In reply to Tom.

I do agree with this. It’s great in abstract, it’s great on paper. But in my experience the IRL usage doesn’t really align with the idea of it.

My partner is a graphic designer who recently made a site with Squarespace. She hated it, because it seemed like she could do anything, but ultimately it just placed her in an invisible box. The ability to easily do anything custom out of the box in a repeatable, easy to use way within that system was an illusion. IMO the same is true for Gutenberg.

I also recently helped a non-profit set up a site. I opted to just use Astra and Gutenberg, thinking it might be faster. I thought by importing block patterns, setting up Customizer settings, etc. I would save time and it would be easy to use. In the end I spent too many hours trying to figure out how to get the nested block layouts I wanted, which felt like an exercise in “How to make a dev with 12 years experience feel like an idiot” When I went to train the client, they were perplexed and unenthused to edit. Explaining how to make some of the layouts, change the fonts and colors, etc, completely overwhelmed them, not to mention the concept of “reusable blocks”. They made one content update (which did not match any of the other layouts on the site) and now I get emails asking for help entering content (which in this case I don’t mind, but thats not the point 🙂

I share these two stories because they speak to the downstream effects of giving too many options to users. They either end up dumbfounded and confused and making a mess, or they think they have more power than they do and get frustrated by the tools (or lack thereof) available to them.