategy. She is the host of The Vine podcast, a podcast about strategy and design for food bloggers. Madison, her husband, and two little boys live in Phoenix, Arizona. And you guys have one on the way. 

Madison Wetherill: Yes. Yes we do. By the time this episode comes out, baby will be here. But when we’re recording this, it is still on the way. 

Megan Porta: Yes, it’s so great to have you here again, Madison. Thank you so much for taking the time for it today. 

Madison Wetherill: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. And it’s so funny to see the different topics we’ve covered over the last couple episodes. They’re all so different, but also relevant. So I’m so excited to be here talking about Gutenberg today. 

Megan Porta: All valuable, but across the board and you have such extensive knowledge all across the board. So we’re excited to learn from you today. First, do you have a third fun fact to share with us? Yes. 

Madison Wetherill: So I think on my very first time I was on the Eat Blog Talk show. I talked about how my family has a home that has been in my family for the last five generations, including my children. So that house has been in our family since 1959. My husband and I are currently working on getting it turned into an Airbnb. So that’s been our new adventure. We bought a new house with the new baby coming and decided we didn’t wanna get rid of that house just because it means so much to our family. So that has been a very interesting and exciting learning process of just starting a totally different type of business and furnishing a house from scratch and all the things. So that’s been a really exciting journey. 

Megan Porta: I love that. My husband and I are actually interested in doing a venture very similar to that, not with a family home, but just with property in general. So I may have to have a conversation with you about things you’ve learned and maybe tips you have and things like that. I’m sure you have many. 

Madison Wetherill: Yeah, absolutely. Like anything, there’s only so much you can prepare for, and then there’s so much that you don’t expect and don’t know, and you just have to learn along the way. But being a business owner, I’m used to that, but it’s still been very interesting just to learn as we go.

Megan Porta: Okay. Another conversation on that. I will definitely be reaching out. After baby’s born and you’re settled. I won’t bother you before then. 

Madison Wetherill: For sure. 

Megan Porta: But Gutenberg. Okay. I was just talking before recording about how some bloggers are using Gutenberg and some are resistant because they might have a lot of content or for whatever else, it might just be scary. So I’m hoping to shed some light on Gutenberg today and maybe just make it more approachable for people to dig in and know what they’re doing. For the longest time, I was like, Gutenberg, what is that? It’s such a weird word. So could you just give us an overview? What is Gutenberg and just break it down for us.

Madison Wetherill: Yeah, absolutely. I think you’re exactly right. That this is something that so many food bloggers are hesitant to do. I can even remember when it first came out, digging my heels in myself and being like no, we’re not gonna go and switch all the things. But if we back up a couple of years, I’m probably gonna get the actual year wrong, but I wanna say it was 2018 or 2019, where WordPress came out with a huge update to their editor system called Gutenberg. It’s also really commonly known as the block system or the block editor. They go back and forth between Gutenberg and blocks, but essentially what it is, is instead of having one big section of content that has images and text and all the things that go into your blog post, the Gutenberg or the block editor breaks it into individual components so that your content is all individually customizable whether it is one section, that’s a paragraph or a heading or an image. So basically it takes your big long blog post and turns it into those blocks that we know our content as. Why this is a revolutionary thing in the WordPress world is that it becomes what is known as a, what is what you get editor. So in the past, the classic editor, You might change something on the back end and you have to go and preview the blog post to be able to see what it changed on the front end. But with this new editor system, you can see that as you go. So if you make something with a bigger font or a different color, you’re able to see that on the back end as you’re working through your post content. That is just one of the small benefits of it. There’s lots of other benefits that we’ll get into, but that’s essentially what the editor system is like now, and it is the standard for WordPress. I think it’s in the beginning of 2023 that the classic editor plugin that a lot of people use won’t even be supported anymore through WordPress. So you won’t even be able to get updates for that. So it’s super important to start now with figuring out how you’re gonna transition over. 

Megan Porta: Okay. I did not know that. So if you are running on Classic in 2023, it’s going to phase out eventually because no updates are going to be happening there. That’s scary, I think if you are on classic, right? 

