Why is technology being forced upon us when it’s still buggy and not yet fully supported?
It’s how I’d sum up all the ranting done about the latest WordPress Gutenberg block editor.
- Gutenberg sucks!
- It’s buggy!
- Too hard to use!
- Doesn’t work!
- Can’t do fancy things like my pagebuilder!
Yes, I’ve heard it all. And despite all the technology advancements we’ve had in the past decades, it seems people (once again) forget how technology works.
The chicken-and-egg analogy
What comes first? The chicken or the egg?
Or in tech-speak, what comes first…the format or its adoption? How do you force users onto a new format/platform/technology? You allow it as an option for a good amount of time, and then force them over.
- Do you remember when CD’s and BLU-RAY discs were an option before becoming a standard?
- Or when USB was an option before becoming standard? And now USB-C is becoming standard?
- Or when Apple ditched the old connectors for the new lightning ones?
Every time there were changes, people cried foul because all their 3rd-party devices and attachments became obsolete overnight. And then what…they learned to love the new technology and practically turned their noses at anybody still on the old format.
Gutenberg is being pushed now because it’s damn time. Now that it’s officially released (already been for over a year now?), all third party themes and plugins can integrate with it.
Gutenberg is good enough for production use
Sure…not for everyone *eye roll*, but at least for trendsetting developers.
If you can code and/or extremely savvy around new technology, Gutenberg works just fine despite some annoyances here and there.
Does that mean all newbies and regular users can use it? Judging from the constant complaining I hear, I’d guess no. But good news for them. They can still use Classic Editor until A) they become familiar enough with Gutenberg, B) Gutenberg gets easier to use, or C) stay with Classic Editor which still works with WordPress!
Why does Gutenberg have to be the future?
Because the future of technology is always evolving.
I know some people would rather die with their classic text editor and bloated pagebuilder than to ever use Gutenberg. That’s a fair position to take. I have grandparents who refuse to use text messages, too.
But that isn’t everyone else’s stance. We want cool shit. New and easier ways to build content and content layouts. Sure…Gutenberg isn’t easy for everyone…I do notice that. But it certainly allows so much more flexibility in WordPress natively. So many more things developers can do now without hacking on other crap (like pagebuilders). And it’s only the beginning.
Once all 3rd-party themes/plugins get onboard with Gutenberg, we’ll start to see the limitless potential than an archaic Classic (text) Editor would have never been able to do.
When does Gutenberg get better?
Things get better when more people use it.
Widespread adoption brings helpful feedback under real-world conditions. Developers improve it, and everybody wins in the end.
The question really isn’t whether Gutenberg gets better. That train was already set in motion a long time ago and so much progress has already been made.
The real question is at which point do you want to jump on the train? When it’s still new and imperfect? Or when it’s absolutely mature and overtaken all other alternatives?
That really depends on you.
Does Gutenberg benefit you now? Does it improve your project or give you chances to improve your development skills? Or is it a waste of time and unhelpful distraction from your tried-and-true methods?
FWIW, I think most people should get familiar with it ASAP. Because it’s going to be so much more than a content editor. It will soon overtake widgets and also theme design.
Funny you should mention this. A fairly prominent paleontologist just mentioned he’s not blogging as much on his personal site because he finds the block editor incredibly annoying. But maybe he’s not a typical WordPress user because all he does is blog.
The block eiditor is getting closer to what Visual Bakery / Composer / whatever was back in 2011, so it’s definitely catching up to modern, non-bloated page builders. But it’s still 90% counterintuitive for folks who just want to write posts.
Since 90% of my work is done for clients I measure everything in terms of trainability. Right now it’s still a 60/40 mix for training a client to edit something like a homepage “special of the day” block in Beaver Builder vs the block editor. That’s way up compared to walking them through updating the same text in the old Classic Editor. (Yuck!) But for now at least Beaver Builder has the edge — mostly because you never leave the actual page. I’m 100% confident that the block editor will eventually catch up with that ease of use.
But teaching people how to blog took about five minutes. “It’s like writing an email in Gmail: click ‘new,’ type your text, select and click formatting icons, drop images where you want them, click ‘publish.'” It was easy to point out category checkboxes too.
Can you honestly say it’s that easy to teach someone how to blog with the block editor? With headings, lists, and quotes? With categories? I’d say no. First you have to orient them to the conceptual framework. Then you have to introduce them to the interface. Then you have to special-case why it’s easier to fumble for a list, heading, or quote block.
As site builders it’s easy to ask yeah, well who gives a $#%!# about blogging? That’s a tougher position to take for site owners though, because blogging is actually kind of important. It’s a bit like trying to convince users to compose email with InDesign.
