Sometimes in June of this year, Matt Mullenweg, WordPress’s project lead, announced the Project Gutenburg, and the Gutenburg Editor Plugin was released. The project is aimed at introducing a new WordPress editor that would replace the current one.
After the initial release and reviews, a lot has been said about the project. If you blog or have a website built on WordPress in Nigeria, here is what you need to know about the Gutenburg Editor.
Gutenburg Editor Works in “Blocks”
As I have already said, the Gutenburg Editor is a new WordPress editor. It’s lighter and faster than the current WordPress editor – and most importantly, it allows arranging contents in “blocks.”
So instead of having all your contents – texts (headings and paragraphs), images, and video embeds – in one unit, as it is currently, you can put each of the contents in different units (blocks) and arrange the blocks how you want. If you already use template designing tools in MailChimp and other email marketing tools, you would be familiar with the concept.
Aside from the possibility of arranging contents in blocks the way you want, Gutenburg Editor also allows you to do other difficult WordPress implementation that would have required shortcodes and custom HTML in the current editor.
The Gutenberg Editor Inserter
Plugins and Gutenburg Editor
On the current WordPress editor, some plugins usually add extra boxes below or beside the editor. Such plugins use the boxes for their functionality; however, Gutenburg Editor doesn’t currently support them. After the integration of Gutenburg, the boxes don’t show.
This occurrence has posed a concern for plugin publishers, thinking the Gutenburg Editor would render most plugins obsolete. So WordPress experts are proposing the adjustment of Gutenburg to accommodate those plugins that print boxes under and beside the editor.
Another thing that isn’t pretty cool about the editor is the relocation of the toolbar (the bar that carries functions like bold, italic, alignment, insert hyperlinks, etc.). The way the toolbar is currently positioned on the Gutenburg Editor makes it automatically popup by itself, disturbing the flow of writing.
Gutenburg Editor Is Still in Beta, but likely to be Bundled into WordPress 4.9
Gutenburg is still in beta and now only available as a standalone plugin. If you want to check it out, download the Gutenburg Plugin here.
But Matt Mullenweg, in his post on WordPress 4.9 and Gutenburg, made it clear that the end goal for Gutenburg is to bundle it into the core of WordPress, making it the default editor. Since the current version of WordPress is 4.8.X, there is a high possibility that the version 4.9, which would come with Gutenburg as the default editor, is coming in 2018.
And hopefully, the glitches about plugins would have been fixed before then.
What do you think about Gutenburg replacing the current editor?
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