Madison Wetherill: It can be, it doesn’t mean that you won’t be able to use it, but what it does mean is that you may find it doesn’t work as seamlessly as it used to because even now, there’s been many big updates to WordPress as a core framework since Gutenberg became popular. Everything is moving in the direction of Gutenberg. So the longer you dig your heels in and don’t switch over, the more difficult it might be down the road to be able to do that. Or just the more issues you may have with your site in general, if you don’t move those things over. Which blog is already hard enough, we don’t need to make things any harder on ourselves.

Megan Porta: Exactly. Okay. So let’s make a case for moving over and it actually simplifies a lot about the whole blogging process, I think. But can you talk about that? What ways does this simplify? 

Madison Wetherill: Yeah, so like we mentioned, Gutenberg really allows you to customize different pieces and sections of your content, which gives you a really wide range of options when it comes to making your content really stand out. In the past, something that you would’ve had to do is you would’ve had to know coding a little bit at least to be able to change something like the font size for a specific paragraph or the color of a specific heading. If you were wanting to do something on a micro level like that, not sitewide, then you would have to be able to do that with a little bit of CSS or HTML code, which for a lot of food bloggers is just not their zone of genius and not where they wanna spend their time. So with the Gutenberg editor, you’re now able to customize individual sections and blocks of a blog post without having to have any coding knowledge, which has really just changed the game for how you are able to help your blog content set be set apart, not only from other food bloggers, but just even as someone is reading through your blog post, having certain sections that pop out against the content, so that people will actually see them and read them. So to me, that’s one of the biggest things that Gutenberg has really opened up.

But apart from that, The thing that I like to teach, and I actually have an entire course about this, where I teach people how to not only use Gutenberg, but also how to build what I call a blog post outline. Essentially what that is, it’s a template that you use every single time that you sit down and write a blog post as a starting place for yourself to sit down and write your content. Instead of feeling like you’re just sitting down, staring at a blank screen not really sure where to start, you create a framework for yourself so that every time you sit down, you have a starting place where you’re just plugging and playing the information that you wanna put in a blog post rather than feeling like you’re starting from scratch every single time. 

Megan Porta: I have created one of these outlines and, oh my goodness. It simplifies my process because like you said, you go in, instead of looking at white, you already have headers that you need to change obviously and copy that needs to be changed, but there’s already something there. So you already feel like you’ve made progress when you haven’t even started

Madison Wetherill: Yeah, absolutely. To be honest, I think a lot of food blogger are doing this. By default they have an outline or a rhythm that they follow with every blog post. They have certain sections that they use in most posts, but it’s the difference between having to sit there and add every single block or add every single section that you want versus having it just there for you to drag and drop images into, or to type in your headings, like you said. It also helps you to remember if there’s a specific section that maybe you forgot that you wanted to include substitutions for example, but it’s right there in front of you. So you’re like, oh yeah, what substitutions could I mention for this recipe? There’s so many benefits to it, but one it’s just gonna simplify your process and take some of the brain work out of it. Then two, it’s also gonna help make sure that every time you’re including those sections of content that are really important to make your blog post the best that it possibly can. 

Megan Porta: Can you talk about reusable blocks? I’ve started getting into this a little bit and they are fantastic as well. So just talk about what those are and how we can use them. 

Madison Wetherill: Totally. I love reusable blocks so much. It is one of my favorite things to work with clients on when we are designing a website for people to figure out, like, what is a reusable block that makes sense for people. Essentially, a reasonable block is something that you use as a template, again, for a piece of content that you use regularly. So I gave the substitutions example before, and that’s a really good example of something where you might often share substitutions for your recipes. You can use a reusable block either as a template for a starting place, or if it’s something where let’s say you have, I’m trying to think of a recipe example.

Megan Porta: What about like a call to action or something like that? 

