I’ve been going through the block options for eight WordPress collections (default Gutenberg, JetPack, Advanced Gutenberg, Atomic Blocks, Kadence, Qodeblock, Stackable, and Ultimate Addons) and I’ve already reviewed The three text blocks and the six media blocks. However, that “media” title was a bit misleading because there are two other areas I didn’t include in my “media” list.
File blocks
The default WordPress blocks include one called “File”, and it allows you an easy way to upload files of different types, store them in your media library, and add a DOWNLOAD button to your page so people can download it. I already have a Download Manager that does essentially the same thing but, of course, that requires a shortcode to show up in modern blocks. I use my Download Manager primarily for my HR guide, which is great as it keeps track of download stats too. If it wasn’t for the stats, I would ditch DLM’s overhead and just go with this block. The styling options here are pretty limited, but then again, so are the DLM ones since they don’t fit inside a normal block anymore.
I’ll stick to the DL Manager options and remove this one from the list. I’m tempted to leave it for temporary download options, but I’m trying to reduce overhead, so I’ll deprecate it for now.
Audio blocks
So this one is a bit awkward to work with in WordPress. I do some music reviews and I have a project that will require extensive playlists. But my default music manager these days is iTunes. I can embed a podcast player, I can embed Spotify or SoundCloud as a player, but there’s no Apple Music option. I took a chance on just pasting the link from Apple Music to see if the “auto” embed block would recognize it but it didn’t. I can still embed the iframe code from Apple Music but the height and width need adjustments. I was a bit disappointed though that I didn’t have options in the list to show my ratings of the songs.
For example, I did a review of all the top hits from 1943 to give my view of what songs were the “best of” for the year and which ones hold up almost a century later. There are 117 songs, and I would LOVE to be able to sort the list by different columns and link to the song with various services. But I considered just doing it in Apple Music and letting the playlist be my ordered list. Not as useful if I can’t show my rating of the song on a 1-5 scale. I thought Apple Music had that option, but I can’t seem to find it anymore if they do. The embed works fine, just not as powerful as I originally hoped. I will use it though for individual playlists when I talk about NAC outings, for example.
Regardless of how I do it in the end, though, it was clear that my embed options for Spotify, SoundCloud and the default audio player are not needed as I don’t use their services nor do I host audio files. There’s an option for a PodCast Player, but I don’t have an immediate need for that one either. I’ll keep that one as a future option, maybe, as I’d like to review some podcasts, but for now, I’ll deprecate it too.
Update:To see my current collection of blocks, check out the blocks I use.
After working through a series of blocks that help me style various text blocks, I reviewed all the various media blocks to handle images and video that are available in the eight collections that I’m reviewing (default ones, JetPack, Advanced Gutenberg, Atomic Blocks, Kadence, Qodeblock, Stackable, and Ultimate Addons).
Image-related blocks
I am obviously going to keep the default image block. It is the simplest and easiest way to insert a photo from the media library OR an external URL. I am trying to control my media library a little bit more aggressively so that random photos just don’t get added there during an embed, and since I have the NextGen Gallery installed, it’s easy to upload my photos to various NGG galleries and hotlink to them. I wish NGG Image Chooser had a block associated with it and I may actually pay someone to develop one, but for now, I’ll stick with the image block plus the NGG Gallery block.
After the default, the world of image blocks gets a LOT more complicated. There are image blocks, slider blocks, gallery blocks, and even header/cover blocks (like your page header, with the ability to put text over them). I’ll avoid the speciality blocks for things like author pages or pricing blocks that have images in them, at least for now, as they are not really about image display as simply having an option to include an image. Let’s dive deep on the rest:
Default cover — Like the main header on a page, you can post an image and put a title over it, but that’s about it. Too limited. Pass.
Default media and text — This one combines something from the media library with some content/description beside it. I would be tempted NOT to keep it except for one thing — it will let me embed local videos with text beside it. Simple, easy, bam, your video is there. You can even stack it on mobile. Definitely a keeper.
Default embed of GIF — It is a bit different than the normal image blocks, and not something I would use often, but I’ll keep it.
Stackable’s image box — This allows you to put several images side-by-side (a mini gallery), as long as they all come from the media library. I can add titles, subtitles and descriptions. All of Stackable’s options are generally awesome, I just wish it would allow me to insert images from somewhere other than the media library. Pass.
