Modifying the output of WordPress / Gutenberg

  • Resolved rsherry8

    (@rsherry8)


    1 month, 3 weeks ago

    I am new to WordPress. I am not new to web development. In the past, I have done my web development by creating HTML with a basic editor, which might be VI. I may have to do some work on a site whose HTML files were generated using WordPress / Gutenberg I think. If I edit the generated HTML files with a plain editor, is there anything wrong with doing that? Will it create a maintenance problem several years from now?

    • This topic was modified 1 month, 3 weeks ago by rsherry8.
Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

  • You should only customize templates with a child theme if the theme you are using is not your own. How to proceed with child themes is described here: https://developer.www.ads-software.com/themes/advanced-topics/child-themes/

    Apart from that, it also depends on which part of the generated HTML code you are referring to. There are also plugins that can generate part of it. In this case, you need to see what they provide for customizing their code. Many also offer their own templates, some only PHP hooks. If in doubt, you will have to ask the respective support team.

    And yes, you should not customize any code you have not created yourself as these customizations will be overwritten with the next update.

    Thread Starter rsherry8

    (@rsherry8)

    You can develop a web page using Microsoft Word and then ask Word to save the file in HTML form. The generated file can then be used as (part of) a website. I would not want to modify the output of Word because then the original Word file would have different contents than the HTML file.

    With Word you have two files, the Word file and the HTML file. Is the same true with Gutenberg? That is, does it save the information you typed in, in its own format plus the generated HTML? If the answer is yes then editing the output of the HTML does not seem like a good idea to me.

    Moderator bcworkz

    (@bcworkz)

    Gutenberg (and any WP editor for that matter) only maintains content in its original source format, as saved in the database. What you see on the front end of a WP site is all dynamically generated, there’s no HTML file to edit even if you wanted to. A page’s main content is certainly editable within Gutenberg or whatever WP editor you prefer. But other content like headers, footers, sidebars, etc. all come from a variety of sources.

    Personally, I would avoid attempting to import MS Word content into a WP page. Maybe I’m doing it wrong, but content never seems to be properly formatted every time I’ve tried it. Additionally, Word generated HTML invariably takes up more data than similar content generated by a WP editor. The attribute styling added by Word makes it much more difficult to get the page to match the styling of all the other site content that’s created with a WP editor.

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