Madison Wetherill: Yes, totally. So let me actually use the idea of an affiliate disclosure, because this is the most simple way to think of what a reusable block is. There’s two ways that you can use reusable blocks. A reusable block, in the way that it was originally designed to be used works really well for something like an affiliate disclosure. Some of you guys might remember years ago when Amazon changed their affiliate disclosure requirements, and everybody had to go back through all of their blog posts and change the affiliate disclosure that they had copied and pasted in there manually. If you had used a reusable block for that, you would’ve been able to change it in one place and across every single blog post, it would’ve changed that reusable block content to be the same. So that’s the default of what reusable blocks are built for and how they’re intended to be used. But what I see a lot of food bloggers doing, which I totally support, and I love this, is taking a reusable block and then converting it to a regular block so that you can use it as like a template and a framework, whether that’s for design purposes, you have it styled a certain way, or it’s just placeholder content that you go in and customize for each recipe. Do those two examples make sense?

Megan Porta: Yes, totally. So I love the affiliate. I don’t think I use a reusable block for affiliate information, but that’s a great idea. Call to action. I know I have one above my recipe card. Hey, if you liked this recipe, come back and give it five stars and leave a comment or something like that. But what are other ways that food bloggers could use reusable blocks? 

Madison Wetherill: So you mentioned the call to action and that’s another one of my favorite ones. I love for people to use that either as a call to action, like you said, to review the recipe. Maybe you want them to go check out your recipe index and see what other content you have there. It could be something like checking out another blog post. So if you have a cornerstone piece of content or a hit of a central idea piece of content that you have on your site, you could create a call to action block for people to go check that out. As long as it makes sense in reference to the recipe that you’re sharing. So that’s a really great way to use another version of reusable blocks. You can also use it for things like your pro tips. So this is one of those examples where I love to see this be really branded to a client and what someone’s niche is. So if your niche is gluten free recipes, maybe you have a pro tip about how to double check that the ingredients in the recipe are gluten free or something like that.

I’m trying to think of an example with Pip and Ebby for you, Megan. But it’s really great when this pro tip can be really tied into your brand messaging and like what your brand is, because it solidifies for your readers what your site is all about. Then again, you’re gonna have this styled in a way where it pops out against the content. So it’s doing two things at once where it’s educating your reader about, this is what my blog is all about. It’s also providing helpful content, but you’re designing it in a way where it easily can be seen in all of the other content that you have on your blog post. 

Megan Porta: You explained that really well. That’s great. I didn’t think about the pro tip thing, but that would be a great way to use it as well. Okay. So for somebody who is listening, who might not use this, I was just thinking about explaining that there are different types of blocks, right? So there’s a copy and photo. 

Madison Wetherill: So there’s a ton that are built into the basic WordPress setup. Essentially what you’re thinking about is every little section of your blog post is its own block. So you mentioned the copy, which is called the paragraph block. You have headings, which are another block. You have images, videos. You can also use things like columns, which I really like for if you have, or even galleries. So if you’re using multiple step by step images to show the process photos of a recipe, you can use either a gallery or the columns block to put those in a column instead of them being full width images, which is really nice because you used to have to go and create something in Canva and upload it. Whereas now you can just use that style of block to upload a bunch of images and style them in a certain way. There is also a really cool one that we use a lot that is called media and text. What that does is essentially it puts an image off to the left or the right with the text, not so much wrapped around it, but to the right side of the image. So again, it provides that column situation where you have an image and text, but it makes it really easy, especially when you think about how all of that stuff has to convert from desktop to mobile, using a block for that versus just trying to figure out how to code it yourself, is so much easier because it’s built into WordPress how that is going to adjust for mobile.

Megan Porta: Also, you can customize colors really easily. So you can have one block, maybe it’s your call to action block for your recipe card. You can make it hot pink if you want. Nothing else turns hot pink. So you can really go through and make things stand out with colors or fonts. So I love that part of it.