Stackable’s header — Like “cover”, this allows you to put some text over top of media. I say media because it is NOT limited to images. Sure, the source has to be the media library, but it is pretty solid. I am considering a default “blockquote” upgrade where there would be an image in the background, or perhaps a layout option for quotes/humour/etc. I would prefer a fully “merged” image that you could share (i.e., some way to share the image and text on social media together), but I don’t think that is possible. If I want higher quality images, I can always go premium, but most of the premium ones are things I can do in PowerPoint myself just as easily. Not as “slick” or as “easy” as paying for a one-click option, but still decent. Except, again, it ONLY works if you use images from the media library. I’d love the option to have a lot of different backgrounds, but I don’t want to clutter up the media library…I’ll pass on this for now, and keep it mind as a possible way to do blockquotes.
Advanced Gutenberg’s Advanced image — Similar to other ones, it allows you to add text over the image, but nothing special. Pass.
Default gallery block/tiled gallery/slideshow — While I like the premise, it only allows images from the media library. And since I don’t keep much in my library in the way of images, I have no real need to keep it. If it let me do VIDEO galleries, that would be something worth doing. Pass.
Advanced Gutenberg’s images slider — Good, but I have no need for it, particularly only pulling from the image library. Pass.
Kadence’s advanced gallery – I have NGG, so no need for this. If it pulled from NGG, without embedding the same image in the media library, then I might use it. Or if it allowed video. Pass.
Video-related blocks
As you saw, many of the options that I ditched above were nothing special for images and they didn’t include options to embed a video (either locally or externally), so no “extra” reason to consider them. Of course, there is the default video block, and it allows upload, inserting from the media library, and inserting from a URL. This is the the same power as the default image block that I like so much, so my first reaction was that of course, I would keep it.
Similarly, there are default embeds that give options for lots of video options that I might use, like YouTube or Vimeo, as well as a long list of other sites that I won’t. Since most of the “other ones” can be handled by the default video block, my intent was to keep the default plus one or two “special” embed options.
Then I tried the “Advanced Video” block from Advanced Gutenberg, which comes with a LOT more controls. It includes options to link to external sites (like YouTube), to play local videos, load image previews, open in a lightbox, adjust playback controls, etc. Which are pretty great. Which then made me wonder…why do I need the previous ones? I tested a local video, and it worked, check. YouTube also worked, check.
There’s a default embed block for TED videos so I thought I would try one of those in the Advanced Video block. In normal insertion mode, the TED video doesn’t show in a preview. Hmm. I tried adding it in a lightbox. Okay, there it is…but when the page is loaded, it still wouldn’t play. I went back and tested the default video block, and the default embed for TED, and those work just fine. Hmm…I tried different forms for the URL, I tried getting to it from a direct “video” file URL rather than the page URL, nada. It would NOT play. I tried a bunch of options, searched through help files online, nothing. Finally, I reached out to the plugin creator and waited a couple of days for a response. At which time they said, “oops, we should fix the description for that block, it ONLY plays local + YouTube and Vimeo, no other embeds”. So TED didn’t work because TED isn’t one of the options. Which is REALLY weird because it isn’t that much more complicated to add other URLs and sites. For most other video players, once you figure out how to pull from sites like YouTube, everything else is a piece of cake. Nope, no TED.
Hmm…well that’s a design question for me. The default video option handles everything. I can do some additional embeds for a few external ones like YouTube or TED, but do I really need it? The default can handle TED and YouTube just fine.
Nope, the overhead to run those other embeds and blocks is too high. I’m going to pass.
I’m reminding myself that I am also likely to use the default media and text block anyway for videos. It lets me put a bunch of text next to it, which is pretty sweet, and most videos I play are local.
Stackable includes a video block too, called Video Popup, and it has some interesting features and format options, but like Advanced Gutenberg, it only does YouTube and Vimeo videos. It doesn’t even have a local option. Pass.
Conclusion
So I’m sticking mainly with six media blocks:
the default image block
the NextGen Gallery block
the default media and text block
the default GIF embed block (although I won’t use it much),
Stackable’s header block for possible use with blockquotes later, and
the default video block.
Everything else media-media related? Gone like the wind.
Update:To see my current collection of blocks, check out the blocks I use.
I’ve been blogging recently about changing my website setup and one of the key elements of that is shifting from the “Classic Editor” of WordPress (pre-version 5) to the “Block Editor” (post-version 5). Nicknamed Gutenberg, the block editor has attracted a LOT of negative pushback from the WordPress community.
