The current WordPress visual editor hasn’t had many changes over the years and for the most part, has stayed pretty much the same. While this isn’t a bad thing, many think it is time for a change. Other platforms such as Medium or Ghost provide a really unique and refreshing experience for writers, so why can’t WordPress? Well, many contributors and volunteers have been working on the new Gutenberg WordPress editor behind the scenes for the past 6+ months. Their goal? To make adding rich content to WordPress simple and enjoyable. Today we will dive into the new editor and discuss some pros and cons.
- What is Gutenberg?
- How to Install Gutenberg
- Exploring Gutenberg
- Pros of Gutenberg WordPress Editor
- Cons of Gutenberg WordPress Editor
- Try Gutenberg Demo
What is Gutenberg?
Gutenberg is a take on a new editor for WordPress. It is named after Johannes Gutenberg, who invented a printing press with movable type more than 500 years ago. The current visual editor requires a lot of us to utilize shortcodes and HTML to make things work. Their goal is to make this easier, especially for those just starting with WordPress. They are embracing “little blocks” and hope to add more advanced layout options. You can check out the official example.
To be fair to the developers and the team working on this, it is important to note that this is currently in its beta and testing phase, it’s not ready to run on production sites yet. But we wanted to dive in and see for ourselves what all the hype is about. We will make sure to keep this post updated as improvements and changes are pushed out. It appears that before this will be officially merged into WordPress core that Matt Mullenweg (the founder) is hoping to get 100,000 active installs. Which makes perfect sense, as this will work out a lot of the bugs, issues, and allow them to process new ideas and feature requests.
“I think we can do 4.9 before we merge #Gutenberg — ideally over 100,000 active installs first.” @photomatt #WCEU
— Bridget Willard (@YouTooCanBeGuru) June 17, 2017
Because Gutenberg is still in the testing phase, the team working on it are encouraging people to try it out and leave comments and feedback in the WordPress support forum or open an issue on GitHub. Or you can join the discussions that take place in #core-editor on the core WordPress Slack. Gutenberg will be shipping with WordPress 5.0.
How to Install Gutenberg
As of writing this, the Gutenberg plugin currently has a little over 20,000 active installs with over 290,000 total downloads and a 2.5 out of 5-star rating. It also requires WordPress version 4.8 to use it.
Gutenberg WordPress plugin
You can download the latest version of Gutenberg from the WordPress repository or by searching for it within your WordPress dashboard under “Add New” plugins. Again, we recommend installing this on a test site or utilize your host’s staging environment.
Install Gutenberg WordPress plugin
Exploring Gutenberg
After installing Gutenberg, you will see links under your Posts that allow you to open up the Gutenberg editor. They don’t replace the default WordPress editor, which is a good thing in our opinion, as during the testing phase it allows you to bounce back and forth. As of the latest version on the repository, it now supports custom page types and pages as well.
Gutenberg link on post
Important: Once WordPress 5.0 is released Gutenberg will be the default editor (#41316), but you will still have the option to install the classic editor if you run into compatibility issues (as seen in the new callout coming below).
WordPress 5.0 Gutenberg callout
Gutenberg adds a new menu in your WordPress dashboard which contains a demo (as seen below) and the ability to create a new post. Again, this menu is probably just for testing purposes As you can see the visual editor looks quite different than the once you are probably used to. It has a very similar feel to Medium, which we think is great.
Gutenberg editor demo
If you take a look at both the Gutenberg editor and the current visual editor side by side (click to enlarge) you can see just how much more writing space Gutenberg has, especially on smaller screens. For people writing on laptops, Gutenberg is going to be a nice change of pace! It really is focused on “writing first” and is trying to provide a less distracting environment.
Comparing Gutenberg vs current editor
In the Gutenberg WordPress editor, you can click on “Post Settings” to remove the right-hand sidebar. And while this does give you access to even more of your screen it is kind of halfway in between the currently available distraction-free writing mode. We tried using Shift+Alt+W to launch it in Gutenberg editor but it doesn’t seem to work yet. It could be they haven’t added this yet. But we are pretty sure they will, as there are probably quite a few people that use this.
Hide post settings (half-way there to distraction-free writing mode)
To switch between the visual editor mode and text editor (code), there is now a dropdown in the top left. You will notice that there are now HTML comments at the beginning and end of each block. For example, the following would allow you to create a text block.
<!-- wp:core/text --> <!-- /wp:core/text -->This allows you to create the blocks directly from the text editor mode. However, it also adds a lot more clutter than you are probably used to if you are editing in this mode.
Gutenberg text editor
When you highlight over a block, there are options to easily move it up or down with the arrows, delete it, or go into the settings of the block. This is very similar to the controls available to you on Medium.
Working with Gutenberg blocks
We were also surprised by how well it worked on mobile right out of the box. If you need to make a quick image insert or add a paragraph before publishing a post on the go, it looks like Gutenberg is going to make that very easy.
Gutenberg editor mobile
One of the first things you will probably notice is that the TinyMCE toolbar you have been used to seeing for years is now gone. It is now replaced with a drop-down menu if you click on the “Insert” button. Well, that is because it appears Gutenberg is trying to get rid of its dependency on the TinyMCE integration. Or are they?
TinyMCE is no more
Here is what Matt Mullenweg had to say about it.
“What we’re trying to do is shift it so that you only have to learn about blocks once and once you learn about the image block, that can be in a post, in a sidebar, in a page, in a custom post type, and it will work exactly the same way. Whatever is integrated with it, let’s say a plugin that brings in your Google Photos or your Dropbox, that will now work everywhere, too.” — Matt Mullenweg (src: WP Tavern)
However, Andrew Roberts, the project leader on the TinyMCE team also reached out to us and cleared up a few things with regards to what his happening with TinyMCE and Gutenberg.
I’ve been on the Gutenberg team since inception. It has been a joint effort. It is probably worth noting that TinyMCE core editing engine is the powering the “editable” component that in turn powers most of the blocks. The Table block for example. That is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.
Also, the Classic Text block is essentially the TinyMCE editor. How much prominence it gets is probably dependent on feedback from the community. There is actually a Pull Request (#1394) being worked which essentially makes Gutenberg a wrapper for the ‘old’ editor so that existing TinyMCE plugins and buttons would work. Remains to be seen if that gets included.
Regardless, it is likely that the WP and TinyMCE Core teams will work together to ensure that a more word processing-style user experience lives on in WordPress. Even if it eventually becomes a plugin.
On a related note, one of the reasons we have been working on the Gutenberg project with the excellent Gutenberg team has been to bring these concepts to the wider TinyMCE community over the next 12 months. That will enable you to bring block-based editing concepts into your own custom application. — Andrew Roberts
Below are a few new block additions we thought were pretty cool.
Table Block and Text Column Block
Simple tables are much easier now, as you can insert them as blocks within the editor. Previously you had to either use a 3rd party plugin or HTML code. Currently, you can only add a 2×2 table with the insert option and you can’t style it without going into the text view. Although, eventually we assume you will be able to do all these things from the visual editor.
Gutenberg tables
They have also added the ability to add responsive text column blocks, which is great! Currently, you can choose between a 2, 3, and 4 column layout. Responsive columns in WordPress have always been a pain in the past and usually require a third-party plugin to get working properly.
Gutenberg columns
Live HTML Block
They also have what we are calling an live HTML block. You can insert your code and then see a preview from right within the block. This is actually a pretty cool idea and might actually prevent some of us from having to switch back and forth between the visual editor and text editor modes.
HTML block in Gutenberg editor
Drag and Drop Images
As of Gutenberg 0.5.0, you can now drag and drop images directly into an image block, just like you are used to with the visual editor. However, there is a fade effect when doing this which is quite strange. We could easily see this being an issue.
Drag and drop images
You can also now add additional CSS classes to certain blocks.
Add CSS class
Recent Blocks
With all the blocks being built into the Gutenberg editor, and probably many more to come, they added “Recent blocks” to try and help speed up the process of insertion.
Recent blocks
Cover Text Options
As of Gutenberg 0.9.0, they also introduced some new visual styles and options for cover text. You can easily change the font size, turn it into a Drop Cap, and change the color with their new custom color palette component.
