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Jeff Chandler

My Gutenberg Experience Thus Far

Ive used Gutenberg for several months and during that time, there have been moments where I love it and situations where I've had to disable the plugin because of frustrating bugs.

One of the most frustrating aspects of using Gutenberg is the lack of support from the plugins I depend on.

Publish Post Preview

I use the Publish Post Preview plugin to generate a preview link for posts so that people can see what it looks like before it's published.

Publish Preview Checkbox in the Current Editor

In the current editor, the checkbox to generate a link is in the Publish meta box. In Gutenberg, that option doesn't exist. According to a recent support forum post, the author does not plan on making it Gutenberg compatible until there is a finalized API to extend the sidebar.

Telegram for WordPress

We use the Telegram for WordPress plugin to automatically send published posts to our Telegram channel. The plugin adds a meta box that has options to send the post, configure the message structure, send a file, and display the featured image.

In Gutenberg, the meta box is open by default which provides access to those options. However, when I edit a published post, there are times when the meta box is closed and clicking the arrow to expand it doesn't work. Since the Send this post to channel option is on by default, saving changes to the post will resend the post to Telegram subscribers. Something I don't want to happen for simple edits.

Edit Flow

We use Edit Flow to collaborate on posts and often use the Editorial Comments feature to provide feedback. In Gutenberg, the meta boxes for Editorial Comments and Notifications do not open when clicking the arrow. Therefor, we can't use those features.


Edit Flow Meta Boxes are Broken

After the Deadline

I'm a fan of After the Deadline which is a proofreading module in Jetpack. It checks posts for spelling, grammar, and misused words. When activated, a button is added to the visual editor to perform the checks. This button is not available in Gutenberg, so those features are not available as well.

Adding Images to Paragraphs is a Pain

Adding images to paragraphs in Gutenberg is more cumbersome than it needs to be. In the current editor, all I have to do is place the cursor where I want to insert an image, add media, choose image size, align it, and I'm done.

In Gutenberg, you need to create an image block below the paragraph block, move the image block to the paragraph block, align it, and use handlebars on the corner of the image to resize it.

I realize that there are a few workflows that I'm going to have to change because of how Gutenberg works, but this workflow doesn't make any sense to me, especially when I can't insert images without creating a new block. Thankfully, the Gutenberg team is on top of it and is working on a solution to add images within a paragraph block.

Random Blank Paragraph Blocks

I recently copied a large amount of text from a Google Doc and pasted it into Gutenberg and was surprised by how well it worked. Blocks were created in the right spots and I didn't have to edit it much.

I opened the post in the classic editor so that I could use the proofreading feature and it mangled the post. I opened the post in Gutenberg again and noticed a bunch of empty paragraph blocks created in-between paragraph blocks.

This resulted in having to spend some time deleting the empty paragraph blocks and questioning whether I should avoid transferring posts between editors in the future.

Tags Sometimes Appear Blank in the Meta Box

When adding tags to posts, sometimes the tags appear blank although they show up on the front-end. Also, deleting tags sometimes doesn't work. I click on the X and nothing happens in the back-end, but the tag will be removed from the front-end.

Blank Tags in Gutenberg

Gutenberg Has a Lot of Rough Edges

If this version of Gutenberg were merged into WordPress today, it would be a disaster. It's clear that the project has a long way to go before being considered for merge into core. Most of the issues I've outlined in this post are known and are being addressed. 

Gutenberg is supposed to make everything we do in the current editor easier and more efficient. If it doesn't, then I have to ask, what's the point?

What concerns me the most about Gutenberg is plugin support. Some of the plugins I mentioned above are active on 10K sites or less but are important to the way I craft and publish content in WordPress.

Without them, using Gutenberg is not a great experience and instead, makes me want to use the current editor where things simply work.

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47 responses to “My Gutenberg Experience Thus Far”

  1. Sigh…

    We have these bugs. Have you filed them with the appropriate project?

    Are you actively participating in the development and reporting of issues?

    Are you testing updates and keeping yourself available to test if releases are fixing your issues?