A recent article on WP-Tavern noted that whenever they write about the block editor, or Gutenberg in general, they get twice as many negative comments from people than on any other topic. This is not surprising as it radically changed the workflows of creating, editing and publishing posts on your blog. I lived through the work world when large organizations went from DOS-based editors to Windows-based editors that were WYSIWYG and the reactions are very similar.
However, the article’s explanation of how all these users are misguided was based on two premises:
Blocks are the future of WordPress
Blocks are the greatest thing since sliced bread
I don’t disagree with the first one and the second is hyperbole. What the article completely ignores is that nobody disagrees that blocks can be great. What they complain about is that the interface available to work with them generally sucks for those who are well-versed in the old editor.
Ironically, he posts a bunch of data on naysayers that is a “drop in the ocean”. Some of his stats:
“Only” 27% of WordPress sites are running the old WordPress;
Of the 73% running the new WordPress with the block editor, more than 5M have installed a Classic Editor plugin to allow them to edit without the block editor, and it’s growing at a steady rate of up to 1% per month.
Here’s a reality check. Many WP sites are set, as recommended, to automatically upgrade as new versions come out. Yet 27% have said “no” to upgrading to the latest version. When commercial products are released, if more than a quarter of all users world-wide say no to a FREE upgrade, that is normally considered catastrophic. And when the number of users who said yes but who are running tweaks to cripple some of the “new” features are over 5M strong and growing in number? That’s a sign that something is WAY off in your product.
However, the article notes that since blocks are the future, it asks how can we move forward constructively? I’m far from an expert in either WordPress or development, but I’ve been a user of WordPress for a long time and have suffered through the conversion to using the poor quality block editor. Here are my thoughts on what I would like to see in future versions of WordPress.
Blocks and the block editor are NOT the same thing
It would be really good if people who are discussing blocks and the future of WordPress would recognize that people hate the BLOCK EDITOR, not blocks. Telling them how great blocks are makes no difference to the conversion rate if they use the block editor, get frustrated, and switch to the Classic Editor plugin. Amazon made it easy to click one button and the site would ship you what you were looking at…no information to enter on your shipping location, credit cards, multiple approvals, etc. Click and done. Because success online is predicated on the ability to remove friction. Right now, the biggest block (no pun intended) to conversion is that the block editor creates unnecessary friction.
Why are 27% of the users not converting?
For many sites, the stat is really misleading. There are thousands of sites out there that were created, people wrote one or two posts or set up a basic website, often for a side-hustle, and then? Nothing. It fizzled. Maybe they realized blogging wasn’t for them. Maybe it was for a business that never went anywhere. Maybe they realized it was way more work than they expected. For whatever reason, it stalled. Yet the site is sitting there live, running WordPress, and showing up in the stats. To be fair, some of the “positive” numbers for those with upgraded sites are also equally dead, but they have auto-update on. It would be better if the stats broke it down the way the plugin library does, such as when the content was last updated, i.e. some estimation if the site is a live site or hasn’t been updated in 3 years.
For others, they may have no real view about the block editor, as they’ve never heard of it. Their current site works, and you don’t try to fix what ain’t broken (security issues aside, which many don’t understand)…some of them don’t upgrade ever unless forced to i.e. when something breaks.
The popular theory amongst the haters is that many of them are in the “I’m afraid of Gutenberg” camp and don’t want to upgrade or they’ve looked at it and said, “Meh”. For me, the far more important number is the 5M who looked at it long enough to decide to use Classic Editor. THAT group has engaged and found it lacking. I find it amusing that the OP dismissed these numbers considering 5M installs makes it the fourth most popular plugin in the repository. More people are using it than are using WooCommerce or Jetpack. That is shocking.
Focus on the differences between content creation, editing, formatting and desktop publishing
If you take yourself out of an online environment and think instead of print marketing and communications in a large organization, you can quickly see four key stages in a publishing process:
Initial content creation — the writers;
Reviewing and approving the copy — the editors;
Page formatting — the layout designers; and,
Product design — the publishers.
Each of those stages requires different tools. Sure, in a blogging environment, the webmaster is frequently doing all four tasks as well as acting as chief bottle washer, but that doesn’t mean they need the same tool to do all four tasks at once.
Microsoft understands this and designed Word to gently merge the first two, with a slight hint at the third. If you are writing, you see a basic page to type on. If you want to switch to an even more basic layout with no distractions, you can. Those two windows primarily allow you to create your content. Computer code editors used to do the same, even FrontPage. They had a text window and a separate code window for working in. If you wanted to see what it looked like, you went to a preview window. In Word, if you want to switch to print layout, you can. Or web layout.