Again, not saying I want to go back to the classic editor! I don’t! I’m sure in a couple of years it’ll totally rock — especially once it can finally work correctly as a front-end editor. I can’t wait!
But even then I’m not convinced it’ll be the right tool for day-to-day blogging.
I’m 1000% convinced that Gutenberg is easy enough to teach. I show people what types of content they can add, and how to choose the associating blocks for them.
The people with the biggest issues are the ones with old habits to “un-learn”. I’m also 1000% sure I can get a brand new WordPress user blogging quicker with native Gutenberg than to show them how to install Beaver Builder, remember to choose the BB editor, and then click around and blog.
I have yet to see anybody fumble between paragraph, heading, or lists. Paragraph or heading, you can choose easily enough. Lists are created automatically if you bullet off a hyphen or number. Indeed, Gutenberg can be more annoying than a simpler text editor much in the way that a full word document processor can be more annoying than a notepad.
I blog a ton and have no issues with Gutenberg. However…your client could very easily default to the Classic Editor or Classic Editor Block and then there’s no issue whatsoever. It’s not like the birth of Gutenberg took away his right to operate old-school style.
I really don’t get it when people moan that Gutenberg is harder to use to write blog posts.
If all you are doing is writing a post, adding a link or maybe inserting a couple of images then there is absolutely nothing more complex or confusing than there was with the classic editor.
It’s virtually the same, you type, you click the link button, you add an image block instead of a paragraph block.
If you are creating complex page layouts then yes, it’s different for better or worse (personally I love Gutenberg), but for simple post writing and editing I don’t even think about it.
Hi John,
I agree that Gutenberg is infinitely better than the TinyMCE editor for creating complex page layouts. The writing experience is much less worse than it was even a couple of months ago.
But here’s a question: what would the impact be if Gmail switched to the block editor tomorrow for composing email? Don’t get me wrong! I’d love it if they did. It would let me off the hook for training WordPress clients who need to switch!
When the block editor is mature enough I wouldn’t be surprised if Gmail does make the switch. But it’s not ready for that. Instead a couple million WordPress users are still just alpha and beta testers.
I do get your point, I just don’t see that the block editor is ‘hard’, it’s maybe a little bit ‘huh?’ the first post but once you realise that you need to change block type for headings, quotes, etc. it’s reasonably intuitive.
What would be excellent would be if Gmail, etc. switched to Ghost like editor. Ghost is just a joy to write posts in. The social media site cake.co has a similar rich text editor (it’s just irritating that Android doesn’t support it).
It’s not really a fair analogy comparing WordPress to Gmail. Gmail is only for email and almost nobody does fancy layouts except using an email service. WordPress is so much more than that. Part of Gutenberg’s strengths is allowing people to do what they’ve already been doing…which is throwing on different content and page layouts.
We both agree completely that the block editor is designed and intended to replace the dozens of page builders that have emerged over the last 10+ to do fancy layouts. I also agree that once you’ve used the block editor to build 15-20 pages with fancy layouts it probably starts to feel “intuitive” to use it for blogging too. And I definitely agree with your point that the block editor would be a godsend for users of mailing-list services!
I think you are simply missing the point. The examples you cite are really not relevant to the question here. This is an old song people are singing over and over again: USB, DVD, SMS, etc… Frankly, there is absolutely no relation.
Gutenberg pretended to reinvent the wheel and it failed. Instead of chasing page builders, they became even more popular since blocks were added in core. Gutenberg plugin has the most incredible collection of 1star reviews while Classic Editor plugin is one of top 5 most installed ones.
Unfortunately, the question is not how great blocks are or will be in th future but rather whether they really fit users’ expectations and working experience. Time has proven they don’t. Just acknowledge this and move on.
The example provided above about Gmail is really pertinent and should make you think twice. Again, the question is really not whether working with blocks is good or bad or whether Gutenberg is a good initiative or not and whether it will improve in the future. The real problem is that this thing was pushed into core and this should have never happened.
Lastly, your title is asking a question that is not replied in the article. And this is the real question people should ask themselves, together with “why Gutenberg was added into WP core”.
Frankly, I think it is you that misses the point.
Gutenberg is new, didn’t reinvent anything. And didn’t fail. It’s a wild success and very clever for many users (unfortunately not all). Having many 1-star reviews from people who hate change is not exactly “proof of failure”. Tesla has a ton of haters, too. Microsoft and Apple also have tons of haters, too. Are they failures? —- NO.
