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Sarah Gooding

WordPress 5.0 Targeted for December 6, Prompting Widespread Outcry Ahead of WordCamp US

During last week’s core dev chat, Matt Mullenweg urged developers to consider WordPress 5.0 as “coming as soon as possible.” Nevertheless, his decision to set Thursday, December 6, for the new release date has taken many by surprise.

Official feedback channels and social media erupted with largely negative feedback on the decision, as the new release date has 5.0 landing the day before WordCamp US begins. This is a travel day for many attending the conference. It also means both of the planned follow-up releases will be expected during the upcoming weeks when many have scheduled time off for major world holidays.

Yoast CEO Joost de Valk, one of the most vocal critics of the 5.0 timelime, posted a public message of dissent that resonated with many on Twitter:

We vehemently disagree with the decision to release WordPress 5.0 on December 6th, and think it’s irresponsible and disrespectful towards the community.

However, we’re now going to try and support the community as well as possible and we hope to show everyone that Gutenberg is indeed a huge step forward.

Although Gutenberg as a project has strong support from many large companies in the WordPress ecosystem, much of the current uproar is rooted in a communication published in early October that indicated 5.0 would be pushed to January if it missed the first set of planned release dates:

We know there is a chance that 5.0 will need additional time, so these dates can slip by up to 8 days if needed. If additional time beyond that is required, we will instead aim for the following dates:

Secondary RC 1: January 8, 2019

Secondary Release: January 22, 2019

Should we need to switch to the secondary dates, this will be communicated as soon as we’re aware.

Companies made plans based on this schedule, but after those dates passed Mullenweg was unwilling to commit to honoring the previous communication. The plan from the outset may have been to “play it by ear” and incorporate new information as it became available, but the developer community had been counting on the published deadlines to be definitive.

“This decision was made in disregard to earlier specific timelines and promises, and does not take the realities on the ground into account,” Morten Rand-Hendricksen said. “I agree with @yoast it is both irresponsible and disrespectful.”

Although reactions on Twitter run the gamut from unbridled optimism to full on outrage, many of those commenting on the schedule have fallen into resignation, convinced that community feedback never really mattered when it came to scheduling the release.

Mullenweg’s rationale behind announcing the release date with three days notice is that Gutenberg and/or the Classic Editor are already active on more than 1.3 million sites. Users do not have to upgrade to WordPress 5.0 until they are ready. If they opt for the Classic Editor, the editing experience “will be indistinguishable from 4.9.8.”

Users who are informed enough to make this choice will be well-prepared when they see that 5.0 update in their dashboards. However, one of the chief concerns is that millions of WordPress users will update without testing. Plugin developers are scrambling to ship compatibility updates and support staff will need to be on hand to help users navigate any incompatibilities or bugs in the new editing experience. Hundreds of WordPress professionals will be traveling to WordCamp US when 5.0 is expected to ship, which poses challenges for supporting users who experience problems with the update.

“I do not think the attendees of WCUS are more important than much larger portion of the WordPress community who does not (and cannot) attend, and there are numerous ways to deal with 5.0 before or after the 6th if that particular day is inconvenient for someone, regardless of the reason,” Mullenweg said in response to comments regarding the date conflicting with travel plans.

The release date announcement has well over 100 comments from frustrated contributors and developers expressing concerns, and Mullenweg has been responsive in the comments. He has recently ramped up communication ahead of the release, regularly attending core dev chats, adding dedicated office hours to connect with the community one-on-one, and answering some of the most pressing Gutenberg questions on his blog in a lengthy but inspiring FAQ post.

Despite these communication efforts, contributors who are not employed by Automattic have said they feel this release has been plagued by a lack of transparency regarding decision-making. Many WordPress core committers, core contributors, and former release leads have pushed back on releasing before January to no avail. Their concerns and disappointments during the process hang like a dark cloud over what should be an exciting time for the future of WordPress.

