Too much “help” is not helpful

  • I get that the WordPress developers want to “help” people with this new editor. The thing is, it would have been best to add the Gutenberg editor as a tab, alongside the “old” TinyMCE Visual editor tab, and the Text editor tab. Let the user decide what’s best.

    In my case, the Text editor is best, since that allows me to know exactly what will be included within the body of a post.

    I help manage some 50+ WordPress websites; if all the authors/editors start using the Gutenberg block editor, it’s going to be a huge mess in terms of layout on multiple devices and ad placement.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

  • Thanks for writing in.

    May I ask how layout on multiple devices would be a mess after editing with Gutenberg?

    May I ask how ad placement works on the sites you manage? How are the ads placed?

    Thread Starter Ted Slater

    (@tedslater)

    The blocks will flow differently on desktop than they will on mobile. Depending on how the editors/authors configure the blocks, they could look just fine on desktop (for example), but messed up on mobile. Some authors think snazzy formatting will make their long-form editorials more engaging, but it may end up just being a distraction.

    We’ve got 50 sites in our network, each with multiple authors with different skill sets … the potential for formatting problems on multiple sites is great.

    Regarding ads, we’ve developed some custom PHP code to inject ads after certain paragraphs, on desktop and on mobile. Extraneous formatting-related HTML (DIVs, P tags with classes, SPANs, etc.) can interfere with the precise placement of the ads. Yes, we could expand the code to accommodate all those extraneous formatting-related tags, but that could get cumbersome … and for what we’re publishing (long-form editorial), it really shouldn’t be necessary.

    I just took a look at https://designsimply.com — Gutenberg may be a good fit for you, since you’re a designer with a good eye for visual composition. I think you could make some pretty powerful layouts. I’m concerned, though, that our authors would make a mess. ??

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • The topic ‘Too much “help” is not helpful’ is closed to new replies.