Gutenberg cover text
Slash Autocomplete
A cool feature added in Gutenberg 1.1.0 is the ability to use autocomplete to insert blocks. For those of us who use Slack on a daily basis, this is a very familiar way of quickly formatting content the way you want it. Having the option to minimize clicks and utilize more of the keyboard is always a good thing!
Gutenberg autocomplete (Img src: WordPress.org)
Table of Contents and Anchor Support
They have also added a Table of Contents on the sidebar. They are clickable links so you can easily jump to a section in your article. This can come in handy for when writing long form content.
Gutenberg table of contents
Another feature you can now use on blocks is anchors. This is actually pretty exciting and something that has been needed in core for a long time. Adding anchors allows you to then link directly to a certain section or header in the article. This is great for sharing, as well as creating jump to menus in SERPs.
Gutenberg anchor support
Word and Block Counts
Most of us are used to seeing the total word count at the bottom of the WYSIWYG editor. Well, in Gutenberg 1.2.1 they have added this as a little informational popup you can quickly view. You can see the total word count, number of blocks, and number of headings.
Gutenberg word and block counts
Pull Quotes Block and New Alignment Options
Besides just having the standard blockquote which we have been using for years, they also have a new pull quote. And yes, pull quotes are different. It is also nice to see some variations on the positioning of the blocks. For years, the standard visual editor has given you the ability to align left, align center, align right, and assign no alignment. With the Gutenberg WordPress editor, you can also align wide (as seen below), and align full-width.
Gutenberg pull quote aligned wide
Button
There is also a built in method for adding a simple button. While there aren’t very many options here yet, it is nice to see, as many bloggers and publishers need easier ways to add call to actions to their blogs posts. Right now you have to use HTML or rely on a 3rd party button/shortcode plugin.
Gutenberg button
Embed Options
If you wanted more easily accessible embed options, well, you are definitely getting your wish! Gutenberg makes embedding media content super easy, whether it be YouTube, SoundCloud, Hulu, Flickr, Imgur, Twitter, Slideshare, Reddit, and many more. While you could embed all of these before, many didn’t realize this because there was no mention of it in the visual editor. Combined with the new block experience and alignment options, we aren’t sure what could really be done better. Although, they might have to reorganize things going forward as this could easily get cluttered.
Gutenberg embed options
Pros of Gutenberg WordPress Editor
Here are a few pros we see with the current Gutenberg Editor.
- Ditching *some* reliance on TinyMCE is a good thing in our opinion. We would love to see a tighter integration between core, theme developers, plugins, and the editor.
'Right now WordPress makes you learn a lot of concepts… [Gutenberg lets you] learn it once and use it everywhere.' @photomatt #WCEU
— Alex Denning (@AlexDenning) June 17, 2017
- For publishers that prefer the newer Medium style editing experience, they are most likely going to love the WordPress Gutenberg editor.
- Gutenberg provides a less distracting experience with more screen space.
- Blocks are fun to use and the new alignment options are a step forward for larger resolution screens and full-width templated and responsive sites.
- Already works great on mobile, and going forward we can actually see people utilizing this a lot more. Need to make a quick edit on your phone while on the go? No problem.
- The ability for theme and plugin developers to create their own custom blocks.
- Easier to use for beginners.
Another thing that caught our eye was in Gutenberg 0.4.0 they mentioned in their development logs adding an API for handling pasted content. (Aim is to have specific handling for converting Word, Markdown, Google Docs to native WordPress blocks.) This would be amazing. Right now copying from Google Docs to WordPress is completely broken.
Cons of Gutenberg WordPress Editor
And here are a few cons we see in the current Gutenberg editor. Remember, it is still in the testing phase, so a lot of these things will probably be fixed or added.
- It is currently missing Markdown support.
- While we also listed it being easier to use for beginners, we can also see this as being harder for some to learn.
- As of October 2017, Gutenberg does now support meta boxes. However, this is only initial support and it will require developers hopping on board. However, it’s a step in the right direction. You can at least tweak your Yoast SEO settings now. 😄
Gutenberg meta boxes
- With so many themes and plugins out there, backwards compatibility is going to be a huge issue going forward. In fact, there will probably be thousands of developers that now have to do a lot of work, such as those that have integrations with TinyMCE. Out of all the WordPress updates, this is probably going to be one that causes the most work for developers. Although there might be a wrapper coming which would enable TinyMCE backwards compatibility. See pull request #1394.
- Some are worried about the accessibility of Gutenberg. Joost de Valk, the developer of Yoast SEO brought up this concern. Make sure to also check out this post about using Gutenberg with a screen reader.
Developers have started voicing their concerns with Gutenberg. Ahmad Awais has also released a Gutenberg boilerplate to help WordPress theme and plugin developers kick-start their development with Gutenberg. Worth checking out.
And many of you are probably wondering, will Gutenberg be optional or not? The answer is no. When they role out Gutenberg officially into WordPress core, you won’t be able to turn it off. As this will become the official editor for WordPress. There is, however, a free plugin called Classic Editor which you can use to restore the old post editor. But use this as a means to an end.
We also recommend checking out this great post on Gutenberg myth-busting which might answer any additional questions you might have.
Try Gutenberg Demo
Want to play with Gutenberg without installing it? Check out Frontenberg, a limited front-end demo of the WordPress Gutenberg editor.
For further reading we recommend you to take a look at our WordPress 5.0 guide: What’s New in WordPress 5.0 (How to Prepare for Gutenberg).
Introduction to the Twenty Twenty Theme.
Also, if you are not ready yet you can disable the new editor. Here is our guide: How to Disable the Gutenberg WordPress Editor.
Summary
Overall we were quite impressed with the new Gutenberg WordPress editor, it’s definitely something we are excited about for the future. We encourage everyone to grab a copy of it from the WordPress repository and install it on a dev or staging site. This is our chance folks to help build the editor we have all been wanting. We can have the same experience Medium folks do but in our favorite CMS! The team here at Kinsta will definitely be taking some time to help give feedback.
Have you tried out Gutenberg yet? If so, we would love to hear your thoughts, both good and bad.
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Embedding content from services like YouTube, using the built in oEmbeds, are already super-easy to use in the existing TinyMCE editor. You simply paste a url into the editor and that’s it. Also, I think it’s worth clarifying that Gutenberg hasn’t added any new embed options. All those existing embed options (YouTube, Speaker Deck, Flickr, Imgur etc.) have been available in WordPress for years. It is good that they’re now more visible though, as there’s lots of people who don’t know that WordPress can already handle this and so they install site specific plugins (YouTube embeds, being the most common ones I see).
Also, the image for the new Table block is a little misleading. There’s no way you could’ve added that table without switching to the Text view and editing the HTML as the Table block doesn’t currently provide functionality to add extra Rows or Columns. It simply inserts a 2×2, unformatted table, and that’s it. I know they’re working on fixing this, but since the article was about the current Gutenberg plugin, I think it’s important to show what it currently does, not what it’s expected to do.
Thanks for taking the time to comment, I have updated the article above addressing your concerns.
No probs, Brian. Thanks for the great post :-)
I recently tried to add an image to a table cell. Not possible! I had to resort to HTML code from the page the original table (with) pictures was in. And some additional CSS too. Not at all handy I would say
Extending a table (row/column) is now possible, but it does not seem to be possible to insert (cut/paste) images in table cells?
Sorry, but this looks and feels bad, and is a productivity drain. Hiding
UI elements until you click on things is terribly confusing for some
new people (the opposite of your goal.) You’ve just doubled the number
of clicks I need to accomplish the exact same thing. I would only favor
this in core, if it’s to replace the current distraction free editor.
If this replaces TinyMCE in core then I’ll replace WordPress for my
site. Not even remotely a fan of the direction the editor is going.
Thanks for the comment. Ya, its definitely not for everyone. I personally like it, but I also enjoy the Medium experience and don’t do much clicking while writing. It will be interesting to see what happens. I see three possible scenarios happening:
1. They merge into core and everyone will simply have to adopt to the new changes.
2. They merge into core and it is optional, like you said, possibly replacing the distraction-free writing mode.
3. They merge into core and still allow a TinyMCE integration back into it to help the thousands of integrations currently already coded for the editor.