“No matter how bad the process around WordPress 5.0 might have been, finally setting a release date was the only right step following the RCs,” WordPress core developer Dominik Schilling said. “Let’s see if it’s also the beginning for doing it better to get back on releases which everyone will love.”

John Teague, who runs an 11-person operation, managing 210 enterprise hosting clients, summarized how many are feeling ahead of WordPress 5.0 shipping out this week.

“I so want to be supportive of this release,” Teague said. “But between the top down, heavily Automattic managed process, poor release communication, super short RC2, RC3, punting on accessibility, and now this two-day notice to 5.0 release – it reminds me of an old Air Force saying when instructors sent barely trained pilots up for their first solo:

‘Send em up and let God grade em.’”

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61 responses to “WordPress 5.0 Targeted for December 6, Prompting Widespread Outcry Ahead of WordCamp US”

  1. The completely opaque, mismanaged development of GB has shown users of WordPress that it belongs to Matt and his investors and not to the community.

    People who dislike the rushed releases, breaking changes, lack of documentation and dismissal of accessibility issues have been called curmudgeons and “afraid of change”.

    What bothers me the most about this all is that Matt has shown himself to be a cunning businessman – now rich off the work of volunteers – and not the benevolent, community-centerd developer we thought he was. It’s very, very disappointing.

    It may sound very emotional, but this feels similar to other discoveries in life that have shown the world to be far harsher and cynical than one had thought previously, like Santa Claus not existing and that all higher-level politicians only care about money and not the people.

    I just don’t know what to say anymore. Kudos on Matt for fooling so many people into giving up their time to help him get rich and act like – as one commenter says in the make link – a king.

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    • I totale agree. The answer “you can still use Classic Editor” is similar to what they told to american natives when they where closed in the reserves.

      Metaphorically, being forced to use the classic editor plugin is like being closed in a new apartheid.

      The only thing the community can do to defend itself is leaving wordpress. But it’s going to be painful, after years of work.

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    • Agree totally with Rod. Automattic employees love Gutenberg, and they’d better. Meanwhile, those of us who don’t work with Automattic, who work day in and day out with small agencies and smaller business owners, know this is not about developers. It’s about stake holders and trying to compete with Wix asap. Otherwise why rush this thing out during the worst time of the year, even after you’ve publicly stated you would not, and then at the appeal of staffers themselves that it not be rushed out buggy as it is. He does not care, and never did. The endless army of WordPress volunteers who work for free and complained about the ethical issues of rushing out a major overhaul before it was ready – now you see the reality. WordPress belongs to Matt, always did, always will and if that were not true, you would have been listened to.

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  2. The decision to publish version 5.0 of WordPress on April 6 does not surprise me at all. The whole Gutenberg project has been disrespectful and irresponsible with the WordPress Community that has shouted by all means that it did not agree with the integration of Gutenberg in the core instead of doing it as a plugin.

    However, Matt did not care at all because, as I have always said, my opinion is that the goal of everything is to seek the benefit of Automattic (WP.com),

    The dates foreseen by him have not been respected and the hurry and speed of launching his project are more than evident.

    He will take advantage of the WordCamp US to “sell” his idea of ​​Gutenberg as something new and revolutionary and will try to convince us that it is a great advance.

    It is possible that this man has thought that he will go to an Apple Keynote instead of the WordCamp US and that is why he wants to force the launch of WordPress 5.0 for December 6th.

    And the worst of all is that this will be only the beginning. Seeing that a large part of the community has resigned itself to accept their decisions instead of opposing them and that it has been able to pass over all of them, other decisions of changes in WordPress that will already be planned will surely come soon.

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    • While I am not totally opposed to the block builder, I still give it a 1 star review, mainly because it isn’t up to speed with what we can do with the current editor, the speed in which it is being introduced as default in core, pushing the current editor into lesser citizen status.

      The problem is how to oppose. As free open source software we have no way to cut off revenue to WordPress to make a point. Whatever direction WordPress goes from now on, it is what it is.