Gutenberg doesn’t need to fit existing expectations because it provides users with a new one. It’s the people demanding an old experience out of a new tool that have the biggest issue with it. Time has proven Gutenberg is wildly successful with many developers. Now working to make all users happy, not only developers and tech-savvy users. Please acknowledge this and move on.
I’ve already answered why it was pushed into core. Because it’s good enough, ready enough, and some of us are excited for evolution.
Or if that answer doesn’t suit you…it was added into WP core because people with more talent, forward vision, and executive power have chosen to.
In case you didn’t feel heard…this is what I got from your repeated comments here and on the Facebook group:
– you think Gutenberg is hard to use, hard to learn
– doesn’t work right
– is a failure
– is too much of a hassle for users to switch back to Classic Editor or Classic Editor Block
– you don’t like it, and feel your sentiments echo the majority
– should not be enabled in core because of aforementioned reasons
What I wonder most about your logic is how you expect new technology to evolve into place. To silently sit on the sidelines until enough people randomly switch over and DEMAND the transition? How did you expect such a radical new concept like Gutenberg to improve without real-world use?
You seem awfully opinionated as a developer here. You might as well tell the WordPress core devs how to do their job and decide when things should be deprecated or not. Can do the same with PHP life-cycles as well. If you really have better solutions for how to smoothly transition into new technology, please share with the rest of us.
No problem Johnny. You exposed your position and I exposed mine.
I thought comments were made for that.
I was being sincere. I think you should make a post telling WP core devs how to cycle in new features. It’d be especially helpful coming from disenchanted users like yourself. (I mean…if you really want to be heard.)
Sorry but I really don’t care as long as I can work with Classic Editor. I’m not a disenchanted user, I simply ignore and never use blocks. Really, genuinely: not interested in whatever related to them.
I simply replied to your posts because I thought there was some fun debating about this topic. I see we reached some limits here. Bye.
Oh yeah, I’m definitely not debating. Not looking to change anyone’s opinions. Simply shedding light for people who can’t see Gutenberg any other way but as a mistake. Take care, John.
I’m curious whether you know any long-form writers who make a living writing. You may not be aware that almost none of us use Gutenberg. The freelance writers who are forced to use it because they contribute content on sites that force them to use it report that it is annoying and STILL buggy.
I surveyed 26 members of a small business mastermind community. Here are the results:
Using WordPress Classic Editor: 16
Using Gutenberg: 5
Switched to Classic Press: 2
I use another page builder in WordPress (Divi, etc.): 3
Three of the five who responded that they use Gutenberg elaborated that they ONLY use it for specific pages — not for blogging.
Also, do you know anyone who regularly updates their content? How do you edit content without breaking the layout? How do you even FIND the block the text is in to edit it? And once you find it, if you change it substantially and it breaks the layout, how do you fix it?
I asked someone who uses Gutenberg that and they said they delete the existing content and recreate the page from scratch. Oh fun…and a waste of time!
Do you know of major customized WordPress publishers with massive amounts of content because they publish a dozen posts a day and have for over a decade? The expense and pain they’re going to endure if the ability to keep the Classic Editor goes away will be very real.
My solution for WordPress forcing Gutenberg on us is to switch to the ClassicPress fork. The difficulty of optimizing Gutenberg for Core Web Vitals has many looking at alternatives such as Duda.co which scores much better.
Visual folks and geeks with excellent memories may love Gutenberg, but normal people who do not memorize the names of everything they use will struggle to use it — if they use it at all.
I’d love to see statistics on how many WordPress installs have never been updated since Gutenberg was pushed live. I bet a lot of sites are dormant and have been since that time because the owners either think their site is broken OR simply cannot figure out how to update it and don’t want to invest time in resolving those challenges.
Hi Gail, there’s a lot of truth to your complaints. As a developer, I love Gutenberg. As a writer, it makes things slightly more annoying but not a concern at all for me. I don’t buy the “buggy” complaint at all since I don’t have issues and I can write as heavy as anybody else (will happily challenge anyone on that). Been spitting 10-40k posts back when WordPress was much uglier and fewer features. “How do you find the block” is annoying but not hard if you know a few tricks or two. Fixing your broken layout is also not so hard. But I agree…the interface is not so intuitive like the iPhone where you don’t even have to learn how to use it.
But there’s also another truth…as much as people claim to want a simple site and simple editing process, there are also many business owners who want to build a crazy looking site full of fancy effects. This is where WordPress is beginning to struggle with being an everything-to-everybody kind of product.
I’ll continue enjoying WordPress for as long as it caters to what I like, regardless if all others hate it.