For the next step up, page formatting, very few people doing graphics and layout design of a page actually compose in their graphics layout program. They write in the editor, and then copy the final content in to do the page layout in the layout interface.
WordPerfect fought this battle when they went from DOS to Windows version with the WYSIWYG reactions mentioned above. People HATED the new windows version with onscreen proportional fonts because you couldn’t tell where there were two spaces instead of just one. Editing seemed nightmarish. Or it did until screen technology caught up and people could see where things were lining up or not on the page as you went. WordPerfect did it to give people layout capabilities and better preview functions, but it totally disrupted existing workflows.
But after fighting that battle, WordPerfect decided the future was graphics layout, like the recent block editor change. “See your page develop!” So they merged features with Corel and suddenly people had to deal with a desktop publishing program rather than the simple editor they knew, and sales plummeted. They didn’t have a captive audience as WordPress does. So people voted with their feet. They don’t stick around to complain if they’re paying the bill. The fall was catastrophic as it diluted the brand. WordPerfect tanked and even Corel Graphics tanked. Two “good” products merged and people using the one for editing and other people using the other for graphics both combined to hate the merged product.
After you get through creation, editing, and layout, there are still the publishers who decide how big the page or magazine will be, what type of material will be used, how good of quality, etc. Usually that is decided in advance, and the page layout designers work within that framework, as do the editors within the parameters of what’s possible for page layout, as do the content creators within the parameters of what’s possible for writing.
In my opinion, the Block Editor is a poor man’s attempt at having writing, editing, layout and publishing options all in the same window within WordPress. WordPerfect tried it and died. Just about all publishing programs did. Microsoft still sells Publisher, but few compose or edit in it. It’s the final tool, not the first.
In my view, there should be four separate tabs/screens/windows for “creating”. We’re talking about the USER INTERFACE here, not the content of the site, so it shouldn’t be anything more than that.
Just as the old classic editor had a visual interface and a code interface, a composition window should have the ability to do inline formatting of text (much like the basic ribbon elements you see in Word). Font choices, font styles/text formats, basic paragraph styles (indent, bullets, justification, ), and the ability to do basic insertions (media, links, and tables).
The edit window could look like a stripped-down version of the block editor. You would see all the paragraphs as blocks, for example [for those going from classic editor to block editor now, it would be the equivalent of switching over and saying “Convert all to blocks”, handled seamlessly]. I would still include all the styling from the basic composition and it should be available for every block. Compared to now, it would be a merger of the basic paragraph block with the classic paragraph block to give you an advanced paragraph option. Personally, I think if the current Block Editor had this level of a paragraph block, many of the complaints about editing flows would disappear as they would have almost all the power they have in Classic Editor now. You might not even NEED the composition window, although Word still has a bare-bones/distraction-free interface option as well as their full editor.
I would add a third level window that would be a true page layout editor. You could move blocks around, almost like a page builder, but one level down. It would be the equivalent of a basic desktop publisher. A lot like the current block editor, but with the ability to see where blocks are going to wrap or not. You COULD work in this from scratch, as the styling options would be available still (to save you from having to switch windows for a quick edit), but it would also have a lot of extra tools for adjusting how things line up on the page.
For me, I think it could also go to a level 4 window, what I would call the publisher window. I’m torn on the exact level of power in this window, but to me, it should give you a graphical replacement for a page-builder with a full grid layout. Basically more granularity in the tweaking of the layout. However, at that point, you’re basically giving the user almost full control to not only “build pages” but also to almost create their own themes on the fly. Obviously, the website owner wouldn’t want that kind of power in the hand of a basic writer/user on the site, but it could/should be available to the admin.
Why would I do all this? Because CORE shouldn’t be tying one tool (editing or blocking) to one editor interface. Not everyone works the same way or has the same needs for tweaking. So why not provide four switchable views (and NOT call them derogatory terms like basic, pro, etc.) and allow website builders to allow those views for different levels of users?
Wait…where do different types of blocks come in?
But if you were going to do what I outlined above, what would you do with blocks? I think we should stop treating them like they’re some super tool that is the solution to everything that everyone needs. We already have a model for rolling out more than the basic design elements and letting people choose what pieces they need.
a. Theme directory — Do you want a new theme that will change your whole look and feel? Great, here is 2020 to start and you can add any one of millions of other ones.
b. Plugin directory — Do you want a plugin that does x, y or z? You add it to your install, activate it, and voila, your site has that functionality.