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      • It isn’t up to speed with itself. And everything it’s competing with (via mimicry) already has a head start. It addresses some nice things, but it’s a net loss in terms of playing to WP’s strengths.

        Sure, you can go to Classic Editor with a plug-in, but if the best thing about a new feature is how easy it is to turn it off, maybe that’s a sign it’s not representative of the will of the people?

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      • I’m not totally opposed either, but am concerned by the buggy nature and reports of old posts being damaged. My way to protest is to put my older blog on ClassicPress, where the many modifications and posts won’t be affected. As for my newer website, I’ll let it take the Gutenberg plunge.

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  3. It’s interesting to see pretty much every larger company like Automattic, Alphabet, Avast, Microsoft, Disney, Electronic Arts and Activision (companies often without any major competition) are currently trying to push their products as a “rolling” service, just to reserve a piece from that monthly subscription plan pie.

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  4. What I’m curious about are the millions of WP users who don’t know anything about Gutenberg. Seems that the majority who are aware of it is primarily the dev community.

    To say 1.3 million have Gutenberg installed is only a fraction of the total user base of WP. By the way, according to the GB plugin page, it’s 700,000+ active installs and 600,000+ for the Classic editor, respectivily.

    Ultimately the people who will determine if Gutenberg (and Matt) is a success or a complete failure are the end-users. So it will be interesting to see what happens from December 6th and onward.

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  6. Don’t you get tired of this extremely subtle shilling for this dictator who secretly bought and owns this site and pays your wages?

    I mean how many “Mullenweg” and “Mullenweg said” do this articles have, there is no real balance.

    I totally missed to bring my Plugin to Gutenberg in a real way but it works with a crappy patch. I am not so deeply involved with it and and not really tried GB to have a real opinion. It feels like a big fuzz about not much to some extend because you really can just install the classic editor and act as if nothing happened. And I am not at all against the entire concept of GB, I like it actually but I hate what I am seeing how the community seems to not like it and how its just forced upon them by this dictator. It could just live as a plugin another year until its better and even more of the trillions of concerns and issue are resolved. Just by watching the plugin reviews and things arround it it seems the community does not want it.

    How is this “democratizing publishing” if the publishers actually have no say in it and nothing at all is even close to democratic? WP needs to be forked into true community organization at some point. Where a commitee, the users, the core devs vote on things or something like that. With Sponsorship of multiple big rich companies not just Automatic alone. Where the sponsors can pay core devs to build specific features they like but not just dictate where the entire project is going.

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  7. Mullenweg’s rationale behind announcing the release date with three days notice is that Gutenberg and/or the Classic Editor are already active on more than 1.3 million sites.

    “Hey, we’re literally a quarter of the internet, but things will go okay because a major portion of one thousandth of a percent of it is prepared.”

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  8. I think the Number One issue causing confusion here is separate blocks for each paragraph.

    Things are backwards.
    Currently:
    Shift+Enter inserts Line Break which doesn’t start a new block, this feels easy when you do this.
    Enter creates a new block which creates clutter. Clutter is bad and its why I believe people are so against it.

    Solution:
    It should Default to NOT create a new block on enter.
    There should not be a paragraph block PERIOD.
    We should be free to type our content and if and when we want to break that content we can press a key like currently happens with the Enter key.
    Which will start a new content block, thus giving us a spot to insert any fancy Gutenberg Blocks.

    Having separate Paragraph blocks is over kill, None of the page builders people are familiar with do this. It ties our hands, looks ugly and confuses things immensely.
    Most importantly it creates Clutter

    I believe, Doing This One change will simplify things for many and change many peoples minds about Gutenberg.

    I believe this one issue is preventing people from seeing the immense benefits and advantages of Gutenberg.

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    • Absolutely spot on, Derrick. This has been my main gripe about the GB editor.

