At Women Who WP’s Orange County Meetup 1-17-18, I gave a tour — a basic overview — of the features of Gutenberg and published a post live at GutenBridget.com.
Last year at WordCamp Europe, Gutenberg was announced as an editor replacement. In the final phase, it will be much more than that but as of now, it will be an editor replacement in WordPress 5.0.
It’s 2018, it’s time for WordPress to change it’s editor experience.
Instead of metaboxes, there will be blocks.
Posted by Women Who WP on Wednesday, January 17, 2018
What is Gutenberg?
Gutenberg, eventually will change how you interact with WordPress. In it’s first inclusion into Core, will be a new editor experience.
“Gutenberg has three planned stages. The first, aimed for inclusion in WordPress 5.0, focuses on the post editing experience and the implementation of blocks. This initial phase focuses on a content-first approach. The use of blocks, as detailed above, allows you to focus on how your content will look without the distraction of other configuration options. This ultimately will help all users present their content in a way that is engaging, direct, and visual.
These foundational elements will pave the way for stages two and three, planned for the next year, to go beyond the post into page templates and ultimately, full site customization.” Gutenberg Team
Blocks Replace Meta Boxes
Instead of meta boxes, you interact with your content in blocks. Content includes video, images, headings, quotes, and, of course, text.
Highlights:
The plus sign allows you to add more boxes. Sometimes you have to hover to see it.
Plugins make their own types of blocks.
Themes control how a block looks. This is an opportunity for theme developers.
Blocks are determined in the code with CSS Commenting so you know what’s in block.
Even though paragraphs are in different blocks, each paragraph is output with paragraph tags and shouldn’t interfere with SEO implications.
Contextual Formatting
This means every block has its own control. Every plugin can create settings for their blocks. You may not see settings in the sidebar anymore. They may be in the settings.
"You can actually go into individual elements and control them individually." @mor10#WCUS#Gutenberg
“Gutenberg tries to identify all of these types of content properties so we can control it. It’s all based on blocks and block context.” Morten Rand-Hendriksen
Editorial note: This post was written in 2017 and has now been converted (2021) to a post using Blocks. The tech was never my bone to pick with Gutenberg. It was the timeline.
As a business-oriented marketer, my perception of Gutenberg is not about its beauty or ease of use. Rather, I am very concerned (and have been since June 2017) about the economic impact of the tight timeline of Gutenberg given how quickly it is being iterated.
In my words, Gutenberg is a structural and visual change to WordPress’ editing and publishing experience. Its interface is very much like Medium and I found it very easy to use. This project or editor will roll out in WordPress 5.0 which is slated for April 2018.
“The core concept of Gutenberg is every item you add to WordPress is a “block”. Every heading, paragraph, image, blockquote, list, and other content you add is a block, and every block has unique properties and settings. That means when you create content, you can work with and customize each individual block, move those blocks around, and even make individual blocks reusable so you can build them once and use them in different locations and different views.” Morten Rand-Hendriksen
Also, Josh Pollock has an overview post State of the Word on his site here that is worth reading as well.
“While I worry about backwards compatibility for metaboxes, I think my biggest concerns are addressed or will be addressed. I do think storing Gutenberg’s raw content in the existing post content column as a string is a mistake that will have to get fixed later with a new column and proper content object, but we’ll get there.” Josh Pollock
I am the Marketing Team CoRep for Make.WordPress, I am a business owner, and have formerly worked for a very successful plugin development company and advertising agency that both rely upon WordPress for their business model. Though I will write about this on my own blog, I thought I would put my money where my mouth is and be an official voice instead of a behind-the-scenes voice.
I commented on #3902 but the economic concern is separate and deserves its own issue.
Does Gutenberg Break Backward Compatibility?
It is my understanding that WordPress, as a project and community, is committed to backward compatibility. To be fair, I’ve mostly heard this discussion when considering back-end compatibility with PHP. And I understand the frustrations with developers wanting to use PHP7+ functionality.
However, PHP developers are able to wrap the depreciated code. The new Gutenberg experience (editor) puts a large-scale burden on plugin and theme developers in a short, four-month period.