    Or is this just an article so you can create content about the current flaws of Gutenberg to increase your domain authority?

    Sorry to nit, but I don’t see any solutions or reporting, only “experiences”. If you haven’t already, please report these to the projects you love. Develop fixes if you are capable. Become active.

    If you have done this, then bravo and kudos, sir!

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    • Yes, I have created tickets on Github for Gutenberg if the ticket did not already exist, I’ve created a few forum threads in plugin support forums asking about Gutenberg compatibility, I’ve done what I can to get these things fixed or at least notify people that there’s a problem. I also routinely update Gutenberg, in fact 2.5.0 came out today. I have not written about my user experience with Gutenberg yet and that’s what I’ve done with this post. These are the things that stand out to me and get in the way of a wonderful user experience.

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      • Can I just say what a graceful reply this was? Drive-by commenter drops by to criticize Jeff’s article. Someone who’s clearly unaware of what contributions he’s made, who he is, what he’s about, how long he’s been running this site and the standard of his reporting on all matters WordPress for years.

        If anyone in WordPress is qualified to write a user’s perspective on Gutenberg, it’s Jeff. And despite that, there’s not a hint of defensiveness in his reply. Just a matter-of-fact answer to his questions. This deserves boundless respect, IMO.

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      • @Peter Knight

        Agreed. While I have openly disagreed with Jeff many times, he was very upfront, transparent and helpful.

        As I often do, I strongly disagree with the nonsensical claims that people shouldn’t be allowed to share their experiences or frustrations with WordPress … unless they are willing and able to freely provide their time and creative talents.

        @Darren unfairly and aggressively challenges Jeff about “actively participating in the development and reporting of issues.” Yet, Darren fails to state how much of his time and creative talents he donates to fixing WordPress’s complicated and extensive issues.

        Darren’s website also says that “Since as far back as high school, Darren has put effort towards making his life easier.” So why would he criticize someone who takes the time to point out how WordPress should be easier and better by sharing his findings on the web for others to see and learn from?

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      • No need to explain yourself, there are quite many “Gutenberg is da best” bots around these days in comments, forums, twitter, facebook, etc., who never looked at the code and can not see all the real and also potential problems.

        Thanks for your article, maybe it will help to make the responsible people for Gutenberg start to realize that the project now is an early beta at maximum, far from release, and in many areas still in concept-development stage.

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    • This is the most absurd comment when talking about WordPress. A WordPress user – and that’s the subject of this post, the user experience – doesn’t have to know how to open a GitHub issue or post in a project forum.

      The primary objective of Gutenberg, IMHO, is to make it easy for a new user, to bring more users to WordPress, not to attract developers that can test, find and solve bugs.

      Honestly, this topic is generating so much polarized opinions that maybe it is time to stop and reflect a little what we want for this project as a community, and not as a support of a commercial service.

      It seems that any criticism of Gutenberg is understood as a resistance to change, a reactionary tendency, and not as a genuine concern with what is happening, with the difficulties that we will create to users and ourselves in projects which depend on the current flexibility of WordPress.

      This flexibility is called into question by Gutenberg, the current state of Gutenberg, because it does not cover the uses that are given to WordPress and its editor. Metaboxes are a clear example.

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      • The news seems to be, Gutenberg will need to be formally introduced before smaller plugins can or will patch for it. There will be a time where things won’t work quite right for some/many users. A seamless transition may not be possible with that one plugin you use, etc.

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  2. We, at OnTheGoSystems, have high hopes for Gutenberg. The fundamental problems that it addresses are very real and growing. WordPress does need a better editor today.

    We’ve been working on Gutenberg support for our plugins and we’re getting great support from Gutenberg developers.

    What’s frustrating is how the plugin is managed. There’s no real roadmap towards inclusion in core and there are conflicting and weird messages coming from different people on the Gutenberg team.

    Getting the entire WordPress ecosystem to shift to a new editor is a big project. Instead of defining a realistic roadmap and sticking with it, I feel that the WordPress leadership prefers to keep things foggy and use panic/urgency to get developers to act.