Time will tell.
forget the “new”people, take into account most of us have clients that are 60 year old or more, this editor must be opt-in not “default” editor by any means
@Black Lodge Games : I agree with your comment. When Gutenberg will be released as core component , most of the themes and plugins will need to be updated. That will be a new level of pain for product owners. On other hand that will bring new opportunity for developer to earn more money.
Hi, I’m project leader on the TinyMCE team. And I’ve been on the Gutenberg team since inception. It has been a joint effort.
It is probably worth noting that TinyMCE core editing engine is the powering the “editable” component that in turn powers most of the blocks. The Table block for example. That is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.
Also, the Classic Text block is essentially the TinyMCE editor. How much prominence it gets is probably dependent on feedback from the community. There is actually a Pull Request being worked which essentially makes Gutenberg a wrapper for the ‘old’ editor so that existing TinyMCE plugins and buttons would work. Remains to be seen if that gets included.
Regardless, it is likely that the WP and TinyMCE Core teams will work together to ensure that a more word processing-style user experience lives on in WordPress. Even if it eventually becomes a plugin.
On a related note, one of the reasons we have been working on the Gutenberg project with the excellent Gutenberg team has been to bring these concepts to the wider TinyMCE community over the next 12 months. That will enable you to bring block-based editing concepts into your own custom application.
Hey Andrew, thanks a lot for taking the time to comment. This definitely clears up a few things and I have updated the post above with some of your comments, as well as a link to pull request #1394. Sounds like this might resolve some issues that a lot of developers are worried about going forward.
No MCE custom buttons and toolbars so shortcodes can use them to generate content, no meta boxes, no columns. With all the available page builders, Gutenberg is not needed. In fact if the custom MCE buttons and meta boxes are not added, this thing is useless. They are about to break thousands of themes and plugins, and for what? Didn’t the surveys show that almost nobody cared about distraction free writing? And yet, here we are, thanks to some real “geniuses” getting ready to break many things, without any real advantages, You want something more than the usual editor, there are dozens of good page builders to choose from. I hate Gutenberg with a passion, and my anger grows every day and every time when somebody says the word Gutenberg. Make it a bloody plugin, and that’s it! Simply said the pros do not outweigh the cons, not in a thousand years,
You can’t compare a page builder with a editor. Compare page builders with acf or whatever you want but your comment is just hilarious. Go and play with your drag and drop page builders.
Gutenberg is more than just an editor, it is a whole new way of editing posts and pages. It is trying mimic page builders, and is failing miserably. And for the record, I don’t use page builders, but if I did, I would choose one of the many good ones, over the retarded, disaster of an idea Gutenberg. What’s hilarious, is that you are not defending Gutenberg, just throwing insults. What’s so great with Gutenberg then? Let me help you, NOTHING, unless you are a sheep and follow and do whatever you are told, without thinking.
I agree. WordPress not ought to waste anymore time with this nonsense. This is going to mess with a lot of sites that already have a solution working for them. Time to dump this idea of reinventing the wheel guys.
Every time I’ve used a page builder, it broke my site. I currently have the visual editor disabled. I am sure when Gutenburg will be the default editor, it will break my site completely. Keep it as optional. Have mercy on the millions of existing users, also give your new users using the favorite Gutenburg – no problem! Don’t fucking break my site!!
Thanks, Brian! For the article and for sharing the Gutenberg Boilerplate! ?
No problem Ahmad! Glad to see you are thinking of developers :) I think that this the crowd that is most worried with these changes.
Just trying to help. ?
Yeah this tries to be too clever, our clients wont like it (since they are frustrated with wix and such seamless editors)
I’m pretty shocked this may be included as an automatic update to WP. I use WP for many things beyond blogging, most often as a middleware. Anything that breaks ACF will doom WordPress to history for thousands of commercial enterprises.
WordPress will not be an automatic update. The ACF team has been working for a while not on making it compatible with Gutenberg.
Start reading here: https://gutenbergtimes.com/eight-truths-about-gutenberg/#status4 (Brian, hope it’s ok to post links in the comments….)
Gutenberg looks great. I guess this will be the end for all these overblown page builder themes.
It looks to have a very long way to go before it replaces Visual Composer.
Mmmmm?
Strange when Gutenberg is a very poor version of one of those builders which you can choose to use or not use.
I am a customer of Elegant themes (for my personal website) but am also the webmaster for a church that is using a free theme that is five years old and has never been updated (as free themes usually are not). I’ve tried unsuccessfully to get the church staff to work with me on finding a new theme (not a free one). I have two questions.
1. Will the Guttenberg editor be pushed out to all wordpress websites and will it be compatible with older ones? My worry is that the church website could fail with that upgrade.
2. I don’t want to suggest disallowing WordPress upgrades for security reasons (that website is already vulnerable enough with a discontinued, not updated free theme anyway) so I don’t want to suggest not allowing WP updates. So I am thinking about issuing a warning about Guttenberg to the church staff in case it causes a disruption of their website.
Ideas, comments, suggestions welcome. Thank you!!!!
1. Gutenberg is a core feature so, eventually, all themes will be forced to use it. I don’t know what effects it’ll have on themes that haven’t been updated
2. Rather than give them a warning that will not happen for a while you can disable Gutenberg for the time being and give the church staff time to come up with a decision (but see answer 1 above) but they will have to come up with a decision because the ability to disable Gutenberg will not be feasible long term
Patricia, Themes, especially those from the WordPress Repository should display Gutenberg blocks just fine, as they are nothing different than content stored in the post_content field any Themes uses. Blocks provide their own default styling. You might not get all features like “align-full” or “align-wide” but the site should still function well.
You can create a copy of the site and test it out. Feel me to email to wp4good@nptechprojects.org and I’ll invite to our next Gutenberg Live Q & A for nonprofits.
So you’re “updating” your text editor? Ok, but why not go further and integrate the drag and drop page layout of something like Visual Composer. Heck, just buy Visual Composer and integrate it into WordPress, and make sure it works with posts.
Gutenberg is both exciting and potentially worrisome. An official page builder would be terrific, I’ve seen options like Visual Composer cause far more problems then solutions in the long term for mid to large sized enterprises and businesses. That said, what I’ve seen so far appears to be a drag and drop page builder for existing, simple elements: blockquotes, buttons, images, oEmbeds. This is useful for a WordPress.com user, but not so much for self-hosted CMS systems. I’m very curious to see how cumbersome it will be to isolate advanced editing UI’s within a custom block. Automattic has a wonderful team, but I do feel that they’re disconnected from the vast majority working with self-hosted WP installs. Their track record with Jetpack provides some past evidence of this. While Gutenberg will help Automattic compete with Wix and Squarespace through WordPress.com, I’m not yet optimistic on how it will affect advanced self-hosted sites.
Very concerned with the effect this is going to have with all the non-technical clients that me and others have built out in the past, that may have issues after the release. Yes, as many have said, there is going to be a lot of money to be made, but there are also going to be a lot of pissed off clients who may just move on to something else, and probably blame us developers for it.
… and if the project is starting now, and the WordPress Gutenberg fiasco hasn’t been fully explained to the client, then what? Do we get sued if their site breaks when they upgrade? How do we explain this issue to clients without having them say, “I don’t want that”? I’ve had people threaten to sue me over WordPress being “A hacker target”, so I’m not just blowing smoke here. People expect their website to work and to continue working, which I think is reasonable. I’m currently not starting any new WordPress websites until 5 is released, and unfortunately been looking for alternatives to WordPress. Anyone tried Silverstripe?
My initial reaction is that this doesn’t look a good prospect.
Agreed with what Nodws said. trying to be too clever which could end up disappointing WP users (and of course clients too).
Shouldn’t Gutenberg have specific post/page level JavaScript and custom CSS inserting facility?
Gutenberg has been on my mind a lot recently, about the motivations behind the project and how it is being implemented. It’s a powerful piece of software for sure, but is it right for WordPress? I’m not convinced, and wrote my thoughts up here – https://deliciousbrains.com/wordpress-gutenberg/
Hey Iain, I actually added a link to your post above last week :) Above under “Developers have started voicing their concerns with Gutenberg.” Thanks for sharing, it’s a great piece!
Ha, need more coffee! Cheers Brian ?