I think we should add a block directory. Maybe it is like Gutenberg where you get 20 defaults, but if you want to download one of 5000 other different ways of doing a table with different styling options, you look in the block directory. Oh, look, here’s one that uses bananas for the lines in the table! How perfect for my market-fresh site, I’ll just DL *that* block and add it to my page. It’s just a code snippet with class wrappers. Do you want a table that looks like the Brady Bunch TV grid? DL the Brady Bunch table. And make it so that it can be added to your install OR just to THAT page. I shouldn’t have to install multiple block collections as plugins to be able to use one or two out of a collection. I don’t have to install bundled themes or bundled plugins, so why would I require bundling of blocks?
Many of the block editors already come with page layout options, as do many page builders, but I feel we give those plugins way too much power over the install when it isn’t needed. What if, instead, we had a page layout directory?
What would this all mean?
For me, it would drastically help new users by showing them that they can prepare content in four separate and logical stages — composition, editing, layout, and publishing — if they want to, and at each level, they have just enough options to give them flexibility without overwhelming them with detailed block options before they’ve even written their first paragraph or added their first picture.
More importantly, it would stop WordPress from following WordPerfect down a painful path that mistakes content creation for websites with publishing.
I previously wrote about Deciding to play with Blocks as an adult, some of my favourite blocks, and whether I could even switch over to the Block Editor in WordPress. I had installed a bunch of block plugins and created a long list of possible blocks to use, including the default ones, JetPack, Advanced Gutenberg, Atomic Blocks, Kadence, Qodeblock, Stackable, and Ultimate Addons.
Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that having 60+ blocks available would slow down the back-end of the website when I was editing; I assumed they were more “available-on-demand”, i.e. that they wouldn’t be loaded during editing until you embedded them.
However, I had already created some reusable blocks for sign-offs to various posts, and I realized that they seem to be loading last when editing a page. For example, I would be editing an old post, go to insert the sign-off, and it wasn’t there “yet”. I would wait a few more seconds and it would show up in the available list, but otherwise, it was whirring with no option available, while it loaded all the other blocks into memory first.
Equally, having such a long list makes it hard to be inspired by anything either…psychologists call it the “paralysis of too much choice”.
Or I would confuse options. For example, I would go to do something simple like inserting a quote, but I couldn’t remember whether I preferred the blockquote from Ultimate Addons or the just default quote. Or perhaps one of the four different testimonial layouts that all do similar things.
That’s where the Block Manager comes in. You can disable the blocks you aren’t using. I tried creating a series of pages for testing out all the different blocks, plugin by plugin, but it didn’t really help with comparisons. Again, if I want a quote layout, I don’t want to pull up six different test pages to remember which quote layout I liked. I decided I needed to go about this more systematically.
So I created a simple grid in Excel with the 7 or 8 plugin names across the top, and then just started listing the various blocks by row. If a plugin had social icons, as almost every plugin does, then I would list their equivalent block beside the next one. I could then see at a quick glance the “types” of plugins down the side, and the options to the left. And now it’s time to prune. 🙂
Keeping the obvious text ones
The most basic block of all is the paragraph block. It is the fundamental building block of all text entries, so obviously that one must stay. I also have a lot of legacy pages created in the Classic Editor, so the Classic Paragraph has to stay, at least for now. It allows detailed formatting inline, which the new default doesn’t as easily. I’m surprised none of the plugins have created a new “Advanced Paragraph” option with similar features, but I know part of the reason is that it would seemingly violate the spirit and intent of the new block editor. If you want to style text, you use the top menu and the side menu, not inline menus that have it all together.
Interestingly, the default paragraph one includes an option for using a “drop cap” (a large initial letter for the paragraph, like old books, as this paragraph is styled), yet there are two other drop cap blocks that do almost the same thing. The ones from Atomic and Qodeblock give a few other options with them — the letter by itself, with a box around it, or in reverse (a black box with the letter cut out) — but I have no pressing use for the function unless I was trying to do some sort of odd “bulleted list”. I’ve disabled them and if I need it, I can settle for the default paragraph option. I also find it interesting that the default one shows the drop cap in the editor (as long as you are not editing the paragraph), while the other two only show up when you preview the page, which would easy to forget when doing editing on the fly.
Overall, the default paragraph and classic paragraphs are enough power for me. Scratch 2 other unnecessary blocks.
The next obvious one is the default Heading block (used above for the text “keeping the obvious text ones”). It gives me the options to do any one of the standard 6 heading styles, and I am trying to use it more liberally throughout my docs to enhance the structure. I tend to be verbose, so forcing a structure on my posts is helpful. However, there are two other big options.