    And, would it really be so hard to get these meta boxes backward compatible? That would solve so many issues for so many plugins. It would be great if legacy metaboxes kept working (even if they would look a little ugly). A lot better than to have sites with broken functionality.

    I think that having your plugin admin look ugly and your users complaining about it is a strong enough incentive to act. There’s no need to break everything. Just my own thoughts.

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    • What’s frustrating is how the plugin is managed. There’s no real roadmap towards inclusion in core and there are conflicting and weird messages coming from different people on the Gutenberg team.

      Same here, we really want to contribute, but there seems no real project lead with technical understanding. Often answers to technical issues in github are from designers, and tickets are closed because they see simply can’t understand the issue (no offence, but designers are no coders).

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    • Please, please listen to Amir. I’m not saying that because I use his Toolset plugin; years of using it has taught me to respect what he has to say.

      His perspective isn’t that of a blogger but of someone who supports a LOT of people who build business sites for others. He’s a great source of knowledge about those of us who build business sites for clients because he sees and supports us and our issues.

      And, holy cow but his team gets a lot of work done.

      Please, listen to him and don’t break things.

      My only suggestion beyond that is checkboxes in the Classic Editor plugin to select which post types could use the Gut editor. Maybe I’d like to turn it on for a clients blog Posts and Pages but not all the carefully built CPTs. If necessary though, I’ll just turn it off completely.

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  3. Jeff, thanks for posting such a candid and nicely detailed post about your experience with Gutenberg and plug-ins you rely on.

    Sorry if some people may think this is a “dumb” question, but is there a website with a list of plug-ins that do and do not work with Gutenberg?

    Also, when did Gutenberg project start? Sure seems like an incredibly lengthy process.

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    • The closest thing to a list of compatible and not compatible plugins is the pie charts on this project page https://plugincompat.danielbachhuber.com/ with the majority of those plugins listed as unknown or more likely, haven’t been tested yet. Gutenberg started for me at WordCamp US 2016 when Matt announced on stage that the editor would be revamped. I don’t know the official date, probably the day when the Gutenberg repo was created. The first major version of Gutenberg that was pushed to users was at WordCamp Europe 2017.

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      • As a side note, one challenge for plugin developers is that the Gutenberg team is still periodically pushing some api-breaking changes. This is understandable given the sheer volume of work they’re doing. But it creates risks. We have an internal beta for NextGEN Gallery with Gutenberg compatibility, including a block. We’re also working on some separate GB related projects. But we’re reluctant to release anything until we’re confident there will be no more changes to the API. We don’t want to have to push urgent fixes if anything breaks following upcoming GB updates. My guess is a lot of plugins are working on GB compatibility and features, but have similar concerns about releasing.

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      • When that compatibility tool/list of Daniel Bachhuber was released, we were excited and thought it would be very useful.

        Then we found that it does not distinguish between different Gutenberg versions.

        From our tests and form reading all the issues in GB github we know that “compatible with GB 2.2” does not mean “compatible with 2.4”.

        That’s why this whole project is unfortunately useless in its current state. It should a) mention GB version or b) be reset after each release of GB.

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      • Riad Benguella – First, looks like you’re actively working on GB. Just want to emphasize that any thoughts here should be considered constructive. Now that I’m familiar with React and the GB codebase, I like it. I think the API is elegant. And I’m fairly upbeat about the possibilities of the project as a whole. We have a lot of GB-related development planned.

        You asked “What can we do better in this area?”

        It’s not so much what can be done better. The fact that there are regular API breaking changes just seems to underscore where the project is in the development process. It’s not yet fully mature.

        This wouldn’t be a problem if there wasn’t so much urgency to get Gutenberg fully released in core. Based on where it is right now, I’d say even this fall would be optimistic. Ideally, the project needs to get 100% stable first (still a couple months away), and *then* give theme/plugin devs and agencies 3-6 months to adjust.

        The other point worth making is that even if the team is announcing deprecations, it’s costly and not that fun to have to keep reworking code. And it doesn’t make sense to release GB-based code given the still-high probability of future breakage.

        Again, these aren’t problems in themselves. They only start to look like problems because of the urgency that surrounds the project.

