Please do not go to the core

True, and all have their own way to work, which is very confusing for many users, and also very frustrating. Gutenberg will provide a standardized way how all the complicated stuff, like widgets, shortcodes, custom post types, custom fields can be hidden away for the content producers who have now a unified way to publish their content.

That was the strength of WordPress when I got into it 10 years ago: Every site worked the same way and people who knew how to publish on the platform knew how to do this on every site. In the last few years, that has dramatically changes with the proliferation of non-standardized page builders. The worst of them come with theme and content lock-in, so a site-owners wasn’t free any more to switch out themes when it was time to modernize.

Of course, leaving WordPress as your preferred system is one solution. There is also the plugin “Classic Editor” which will allow you to hide Gutenberg “for a while”, probably years.

You should give Gutenberg a try, WPTommy! You seem to care enough to leave a review here and participate in the conversation. I am using Gutenberg on a few of my side projects (not on client projects) and I really like pushing out content fast. My customers will love it. I also find quirks all around it. I make a note and post them on Gutenberg’s issues list. The team has been very, very fast fixing things, and accommodate developers trying to figure out how to work with Gutenberg on the core-editor Slack channel. It’s a fascinating energy.

@birgit Pauli-Haack

I read and hear a lot that available page builders are proprietary and Gutenberg will not be.

But testing Gutenberg for a while, I really can’t see the “openess” or the difference of it. For me, Gutenberg is as proprietary as the other page builders are.

It isn’t common usage to wrap every single paragraph in it’s own comment. It isn’t common to give specific formatting instructions to every block in addition to whats defined in the CSS.

In other page builders you also require to select every block separately to modify it. Which I personally take as one of the most annoying things in every pb.

Reusable blocks are also just a mix between shortcodes and widgets and they do not work much differently.

Creating a custom block with specific features has become complicated for designers. Gutenberg puts this work back to developers where as for now, some feature integrations such as custom metaboxes are feasible with the help of plugins and even most page builders are already compatible with these plugins. Can’t tell for Gutenberg.

In addition, there is no common library of blocks. They are defined in the theme, which again is not the sense of content being independent by themes or plugins.

And the argument that the content is completely reusable compared to other PBs is also only the half truth. Yes, the basic content is reusable. But due to the fact that the block features are inserted via comments and that these features are defined separately in other parts of the theme, makes is so proprietary that round tripping with other apps is not given as long as the other software does not render the Gutenberg block structure. I think you can see my points.

Gutenberg is actually only a very light version in competition to plugins, such as Beaver Builder, Elementor or the WPBakery Plugin. It is not different to other page builders, neither is it open. It only has a different UI.

• This reply was modified 7 years ago by yapic.