Even the page builders that are out there now (Visual Composer, Fusion Builder, etc.) give you the option to switch to the WP editor. This doesn’t? Really.
My main concern is no meta boxes. How the heck are you supposed to add features and functionality to custom post types? Or are custom post types going away, too?
As someone who absolutely abhors page builders in general due to their confusing natures (feature overload for most people), this is a very bad idea and should be scrapped. I, for one, will be disabling this thing on every I do. And if it’s forced on my, I’ll either go back to straight HTML coding or find some other less confusion and more functional platform.
Hey Jason, Gutenberg does support meta boxes and custom post types. I think everyone shares your concerns though regarding how it works and getting rid of the normal editor we have all been used to over the years. Thankfully this is still in beta and they are making good progress. But time will definitely tell how it turns out.
Text column support has been added – might want to adjust that but it’s not a full column system as yet.
Gutenberg is ambitious but in my opinion, it needs to be more ambitious. Just make a page builder as part of core already and make that a way of editing. BOOM – I said it.
I would love to see a backend layout tool and editor for WP that is truly a native setup. All the other page builders have already shown the way to, its just a switch to turn them on.
Thanks Matt! I’ve updated the post with text columns. Great to see this added. Getting closer :)
Brian: You’ve updated the post with text columns, but you haven’t removed the lack of columns from the cons at bottom of article ;)
Appreciate the heads up. This is now done!
This new editor Gutenberg has great potentials, still some of the beta users are afraid of it. However I personally tried it on my blog using plugin and loved it.
Hi guys,
nice tutorial! Reading the comments I think this is the right place to share a good plugin about Gutenberg.
I would like to present you a free plugin that allows you to manage the Gutenberg editor.
It’s called Gutenberg Manager and allows you to enable / disable the editor in the various post types (pages and posts included). It has more features but I leave them to you.
We have read tons of posts of people complaining about the future implementation of Gutenberg within the core in WP 5.0 and this has led us to find a simple solution.
Gutenberg Manager solves this problem and allows for example to continue using Elementor, Visual Composer, Siteorigin Builder or Cornerstone without any problem even after WP 5.0.
From the first user feedback on WP.org the plugin seems to be apreciated :)
For this reason I would like to introduce you to Gutenberg Manager -> https://it.wordpress.org/plugins/manager-for-gutenberg/
The plugin can be used by developers in their own themes and plugins thanks to some useful hooks. There is an hook to HIDE the plugin option panel so the final user will not see it in WP backend (great feature for the devs that want to include Gutenberg Manager in their projects).
We are also making arrangements with the teams of most famous Builders to activate partnerships and collaborations. In this way we hope to make the transition to Gutenberg a little less traumatic!
Thank you all for your attention,
Good job.
Very interesting Alessio. Do you see this being a long-term solution though? I would think at some point we should embrace the changes and make everything compatible. Or perhaps this is being developed as a temporary plugin?
I am convinced that Gutenberg will change the WordPress environment positively. All it needs is some time.
I think the people behind Gutenberg aren’t in a rush and they are trying to deliver the best possible outcomes. We just need to be more patient while the editor goes through the development phase.
Here is an article showing the possibilities of Gutenberg-
https://www.coderex.co/wordpress-gutenberg-nightmare-or-dream-come-true/
I really like them latest update. It is quicker than my usual workflow and I really like the placeholder and to use / as shortcut key to instantly search for blocks.
Would be good if they made it less “wordpress dashboardy” and had an option to have it as a front end page or popup instead on your site. This simple feature would make it look and feel more like a user generated community site like medium etc…
The one criticism I would have with Gutenberg is the general philosophy behind it and the team and the way they want to implement it as core and default with no regard to the needs of users who depend of how the current editor works.
Don’t get me wrong, Gutenberg has potential and I am open to persuasion but it seems they want to see the complete obliteration of what they call the Classic Editor, and widgets for the matter. On widgets, it’s kind of odd, seeing as WP 4.9 introduced many new widgets. The image and gallery widgets and an update to the text widget incorporating a version of TinyMCE.
There is no consideration to how the Classic Editor affords a flexible user experience to fit many types of workflows. The main aspect of this being the ability to move, hide or collapse meta boxes into whatever arrangement you want.
I have been monitoring the feedback on the Gutenberg Plugin page and it is noticeable that there is a certain amount of censorship to comments on there. Yes, some of the feedback is at times shrill but I have seem more moderate and constructive feedback (including my own) redacted or removed. A very disspointing experience in what is supposed to be an open community.
Yes, I have noticed censorship also.
So Gutenberg wants to make WordPress work like Medium? I Have a better idea, shut down WordPress and force everyone to switch to medium.
Oh and one more thing, WordPress is trying to reinvent the plane while it is flying at 500 miles per hour.
As a relative novice to many things WordPress, I’m afraid, very afraid.
I’ve been evaluating Gutenberg for a blog post and I’m stunned by the LACK of features.
Notably, the lack of color options for Heading blocks. The “old” editor allows us to make color changes with a click or two. Now we won’t be able to have color in headings at all.
Why go backwards?
When I heard about Gut. I expected page builders like Elementor, Beaver, etc to become obsolete. Now they’ll become mandatory!
I’ll be putting off WP update past 4.9 as long as possible.
Nice, I Like. BUT and this is a BIG BUT!
I hate serif-ed fonts. Gutenberg’s editor uses the dreaded Time New Roman, the world’s worst font in my humble opinion.
No option to use a font of our choice?
Could be worse, they could force you to use Comic Sans…
One real hassle I had with WordPress was the stripping away custom DIV tags, “br” tags, and “p” tags unless it had inline styling.
Is this Gutenberg framework going to address that issue or make it worst?
Hey Mark, that should hopefully no longer be an issue, but time will tell. Currently, Gutenberg is slated to come out with WordPress 5.0.
Thanks for all of this helpful info – it may not be as scary as I first thought :-)
The reason why wordpress became wordpress because of the Tiny MCE editor.
The tiny MCE editor is very nice to use it has given and gave wordpress users the edge for decades.
Who are these guys that are spearheading to change the wordpress core?
Can you name these people?
Why would they force there ideals of changing the Tiny MCE?
Why would they force it into the Core. It should be optional, not all themes and plugins will work with millions of wordpress designers using the unwanted Gutenberg.
What happens to their contents then?
I will Activate The tiny MCE plugin first
Train myself with gutenberg for a month before i will role the 5.0.
This is giving me extra work.
I’m feeling reluctant to start any new WordPress projects for customers. WP5 rolls out and then what? I get sued for making them something that is broken? Broken is exactly my experience when playing with the Gutenberg plugin.
So WP, if you were looking to be fresh and fancy, and you were hoping that it would attract more people, I hope you realize how many people are going to abandon you.
Is there truly any lack of usage? Seriously, how much more of a percentage of the web would make you happy? I just don’t get it.
BELOW is a list of bullet-points. Each bullet-point represents a complaint and/or issue with the Gutenberg plugin.
――――――――――――――――――――――――――
● #1: The “Settings” panel on the right-hand side is very slow and buggy. For example, every time I edit a post, ALL of the tabs are ALWAYS collapsed, so I have to expand the tabs every time I edit a post. It is unnecessary and time-consuming!
● #2: There is no option to drag the post-type $support tabs (i.e “Revisions”, “Categories”, “Tags”, “Excerpt”, “Comments”, etc.) across the post editor screen. For instance, I like to keep “Discussion” & “Comments” BELOW the content-edit area the_content(), but with Gutenberg that customization has now vanished!
● #3: Speaking of the “Comments” tab, that is missing. Where are the comments?! With Gutenberg, I do have the option to enable & disable comments under the “Discussion” tab, but the “Comments” tab (showing the 20 most recent comments) has disappeared!
● #4: I have two custom Taxonomies for customization purposes, and neither one of those two Taxonomies are showing up anywhere on the post editor screen. Where are my two custom Taxonomies?!
● #5: Every time the “Tags” tab is expanded, it takes a second or two for all the chosen tags to display. Sometimes, the tags won’t display until I click on the content box that stores the tags. This is very annoying! I guess I should be fortunate the tags are at least showing up, unlike my missing custom taxonomies!
