Gutenberg Editor: Developer’s Perspective

Prior to November 2017, developers were working for Gutenberg to give better editor experience for its user, which any non-technical persons can also understand easily.

The good news for the WordPress users is, it will not be changed for next 12-15 years, announced by WordPress officials. This announcement indicates that WordPress has planned something very strong for Gutenberg editor. This was a big strategic decision that’s been made and WordPress community will resolve any issues and that Gutanberg is here to stay. With the vision in mind, WordPress official team is improving & adding some awesome features into it.

Gutenberg is block based editor where user can see live preview & know exactly the view of live web page. The main feature of Gutenberg is to provide drag & drop facility to add blocks & elements.

1) Users can build the sites & pages as per their creative imagination.
2) Users can update pages/site on mobile devices. This one feature itself is a big game changer for users to adopt WordPress 5.0
3) With the help of live preview functionality in Gutenberg you don’t need to review short codes frequently.
4) For non-technical users, text pasted from Word file will get cleaned up and converted to blocks automatically and instantly.

All this change is possible because of React.js. WordPress included new front-end technology in the form of React.js. This has been helpful to increase performance of Gutenberg.

Developers and agency were confused and scared when they learned about WP5.0 as they had lot invested in WordPress and build websites based on the old editor. The fear of losing content and other functions was pretty genuine and reasonable when business’s critical websites where built with the TinyMCE and WP4.x. After reviewing Gutenberg, the initial fear gave way to excitement as it doesn’t affect their old websites. It gives the opportunities to build and upgrade to newer and powerful version of WordPress.

Plugin developers will be able to completely integrate it in every part of WordPress including posts, pages, custom post types, and sidebars without hacking TinyMCE or squeeze their entire feature behind a toolbar button. Today, every plugin that extends WordPress does it in a different way; Gutenberg’s blocks provide a single, easy-to-learn entry point for an incredible variety of extensions. Some developers already started to port there plugin over, and found that they’re easier to build and have much improved UI.

Widgets and short codes will continue to work as it’s working prior to Gutenberg. The Gutenberg editor seeks to offer new ways to interact with those existing elements on the site. By creating editable blocks for these elements, users will have more control over the visual display of their content without having to know any code.

Template is going to work in same manner. In the Gutenberg editor you can select the theme template you wish to use for layout and design on the right-hand side.

For now Gutenbergy will not replace Page Builders/editors like WP Page Bakery, Elementor, and others. As Gutenberg continues to evolve, it’s possible it may replace some of the features and functionalities offered by these Page Builders. We believe that by the Page Builders will evolve and there maybe advanced functionalities may be offered which Gutenberg will lack.