        So if I was going to ask for anything, it would be more clarity (and possibly more reasonable-ness :) ) on what the criteria and timetables are for deciding when GB is ‘ready.’

        Thanks for the work you’re doing on the project.

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    • Thanks for these answers, and don’t worry, I take all the constructive feedback. In fact this kind of posts in general is really constructive and we need this so Thanks Jeff. (And most of the issues above now have PRs and issues and will get fixed in the next releases).

      True that I’m actively involved in Gutenberg, but I’m a contributor like any other contributor, decisions like readiness and APIs are not my own.

      Now coming back to my opinion on the API, I feel like you’re saying that for an API to be stable, it needs to stop changing? Allow me to disagree with this. For me a stable API is an API that has a good breaking changes strategy. WordPress has a history with avoiding breaking changes and that’s good but WordPress also breaks backward compatibility in all releases. Like any software, if you want to stay alive, you need to continue improving it which means breaking existing API. So having a stale API is something that never happens unless the software is dying.

      At the moment Gutenberg has an opportunity to make breaking changes quicker than normal in the WordPress world and that’s fine and that doesn’t mean it’s not stable. It’s just an opportunity we have to improve and polish things while it’s in Plugin Phase, and this will never stop if it stays in Plugin Phase. That doesn’t mean the old APIs are not good, it means the new ones are better. After the merge, the pace of these breaking changes will slow down to match WordPress breaking changes pace but I don’t think it’s going to stop which would mean we stopped evolving WordPress.

      > Again, these aren’t problems in themselves. They only start to look like problems because of the urgency that surrounds the project.

      I see this over and over again and to be honest, I don’t see any urgency myself, Gutenberg (the idea) has been around for several years (mockups in WordCamp US three years ago), the development started more than a year ago (it was in the open from the get go) and the plugin was first released 10 months ago now. As stated several times by the leads, the WordPress 5.0 won’t ship until it’s ready. I honestly don’t see the urgency here.

      So we have two options: Get on the Gutenberg train now and help shape the API, which means maybe having to make some small changes to your themes and plugins each 3 Gutenberg releases (and not in urgency because there are deprecating messages etc…) or wait for its final release and hope the API will fit your needs.

      When it comes to readiness of Gutenberg: I think it’s close to be ready for merge, if you notice the last releases are not as big as the previous ones, we just focus on polishing things essentially. And a lot of this polish can happen after merge like any other part of WordPress, there are still some important bits we have to get int before but these are all known and can land pretty quickly.

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      • Riad, I’m NOT a developer, but three (3) or more years just to come out with a better editor is a bad sign. Gutenberg is increasingly looking like its going to be for WordPress, what the Edsel car was to Ford back in the 1950s.

        For people not familiar with Ford’s Edsel fiasco, here’s a brief summary:

        “Marketing experts hold the Edsel up as a supreme example of the corporate culture’s failure to understand American consumers. Business analysts cite the weak internal support for the product inside Ford’s executive offices.” (wikipedia.org)

        “Car buyers didn’t purchase the Edsel because it was a bad or ugly car. They didn’t buy it because it didn’t live up to the expectations the company created…So actually the first failure occurred for the Ford Edsel before anyone even saw the automobile.” (thoughtco.com)

        “The ‘car of the future’ is now a cautionary tale in business classrooms” (howstuffworks.com)

        “The Edsel’s short history makes a fascinating cautionary tale for anyone in business” (roadandtrack.com)

        “The word ‘Edsel’ became synonymous with failure” (washingtonpost.com)

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      • At the moment Gutenberg has an opportunity to make breaking changes quicker than normal in the WordPress world and that’s fine and that doesn’t mean it’s not stable.

        That doesn’t seem to make sense.

        Making breaking changes quicker than normal is pretty much the definition of unstable.

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  4. Not sure I agree about the adding inline images to paragraphs. Seems to defeat the purpose of having images and paragraphs as separate blocks. I totally agree the current workflow makes aligning those images more difficult than it maybe should. Though the purposed solution seems to add more unneeded complexity and even more hidden contextualize menus and options.

