Pros & Cons of Gutenberg
The current WordPress visual editor hasn’t had many changes over the years and for the most part, has stayed pretty much the same. While this isn’t a bad thing, many think it is time for a change. Other platforms such as Medium or Ghost provide a really unique and refreshing experience for writers, so why can’t WordPress? Well, many contributors and volunteers have been working on the new Gutenberg WordPress editor behind the scenes for the past 6+ months. Their goal? To make adding rich content to WordPress simple and enjoyable.
To be fair to the developers and the team working on this, it is important to note that this is currently in its beta and testing phase, it’s not ready to run on production sites yet.
Pros of Gutenberg
- For publishers that prefer the newer Medium style editing experience, they are most likely going to love the WordPress Gutenberg editor.
- Gutenberg provides a less distracting experience with more screen space.
- Blocks are fun to use and the new alignment options are a step forward for larger resolution screens and full-width templated and responsive sites.
- Already works great on mobile, and going forward we can actually see people utilizing this a lot more. Need to make a quick edit on your phone while on the go? No problem.
- The ability for theme and plugin developers to create their own custom blocks.
- Easier to use for beginners.
Cons of Gutenberg
[featured_snippet image=”https://turtlesdive.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Wordpress-Gutenberg.jpg” image_alt=”Cons of Gutenberg” ]- It is currently missing Markdown support.
- While we also listed it being easier to use for beginners, we can also see this as being harder for some to learn.
- As of October 2017, Gutenberg does now support meta boxes. However, this is only initial support and it will require developers hopping on board. However, it’s a step in the right direction. You can at least tweak your Yoast SEO settings now. ?
- With so many themes and plugins out there, backwards compatibility is going to be a huge issue going forward. In fact, there will probably be thousands of developers that now have to do a lot of work, such as those that have integrations with TinyMCE. Out of all the WordPress updates, this is probably going to be one that causes the most work for developers. Although there might be a wrapper coming which would enable TinyMCE backwards compatibility. See pull request #1394.
- Some are worried about the accessibility of Gutenberg. Joost de Valk, the developer of Yoast SEO brought up this concern. Make sure to also check out this post about using Gutenberg with a screen reader.
