Since the Gutenberg WordPress editor was first announced the internet has been buzzing with discussions, reviews and opinion pieces about whether the page builder will be a win or lose for WordPress. There’s still plenty of time ahead of us before we get to try the finished product in WordPress 5.0 so we’re looking forward to seeing the final product and testing out this potentially revolutionary change.
Details about Gutenberg were sparse in the beginning and there was some confusion over what the project actually was, though over the summer a beta version of Gutenberg was released as a plugin. This gave users the opportunity to give an early version of Gutenberg a try, with the caveat that it’s still very much a work in progress and should be treated as such. Meaning, of course, don’t test it out on a live site.
Reviews for the beta Gutenberg plugin are mixed and make interesting reading. They suggest the page builder is likely to be polarising when it’s integrated into WordPress core in version 5.0, as almost every current review is either 1* or 5* with barely anything in between. Reviews range from 1* negative reviews that it should remain a plugin and never be integrated to core, to 5* reviews that hail it as a great step in the right direction for WordPress. Based on reviews of the early plugin, it’s certainly going to be an interesting day when WordPress 5.0 is released and we imagine any other features in the release will be overshadowed by the long-awaited arrival of Gutenberg.
Are you unsure what Gutenberg even is? Matias Ventura shared a fascinating write up, titled ‘Gutenberg, or the Ship of Theseus’, which is well worth a read if you want to learn more about what Gutenberg is and what it could do in the future. Highlights include:
“This is an important idea to clarify. Contrary to a worried perception that designs will be susceptible to breaking if the user can edit things, Gutenberg aims to give developers a way to define and protect structural markup and their design while giving users the ability to directly edit the information intuitively. Rather than making it easy to mess up a design by mistake or lack of knowledge, Gutenberg protects the design and guides the user.”
We’re keeping our fingers crossed that Gutenberg delivers what has been aimed for and are looking forward to more news about features and release dates as we head into 2018.