      The each paragraph-as-a-block is the dumbest idea ever. Medium looks the same (since WP shamelessly copied its editor’s look) but it doesn’t treat each paragraph as a movable block. It only supports cut and paste

      Your proposal is exactly how WP should have done it.

      Moving multiple paragraphs in GB is super confusing. Yes you can select all the text and use cut and paste like “normal” but it’s really weird selecting text across blocks – tho we may get used to it. But you can also drag drop the paragraph blocks individually.

      So… if you want to move one para, drag it. If you want to move two or more, use a weird cut and paste.

      Your proposal would make it so much easier, as all the paragraphs you want together would be in their own block, so dragging them around is quite intuitive and less prone to mistakes.

      (Also curious why I have to submit comments twice on this site – the first submit disappears into the ether. I’ve learnt to copy before submitting)

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    • I’m interested in what you said about clutter. There’s a Top Toolbar mode in the More menu at the very top right, and I think it will help you if you want to try it out. It makes the workflow for adding a paragraph a lot more similar to the classic editor in terms of how you’ve described wanting to simply type content and then get several new paragraphs all in one space when you hit Enter.

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  10. I’m one of the 1.3 million users who installed the plug-in and happily await the release of the core engine. So no, I haven’t been a loud objector that catches the attention and leads some to say WP isn’t paying attention to its user base. Maybe WP is paying attention, and likes the quiet contentment of a large part of its user base.

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  12. Three days notice is unacceptable.

    WordPress is Enterprise grade software and we should have had at least a full week or more to prepare, test, train and plan based on the stability of RC3.

    I’m using WordPress in a Educational Environment and would prefer to launch Gutenberg at day one in support of the project.

    In my opinion installing Classic Editor is a step backwards and a slap in the face of those who worked so hard on Gutenberg.

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    • I strongly would have preferred a January release to this. But to be fair, you were supposed to test with the previous 2 release candidates. That’s one of the reasons that release candidates exist. Taking that into account, you had about 15 days to prepare, which is well over the week you wanted.

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      • You’re correct.

        However, RC1 and RC2 were a little buggy when it came to what I needed to do in the theme development space with Gutenberg blocks.

        For instance, I needed to dequeue some of the core embed blocks that are useless noise. (ie the college humor block), remove color options, limit fonts etc.

        Documentation is not as well organized as say WP_Query, Template Tags, and Conditional Tags. This is very unfortunate.

        The handbook is great but it lacks code examples for everything Gutenberg can do and how to best do it.

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  13. Seems, with any new release, the professional and proper way to go about it is to educate the users beforehand.

    Forcing a major change, such as the Gutenberg editor, on so many folks without more input from the community is disrespectful.

    In order for a new idea to succeed, the application of it must succeed. Most learned that in Business 101. WordPress folks are customers and should be considered the organization’s bread and butter.

    I don’t mind the Gutenberg editor but don’t feel it has enchanced my WP experience – yet. Some folks are confused by it and therefore don’t like it. Let’s give them a chance to learn it before they HAVE to use it.

    I feel the release should wait until after the first of the year.

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  14. Matt is a genius and visionary. You should all be thankful we have his leadership and steady hand guiding the ship. Many of you have made your own “small fortunes” on the backs of WordPress. You should be grateful, but instead we see only sniping and crude remarks about money. If Matt wasn’t leading the charge or WordPress didn’t exist, where would you all be? Nowhere. Remember where you came from, instead of biting the hand that feeds you.

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    • Robert, you’re mistaken. I don’t owe Matt anything other than a modicum of respect for things he’s done in the past. You seem to think that WordPress is some free tool that he gifted the world and thanks to his genius we’re all fat and happy.

      The truth is that WordPress would be nowhere without all the developers that have built themes and plugins or the people who spend countless hours helping other people learn WordPress. Don’t forget all the people who have written tutorials or helped put together WordCamps.

      A large percentage of those people don’t do any of it for the money. They do it because they want to, because they enjoy helping others, because they honestly believe that they’re working towards something great.