To assist in the marketing strategy both inward (Make Teams, WordPress Developers) and outward (clients, end users, agencies), a SWOT analysis should be made by us.
Here is an example:
Strengths: Ease of use, modern technology, possibilities with VR, etc. Weaknesses: Accessibility, SEO issues, compatibility. Opportunities: New developers, new customers, modern technology, better UI. Threats: Attrition (loss of WP to Wix, et al), Economic impact, loss of volunteers.
Is WordPress Attrition a Threat
Attrition is a real risk. I shared Morten’s article from LinkedIn and an affiliate marketer began having a conversation with me that I think we should listen to. 29% of the internet uses WordPress. The rollout needs to manage expectations, educate, and give people time to learn.
Businesses run on fiscal year budgets, not timelines for software releases. It’s easy for us on the inside to become excited about amazing features and great possibilities only to forget about the small business owners, the plugin and theme developers, and the bloggers.
Plugin and theme developers, for example, have to shift budgets from marketing (how will this affect WordCamp sponsorships, for example) to product development and support. They need to train themselves and their developers to deeply learn JavaScript and React and Vue (possibly) in order to create compatible metaboxes.
Plugin development companies also have to decide if they are going to support their legacy clients. Should they decide to support both, the technical debt now becomes financial in nature as they spend more hours (time) and/or budget (money) keeping current clients. Should they not, they risk losing current clients through attrition.
Granted, people like Josh Pollock of Caldera are excited enough to get their plugins ready now. As a Caldera Forms user, this makes my heart sing.
Yesterday: Blog post about how excited I am for Gutenberg. Today: @calderaforms Gutenberg blocks.
Agencies who use WordPress often have year-long contracts. The site is built and then used to publish content on a regular basis for lead generation, SEO, and business development. The agency will have to ensure their clients’ sites either remain on 4.9.x or are fully compatible to Gutenberg. Many agencies build custom themes on frameworks or with ACF. Those themes will need to be worked on (that translates into budget shift). Personally, I’ve recommended many of my agency clients and friends to prepare for this last October. Many have added to their budget to be prepared.
Small businesses often come to WordPress for the reasons we promote: technical SEO, ease of publishing, owning your own data. Convincing them to stay, when another option may be cheaper (WIX, Squarespace, even Dot Com), may become a challenge. Businesses don’t make decisions based upon community loyalty; they make decisions based upon finances.
I love WordPress. Here’s a Possible Solution.
I would love to see the version that will be shipped with 5.0 set sooner than later. This will allow WordPress educators, agencies, businesses, the Make Team, and development shops to prepare the general public for the rollout with marketing materials, documentation, and, of course, compatible code.
I love WordPress. I want it to thrive. Keep iterating. It should iterate. But the economy that relies upon WordPress needs time to learn and accept.
The big news is the Gutenberg “editor” (it is way more than just an editor) will be coming out with 5.0 in April (I’ve been saying this since June so I felt a bit vindicated in my analysis).
If you want to keep informed on it, I’d start with following Kevin’s tweets. It is iterating (changing) quickly.
Here's why #Gutenberg is different: Past #WordPress changes like CPTs, Customizer, and REST API could be used or ignored on a per-plugin basis. To each their own. But Gutenberg, more than any other change, tangles the fates of independent plugins together. #WCUS#StateOfTheWord
You can order your own swag thanks to James Tryon and Wapu.us here.
She’s more than a mascot, she represents a traditionally underrepresented minority in tech: women. We didn’t think she’d be part of a global movement, but it is trending that way.
Contributor Day was the real reason for me to attend this camp; it’s an all volunteer work day for Making WordPress. Though some people are “sponsored volunteers,” we are volunteers nonetheless. WordPress is created by you for you.
I’m honored to be a Marketing Team Rep and this CD was smooth, efficient, and fun. We had over 20 new people contributing. I couldn’t have done it without Dwayne McDaniel of Pantheon. He even gave out I Make.WordPress.org stickers. It was epic.
Thanks to GiveWP for paying for my airfare and Jen Miller for sponsoring my meals and lodging. With the recent change in my career, I wouldn’t have had enough time to save for the trip.
If I can think of every person I was so excited to have chatted with at #WCUS this past weekend, I will reach out.