● #6: The “Content” edit area the_content() it terrible. For instance, It’s only about 600px in width, and there is no option to expand the width of the “Content” edit area ―― it should behave like a textarea HTML element, but it doesn’t.
● #7: In order to switch between “Visual Editor” & “Code Editor”, I have to click the 3-dotted button in the upper right-hand corner, then choose “Visual Editor” or “Code Editor”. This is yet again unnecessary and time-consuming.
● #8: I have another plugin which allows me to switch “Post Types” (not Post Formats) within the post editor screen, but that option has completely disappeared!
● #9: Under the “Status & Visibility” tab, it provides me with the option to choose between 3 different Post Formats, but I don’t have Post Formats supported for any of my themes (via functions.php file) ―― I create my own themes.
**literally shaking my head at this point**
● #10: When I switch from the “Visual Editor” to “Code Editor,” I get the following coding in a lot of the HTML DIV elements. The coding I get is related to CSS Bootstrap. However, I despise Bootstrap, and I purposely avoid plugins that have Bootstrap, because it interferes with my CSS coding. I have my own, personal-made CSS library for columns & grids, and I make my own accordians, tabs, etc with my own HTML, CSS & JavaScript, so Bootstrap is essentially useless for me and it conflicts with my coding.
Example of coding that Gutenberg adds:
div class=”col-md-9 col-sm-10 col-xs-8″
● #11: The “Custom Fields” tab is gone! What is the purpose of this? Custom Fields are crucial for many of my Post Types & Metadata.
● #12: The “Permalink” isn’t displaying. I tried right-clicking & clicking on different options, but I can’t find a way to edit the permalink. Is this intentional?
● #13: The “Slug” isn’t displaying. This is the same issue as #14 above. How come the slug isn’t available to edit?
● #14: The “Add Media” Quicktag is all the way at the bottom of the content-area the_content(), and Gutenberg doesn’t provide the option to adjust the content-area’s HEIGHT. Thus, if there is a long post, the person adding media content to the post has to scroll all the way to the bottom of the content-area. Yet again, this is not time-efficient. It’s another inconvenience!
● #15: When in “Visual Editor” mode, there aren’t as many Quicktags options to choose from. This is another example of Gutenberg eliminating and omitting options that are present in the current WordPress post editor.
――――――――――――――――――――――――――
That fact that Gutenberg is in the plans of becoming part of the WordPress core makes me absolutely irate ―― particularly because I have spent a long time customizing my post editor screen with API/Actions & API/Filters — i.e. functions remove_post_type_support() , add_post_type_support() , wp_editor() , and so on.
I am aware that there is the Classic Editor plugin, but that’s not fair to us users & coders. Gutenberg should remain an optional plugin. My gut is telling me that if Gutenberg becomes part of the WordPress core, and people like myself have to use the Classic Editor plugin, then there are going to be compatibility/coding-conflict issues. As far as functionality and appearance, does anyone know if the Classic Editor plugin is EXACTLY the same as the current WordPress post editor? Will API/Actions & API/Filters work with the Classic Editor plugin the same way these APIs work with the current WordPress post editor?
Wow, Phillip! That is one impressive comment. You’ve brought up a lot of good points with Gutenberg. It will be interesting to see how this impacts the classic editor in terms of support and future updates/compatibility. Only time will tell.
I’m still working through my own issues with Gutenberg, but I can answer a few of your points:
#4 Custom Taxonomies must have `show_in_rest` set to true for them to appear in the Gutenberg editing sidebar.
#7 For good or bad, the HTML editor is becoming less useful in a Gutenberg block context. The HTML content itself is a representation of the data which is basically disposable as it will be regenerated by the next visual edit. I expect we’ll see some more developer-targeted custom blocks in the near future which are intended for raw HTML input.
#9 All our themes are custom as well and I’m haven’t ever been offered any Post Formats. Check your plugins?
#10 Personal opinions about Bootstrap aside, I’m not seeing this either. Again, this feels like a plugin has wedged a filter somewhere. Gutenberg does add a variety of classes, but they’re mostly namespaced with `wp-` and fairly minimal. If you haven’t looked into custom blocks yet, you should. The API is well thought out and gives developers a great deal of freedom about how we want our code generated.
#11 Custom fields (ACF?) should appear below the main content area or under Extended Settings in the sidebar. ACF Pro has been a staple of our WP development, but after a few days with Gutenberg API I can see the potential for replacing nearly all of it with custom blocks. Time will tell, but the potential of metadata blocks and custom HTML is really huge.
#12 & #13 Edit the Permalink/Slug by clicking in the title. They’re derived from the title, so this makes sense, but it took me a while to find it too.
I’ve been working with WordPress for a very long time but have never been a fan of the code. Development can be extremely frustrating. My first impression of Gutenberg was not good, but after giving it some time, I’m very, very impressed with the thinking and execution so far.
Hi
I can’t see how you edit the permalink or slug and I have clicked on the title and it does say ‘Change Permalink’ but that takes me to the Permalinks setting page under Settings.
Hey Colin,
Are you sure you have the latest version of Gutenberg installed? The edit option should let you change the permalink on the same page. You might also try disabling all your other plugins temporarily, perhaps there is a conflict somewhere.
Hi, about the permalink editing issue. It does show as an edit but after you save the draft. When editing as a new post, the edit button in the permalink text field is not visible.
Ah, thanks for the clarification Damian! That was probably the issue.
I’m curious if anyone has had any success setting up custom blocks using vuejs? I was under the impression that the core developers were building Gutenberg in a way that would make it simple to swap out the underlying javascript framework.
I’ve looked online, but 90% of gutenberg tutorials don’t work to begin with anymore, let alone the few that demonstate vuejs.
Would it be easier to find a library that ports vuejs -> React, rather than attempt to integrate vuejs directly?
Hi Marcus, fancy meeting you here:-) I thought of you when I came across Kevin Ball’s article: https://zendev.com/2018/07/31/wordpress-gutenberg-blocks-vue.html
I have big compaints, too:
I have some complaints, too:
– I use the galleries (WP core feature) a lot. With Gutenberg it is noct possible to change the image size of the gallery items (with the classic editor you can change it). The full image is displayed which is very annoying. And I could not find how to change this
– I really miss the custom fields. I know that there are plugins to show them but I don’t like to install many plugins just to rebuild the old WordPress backend
Hi
If you click the image in visual mode it will become highlighted and at the top a menu pops up just above that image. Simply click the edit button that looks like a pencil.
Another window will open and you can change all the details there.
I’ve been using WordPress since the beginning, and I’m hoping that somebody comes to their senses and decides to abandon the idea that Gutenberg should be forced on everyone. There should at least ALWAYS be the option of using the classic editor (and without needing a plugin to do so).
Totally agree, responsive columns need to become a standard feature of Gutenberg – maybe with Settings page to configure breakpoints too..
While its definitely the future, I predict millions will prefer the classic editor when 5.0 is released.
Just installed Gutenberg on my WP site and when I go to create a post or page, I see nothing but a blank screen. I don’t know if it’s a compatibility issue with my Genesis theme or the fact that I use Visual Composer. Either way, it’s not working — and since I use VC (and love it), I’m not sure I really need whatever it is that Gutenberg provides. Am I being naive?
Please make it stop! The main reason I use WP is that it does NOT feel like a cheap Wix or Weebly site drag and drop.
If this becomes the main way to edit websites I’m out and will learn a new platform.
I too agree with the vast number of comments that this is NONSENSE. Not only will it create problems with existing sites, added billing for needed updates (clients are going to love that – oh yeah!), but also there’s going to be a learning curve for me as their developer also. And I already have a learning curve dealing with keeping all these sites running now. Which they do and THEY DO JUST FINE with wordpress the way it is.
Make this ridiculous contraption an option – not a default. And make the install voluntary too.
Solid article,
Few questions:
1. You mentioned using anchors so you can create jump-to sections in the SERPs, can you show me a single example of a ranking page for a keyword which has jump-to anchors in search engine?
I don’t think they will index them. You would need to so something with HTML5 pushstate to accomplish this (if sections were on the same page), and likely include in your sitemap.