Madison Wetherill: Yeah, absolutely. This is such a great opportunity to train your audience on where to find this stuff. That’s why I say figuring out what makes sense for your brand and making sure to use that often is really important. So we have a client who she always talks about in her stories about how she has her substitutions in a green block. And she says it over and over again in her stories. But it’s because she’s using the exact same style of block every time. So her readers are starting to know, that’s where I need to look. So that’s a great way to get people to pay attention is by changing the background color. Because we’re so used to seeing paragraph image, heading paragraph, image, heading, and it all looks the same. If you think about it, what is the one thing that your readers want to find when they get to your site? It’s your recipe card. They typically know that it’s your recipe card, because it has a different background color. So if you use that same philosophy and then make the important content in your blog post stand out with a background color, they’re gonna be more likely to see that as they scroll. Or even if they use the jump to recipe button, they’re gonna see that as they jump and then they’re gonna be able to be like, oh, I wonder what that was. That looks important. It’s just this psychology behind people paying attention, essentially. When you use those background colors, it’s really gonna help that content to stand out and help someone to slow their scroll and actually read what it says. So you’re gonna really be able to make sure they see the valuable content that you’re sharing. 

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Megan Porta: It’s like you’re training them, right? Like by color and the way things look visually, if you’re consistent with it, you can train them to go look for that color or look for that specific block. 

Madison Wetherill: Absolutely. That’s why repetition is really important. That’s again, where that reusable block comes into play. Because if you are every single time being like, what color do I wanna use? Today I’m gonna use red. Today I’m gonna use yellow. First of all, it’s not gonna look very good and second of all, it’s not gonna train your people. So you wanna make sure you’re staying consistent. If you can just pick one color, either per block, if you feel really comfortable with colors and, feel like you can make something look really good, you can use a different color for different styles of blocks, but if not, just make it so that every time you put a background color behind a block you’re using gray or something that’s really, easy to see and easy to make sure that it looks good, but that way, people are gonna start to pay attention and start to see that is an important color that they should pay attention to. 

Megan Porta: Do you have certain blocks that you love since you’re such a Gutenberg expert? Do you have blocks that you just are like, okay, food bloggers, you need to be using these.

Madison Wetherill: Yeah. The one that stands out the most to me is that gallery block. Just because it’s so easy to create that collage effect, but without having to open up Canva and create something new. Then the other one, honestly, is just using a paragraph block, but sticking a background color behind it. So that’s, again, one of those one that’s built into WordPress, which is awesome. I know a lot of people like to use the Yoast FAQ block. So that’s another great one that you can use as well. That has some really awesome SEO schema built into it. Then apart from that, I think it’s really just about getting specific about what makes sense for your reader and thinking about the content that you can share whether it’s over and over again, or it’s just like every blog post, I’m gonna share this helpful tip and it’s gonna change, whichever one, whichever blog post I’m talking about. I think just being consistent with it is really important. Luckily those are like super basic blocks that don’t even require extra stuff, but those are the ones that I see most food bloggers using and using well. Then if you feel super comfortable with those, then there’s definitely other ones that you can try out and experiment with.

Megan Porta: Like next level blocks? Do you have next level block recommendations? 

Madison Wetherill: Yeah. So there’s two plugins that are an advanced Gutenberg block. So if you find yourself using things or trying to use things like columns or wanting to use some different media types of blocks, then I would recommend looking into either reusable blocks extended or Kadence blocks. Even if you’re not using Kadence as your theme, you can still use Kadence blocks for Gutenberg. It’s separate from the theme itself, but they have some more advanced and extended blocks that are fun to play around with. But I think the first thing is just to make sure you are moving in the process of starting to use Guttenberg and I find that it’s actually more helpful to start with an older blog post that’s already done rather than a brand new one. Because as you’re trying to get used to the system, writing a brand new blog post, it’s already taking a lot of brain power from you versus converting an old blog post. The content is most likely going to be 90% of the way there. You might have some tweaks to make, but, and then you can kinda get into some of the advanced stuff once you feel comfortable. Once you love Gutenberg, as much as some of us do.

Megan Porta: Okay. Can you talk about that? So if you are a blogger who has maybe a lot of older content and you’re hesitant just because it’s a change, it’s something different. It’s unfamiliar, all of those fearful things can pop up. I totally get it. How easy is it to change over to Gutenberg? Is it something you have to do on a post by post basis? Can you do it all at one time? How does that work? 

