With the growth of sites like Squarespace, Wix and other WYSIWYG builders, the competition for user-friendly interfaces on websites has gotten intense. WordPress has had the same editor interface for almost 15 years, so after 6 months of testing and community feedback, Gutenberg is finally here.
What is Gutenberg?
Gutenberg is the latest editor released for WordPress. It is named after Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of a printing press which introduced printing to Europe during the 1400s. (Definitely not to be confused with Steve Guttenberg from movie classics like “Police Academy” or “Three Men and a Baby”!) Past builders required knowledge in HTML or to utilize shortcodes to make your site work correctly. The introduction to this new builder means you now build content with “little blocks”. The goal is to make creatively dynamic and rich content available to users of all skill levels. Below is a sample of some of the default blocks included in Gutenberg:
Does My Site Work with Gutenberg?
Gutenberg is changing how editor works for all the pages and posts in WordPress. If you run plugins or tools that interact with your current editor interface it is important to check compatibility before you update.
Should I switch to Gutenberg?
The update is mandatory so you the sooner you get ready the better. When you update WordPress to 5.0, you won’t be able to deactivate it. Luckily, if you are not ready for the big jump, installing the Classic Editor Plugin should give you time to check developer documentation and perform testing when the update goes through.
Summary
We have been going through the process of transferring clients for the past 2 months and overall, we have had mixed feelings about the release. While the builder offers great tools for beginners to take control of their content, we have seen a lot of themes and plugins have compatibility issues. We recommend that you talk to your web developer before making any sort of update or major changes to your site.
Curious on how it works? Button: Test Drive Gutenberg – https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/