2. Don’t you think the fall-back to the default should be a bit more graceful? Why should they make 20% (or 30%) of the internet install something to keep things the same…? That is weird if you ask me.
Part of the reason (in my opinion) that wordpress has been so successful is because of the lack of new changes, people understand the moving parts and therefore can launch many sites quickly without seeing and learning new interfaces every so often. Then using plugins they can try new things.
From what I see this article brings many new concepts to WP, some that seem to over complicate things. I am very interested to see how the broad community (those who have not even heard the word “gutenburg” yet), will react.
Thanks for your post man!
Hey Greg!
Great questions… So I have personally seen many time anchor lists in SERPs. I wrote up a little more here: https://woorkup.com/jump-to-menus/
It does appear to be something Google is testing on and off. As some months I’ve seen them, other months I haven’t.
I agree the default fallback should probably be a little more graceful, but I think they are simply trying to push everyone to Gutenberg as fast as possible without too much fragmentation. I think we’ll end up being this way anyways though since many will just install the classic editor plugin.
I think we all are interested to see how the WordPress community will react and how things progress :)
Thanks for the explanation. I am looking forward to the hours of fun trying to get used to it. I mean, it’s not as if I need a reason to be grumpy.
One point, and a big one: Gutenberg invented the modern world. The bloke was a Newton without the baggage. He brought information to the masses and started the fight against religions keeping ‘us’ in the dark. I was an apprentice printer and ironically we viewed him as godlike. I somehow doubt a WordPress plugin is going to change WordPress all that much, let alone the world.
Thanks again. I feel ready for it. Some excellent comments as well.
Great article.
Thanks for your reply, Brian.
I see the “jump-to” section in the image in your post, but I would not bet on any jump to section actually appearing in the search engine.
The best way I have seen to get same page sections to index, is re-writing the URL with replacestate (or pushstate). As well as title tag, bonus points if the new URLs are in your sitemap.
An absolutely epic implementation of this can be found here: CRV.com
Apologies if that was a bit off topic, but I really love that site so I thought I would share.
Thanks again!
Hey Greg!
You are correct, there is no way to guarantee that you will get a jump menu in SERPs. However, we have now seen this happen hundreds of times and have compared it directly to URLs that we’ve added anchor links :) We just wrote up a more in-depth post about it that you might find interesting: https://kinsta.com/blog/anchor-links/
But sadly, it is up to Google to decide whether or not they will show up.
…I don’t like Gutenberg. Looks neat on the surface, but it unnecessarily complicates things under the guise of simplicity. The classic editor is already simple enough for clients with basic knowledge. I would have preferred an update instead of a replacement, and the time spent on developing this could have been better served towards others areas such as media management or modernizing other aspects of the core where WordPress is painfully getting behind.
I’ve actually stopped making new projects on WordPress while I look for alternatives, and developing a custom CMS built on top of Laravel.
It looks kinda really confusing and not straight forward, last i checked simplicity is key this shouldn’t be made as a wordpress default but an option to choose from to me its a turn down i prefer the native wordpress editor UI
Like it or not (a bit of both for me) it will be included and used from a large part of the WordPress community and asked by clients. Get used to it :)
I’ve build a website from scratch with a basic blank theme and Advanced Gutenberg plugin (Joomunited, to control the blocks activated) and well that’s not perfect but no doubt that in 6 month I won’t regret having using it.
So like it or not, it’s here to stay, because a shitty idea is good if you force it on people?
Hi, and thanks for this good description of Gutenberg editor. I have tested it on one of my websites, and it seems to work fine with my theme (WP TwentyFourteen). I see you mention anchor in your article. Could you explain how that work just by using the HTML-anchor option in Gutenberg?
Hey Kari!
We just published an in-depth post on how to create anchor links in WordPress, including Gutenberg. Check it out: https://kinsta.com/blog/anchor-links/
Can’t color single words in a paragraph which is no problem with classic editor.
Can’t color single items in a list which is no problem with classic editor.
Very basic functions are missing.
Gutenberg is an early beta version, should have never been released via callout to any “normal blogger”…
How do I completely remove Guttenberg from my computer, i’m using a Mac 10.)! Makes inputting data nearly impossible.
Thank you.
Hi Jim, we have a detailed step by step on how you can disable the new Gutenberg editor. Please take a look at it here https://kinsta.com/blog/disable-gutenberg-wordpress-editor/
At last I have read the long article. I am impressed with the WP Gutenberg team. Good going and eagerly waiting for the WP 5.0
I have a concern, is it going to replace the visual composer plugins someday?
Not a bad concept, but I can’t add the “READ MORE” bar. It’s gone!
That is, I can add it, but I have to go to HTML and enter manually. That’s a huge backward step. I could imagine that there are some other issues too, that’s the main one I use in each one of my articles, so on the front page you get a “Click to read me” type of message instead of the full articles (otherwise I’d get a front page of 20,000+ words, which would be way too large.)
A great writeup! I especially appreciate the honest comments I’ve skimmed through above. As a website designer for *very* small-scale clients – mostly artists, photographers, quilters, crafters, many with *very limited budgets* and often with limited technical skills – I’m worried. I really, really hope that WP offers the Classic Editor as an option for a very long time.
I now dread receiving countless messages once this rolls out with perhaps no option to continue using the Classic Editor that the interface looks SO vastly different from what they’re used to, and looks nothing like the reference guides with screenshots I painstakingly provided them prior to going live. As it is, whenever there’s a minor WP or plugin update and something doesn’t match my reference guide 100%, they often freeze, even if the upgrade isn’t vastly different from what they’re used to. Most of them don’t have the budget to just call/hire me for routine updates, hence the reason for using WP in the first place – it gives them the ability to be autonomous within reason, to add new images to their galleries, update their bios, etc., and only call me when they are truly stuck or need help implementing something new. They shouldn’t need to pay anyone to teach them how to find the bulleted list option that used to be *right there* on the toolbar!
I just experimented with Gutenberg. My first reaction was, “Where is it?”
As someone noted above, it’s really bad UI practice to hide commonly used functionality, or scatter it around the screen. I tell my hesitant new customers that if they can use a word processor and follow some basic instructions provided by me, they’ll be able to use WP to update their sites. To me, Gutenberg looks nothing like a word processor that they’re used to, and many features are no longer available. I mean, look at the progression of Photoshop’s toolbar over the years. Very minor tweaks, the same basic icons only slightly enhanced are still there, yet they’ve exponentially added functionality in other ways.
Love the idea of Gutenberg adding “blocks” of content tho honestly I’m not seeing what’s in place now as being that robust compared to, say Beaver Builder.
Was disappointed to see that the font used in edit mode doesn’t match the font used in the stylesheet. That is, if you’ve got paragraphs set to use Arial, why not display Arial in edit mode? That has caused my customers much confusion over the years. Some will spend enormous amounts of time highlighting text, changing the font, forgetting to refresh the browser, and think they’re still stuck with the font they see in edit mode. I’d hoped that’d be one upgrade, minor as it is.
I noticed that the width of the text on the page in edit mode doesn’t match the width of the text on the actual live page. Many of my customers like to try to align things perfectly so the wider margins/narrower content area in edit mode are going to frustrate them if the actual published page widths differ. Lots of refreshing and back and forth.
I always install TinyMCE Advanced to give them more editing options and I see on my test site that that isn’t available in Gutenberg mode.
Maybe I’m missing something, after having read countless sites describing the new features and performing my own experiments, and I try to approach these things with an open mind, but unfortunately *my* mind has to be merged with a few hundred customer’s minds because it isn’t just me who has to learn this, eventually, but my customer base. If they can’t figure it out easily or get frustrated, how can I push WP as a platform that I feel is ideal for their basic needs?
AND, if you’re still reading along , as someone noted above, if the classic editor isn’t offered in the future, how on earth do we build a site for someone prior to the removal of it and then spring it on them that things may function rather differently in a few months after going live?
Whilst there are pros and cons with regard to the new WordPress Editor in the form of Gutenberg, I am surprised that no one has mentioned an offline mode for it perhaps in the form of a software similar to the old Windows Live Writer. For people who travel a lot and need to blog offline where there is no Internet, I am hoping that there will be the ability to save posts as drafts on your computer via the Editing Software and then when there is Internet, the draft posts can be published. I hope to God they come out with something like this cos there are not many if any offline editors around for those who prefer this way of working.I am even willing to pay for it cos it has now become a vital necessity.
