Say Hello to Gutenberg

1 minute read / News

Heard of Gutenberg? Well, it’s time to say hello.

Gutenberg is the new WordPress editor, an update which will be available as part of WordPress 5.0 and later – with all future development continuing in the Gutenberg plugin.

Building with blocks

According to the WordPress announcement, “the entire editing experience has been rebuilt for media rich pages and posts” through the Gutenberg release.

Gutenberg was developed on GitHub using the WordPress REST API, JavaScript, and React. As part of the update, users will be able to make use of the new ‘blocks’ – designed to help people build engaging content. Whether you’re new to web design or “write code for a living”, WordPress think that blocks will allow people to “insert, rearrange, and style multimedia content with very little technical knowledge”. Sounds good, right?

Now, instead of using custom code, users will be able to add blocks in a quick and easy way, helping to create more engaging and creative websites. Within the default blocks included with Gutenberg, you’ll find options for Audio, Columns, Code, Button, Embeds, Quote, Cover Image and more – meaning the opportunities to create something exciting seem fairly endless.

 

So, is Gutenberg a good thing?

Well, perhaps only time will tell. It’s likely that options like Gutenberg will replace page composers like Visual Composer, with our first glance already telling us that Gutenberg looks  a whole lot less complicated. Plus, thanks to modern technologies like React JS, it’s a whole lot lighter – replacing WordPress’ core WYS/WYG editor.

WordPress is recommending that people migrate their current features to blocks within Gutenberg, but there will be support remaining for existing functionality. Keep an eye out for transition paths for custom post types, shortcodes and meta-boxes, too.

We’re excited to start working with Gutenberg and put it through its paces – so watch this space in a couple of months when we’ll do a review of how we’ve found it. Bet you can’t contain your excitement, can you?

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