      If Matt wasn’t leading WordPress you know where I’d be? Right here, writing code for something else. If WordPress vanished off the face of the Earth tomorrow I wouldn’t have a problem finding work or making money. I’ve been doing this since long before WordPress was even an idea or the spark of a concept.

      The reality is “WE are the hand that feed”. It is on the backs of tens of thousands of people who don’t work on Core that WordPress became a success. It isn’t us who needs to remember where we came from.

      Truthfully, I don’t care about Gutenberg. Personally I wouldn’t use it, but I only use the old editor in text mode anyway, so my personal opinion doesn’t really matter when it comes to the product.

      What does matter to me is the attitude and the lack of respect that is rapidly dividing the community and splintering people.

      Comments like yours aren’t helping the situation and further promotes an “Us vs Them” mentality. It’s also a discredit to Matt himself, there are a lot of people who take comments like yours and attribute it to him and I really don’t think he’s nearly as conceited and arrogant as you make him out to be.

      I like Matt (despite the fact he thinks Texas BBQ is the best, even though the entire world knows Kansas City BBQ is far superior).

      He makes mistakes just like everyone else and the way he has treated this release and allowed people (like Otto) to bully, bad mouth and disrespect people has been pretty bad.

      On a personal level I’ve lost a little respect for the guy. But he really doesn’t need people like you taking a bad situation and making much, much worse.

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      • You said it better than I could. Although I strongly dislike the way Mullenweg has pushed his agenda in this whole Gutenberg project, I still haven’t read an insult towards regular developers and builders coming from him, unlike from many of his fans writing here or in other places: the “you traitors, snivelers, change-averse scum, bow to our master!” crowd.

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      • “Personally I wouldn’t use it, but I only use the old editor in text mode anyway, so my personal opinion doesn’t really matter when it comes to the product.”

        Hi, Jay! Thanks for your insights.

        What is your plan for going forward? Will you leave WP? Will you use the Classic Editor plugin? If yes, what will you do when it’s deprecated in a couple of years?

        I like writing in WP in Markdown. Classic suited me well. It seems ridiculous to take my fingers off the keyboard just to make something bold, italic, or a simple link. Gutenberg doesn’t necessarily seem bad, but I don’t see any advantage to it, and at least for now, it takes away the way I liked to write and requires me to do a lot of mousing just to write what was previously all keyboard work.

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        • Right now the plan is to sit on v4.x for the foreseeable future.

          There’s no reason to upgrade at this point and hiding updates is cake if you know a little code.

          I’m paying close attention to ClassicPress, there seems to be a large community of talented people working on it and some of the things going into their v2 are exactly the kinds of things WordPress should have been focused on, even if they’re not flashy.

          There’s a vision behind Gutenberg and I can see what it hopes to accomplish and how other pieces, like the Customizer, will eventually fit in. But I’m not convinced it’s the right way to accomplish the end goal.

          *shrug*

          Change is the nature of the business. It’s constant and never ending.
          Sometimes tools change and sometimes people change tools.

          Sometimes people change tools because the tools changed, sometimes it’s because they find a better tool.

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    • If Matt wasn’t leading the charge or WordPress didn’t exist, where would you all be? Nowhere. Remember where you came from, instead of biting the hand that feeds you.

      I’m hoping the post was sarcastic but with the fanboys you never know.

      I was programming before I knew who Matt was or what WordPress was and I’ll be programming whether it’s WordPress or something else. I’ll be right where I want to be. In charge of my own destiny.

      I feel sorry for you if you are hitched to Matt and his kingdom and depend on them for your success or failure.

      You are exactly they type of user Gutenberg was made for.

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      • I 100% thought the guy was being over the top to underline the sarcasm.

        I don’t owe anyone anything that they freely gave me, or they did not freely give it.

        Adults live with the consequences of their actions, good and bad.