Really Well summed-up post.
I’ve been using Gutenberg for a while now.
So far so good, it has worked really well for me. What I feel is it has made me more productive with the distraction-free editor (yes! – I prefer Medium style editing)
Just a quick question –
“Did Gutenberg remove the Table of Content option from Document section?”
If so, how can I add a table of content (Is it using anchors?)
Regards,
Such a clear article. Thank you.
I installed the Gutenberg plugin and fell in love with it because embedding Instagram posts is so easy.
Developer dictation ended decades ago. Provide options so users can make the choice they know is good for them. Gutenberg may be great some day but it has a lot of work ahead. Compare Elementor to Gutenberg, the biggest disappointment for me is Gutenbergs editor page looks nothing like the live page on the web. Columns can’t be adjusted in size like Elementor. Gutenberg should not be released 10 steps behind something like Elementor. Who releases a product that is inferior to it’s compitition?
Just curious but considering the evolution of Gutenberg, wouldn’t it be better to reverse the date order of the posts? Current at the top.
WordPress: The new WIX copycat, out with the old and in with a clone attempt without a USP. A great example of how crowds inspire people to create things that lack innovation.
I like to schedule posts in advanced and sometimes select to post on twitter, linkedin or google+. I don’t like the fact that the “sharing” option is now missing for individual posts when using Gutenberg. Unless it’s a feature that’s hidden someplace else I’m sticking with classic.
For all the times. I actually removed the WordPress default text editor and using ACF flexible content to create layout or create custom templates with ACF. I understand that WordPress is trying to be more user friendly for those non-technical people. But for our developers. That looks like an unnecessary add-on.
Unless there’s a way for developer to create layouts/components etc. It need to be high customizable for us, otherwise, you’re letting developers down and eventually we will look for an alternative.
I’ve looked at a lot of pageBuilder options, Visual Composer, Elementor, etc. I also worked with Wix. Their functionality is very limited. I found a lot of problems to implement the design that was provided to me with the way these things provided.
I tried it on the Windows 10 explorer browser.
It fatally hung up.
I had to go use my Kindle to unlock it and return to the classic editor. Until I KNOW this severe bug is fixed, I ain’t using it. Because I’m so not editing on a teensy Kindle keyboard.
I love WordPress and I hate to say this, WordPress is slowly moving towards a different direction than whatever the “Blogger” community may have wanted them to become. Perhaps, keeping it simple, less resource hungry, smaller in size would have been a great path to follow, alas! I understand why every business idea wants to become the next big thing but it is really frustrating to see how WordPress is continuously becoming a “Business Friendly” application. Its quite understandable why it is not longer a Blogging CMS only. My long standing frustration on WordPress is there and it’s getting complicated by every major updates.
WordPress 5.0 will go live today and they already released a plugin “Classic Editor” to go easy on users who are so used to with the classic editor and it will be supported until 2022. Yes, eventually Gutenberg will be forced upon us. Sad move indeed.
I really disliked the new Gutenberg Editor. It really ruined my day today (until I stumbled upon the Classic Editor plug-in). Glad to be rid of it. The functionality was NOT very intuitive for me and very limiting (for what I’m used to doing).
Thanks for the tip. When I had to spend a half hour trying to insert media into a text block, I had enough. If I can work with the classic editor, I would much prefer that.
It’s extraordinarily foolish to force this on everyone. I can easily imagine this being a nice feature for certain bloggers (perhaps those who post image-heavy things, or who spotlight YouTube videos with brief writeups), but for anyone writing long, text-heavy pieces, it’s a nightmare.
The fact that this is now the default editor is idiotic, as it essentially forces the idea that this is how WordPress SHOULD be used. You know…despite the flexibility that WordPress users have enjoyed for years. The flexibility that made it work for everybody is being sacrificed so that it only works well for one very narrow set of needs.
Great idea, guys.
Make it an option. I’m sure it will make some people very happy.
For anyone who likes having actual control over what they do, for anyone who doesn’t feel like clicking around God knows how many unfamiliar icons to do something they used to be able to do with a keystroke, for anyone who cares more about what their content says than how it looks, though, it’s a slap in the face.
Make it optional.
I am old-school and not an expert, yet have created and manage probably 20 different sites for neighbors and some customers. In some cases their sites were a cut and paste from old HTML sites. This was done because the owners have little technical skill and no money to hire proper web designers.
I got them to stop using HTML sites with the idea that if they could use MS Word, they could use WordPress. This new editor scraps that idea.
Even though 5.0 is supposed to be optional it auto-updated on one site and now I have to worry others are close behind. I have warned all users NOT to update to 5.0 because it may break plugins and/or their site look and feel. I personally don’t have the time, nor inclination to troubleshoot these sites, some of which contain custom code.
Although I don’t use WIX or the like, I can imagine the editor mimics sites like the MailChimp editor, of which I am not a fan.
Automatically converting a site to use Gutenberg as default and the suggestion that the old editor will be done away with, leave me with a bad taste in my mouth.
Will this new editor do the same as Win10, force many people to skip any update (and with that the security updates) because this will be a forced change?
Gutenberg Editor is not user friendly, WordPress should understand the popularity and love for WordPress before sending this kind of update.
I know there are pros and cons but UX is first step if you fail on this it will fail your new update.
I just want to be able to add media, click-select multiple items from the library and insert into post
same with lists, create list add from library items (select multiple from library)
It feels like it was just Yesterday as I started to learn HTML 2.0 when I was a child around 1996 and last August I turned 31. I have seen many.
The only things I learned and the last WordPress update proved is, the world is definitely going more unstable, stupid, fascist and driven by a monopolistic type of people.
I understand as even the “free internet” wasn’t free and born in the military but at least it wasn’t this much stupid in the back. I will not start to whine and babble about as “things were different back in those days” but it was. Now it is more turned into “just” business wars than something real. From the finance and politics, it’s now reaching the area of the “open” source development.
In these years, big companies just went bigger and they fought for nothing but money and we lost significant technological and usability chance.
People act like royalist. They will say at the end “Look, I told you, Gutenberg was a great idea and it worked. You just said it’s bad sides …”. Yes, dear idiots. It will work because it must. If you force something “have to done”, some of the parts of the society as 50% in the theory will take your case even with more serious than usual and try to polish its functionalities and praise it. And those ones are mostly the ones “shape praisers”, as they don’t know the past, as they don’t know the deepness in the functionality and the meaning, they will just say it looks perfect and it works. This is the biggest paradox of “adaptation” feature of the human brain.
This is the same scenario always and always happens. Exactly same and more useless “something new” comes with a more shiny package, some idiots force it, 50% accepts and even sticks like it’s the new version of the amendment and “voila”.
It’s like, choose my mind-frame or you will be abandoned. It’s the proof of the monopoly. They never listened to users. They never asked. They even never understand what new users needed and what professional needed.
They created a fake solution when there was no problem. I guess web development turned into world politics.
Someone must have serious mental problems to delete Classic Editor without attention for new users and give them this unstable and stupid interface, or they have pretty interesting secret plans.
Re: or they have pretty interesting secret plans.
Unlikely I think, adapt this “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity” replace malice with interesting or clever or planning.
Gutenburg is a misguided attempt at trying to do I don’t know what, in any real world business where there has to be a business case before projects are even planned let alone started I really do not know what case could possibly be made for Gutenburg.
I just updated a site I look after for a friend to WordPress 5.0.2, I have the plugin to disable Gutenburg but thought lets give Gutenburg a try, well firstly 5.0.2 broke the site, it no longer displays as it used to, I was not too worried by that, it is not a big site and I wanted to rearrange it and also use a new responsive theme on it anyway.
I tried adding a page or two using Gutenburg, all it seems to do is add more clicks to every operation then take you to limited editing dialogues for whatever type of block you are editing which are missing a lot of the functionality that was available before because this is the way to do things, yes I saw that comment from some WordPress ‘expert’ when some people asked about missing functionality, you don’t need that you should not be doing that.
