Wordpress 5.0 - Gutenberg is coming!
- but it has already been included for trial in WordPress in version 4.98
Gutenberg is the new visual editor for WordPress replacing TinyMCE. It will be standard as the default editor when WordPress 5.0 is released later in 2018. So what does this mean for existing WordPress users?
If you have been taught to use the TinyMCE editor things are going to change, big time. In Gutenberg you will need to learn about blocks and how these work to produce your website content. There is also a nudge in the direction of learning HTML and CSS3 to have full control over your layout, requiring a steeper learning curve for business owners who will have to devote much more time to maintain their web presence.
If, as reported, Gutenberg is installed by default, many people will avoid updating their WordPress sites to version 5.0. This is a very bad situation where security updates will not take place, which in turn will leave websites open to the hackers. Even if WordPress does decide to allow an opt-out option, they won't be able to support it for ever. In short, the massive changes heading towards WordPress users are going to affect absolutely millions of websites.
“We call the new editor Gutenberg. The entire editing experience has been rebuilt for media rich pages and posts. Experience the flexibility that blocks will bring, whether you are building your first site, or write code for a living.”
Now, at the time of writing, there is some debate over whether WooCommerce websites will work with some templates. Wtih so many WordPress online shops using WooCommerce as their preferred shop plugin it seems that there are huge problems ahead.
So why is WordPress changing to Gutenberg? Simply put, it's the competition from page builders, such as WIX and Squarespace, amongst others. At the moment WordPress is by far the most popular choice for a new website platform, it uses a Content Management System(CMS) with a fairly low learning curve and can be easily understood just by end users having to read a book. But if the user wants something even simpler and quicker then page builders are the way forward and they are becoming very popular. Clearly WordPress does not want to lose their dominance of the online market so Gutenberg is their answer. For new websites WordPress and Gutenberg is a far more attractive option than using TinyMCE; its just the existing WordPress sites that will cause major headaches.