    All that being said, even with the proposed fix, the option to align the image and text as separate blocks would still exist. It seems like we should fix that experience before building in more layers of complexity.

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  7. I’ve been trying to force myself to use Gutenberg on all my personal sites and find many of these similar challenges. Unfortunately, I also heavily use the WordPress mobile app which has no connection to Gutenberg currently so I’m very concerned about what the future holds in that regard. I’m mostly using classic editor really since that is really all the mobile app supports.

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  8. As a plugin dev, I’m holding out to make major changes to my plugin to get it to work with Gutenberg.

    The main issue I see currently is the metaboxes that are in some of my plugins. Still not clear if they will remain compatible or I’ll need to spend hours making major changes.

    Frankly, will cross that bridge when I think the time is right.

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  9. Jeff, this is really a side note. But instead of using JetPack’s grammar check I use Grammarly in Chrome when proofreading posts for WordPress. It does a really good job as a plugin for Chrome.

    You can also use Grammarly as an app on your Mac or mobile devices. I would like to see WordPress / Grammarly integrations in the future if possible- it doesn’t seem to work on Safari (my preferred browser).

    I haven’t used Gutenberg for a while because of the switching back and forth problems you mentioned- particularly for Markdown.

    However, I would think using something like ACF with CSS Grid layouts could solve some of these photo layout problems in the future. Just a thought.

    The UX is always going to be tough because they have to decide on what features are direct access, and which are sequential access- otherwise you clutter the menus.

    https://www.nngroup.com/articles/direct-vs-sequential-access/

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  10. Thank you for giving us a fair assessment of your use of Gutenberg. Which, incidentally, is not so unusual that it does not leave us worried about how much there is yet to do for Gutenberg to be usable.

    I believe, however, it underestimates the impact of Gutenberg’s incompatibility with some plugins. The 10K sites you refer about the plugins you use are a lot of sites to be left behind.

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  12. The WordPress Gutenberg project assumes that the so-called Linus’s Law can find and fix anything and everything:

    given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow

    While it’s a a useful metaphor for FLOSS, it’s not a software development methodology and is considered flawed as it does not scale in reality.

    An expectation that the community of users should/could test and report all the internal bugs and external issues occurring with Gutenberg seems a stretch. And that’s just reporting them. Next, every contributor for all the plugins, themes, and WordPress itself would have to respond to those needs. While most interactions will work fine, the potential range is exponential: [Gutenberg] x [WordPress] x [plugins] x [themes]

    Jeff indicates that Automattic’s own contributions of Jetpack and Edit Flow aren’t yet fully compatible with Gutenberg, which is driven by the company’s CEO, led by an employee, and teamed by some company staff. If they can’t get it quite right, why push such an expectation across an entire ecosystem that now powers some 30% of the web?

    Here’s a suggestion: Gutenberg should be treated as an Automattic product like Jetpack. It could be developed and housed as a WordPress.com project and then shared with the community to use or ignore. That’s how other companies play in the WordPress ecosystem.

    Remember the guiding principle of the WordPress.org roadmap:

    a regular release schedule every 3-4 months with the features primarily driven by ideas voted on by our users

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    • Here’s a suggestion: Gutenberg should be treated as an Automattic product like Jetpack. It could be developed and housed as a WordPress.com project and then shared with the community to use or ignore.

      Ahhh, the voice of reason, at last.

      That approach should make logical sense to both sides of this debate, and the development could carry on with all those who are sufficiently interested participating, and those who aren’t, standing on the side-lines and shouting.

      A bit like Brexit, I would imagine. :-)

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      • Terrence, thanks for commenting “voice of reason” on my suggestion to reduce Gutenberg to a Jetpack-like role.

        I’m trying to be reasonable about the Gutenberg shift, not some disgruntled troll. I want debate, unlike the defenders. It’s a big deal for me, as I’ve been a WordPress contributor for the past five years on WordCamps and WordPress.org teams. Now, I’ve stepped out on sabbatical from the WordPress community, as I won’t be moving beyond version 4.9.x. Instead, I’ll focus on client needs, which aren’t to suddenly budget a site re-engineering to accommodate a sole plugin that breaks the WordPress platform. That’s not a business goal for me nor my clients — though it seems to be a business goal for Automattic and a small coterie of companies on the so-called Growth Council that has crept into WordPress.org without any charter whatsoever.