If I wanted to be told this is how you you should be doing this or that I would have put this site on Facebook and had done with it, I chose WordPress to give me the flexibility to do what I wanted, all I can say at the moment to WordPress users is use the time before they finally force Gutenburg as the only way to do things to look at alternative platforms, I think WordPress has planted the seeds of its own gradual slide into obscurity.
I don’t like this at all! Just pisses me off! I come to my wordpress once a month to make a change and this month its all different and I can’t figure out how to edit my post like I used to. I guess we live in a dictature world now days and I don’t have any choices any more. They change it and if you don’t like it to bad.
The old classic editor is better. This is worst ever WordPress update.
I don’t see how this Gutenberg project enhances the workflow of creating a unique webpage. After trying it out and reading the tutorials, i can’t say that i understand much, it just feels unintuitive and a chore to work with, just to look pretty while you get tortured. I don’t see the fun in this. Please explain how to make more advanced things, and just publish it as an optional plugin.
No disrespect to people trying to improve things, but this needs more work and a more rational approach, with usability in mind, before forcing it upon me. My 2 cents.
So, I cannot add an image without making a new block? I’m not sure how that works when images are in lists. I guess I’ll have to switch back to the Classic Editor. What in the holy heck were they thinking? The new editor is in NO WAY an upgrade.
Dont even bother changing to 5.0. The new “editor” does nothing to improve anything…only makes things more difficult! Obviously something done by someone behind a desk with nothing better to do with his time than screw up a good thing. Leave WordPress ALONE! Its a blogger…leave it a blogger! THIS SUCKS!!!!!!
Are you serious? No, you cannot be. This is the most fallacious review I’ve ever seen. I wonder why you hype Gutenberg so much — 99% (I myself included) thinks it’s a piece of crap and a huge mistake. C’mon, who paid you for these opinions?
Hey Elviira!
Nobody pays us to write anything. These are simply the opinions of our team. There are definitely pros and cons with Gutenberg. But we definitely aren’t trying to hype it up… we encourage people to give it a try first before making an opinion.
In fact, we have an entire blog post about how to disable Gutenberg. 😄
https://kinsta.com/blog/disable-gutenberg-wordpress-editor/ And we ourselves are still using the Classic Editor.
A nice post related to Gutenberg WordPress editor. This new editor is awesome and mind-blowing.
I manage about a dozen WP sites ranging from small 5 page ones up to a whole theater site with events and bookings.
I’ve tried the Gutenberg on all these sites and, one by one, I’ve ended up installing the Classic Editor, either to make it possible to continue to maintain the site because some of the plugins simply don’t work well with Gutenberg, or just that there is too much there already that changing to a page-builder is not really practicable.
Most of my clients found the new editor impenetrable so I have now disabled Gutenberg on all these sites and gone back to the tried and trusted.
That’s 0 out of 12 votes for Gutenberg for existing sites. I’m expecting Classic Editor to be around for much longer than 2022 unless Gutenberg gets seriously more intuitive in use. It passed the 1 million+ installations some time back.
I’m embarking on a new site from scratch so I will try Gutenberg to see if there are benefits when starting with a clean sheet, but I’m not yet confident it will out-perform TinyMCE with a few standard plugins.
Hi David,
I would suggest you to go with Cosmic Blocks – a high-quality collection of 40+ customizable content blocks for the new WordPress 5.0 Gutenberg content block editor. This collection is built to easily integrate in any theme. It is packed with many unique features and design options for your site.
Great post! Thank you for sharing this interesting info about new WordPress editor.
Thank you for the article, but I find I have to disagree. There is not one thing about this editor that makes it remotely decent. It’s clunky, hard to use, and the learning curve is too steep to bother with. I want to go in, leave my post, and get on with my day, not sit there and worry whether I added the block right or not.
I have been horrified to discover that the latest Gutenberg editor breaks the ability to back-date posts. It is still possible from the Dashboard, but like so many other things about this editor, it offers a few features while breaking lots of fundamentals… some of which are painful and require work-arounds (like indenting a block). The back-dating problem is HUGE, and were not for the Dashboard quick-edit trick, would be an absolute deal-breaker for me (historical archive site).
(A footnote to my comment above – Gutenberg DOES allow backdating as far as 1970… just not before. If you Googled your way to this comment while dealing with the same problem, give your new post a title and any date after 1970, then go find it in “All Posts” in the dashboard and use Quick Edit to fix it. Once you return to the post and save draft, the correct old date will appear…. at least in this version….)
What impact has been observed in existing WordPress site content when the Gutenberg editor is installed on a site? Does the editor detect existing content and create blocks of content based on the existing content? I ask because I have content to load into a WordPress site, and am wondering if I should delay the publishing of this content until after the delivery of WordPress 5.x and Gutenberg.
Gutenberg is fantastic. I can change font size and color at will. I find classic editor useless really.
I hate this new editor, why in the world would they take away features like making individual text a color. I want that back and I guess I will go back to the old editor. I am not happy with wordpress.
Please can someone help? Suddenly my posts that I am working on are totally weird. The whole page is skewed to the left and butted up against the side bar menu. I’ve lost my floating menu bar and when I try to click on a box it jumps all over and keeps showing a message like this: Move Paragraph block from position 3 up to position 2Move Paragraph block from position 3 down to position 4
It’s awful Am I missing something? Can I get back to how it was a few weeks ago?
Hi Gordon, you can disable the new Gutenberg editor by installing a plugin. Here is our detailed guide on how to do it https://kinsta.com/blog/disable-gutenberg-wordpress-editor/
My blog looks like crap and I can’t fix it. The old WordPress taught me html, css, and php. This new WordPress is causing me to forget all that. If I’d wanted this I would have stayed with Blogger or WordPress.com or LiveJournal. I used WordPress so I could have more control. Can anyone please suggest how I get away from this dumpster fire?
Hey Walton! You can go back to the older editor if you want. It will be supported until 2022. Check out our tutorial here: https://kinsta.com/blog/disable-gutenberg-wordpress-editor/
Support it forever, because Gutenberg stinks. It’s a massive drain of my creative energy making it work.
My blog has been monetized by Adsense for 2 or 3 years now. I have never had issues with ads popping up until I started posting with the Gutenberg editor. I was not a fan of the editor at first, as it seemed to add a lot of extra steps to my posting process and is not intuitive compared to the classic editor. However, I eventually figured it out and grew accustomed to using it. Unfortunately, posts published using the Gutenberg editor had a few issues. When using the Google developer, it was brought to my attention that the new editor was systematically introducing syntax errors in my lines of code (). Also on every page and post of my blog, there is a footer, in which a run a small ad. For every post I made with the Gutenberg editor, my footer ads would be somehow disabled. It took me forever to figure out what the issue was (as I thought the problem was perhaps directly from Google Adsense). I just republished my last two posts using the classic editor and everything works fine now. As it turns out, Gutenberg was the problem all along.
The Gutenberg editor does not in any way improve anything. I cannot even conceive of a single instance where moving blocks with a menu button oddly placed on the side, rather than just cutting and pasting is easier.
I hated Gutenberg when they initially launched it, nothing here has fixed any of the problems. This is not for writers and it shows.
I would pay you money to let writers create a simpler interface, rather than people who focus on video and images.
PS – Medium’s interface isn’t really all that good, so why on earth would you cludge yours up to be more like it?
One of my biggest issues with Gutenberg was when I was developing blocks and would update my save() function and things would break all over my site.
After a few weeks, updating anything became a huge hassle hassle. I didn’t know what pages the blocks were used on so changes would go out and cause issues.
I got fed up so I created a plugin to list all the blocks that are used on a site and what posts they are used on. At first I was going to just make a quick version for myself, but realized there may be other people who have the same issue.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/find-my-blocks/ is the plugin I have created if. Hopefully this can help someone out there as much as it has been helping me!
There is a lot of negative feedback to Gutenberg. Hopefully this improves over time!
I tried it and writing a blog post the way I want it was totally confusing and ended up being impossible… so I ended up having to get the classic editor plug-in which now acts as a life-saver. The classic editor is easy and simple, and nice to work with for all those who like me have basic or less knowledge. The new Gutenberg is NOT user friendly, it`s only confusing and adds more work-load. Keep it as optional. PLEASE! or me too will be out, finding another platform.