Not really ready to be released, awkward as hell

First, I appreciate that this is free, and thanks to all the shoulders WordPress is built upon.

Now about Gutenberg in particular – I have some websites made with content management plugins/themes – I thought perhaps these could be moved to Gutenberg and relieve my clients from subscriptions fees for themes/plugins.

Gutenberg lacks a lot of very basic layout control. It does not provide an alternative to paid/supported content management systems.

If you are designing your site first (so that it encompasses the brand, content, etc) and then building the website to reflect those goals, Gutenberg seems almost unuseable.

If you are choosing a template/theme first, then stuffing your content in as best as you can, Gutenberg is useable.

It feels like using Adobe Pagemill back in the day, with the convenience but very limited control of the final result.

I work in print and web – I am amazed that after all these years, there isn’t something like InDesign for websites.
Wordpress and other web layout systems feel like there is more emphasis on tech wizardry under the hood, than on creative layout/content/presentation for the end viewer.

Instead of user-friendly management windows/boxes to control and set everything, we have very basic placement settings, and real control can be exercised only through adding lines of css or editing template code.
That seems ridiculous at this point in time.

It would be helpful if, instead of just loudly promoting what it can do (which is all good), WordPress et al would also loudly state up front what it can’t do. Could save a lot of time for people trying to make websites.

So I’m back to the subscriptions and classic.

Best of luck with Gutenberg, but seriously, maybe its not ready yet. Once there is a complete UI for everything designers need, that would be a better launch time, and would mark an improvement over what has so far been available for web layout.

• This topic was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by culturalproduct. Reason: forgot to set stars