        Unfortunately, my suggestion will not be heard. So-called WordPress benevolent dictator Matt Mullenweg chooses to issue ultimatums with little explanation while ignoring all criticism of his moves. I’ve spoken with so many high-level and mid-level figures across the community who don’t support Gutenberg, but they won’t speak out about it. Why not? Does one person merit that much power in an open source community that powers some 30% of the web. I’d expect as much from Facebook’s Zuckerberg, but not from someone who claims a mission to “to democratize publishing through Open Source, GPL software.”

        Whatever, why complain, let’s wait it out a year with the community split between 4.9.x and 5.x. Besides, one major figure (in the closet with their opinion) confided to me a year ago at the start of this mess: It’s only matter of time until WordPress forks. Why? I asked. Because, they said, it’ll just be some business deal. Me, I’ll choose community over business. Let Automattic become the new Oracle, if that’s what they want.

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  13. Thank you Jeff for sharing your experience with Gutenberg and your experience is very helpful for me to make decision on using it now or waiting for a little bit longer. I wish I had time to try it and contribute my experience, but I don’t.

    Keep up good work, Jeff!

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  14. For agencies and developers with multiple clients, these experiences this “late” in the game are deeply concerning. I put together a helper plugin and workflow for my agency to get Classic Editor installed on all our 400+ client sites before the merge proposal or the 4.9.6 release, to strip Gutenberg and the relevant nag panel until we can fully test integrations with the final release version, and set client expectations.

    You can find my solution here: https://gschoppe.com/wordpress/disable-gutenberg-now/

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    • Thank you Greg for the providing that code.

      Is it compatible with Multisite?

      In re-reading all this bruhaha in here, and in other threads, about how wonderful Gutenbrick is going to be, a surprisingly charitable thought keeps going through my head….

      “You can’t learn what you can’t see”.

      And clearly, they just can’t “see” the problem. The only way they can learn that their worldview does not align with the majority of end-user needs and wants, is for one of two things to happen.

      1) The Gutenbrick hits the fan, its ignored by end-users and rejected by the WP ecosystem; prefering to stick with TinyMCE, Elementor, Beaver Builder etc. In which case, WordPress loses a year or two of wrong-headed development, WordPress.com competitors steal a lead and, I imagine, WordPress starts to fade slowly into obscurity.

      or,

      2) The Gutenbrick hits the fan, its ignored by end-users and rejected by the WP ecosystem which then forks the code into WP2 (which may have already started), and builds a new kind of community which is not run by a Corporation masquerading to be working in the community’s best interest, when really its just serving its own.

      Neither of which is particularly good news for WordPress.com investors, so I think someone with skin in the game will eventually ask WTF is going on here?, and pull the plug, before its too late.

      But, just to hedge my bets, I bought a domain “gutenblock.org” and thought I might curate in one spot all the code and plugins designed to help those who didn’t want to go down the yellow gutenbrick road.

      What do you think… good idea?

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      • Terrence, there is a real need for WordPress LTS, which will be exposed as a major weakness with WordPress 5. I’d say that Gutenblock is too sarcastic to attract serious support. I thought about launching BorgPress as a joke site, but that’d be very mean-spirited.

        The Classic Editor plugin by @azaozz is provided as a delay solution, and there are posts on disabling major upgrades and Gutenberg itself. When WP5 hits there will be a surge in recommendations to delay and disable Gutenberg, and some WP agency CTOs have already dug in their heels to stay on 4.9.x for a year to see how things land.