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      • Two points:

        Where would we be? Really? We’d be using Joomla or Drupal or something else? Matt came up with a fork of his own, that was a basic blogging tool at its core. He’s built an army of fanboys around the idea of “community” while essentially using them as free labor for a decade – unbeknownst to them. When you see Gutenberg dropped in the middle of December, while most people are trying to get off work to visit family or do their holiday planning, despite the overwhelming 1 star reviews, known bugs galore, and make it a mandatory part of core, too; that shows you how compassionate your leader truly is. You’re an investor or you’re not on the list that matters. And there are other CMSs outthere – and there are others many of use are going to start or go to as a result of this level of discourtesy and disregard.

        Secondly, ease of use, that was always the appeal of WP – and to remove that in favor of a bloated system no one wanted, no one needed, so it can be a “new” drag and drop builder that will then integrate into core is a big change. Software development is normally done in logical, tested increments so developers can keep up with releases and nobody is left behind. Microsoft didn’t go from Windows 7 to 10, and the beloved iPhone didn’t go from 3 to whatever they’re at now. They release changes gradually so developers can change software, vendors can make changes to programs, and users can acclimate. Making Gutenberg essentially not backward compatible is not only sticks it to current users and past users but is cruel and bizarre.

        I’ve used WP on hundreds of clients sites over the decade and a half that it’s been out. I’ve volunteered at WordCamps and seen them turn into celebrity love-fests where the “in crowd” gets the opportunities and those who are not known are shunned openly and brazenly. I’ve also seen Matt avoid discussing important, relevant topics, and treat end-users like garbage.

        Why not switch to ClassicPress in the short term, and in the long term I’ll look at Drupal or Ruby.

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  15. I installed Gutenberg. I was worried because I use the Comic Easel Plugin with modified themes.
    The text editor is… well, there are some parts that are awkward. But it didn’t destroy my themes or installs.
    I am hyperactive in maintaining my installs. If I did one and done installs for customers, I think this would be uncomfortable. You’ve already set up an install to be as low maintenance as possible. Now you are fielding questions about this renovation.

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  16. Here we go again…Some people said that things shouldn’t be around Thanksgiving holiday in November, guess what? I, as a Canadian, celebrate Thanksgiving holiday in October. Billions of people don’t celebrate Thanksgiving.

    Hanukkah is between December 2 and December 10. According to Google. Guess what? Billions of people don’t celebrate Hanukkah.

    Maybe 5.0.1 will come around Christmas, I celebrate Christmas. Billions of people don’t celebrate Christmas.

    My Company has Canadian, American and European staff (spread out in three continents). Guess what? During the long weekend for Canadian Thanksgiving…my Canadian staff didn’t work, the European, American and other staff took on the work.
    When American Thanksgiving came, Canadian/Euro/other staff took on the work and American staff took off 4 days (thursday, friday, saturday and sunday).

    For Christmas, to billions of people, December 24 & 25 are just regular days, just like let’s say October 24 & 25. They will take over the work December 24 & 25.

    I could go on and on about different holidays.

    Automattic is a company with staff all over the world.
    WordPress Community is a community with members all over the world.

    Schedules shouldn’t be based around US/North American holidays.

    If we combine US (327M), Canada(37M) and even Europe(742M) population…Roughly 1.1B population…That leaves 6.6B that don’t celebrate these “major holidays”.

    Also, no one is forcing you to update to WP5.0 on December 6.

    January has a few holidays around the world.
    February 5 is Chinese New Year and so forth. People who celebrate those holidays celebrate those days?

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  17. In support of the millions of people who will unwittingly update over the next few days, and who will face severe compatibility issues with their old themes and plugins, I’ve prepared an article to walk them through the troubleshooting process.

    It’s currently still relatively minimal, but I will be expanding it as more information becomes available:

    https://gschoppe.com/wordpress/wordpress-5-0-repair-guide/

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  18. The arrogance of Matt and the core team is amazing. “hey let’s release a major upgrade with a new editor that affects how a lot of site plugins work… right before the holidays!”

