The future of WordPress: Visual Scripting

How Visual Scripting will change the way we work with WordPress

We’ve seen the rise of Page Builders in WordPress — love them or hate them, they’re here to stay.

The majority of the WordPress development process is a visual one. From the famous 5 minute install to setting up plugins and themes and (now) designing pages and posts using a Page Builder — it’s all done via the browser.

Compare that to building a site in another platform, such as React or Laravel: The vast majority of your time, as a developer, will be buried in code.

WordPress is simply a lot easier to get up and going without having to write code, and I have no doubt that this is a major contributing factor in it’s rise to the top of the CMS world.

However, there are still a couple of areas of WordPress that are still firmly rooted in the realm of code: Plugin and Theme development.

Why Visual Scripting is needed

Most clients I deal with are small business owners who run a WordPress site. They manage to get the majority of the site up and running, but sometimes get stuck on the small details, such as integrating two plugins, or adding a custom field to their WooCommerce checkout.

The reason for this is that installing and configuring plugins can only get you so far — once you start trying to add functionality that is outside of the scope of these plugins, you have to start copying and pasting code or hiring developers.

A code-less solution would be ideal.

Let’s take a look at another development industry: Game Development.

Just a few years ago, Unity was the clear market leader in independent game development. While a lot of the development was done by connecting components together, there was still a lot of coding required.

That all changed when Unreal Engine announced their intention to compete in the indie market — and included an intuitive, code-free, visual scripting system called Blueprints. Blueprints allowed non-programmers to code their game via a drag and drop/click interface, and the entire industry was disrupted virtually overnight.

The Blueprint Visual Scripting engine from Unreal Engine 4

Unity does have it’s own Visual Scripting plugins available, but it was the power of Unreal Engine 4, the ease of use of Blueprints and the $0 up-front costs that allowed UE4 to take off.

When applying this to WordPress, we’re already 2/3rds of the way there — we have a powerful content management platform, and it’s free and open-source.

Add in Visual Scripting and non-programmers will be able to take full advantage of the power of WordPress.

What Visual Scripting will do for you

Let’s imagine you’re a small business owner selling books and would like to add a new feature to your website: Allow users to list their second-hand books for sale on your site for a small commission - similar to Amazon.

The first thing you’d do is look for a plugin. WooCommerce Product Vendors might get you part of the way there, but since you want the vendor listings to be displayed in a simple format on the main product page, you’ll need to add a second plugin that allows this.

Since it’s a fairly specific requirement, you’ll probably spend a few hours fruitlessly searching, and then end up having to pay a developer to code it.

With Visual Scripting, this is no longer an issue. What you’d need to do is install Product Vendors, then simply create a new script using the Visual Scripting interface and click a few buttons to inject the list of second-hand items into the parent product page.

The end result is you would save a lot of time and money — and can tweak the process until it’s perfect.

But what if you’re a developer?

As a WordPress developer, visual scripting may not seem to be that useful at first glance. But add in the ability to “Export to Code”, and you’ll be able to prototype things very quickly.

Site developers could build up their own library of Visual Script recipes — and apply them to new sites by tweaking a few settings.

Plugin developers will be able to support integration requests from users simply by registering their current hooks with the Visual Scripting engine — resulting in more downloads and/or sales.

Theme developers will be able to add custom extension points into their theme that allow users to hook in and customise in ways that cannot be done currently.

What Visual Scripting will do for the community

Once Visual Scripting is adopted by the majority of the community, we’ll start to see some changes:

Lightweight plugins

Plugin bloat will disappear as plugin developers will spend less time focusing on supporting every possible feature — and more time concentrating on their core features.

Faster iterations

Development time will be reduced as Visual Scripts can be easily reused and shared. Adding a new feature to a site will be as simple as clicking a few buttons via the Dashboard.

Happier end users

Site owners will be able to take full advantage of WordPress and provide a much more refined user experience to their end users by tailoring their site to suit their audience.

WordPress is the ideal platform to take advantage of Visual Scripting — and I believe it’s just a matter of time until it does.

Thoughts? Disagree with the above post? Let me know in the comments below