What is Gutenberg for WP?

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Gutenberg

I have heard about this major overhaul of the WordPress editor for a few months now and I have been following it loosely. If you ask me, just the name itself is a bit creepy.

There is a plugin, which I haven’t tried yet, that is out.



The reason I did not install the plugin is because of the poor rating (2.6 out of 5 star) and it has received and all the negative reviews.


I did a bit of research and there are very mixed reviews! People are not giving it the two thumbs up quite often. It has been compared to WIX and Squarespace, and it is seen as an attempt by WordPress to react to their competition and the move will change the interface quite drastically.

It seems that the change is inevitable, and we will all be affected by it one way or another, good or bad.

There’s even a plugin already out that’s called “Classic Editor” that will restore the previous WordPress editor and edit screen to it’s original state.

I also searched for a release date, but did not find any

My question here is why fix something that is not broken? Am I missing some underlying concept here, or my ignorance of the matter is somewhat blinding me?

Is it going to make or break WordPress?

What are your opinions?

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Recent Comments

35

Thanks for sharing your post I need to do more research on Gutenberg

No problem! :)

Hi Denis,

I haven't tried it yet, but like anything new, all the bugs have to be worked out. No opinions yet from me. We'll see.

All the best,
Sue

It's actually not bad. I tried it on a test site and it's OK...

Hi Denis, I tried and found it a little buggy. I put a bullet list in a post and later inserted a spacer, then the bullet list does not show the bullets anymore.

Even it is not as flexible as drag-and-drop page builders like WIX, I do like the block feature which makes editing easier. I just wish WP can make sections that contain blocks, and make editing even more flexible.

Hugh

Thanks for your input here Hugh. You're way ahead of me on that. Will be extra care if I use bullets...

Thanks for sharing that, was not aware. No opinions yet, just don't like the ratings.

I guess these are older reviews. Check Marion's training. It's worth the time! :)

"why fix something that is not broken?"

Because "if we always do what we have always done, we will always get what we always got.".

The simple answer to your question (and I have asked it many times in the past :-) ) is "to make it better".

I haven't used Gutenberg yet, but just activated it on one of my sites, so I'm going to give it a try--Marion's word is good enough for me.

Best wishes and good luck,

Joe

Agreed! I have tried it and it's not that frightening. :)

Good to know, Denis, thanks...I probably won't get to it for a few more hours, but looking forward to it. I think it is good for us to "get outside our comfort zones" once in a while.

Yeah! Keeps us sharp! :)

Good afternoon Denis,

I can understand your concern, most people are somehow worried.
Marion has written a lot of posts on this issue and is all positive.
I will give her a vote of confidence.

Greetings from the south of Spain, Taetske

I agree,. I have complete confidence in what Marion teaches here! :)

If we are doing our post in WA site editor can we still use Gutenberg editor for headings, paragraphs and images?

Sorry cannot help here. I am not familiar with Gutenberg at all. Hopefully someone else can chime in with an answer. :)

Yes, you'll be able to edit in Wordpress just like you do now. Gutenberg is just a 'named' release for the new WP editor coming in version 5.0.

Most of those negative reviews were made when the plugin was in the very early development stage and at that time it really was woeful. It's improved out of sight since then. I love it now and can't wait for it to become part of WordPress core. It will make writing content so much easier, especially for beginners.

Well Finally, a good review someone who has authority here! :)

I was still debating to install it after the 4.9.8 update...

If you say it's good, I will try it!

Thanks Marion!

Funny thing,

I installed the plugin, it is activated, but I'm still seeing the "classic editor"

What did I miss?

Start a new post or convert an old post to blocks. I did a few videos on using Gutenberg. The links are at the bottom of this post

Hi Denis, I have similar questions. In fact, with front-end editors like DIVI, WIX, Elementor, I guess it is probably time for WordPress to do something about it. Personally, I don't like the idea of being locked in with a editor plugin but if this feature is built into WordPress directly, haa...that's a different story.

I guess we can look at it this way: No pain no gain. It's always like that when something familiar changes. The fact that page builders do whatever we want right now doesn't mean it's not the time for a change...

I use Elementor anytime I want to publish a page with a different format than the one WP has. I wish they would incorporate a page builder instead, that would be neat. Elementor is quite memory hungry (on my computer anyway).

I use Elementor as well for a couple of pages. The gripe I have now is that it is memory hungry and according to some, slows down the site. If I were to deactivate it, my Elementor-designed posts will go haywire and lose all their formatting. This is the constant dilemma.

I know what you are saying! It is a dilemma!

Companies often do things like this, try and match the competition s product or way of working when most of the time the way they previously were doing things was better.

My point exactly. It took me a long time to find my way through the WordPress dashboard. Now that I am familiar with it, they want to go and change it. :)

It's not that I'm against change or anything, I'm being careful I guess...

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