    Brilliant. And while you can say “Oh people should always test….” etc (and agree), we all know that there are a lot of people who will just update… and how many sites will break in ways small or large? How many people will be affected, negatively, in the weeks during their major sales push? Why even take this risk – what’s another month? Oh right… Matt doesn’t care.

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    • Hey Rick, you don’t have to use WordPress. There are plenty of other CMS’s on the market who would be happy to recognize your “brilliance”. It’s quite arrogant for you to think you know better than Matt, considering he created all this and got us to where we are today. You can say he doesn’t care but he has provided multiple opportunities for you to contact him. Did you? His information is public and he’s had office hours, provided interviews, been at word camps, etc. Just because YOU don’t get your way, doesn’t mean the rest of us have to bow to your demands. How do those sour grapes taste? I hope they’re sweet!

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      • It’s quite arrogant for you to think you know better than Matt, considering he created all this and got us to where we are today.

        He may have originally created the concept but the community & plugins are still being created by a massive amount of contributors either on GitHub or the WordPress plugin directory.

        I believe if WordPress didn’t exist today something similar would have been created by someone else and massively adopted in the same fashion (such as Joomla). I am happy for what was given to us and appreciate what it has done to make website design easier. However, I feel Gutenberg is going to be a huge problem for many people very soon.

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    • The arrogance of Matt and the core team is amazing.

      Chortle. If you think the core team (the list of people who used to develop WordPress,) is on board with this farse you haven’t been paying attention. If you mean the “core team” that Matt handpicked and installed via his Automattic employee directory, sure.

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  20. We don’t have anything against Gutenberg. We actually share the same vision for the new block editor and support it.

    However, the short release date while there are some serious backward compatibility concern us. And we have to write an announcement yesterday to tell our users not to update yet. It happens to not only Meta Box. We noticed it happens to ACF, WP101 and maybe more teams/products. The total users/websites are affected is millions.

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  21. On balance, I would defer the decision to release 5.0. I came from a financial services background where you locked down your production environment in early December. It was year-end and you couldn’t screw with financial transactions and reporting. Too much risk.

    While not the same, I think the logic holds forth for e-commerce sites where they are expecting larger than average sales. Add to this, people traveling or on vacation and I think you have a high-risk scenario. The reporting risk here is the press as I don’t think they will be forgiving.

    Some people have countered, saying the release is OK because 1.3 million sites have installed it. True. I’m one of those installations, but it’s on a test site. It’s not on a production site. Fortunately, my hosting company allows me to have a staging site. But, not all plug-in developers allow their software to work in a staging environment.

    Some developers want you to buy an additional license even for staging. The end result is I’m testing something in a sub-optimal scenario.

    Given the current situation, I will defer upgrading till I feel comfortable. This is not to say, I disagree with the direction. It’s primarily the timing. I’ve experienced too many times where projects were released because of external dates and not readiness. The good news is I don’t have to abide by those dates.

    What also concerns me is the number of people I talk to who have no idea of the editor change but will gladly update thinking 5.0 has got to be better. Those are the people I worry about. Many of them are non-profits or small businesses that don’t have the resources to figure out what happened if things don’t work. And…I’m not sure how well the hosting companies are prepared to help them.

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    • Well said, better than I put it above. Imagine you’re a normal WordPress user. you have a Woocommerce shop. You know you should keep things up to date so you do that today… but you don’t see the message from the WC team that it’s important to update WC before WP… oops. Or something else goes wrong. Yes, of COURSE you should back up etc… but we’re talking normal people here, not devs or IT people. If they are offline for a day – what are their sales losses?

      Here’s what I don’t get – why is it critical to shove this out now vs after the holidays (and let’s not go to the utterly silly place that ‘there are 7b people, there are always holidays’ etc. )?

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  23. I’ve been watching all the back and forth and can understand both sides.

    I have been building sites for 23 years and what excited me about WordPress, from the start, was its ease of use for my clients.