Madison Wetherill: Yeah, so I wish that the answer was that you could do it on a Scale for all of your blog posts. So the answer is no, you can’t do it for all of your blog posts all in one button. But I actually think that’s a good thing because it gives you the opportunity to go back through every post and just give it a once over in terms of how easy it is. It is really simple to convert from a classic editor blog post to a Gutenberg blog post. If you’re still using classic, you most likely have the classic editor plugin, and there’s some settings in there that will allow you to start converting things over to Gutenberg.

So you kinda have to find those settings and open up that option for yourself. But once you do that, you go into an old blog post that’s in the classic editor. It will open in the block system, but all of your content will live in one block that’s called a classic block. You’ll have a button that just says convert to blocks. Then what it’s gonna do is it’s gonna take that one big giant block that you have, and it’s gonna break it up into paragraphs, headings, images, your recipe card, all of that stuff. So that’s the process that you have to go through for every blog post. What most people do is they just do that as they go. If you’re editing an old blog post, just go ahead and convert it over, look it over to make sure everything converts correctly. Then once you start feeling comfortable with Gutenberg in general, then you can start writing your new blog posts in that editor. Doing those two things alongside each other you’re gonna learn it pretty quickly and be able to get comfortable with writing your new blog post in that system as well. 

Megan Porta: I was just talking to a blogger friend this morning and she was super hesitant because she started doing this and had problems. I don’t know exactly what her issues were, but she said it messed everything up on her site. She was just scared now. Now she was thinking that she would hold off until after Q4, because she didn’t want to mess with things. Do you have encouragement or advice for her? You might not know because we don’t know exactly what her problems were, but I don’t know can it improve your page speed or something to encourage her to at least experiment with it?

Madison Wetherill: Yeah. So my first initial thought is that it’s probably not the blog post. It’s probably something within her theme or a plugin that isn’t playing nicely with the Gutenberg update. So that would be my first thought. If she’s using a theme that is up to date and works well with Gutenberg and is known to do that, the Feast themes for example, all work super well with Gutenberg. Then there may be something else that’s going on. Like I said, it could be a plugin. So in her case, I would say trying it out on a staging site would actually probably be the best thing. At least so she can figure out if it’s a specific plugin and what you can do is just slowly go through your plugins and deactivate them to figure out which one is broken.

It also just depends on what the error is that she’s getting, or what’s happening, because that may give her kind of a clue. But if you can isolate it down to just the content itself, then most likely it was something else that was causing the issue. The only thing I’ve seen in the past, cause issues for people, every once in a while, either they’re Convertkits or FloDesk, whatever email marketing platform they’re using, if they have coding from a form in a blog post, or if they have a Mediavine or AdThrive video in a blog post, every once in a while, those don’t convert over quite right. So sometimes you just have to reinsert it. So what I usually say is to actually have your blog post open. The live blog post on one screen and then on another window or screen, having the editor open so that you can see, oh, this section is supposed to have this here. That’s what broke it or that’s what isn’t working and you can troubleshoot it that way. So those are some tips that people are having trouble with. But I think in general, like we said, it isn’t even going to be something that’s super supported. That’s probably why she’s having issues at this point now, is that something isn’t playing nicely with that because it’s just not really supported anymore. 

Megan Porta: So it’s a matter of just investigating a little bit and figuring out what exactly is not being supported.

Madison Wetherill: Exactly. 

Megan Porta: Okay. So outside of usability and just simplifying the blogging process, are there benefits to using Gutenberg? 

Madison Wetherill: Yeah. Great question. So on the surface there really aren’t any SEO or speed, types of benefits at this current moment. But again, the further we get away from the classic editor being supported or being used a lot, the more likely it is that there’s going to be benefits to using Guttenberg because everything is going to be built with that in mind. I will say that the more comfortable you are with blocks and if you’re able to really adopt that, then you’re able to move away from using things like widgets and themes that don’t support the block editor in general, you’re able to move away from those, which I think are gonna show a lot of benefits to you from a site speed, from an SEO perspective, down the road.