        Here’s the real problem: all those darn plugins! Developer shops will be forced to decide if they can support one path or the other or both…UGH. Jeff’s pain on this post will not be an easy fix…

        That scenario was the final nail in the Joomla coffin, when they forced a roadmap strategy of quarterly fast-paced minor upgrades with limited support and an annual major upgrade with breakage and LTS. Joomla Extension developers wouldn’t have it; they said we’ll just wait to see what pans out in the major upgrade and then decide what to do at a later stage. The result is that users were left floundering in the wake of mismatched versions with confusing support. There was a similar backlash with Drupal 6, where some shops sat on version 5 LTS and delayed until 7 was viable.

        WordPress.org does issue patch upgrades for previous versions, and the intention is to continue that practice, BUT since WordPress has no official LTS or sunset schedules, it’ll be a crap shoot.

        Bottom line? Big companies can extract upgrade costs, while the rest of us ride out the turbulent waves of “Innovation.” Choice? BorgPress or LTSpress.

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  15. Yep Jeff, I’ve had similar or exact same issues with Gutenberg on my personal site.

    Thanks for writing about this – most appreciated!

    I haven’t had to disable Gutenberg after a release (yet) so, I fully intend to just keep using it as my Editor of choice from here on out.

    Thanks to the Gutenberg team for working hard and smart!

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      • I am not a coder or programmer, just a blogger.

        That’s the whole point Marcus.

        Gutenbrick is for bloggers.

        But, these days, bloggers are only maybe less than half of WordPress[.org] site owners. Many WordPress[.org] installations ~ shock, horror ~ run without a single item of blog content whatsoever.

        Never have. Never will do.

        And for them, and many developers of the page-oriented tools we use, right now, despite all the talking-up and accolades its been getting from its developers, Gutenbrick represents a retrograde step.

        But not for you Marcus. You’re OK, right? :-)

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  16. There are clearly a lot of talking heads in here that know a lot about coding and WordPress.

    I wonder, can any one of them point me in the right direction so that I can understand what is being done by the development team to learn about end-user need for, and reaction to, the Gutenberg interface, and its use and application?

    I mean ~ specifically and “in detail” ~ and not by just pointing me to a Slack channel or blog article they wrote.

    I ask this because I have had the distinct impression from day one that irrespective of whether the WordPress ecosystem liked it, or the end-users wanted it, we are going to get Gutenberg, in one form or another.

    Which seems to be much more like the way you would behave if you were the, say, the CEO of a corporation, but not if you were, for example, the trusted head of a community and non-profit.

    And in absence of genuine outreach and active end-user inclusion in development would obviously tend to support this view.

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  17. Finally someone who tells things as they are and not someone who just applaud Automattic (as many do) praising everything they do. Congratulations for your comments.

    I have commented repeatedly that Guttenberg is light years away from becoming a suitable editor to incorporate into the core of WordPress: it is cumbersome, complicated and difficult and writing an entry steals you more than twice as long.

    They argue that they created Guttenberg to extend the use among inexperienced users … but it is clear that the opposite has been true to date.

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    • I’ve been using it and, it works fine. It’s not perfect but it is NOT light years away. Most people could start using it now and get use to the workflow and a few changes. IMHO it’s going to be a GREAT update to the old Editor. The UI is quite intuitive and, I’m REALLY looking forward to see what the page builders, plugin developers and theme authors do with it! My experiences with Gutenberg 2.50 have been positive so I’m using it now – not waiting for it to be perfect.

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      • Yes Bob you are probably right. My site is only using 21 active plugins including an Organize Series plugin that connects Posts into a series (like chapters in a book). However, I’m pretty sure the WooCommerce guys will get their plugin compatible with Gutenberg soon enough along with the more popular plugins. I’m pretty upbeat about the Gutenberg 2.50 plugin and, I really like the media blocks (image and gallery). Jeff’s findings were spot on as I have too ran across these issues but all in all I think it will be Gutenberg will become a great Editor.

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    • Thanks, but don’t get me wrong. I may not be a WP fanboy, but I do love most things about it; the sharing community and ecosystem etc.

      I think, at times, its a shining beacon of hope and shows what can be accomplished by a comunity. At others, it shows all the flaws of human nature. So, no surprises there then.

      What I don’t like, what I REALLY don’t like, is this Gutenbrick thing which WordPress.COM needs, being shoved down our WordPress.ORG throats.

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