GutenbergChallenge – Edwin Cromley

The Gutenberg editor is really shaping up to be something great! The standard editor in wp-admin will most likely be replaced by project Gutenberg in the near future, but Gutenberg is much more than a wp-admin editor replacement. I think it is the future of WordPress, and will open up many new opportunities to bloggers, site owners, agencies, and product businesses. WordPress already powers a large portion of the web, and I think project Gutenberg will increase WordPress’ market share. This could be a victory for the open web, when lately, its obsolescence seems inevitable. Let’s look at some cool things you can do with Gutenberg.

Page Builder Style Editing & More

Below you can see this text being added into the page!

Pretty cool. Not too far off from the current WordPress experience. Let's add in something a little more interesting, that a basic WordPress install cannot do.

Adding A Cover Image!

What we did here is we added in a new cover image block from the inserter. This opened up the media library and we selected our image. We then added text and set the image to full width; oila! Here is what it looked like:

This is just one of the many things that can be done in Gutenberg, quickly, and enjoyably. What you are seeing however is not the standard Gutenberg experience. Instead you are seeing a front-end content building experience powered by Gutenberg. If you haven't checked Gutenberg out yet head over to the WordPress plugin repository and try it out! It does have a fair number of negative reviews, but this is a project in its infancy. There are a number of issues to be resolved with project Gutenberg, but it is largely the effort of a small team over a four month period; impressive.

To see the difference between the regular Gutenberg editor and the one you see running here check out the below image:

The font does not match my theme, nor the layout. This is the standard Gutenberg experience, which is great! As much as I love the standard Gutenberg editor, I would much rather live edit my content as it is going to look when I hit Publish. This has been a boon on some recent projects for me, as my clients are now much more easily able to visualize the final result, because they are creating the final version as they go. The block based building in Gutenberg brings more to the table than a nice user experience.

All hail blocks!

The sleek UI, and interface for Gutenberg will eventually become outdated, but I believe that blocks will remain. The "block first" approach being taken in Gutenberg is the most important aspect of the project. Content blocks have the potential to replace shortcodes, meta boxes, widgets, custom post types and unify them into one self contained entity. The Gutenberg editor can eventually even extend to become a theme builder of sorts. The possibilities are limitless, but I have already started building some practical solutions for my clients as blocks.

For one of my projects, I have created a quiz block. You can build out a quiz, with questions all right inside the editor screen, or use it to insert an already created quiz. In the past this would have required many meta boxes, shortcodes, and would be a jarring user experience. Now it is seamless and effortless.

The Future

I don't know what the future holds, and there is definitely a significant amount of tension surrounding this project, but I am rooting for it and going all in on it. How do you feel about Gutenberg?

There seems to be some tension in the air over the new Gutenberg editor for WordPress, which is good. I wish there was more attention and dialog on it. If you haven't tried it out yet head over to the plugin repository and download Gutenberg for your WordPress install. Some think it is utter crap, some think it is amazing. There seems to be very little in between. Some do not see the goal posts or incremental movement, and others realize the plan and understand the significance of Gutenberg.

Why does Gutenberg matter?

Platforms like Squarespace and Wix are offering a very compelling user experience for a very small price. They eliminate a lot of the headache involved in managing self-hosted WordPress. No plugin updates, no core updates, no random breakages between conflicting versions of plugins or core; bliss. The design templates for Squarespace are well crafted. In the hands of a professional designer, any Squarespace site could be molded to look fantastic, without touching any code. The same is not necessarily true for WordPress, unless you are using a tool like Beaver Builder.

If things continue on this path, it is not too unreasonable to imagine a large chunk of WordPress' market share to be taken up by these platforms. This would be a loss, as WordPress is open and serves a gigantic ecosystem, where small businesses and large enterprises can thrive. With a closed platform like Squarespace, outside tech services can only provide little to no benefit for each other. What does any of this have to do with Gutenberg?

WordPress needs to innovate to remain relevant and grow. Now is the time to do so as well, while WordPress still dwarfs any other platform. The Gutenberg project will be the driving force for innovation.

The Goal of Gutenberg as I see it

The goal is to "make adding rich content to WordPress simple and enjoyable". Extrapolating that goal leads one to a front end editing experience similar to Wix, or Squarespace and beyond, but the Gutenberg plugin only currently replaces the editor inside of WP-Admin.

Misunderstanding the goal of Gutenberg

A common question I see is, "If you want to compete with Wix or Squarespace, why not make a page builder?" WordPress could, but it would be missing a huge opportunity in unifying its content experience, and in the process would only try imitating Wix or Squarespace not supersede them. I think things are less about competing with a particular platform and instead are more focused around creating a superior product to any platform. By taking the "block first" approach, widgets, shortcodes, custom meta boxes, post content, et al. can become a block, which can then be added to content anywhere, dynamically, using a uniform interface. Once you can see this clearly, I think it is hard to argue that the direction Gutenberg is headed in is not a superior user, and developer experience.

By unifying the content system into individual blocks first, a page builder would become much more trivial to create. It would also open up other possibilities that other platforms do not have, like collaborative editing (similar to Google Docs). So why the focus on the editor first?

If the front end editing experience was made first, well it would pretty much break the current editor, making it unusable, anyways. If you are editing content as blocks on the front end, then go back to editing in the classic WordPress editor, you will most likely break all of the block content you just created on the front end, because it is no longer there for you to edit in wp-admin. Building the editor first in a new "block first" approach is the correct choice, as opposed to trying to build a page builder on top of WordPress.

This all sounds pretty good, maybe this Mullenweg fellow does understand a thing or two about leading a project forward, so why all the hate on Gutenberg?

Innovation, Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt, and Context

New innovation always will bring about a certain amount of Fear Uncertainty and Doubt, which is totally healthy and good. I have many reservations about the Gutenberg project myself, but I think on the whole it will be a giant net benefit to WordPress. The reviews on the plugin repository are extremely polarized, and although the plugin claims to be in beta, it is really, in my opinion, more like alpha software. It is important to understand that the Gutenberg project is not ready for core yet. It's barely even ready to use on your blog and I would not recommend using it, unless you understand the technical side, but it is also not as far off as some people think.

For developers like myself who have invested countless hours building custom metaboxes and custom TinyMCE buttons etc., it can be somewhat disheartening to see that effort seemingly go to the wayside. You need to get over that feeling quickly. That time spent has hopefully served you well up until this point and now it is time to move on to something that I find is a lot better, and your clients will find a lot better.

My own experience

I have recently started converting a lot of the custom meta boxes and custom TinyMCE buttons for a client into blocks and running Gutenberg ( with tweaks ) in production ( yes, I am crazy ). My client is able to do much more than they ever could, and they have a full front end editing experience already, today, which they are thrilled about. Rather than trying to dig my heels in, I am embracing the future direction, because it seems like in the long run, it will be better for me, my clientele, and WordPress.

Backwards Compatibility

Shortcodes, meta boxes, and widgets aren't necessarily going anywhere, but if you want to come along the journey of where WordPress is going, you should start creating blocks and get involved to help shape them. You might find that the previous experience was a pain to work with. Learning new things can be daunting, but I think the direction of Gutenberg is a good path to follow.