But as of right now, there’s not something that is going to be holding you back if you’re using the classic editor. I just know it’s one of those things that’s gonna continue to be more and more outdated. So there will continue to be more and more issues going forward. We’re in that sweet spot right now where it’s not like a fire that you have to put out, but it’s also if you haven’t started thinking about switching to Guttenberg, you probably need to start thinking about switching to Guttenberg sooner rather than later.

Megan Porta: Yeah, that was a good answer. Then I was gonna ask you, do you have any frequently asked questions that people ask you often about Gutenberg? 

Madison Wetherill: The two biggest questions that I get asked are, can I switch everything over, with one click and the answer like we already talked about is no. But take advantage of that and make it just part of your process of going through your old posts and editing it. Then the second question I get a lot is how to use reusable blocks. Like we talked about, there’s those two different ways that you can use them. One is as a true reusable block, which means that the content is the exact same in every blog post that uses that reusable block or using a reusable block as a template and a framework, and then converting that to a regular block so that the content can be individualized, between blog posts. Those are the two biggest questions that I get. Then apart from that, it’s really just about digging in and spending the extra few minutes, maybe even an extra hour to make your blog post come to life using that system so that you can start, getting faster with it and getting more used to it because a lot of things in the blogging world, tech is always changing, but it’s usually changing for the better. So the faster that you can feel comfortable with it, the more you’re gonna see the benefits from using it. 

Megan Porta: Is there ever a situation where you would recommend somebody does not use Gutenberg? 

Madison Wetherill: Ooh, that’s a good question. I would say the only time would be, if you have a theme, that specifically is like, we do not play nicely with Gutenberg. Which again, most of the themes that food bloggers are using definitely are going to play nicely with Gutenberg. So I think, unless that there’s something wrong on your site that is going to not let you use it, then I would say, don’t use it right away or figure out that, but that would be a bigger issue to me, is getting on a better theme than starting to invest in learning Guttenberg. I would actually say another frequently asked question, should I invest into learning Gutenberg or should I invest into learning something like SEO or something? I know it’s Hard to even put those two things in the same bucket, but you have to think about learning Gutenberg is going to benefit your process as a blogger. It’s going to make your job of writing blog posts easier, especially if you’re able to really master the system of Gutenberg and then use it to your advantage to build something out like a blog post template. If you’re able to do that, you’re gonna have more brain power to be able to go and learn SEO. So I don’t usually try to say, oh, yeah, you should definitely learn Gutenberg over something else that’s going to drive more traffic. But at the end of the day, Gutenberg can really simplify your blogging process. I think that is something that all bloggers could use to have a little bit more brain space for some of the heavier hitters that we have to learn as food bloggers. 

Megan Porta: You just sold it. I feel like everyone was probably sold. Thank you, Madison. Do you have a list of maybe just a handful of themes that work really well with Guttenberg that play nicely with it?

Madison Wetherill: Sure. Like I mentioned, all of the feast themes, for sure. They’ve really moved in the direction of not even really using a lot of the classic set up from WordPress. So they don’t really use widgets for things. They’re really moving in the direction of fully using blocks for everything. So the feast theme and the fees plugin is set up really well for that. I know that the Restored 316 themes that are all built on Kadence, all use blocks as well. Trellis, as far as I know, it definitely would work well from a blog post perspective. I’m not sure how they have their homepage and things like that built out. I don’t think it’s with blocks, but I could be wrong about that. So those are the three main hitters if you’re gonna be using a premade theme. If it’s something else, I would just really look for in the description of the theme itself, are they talking about blocks? Are they talking about how it’s compatible with the Gutenberg editor? Really look at those things to make sure that it’s compatible. Because like I said, I would much rather you have a theme that is going to be able to work with you over the next couple of years, rather than feeling like you’re stuck with an old theme and you can’t use the latest technology that other food bloggers are using and get behind in that way.

Megan Porta: Yeah. Is there anything we missed that you feel like would be really helpful to impart? 

