Are you listening?

The answer is no. I reported the main UI issues that people are having now over a year ago during beta testing. My feedback was ignored, probably because it undermined the basic usability of the editor.

We cannot go back, as people are now working with Gutenberg — My sites now have a mixture of posts in both Classic and Block format, so like it or not, it will have to go forward.

In the meantime to try and make the best of this mess I’ve started reporting bugs on GitHub. https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues

• This reply was modified 5 years, 11 months ago by Gary Allman.

I rather suspected that was the case, @gsallman. It’s sad, because WordPress is amazing, yet if regular users like me find it off-putting, and occasional guest-posters on my blog don’t even know how to begin a post, complete newcomers to WP are going to be even more lost. This isn’t going to help with the adoption of the platform.

Folks,

Thanks for the input here and I’m glad to have the opportunity to respond. It seems that you are missing the point of the development of WordPress core, and specifically the editor. Until this month, the default editor was the classic editor.

For the previous two years, if one wanted to experiment with the enhancement touted as the future, one had to install a plugin called Gutenberg. There are many reasons for using the Block-based editor and its development was a long process that continues and will continue for some time.

The change that happened this month was nothing more than a flip-flop of the necessity of a plugin. Whereas the classic editor was the default shipped with core, it is now available as a plugin. With this plugin installed and activated, your experience will be no different than before. What you won’t need to do is install the Gutenberg plugin to use the new blocks api.

Given that the future of publishing involves the rich experience created with javascript, I find it wonderful that the WordPress community created the Classic Editor plugin to allow the older experience to persist without stifling its ability to respond to market pressures.

@pbarthmaier Why are you guys so much in denial? We do not want this thing. You can go back to make Gutenberg a plugin and remove it from the core. What do you expect to happen, that users & devs will just stop complaining and accept it? It’s not going to happen. The persistence which the WP Team has about Gutenberg makes me wonder if a deal behind the scenes with a big player is going on.

Classic Editor Installations: Overs 2 million right now! Last time I looked before xmas it was 1 million.

https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/classic-editor/

@pbarthmaier. I’m not sure if I have actually missed the point or whether you have.

I’m well aware that the classic editor is available as a plugin, and in fact I’d already installed it before I wrote.

The reviews of Gutenberg are overwhelmingly negative. It doesn’t seem like this is being taken seriously.

Those reviews point to Gutenberg being unintuitive, clunky, much more difficult to use than the classic editor, and is intended to solve a problem that most of us simply don’t have. If Gutenberg remained available as an optional plugin, I’m quite certain that only a small percentage of WordPress users would download and use it long-term. For most of us it’s simply unnecessary.

New users of WordPress are going to struggle with Gutenberg. Sure, there’s an alternative, but having to download a plugin before you can use your blog, rather than having the classic interface available as an option right from the start, is going to be a barrier to adoption. It would be far better to have the classic editor running out of the box, with Gutenberg available as an optional setting or as a plugin for the small minority of users who want it.

So, what has happened to the “WordPress Philosophy”, specifically this bit…

“The rule of thumb is that the core should provide features that 80% or more of end users will actually appreciate and use. If the next version of WordPress comes with a feature that the majority of users immediately want to turn off, or think they’ll never use, then we’ve blown it.”

Does anyone seriously think that 80% of users want Gutenberg? Or has this statement just been quietly scrapped? In which case in should be removed from that page.

I salute you, @acoggins!

I have been a WP user for many years, and Gutenberg is the first time this platform disappointed me. It’s ridiculous to force us to have something that is flawed and really awfully made.

When a million of new people (or whatever the number) install a plugin to get rid of something you implemented I think you need to assemble the team of devs and make some changes because you are not going in the right direction.

Considering that WordPress 5.0.x was downloaded over 17 million times, I am surprised that the Classic Editor only has 2 million. I would think that number will rise in the next couple of months.

In our agency we only have a few sites with WordPress 5.0 in production without the the Classic Editor. The ratio is 4 on Gutenberg vs. 40 on Classic Editor. There are various reasons why people don’t want to deal with the new block editor yet. Only one client is absolutely against using Gutenberg. He is also the one who doesn’t want to switch to a responsive theme. Most clients deal with incompatible plugins, training time or staffing. The ratio will swing in favor of the new block editor in Q 2 of 2019 for our group.

@bph do those numbers show how many users reverted back to 4.9 after trying 5.0 or abandoned it all together? For the classic editor plugin to jump another million in a week is a hard sell to prove a point that Gutenberg is really desired by those who just simply want a choice. Adding another plugin to get our old editor back isn’t really a choice, it’s forced.

I’m terribly sorry, but this thread isn’t very productive in light of support.

It started out as a review of the reviews, not a request for support, and it has devolved a bit, there’s some tension starting to build as well, and as such I am closing this down before things get heated.

If you are seeking help with WordPress or the plugin, please feel free to create your own posts, if you wish to share your experiences with the new editing interface you may create your own reviews.