Maybe it has not been noticed, but behind the scenes it has been uneasy for a while in the WordPress Community. There has been a lot of work done in recent years on a new editor, called Gutenberg. This new editor must give a new experience to writing in WordPress. It becomes more intuitive and more drag-and-drop. This development also fits with the increasing use of sitebuilders such as Divi and Beaver Builder within WordPress websites in general.
Soon WordPress 5.0 will be available and this release would make the Gutenberg editor available. However, a lot of themes and plugins are not yet compatible with Gutenberg. There were also too many issues surrounding go live. That is why 5.0 has already been postponed twice. Yesterday, however, it became known that tomorrow, December 6, the go live will launch anyway and every website that uses WordPress 5.0 passes to Gutenberg.
And that has quite some consequences!
Because, as mentioned, many themes and plugins are not yet ready for Gutenberg. In addition, there are still a few issues in Gutenberg; teething problems that every new technology has. But the last and most important problem is that most site administrators are not ready for Gutenberg at all. The way of writing and designing is completely different and without some experience, this can have considerable consequences for websites that are already in the air. It is not for nothing that big players such as Yoast and WPML warn not to install the 5.0 release for now and at least to wait for 5.01 in January. Better still, to use a staging website to test everything well before you go live with 5.0 and Gutenberg.
Whatever one thinks of Gutenberg and the way it becomes available (or forced, as some find), the fact remains that tomorrow it will be available in the 5.0 release. The fact remains that we, as website builders and administrators, will eventually use Gutenberg in any way whatsoever. However, we have decided to do this at a later date and very phased. That is why on all websites we manage this morning the Classic Editor is installed and activated, so that the automatic upgrades can install WordPress 5.0 tomorrow. For example, these websites get all the good from the 5.0 release, but for the time being Gutenberg remains inert in the background.
After we have gained some testing and experience with Gutenberg next year, we will decide what we will do with it. In any case, we will consult with the owners per website how we will use the website in the coming years and how Gutenberg fits in. Eventually, before July 2022, if the Classic Editor is no longer supported, all websites will have to be converted. Then many websites will have been re-designed, we suspect, and Gutenberg can be used in that process.
We keep the WordPress release up-to-date on all websites, and we benefit from all stability and safety improvements, but we keep Gutenberg off the radar for the time being, until we consider Gutenberg and ourselves mature enough to go on productive websites. Bet.
If you have any questions about Gutenberg or our opinion about this, let us know!
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