Kadence has an Advanced Heading option which is decent. It moves the text alignment to the sidebar (rather than the standard options at the top for the regular header block) and adds configurable options for desktop, tablet and mobile phone, and extensive typography options (font family, letter spacing, line height, capitalization, highlighting, margins, padding, and shadows).
Ultimate Addons goes in a slightly different direction. Their default is centred and it allows you to add a description below the heading. It would be great for a page title, for example, or perhaps in pages in a very long post. Or perhaps even if you wanted to use it as a quote layout (the quote in the big text and the description could be a citation/source). The typography options are not quite as extensive as Kadence, but it is an interesting option.
However, to be honest, I don’t have a huge need when it comes to headings. Almost all of my headings are simple ones at the H4 level that don’t require extensive tweaking.
And if I do want that for a one-off situation, I can do it with lots of other blocks, without installing extra ones. I’ll stick to my three default ones.
Update: To see my current collection of blocks, check out the blocks I use.
I mentioned in an earlier post (New featured images – Headers, website posts, and computers) that I was upgrading my setup on my website for graphics, and I’ve already covered posts related to astronomy, my website and computers, and governance (governance, international development, civil service, a conference and my HR Guide). For my website posts, I used to frequently use an image of a frog typing:
I decided during this update that I wanted to re-purpose that image to just be about writing, so I found other images for my website/blogging options.
But even with that re-purposing, and saving it for writing, I’m left with a second question. Do I use it for MY writing, i.e., my fiction? Or do it use it when I’m writing about the craft of writing? Or both?
I confess up until recently, a lot of categories related to my writing have tended to blend together. For example, while I have 52 posts that are in the “writing” category, only five of them are ONLY in the writing category; the other 47 are cross-posted with publishing, family, even weight-loss. Which is a bit of a question mark for me…if I decide to write about a topic on my blog, isn’t it ALL writing?
When it comes to family, I have written eulogies for my father and mother, and a wedding speech for my own wedding. Back in university, I did a skit nite for stand-up style comedy, and my weekend update sketch is on my site. Those are quite different from most of my posts, and I would say are samples of my “writing”. They cross-post, sure, but they are not posts — they are stand-alone writing projects. I’m also working on a novel that I started back in November … it clearly is NOT a “post”. So I have filed it with my writing category. And for me, I think that is the main defining criteria. When I’m writing something as a project, even though I’m posting it, it is “writing”. Anything else is, well, not “writing”.
Yet in that category, I also have a bunch of posts about the technical side of writing. Mostly articles I’ve read, or reviews of classes / books about writing. And when I think of those, it is almost like post-writing, near “editing”, or pre-writing, generic techniques. None of those phrases lend themselves to an obvious image. Editing perhaps could have a red pen marking up text, but that’s hard to show in a small graphic. I found an image of an editor sitting on a throne, or a pile of manuscripts, but those are a particular type of tone. I found one of a pencil over a marked up page, but the look wasn’t appealing, and the dimensions were wrong. I considered one of a typewriter (old school), one of a kid writing at a desk (wrong tone, wrong dimensions), and one of a pencil on blue sheet of paper (nice colours, nothing communicative).
After eliminating those, I’m down to three options. The first is a piece of text with a magnifying glass and a pencil hovering above it. It has an “editing” / “technique” vibe to it, I guess, but the image itself doesn’t resonate with me. The second is an orange piece of paper (visually appealing), with a burgundy ballpoint pen to the side. I like it, it’s decent. And the third one is a red square that looks almost like a button. With a red pencil above it writing on a piece of paper within the square. It isn’t as communicative as the orange paper with a pen, but it “pops” as a featured image. Plus I feel like the red signifies “editing” somehow. Either will work, but I’m going with the red one.
There is one other category with a similar bent to it, and for lack of a better term for the category, I labelled it “publishing”. If the writing technique comes first, and my writing comes second, then the business of getting those words into the world comes next. I could try to do something more with sales and bookstores, but that presupposes a stage that is separate from publishing. If I went the ebook world, those are likely more tightly tied together, particularly if my main sales venue were to be Amazon. As with governance, I created my own symbol. A four-quadrant circle and stuck different “avenues” or “models” of publishing in the quadrants.
With the decision to wrap these all together in the “writing” category, I’ve even decided to delete the publishing category all together. In the end, it comes down to “writing technique”, “my writing”, and the “business of writing”.