Madison Wetherill: I don’t think so. I guess I would say just as an encouragement, investing a few hours of time into Gutenberg and learning it is going to make your process so much easier. If you can do that, then you’re gonna have much more time and brain capacity to do other things. I think it’s gonna make your content stronger in general, because you’re going to have that framework to help you remember. These are the things that are important to mention in my blog post. If you are feeling stuck on how to switch over, what are these settings that I need to figure out? What block should I use? Then I would really recommend checking out my course, which is called Simplify With Gutenberg. It’s a two step process. We teach you how to convert everything over to Gutenberg, and then how to build out that blog post template for yourself so that every time you sit down to write a blog post, you’re staring at a template that makes your life easier, not like a blank white screen of death. So I would definitely recommend checking that out or just exploring it on your own and seeing if it’s something that you can figure out. Because a lot of food bloggers have been able to figure it out on their own. But I created this course for people who feel really stuck and who just want someone to walk them through step by step. 

Megan Porta: I am so glad you mentioned your course because I have not taken it, but I’ve heard so many people, Madison, say how much they’ve loved it and how helpful it is. Yes, I’m glad you mentioned that. All right. Thank you. This was amazing. I think everything from A to Z we’ve covered with Gutenberg and you’ve made an amazing case for why people should switch over if they haven’t already. So thank you for being here. I appreciate it. 

Madison Wetherill: Yes, absolutely. I hope that it’s helpful for people. If you have any further questions on Gutenberg, please reach out. I am a Gutenberg nerd. It’s one of those things I just love using and love learning more about. So I’m happy to help anyone who’s feeling stuck. 

Megan Porta: Awesome. To wrap up, I know you’ve done this a handful of times, but do you have an additional quote or words of inspiration to leave us with? 

Madison Wetherill: Yes. So I’ve actually been reading this book called Content, Inc. Have you ever read it? 

Megan Porta: No, I haven’t. 

Madison Wetherill: I know you’re a big reader. Joe Peruzzi. So the book Content, Inc. is essentially about creating a product based on an audience that you’ve already built. So a lot of the time people go and they create a product and then they find the audience to fit into the product. But this is the backwards way of doing that. Where you build the audience first and then you create the product or the service or whatever it is. There was just a quote that I really loved. He was talking about just creating content in general. He said, readers are open to receiving and engaging in content that will help them live better lives, get better jobs or solve a particular problem. You have as much opportunity to deliver amazingly helpful content as anyone else. I just loved that quote, especially for food bloggers, because I think so often we just feel like, oh, we’re just, putting out recipes and no one needs them or cares, but when you think about it in this way, and you really start to think about like, how can I help my readers solve a problem? It just opens the door. I just hope that encourages people to really be excited about the way that they’re helping their readers to improve their lives. 

Megan Porta: I have not read that when I’m putting it on my list. So thank you, Madison. I always love new book recommendations. It sounds amazing. We will put together a show notes for you. If anyone wants to go peek at those, you can go to eatblogtalk.com/graceandvine2. We’ll also put the link to Madison’s course in there. Why don’t you tell everyone in Madison where they can find you? We’ve mentioned it a few times, but online, social media, etc. 

Madison Wetherill: Yes, absolutely. So like I said, our business is Grace and Vine Studios, and we would love to chat with you. If you are looking to have a custom website or brand built for you, if you’re interested in the course, you can go to graceandvinestudios.com/simplify, or like Megan said, it’ll be in the show notes. If you liked this conversation and you want to hear more tips about food blogging and all of that type of stuff, then I would love for you to check out our podcast, The Vine podcast. The most social place to find me is Instagram and I’m over there at Grace and Vine. 

Megan Porta: Awesome. Thank you again, Madison for taking the time out today and thank you for listening today, food bloggers. I will see you in the next episode. 

Outro: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Eat Blog Talk. If you enjoyed this episode, I’d be so grateful if you posted it to your social media feed and stories. I will see you next time.


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Megan
Megan

Megan started her food blog Pip and Ebby in 2010 and food blogging has been her full-time career since 2013. Her passion for blogging has grown into an intense desire to help fellow food bloggers find the information, insight, and community they need in order to find success.

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