    Over the years, technology evolved and things have been nudging toward being more difficult. We can’t stop technology, I get that. And I also know it will steamroll forward whether we like it or not. I get that too.

    But what concerned me most about this entire process — are my clients. I’ll evolve, embrace, learn and keep up — as most of you who are reading this post will do. But that is not how most website owners look at things. Change is difficult, but we don’t have to make it more difficult that in has to be, right?

    I’ve personally seen several site owners who have been struggling to “keep up” shutdown their blogs over the impending introduction of Gutenberg. Even letting them know that nothing has to change by using the Classic Editor until 2022 wasn’t enough. They are done.

    I recently read where those new to WordPress have no problem with Gutenberg — they don’t know any different. But what about all millions of users who like WordPress because of it’s ease of use. That’s was one of the key “selling” points that made it so popular with the “average Joe”.

    So WordPress keeps pushing ahead, partly to keep up with the Jones — but how many non-techie users are going to be left behind in it’s wake?

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  24. I appreciate all the comments from others, and am glad this ole dog is not the only one confused and upset with this new version.

    First impressions are what counts, and at first look it is very cluttered and confusing to say the least, I always thought WP was for the beginner when I look at the new version it looks like a spreadsheet of some kind, and I have no idea what I am looking at.

    I built a page and the garbage text left over was enormous!

    Thank god I finally found the “text” version so I could see what was left behind, this is obviously no good.

    This whole “building blocks” set up is something I left behind over 50 years ago, I don’t play with them anymore.

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  26. Reading through the comments made me realize how strong Matt and the team are.
    Accepting all the negatives, attacks and hard work they’ve to go through for the greatness of a community that doesn’t realize it all in the beginning.

    To me, Gutenberg is the best thing that has happened to the WordPress core EVER, Period.

    When you understand this, you’ll be fine, humble and thank Matt and the core team.

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  28. I have by accident installed WP5.0

    nothing seems to be broken, apart from GB!

    had to install the classic editor plugin,

    GB does not work! :(. I searched for 3 months about the solution, my host provider is still looking. but it just won’t stop sending me msg

    “Update failed” it just does not and never did let me post anything ..

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  29. I love new features and always happy when a big release is coming out. When something is very new, it is always scare and people are going to dislike it because they have been using the classic editor for years.

    to be honest, I find the new editor nothing, too much search, too much has been removed and many themes are not compatible with Gutenberg. Still, I want to use it, I assume that the standard editor will disappear forever in the future.

    I also understand, even incl myself to move over to another cms system like Joomla. .. or not. I have no idea serieus.

    Gutenberg is nice for text, but there is not even a lightbox for the gutenberg gallery, so you have to install another third part plugin for that. … I will see it in the future what WordPress will brings .

    Gutenberg is for me a puzzle

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  30. (Warning: levity alert…)

    As an “old fart” observer of pop culture and technology, I’m going to take a wait-and-see approach. Will the Gutenberg adoption be successful as Apple’s migration from Classic OS to Mac OS, or will the change face the same fate as the ill-fated New Coke?

    Meanwhile, I’m going to upgrade WP only on my test domains before making wholesale upgrades. In words of philosopher Vanilla Ice, “Rolling in my 5.0, with my ragtop down so my hair can blow…”

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  31. There’s 9 very serious WordPress gurus where I work on the weekends. Everyone of them say Gutenberg is the equivalent to the downfall of the Berlin Wall.

    I think to put that in better terms is…Gutenberg will be the downfall of WordPress. The downfall of the Berlin wall was because it got shoved down people’s throats like WordPress is doing to it’s huge community.

    I know it’s the biggest mess I’ve ever tried to use. I think my Redbone Coon Hound pet dog has more sense than…never mind.

    Myself, and a lot of other people I know have had our WordPress accounts disabled and our reviews deleted because we left clean honest reviews on the Gutenberg review thingy.

    What are the moderators afraid of…the truth?

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