I know a lot of people dislike PHP and WordPress, but I haven't found _anything_ that comes close to it in terms of sheer extensibility and plugin ecosystem. There's a plugin for pretty much anything you might want to do with a platform. I even moved my personal Jekyll-powered blog to WordPress a few years ago.<p>My favorite thing about WordPress is that it's a known quantity. There's an easy to follow tutorial teaching you pretty much anything you might want to do with the software. PHP isn't the prettiest language, and WordPress itself feels a bit creaky at times. But it's a practical tool. It does the job, and does it very well.<p>Since I'm a JavaScript developer, I was optimistic about Ghost becoming a viable alternative to WordPress. Sadly, Ghost's plugin API still doesn't seem to be complete. Without that, it can't replace WordPress for anything besides basic blogging. That seems to be the niche the Ghost developers are interested in, though, so I don't think it's coming anytime soon.<p>I'm really excited to see this release. Gutenberg is certainly a step in the right direction for the editor, and I'm planning to upgrade all my websites over the next few weeks!
The big problem with 5.0 is that it's not actually ready and they are shipping because of Wordcamp.<p>There are 152 open issues that they conveniently allocated 1 to 5.0, 28 to 5.0.1 and the rest to future point releases. <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2018/12/06/5-0-gutenberg-status-update-dec-6/" rel="nofollow">https://make.wordpress.org/core/2018/12/06/5-0-gutenberg-sta...</a><p>The introduction of Gutenberg is a huge change and yes if you've been following the development, you're probably ready for the major changes but if you weren't following along you're in for a nasty, buggy, surprise.
As someone who hosts over 150 WordPress websites for small businesses ... I'm not thrilled about this release and the work it will entail given the editor overhaul.<p>Another user posted this: <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2018/12/06/5-0-gutenberg-status-update-dec-6/" rel="nofollow">https://make.wordpress.org/core/2018/12/06/5-0-gutenberg-sta...</a><p>Also this posted by the author of Advanced Custom Fields, a very popular plugin: <a href="https://twitter.com/wp_acf/status/1070089217479307264" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/wp_acf/status/1070089217479307264</a>
I know this is not for everyone, but sometimes it makes sense to jump off the CMS bandwagon and build a custom site. First I used Drupal but got tired of rewriting the site on every major release and jumped on WordPress. Then on WordPress I realized I could not create the user experience I was after without committing massive amounts of time and resources in custom plugins/themes. Leaving me too dependent on a moving target that might take a direction I don't agree with. It looks like there is a plugin for everything, but having them all play nice together is difficult. The more plugins the bigger the security risk, and the greater the risk of an update breaking your site.<p>I rewrote the site in Node.js/Express with Vue.js and server side rendering. The ecosystem is ready with so many libraries to quickly get up and running. Another major benefit is being able to design your own database instead of having everything stored as a post (WordPress).
Will Gutenberg actually help Wordpress? I don't think so. Why? Most site owners aren't designers and don't do layout or content building well at all. Maybe I am short sighted on this though.<p>Much of my business has been replacing sites that run on Wordpress with my own CMS Archetype. Even though it lacks a lot of the power of mass of WP plugins, it makes up for it with simplicity of production and ease of use.<p>Some site owners want more control/power over layout building, and others would be overwhelmed by the extra features of Gutenberg.<p>Will Gutenberg become a core complaint of WP in the future? Maybe. The biggest complaints I've gotten about Wordpress are these:<p>1. Can't hand it off to clients to edit their own content, because it's too hard to learn. Or if you do train someone, it turns into a cycle of retraining. (though this seems to be Gutenberg's real target goal)<p>2. Updating is painful. Plugins break on a regular basis.<p>3. Security, WP sites get hacked alot. Think this is primarily because most WP sites aren't run by professionals, but individuals.<p>But also, #2 applies here, there's motivation to _not_ upgrade because of the possibility of breaking the site.<p>There are others, but Gutenberg would not solve these 3 largest problems with WP that I have run into.
Here's the holy land:<p>- React components (Gutenberg)<p>- You can visually edit react components (Gutenberg)<p>- You can render the site with anything (Gatsby?)<p>Wordpress made some insane decisions with Gutenberg, like 1. storing the parameters (data you enter visually into the component) in an HTML comment (!!!) alongside the rendered HTML and 2. deciding to show the equivalent of "FATAL ERROR IN THIS COMPONENT" when the component author makes any adjustment to the markup output. Their idea for the latter was for you, the component author, to keep a deprecated version of any change alongside the new version.<p>They have the start of something great but crippled it with laughably bad decisions. Feels like... well, developing in the PHP ecosystem again.<p>More specific discussion: <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/10444" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/10444</a>
No mention here about Gutenberg's lack of support for accessibility standards. They pretty much went full steam ahead and left the accessibility team behind. See: <a href="https://rianrietveld.com/2018/10/09/i-have-resigned-the-wordpress-accessibility-team/" rel="nofollow">https://rianrietveld.com/2018/10/09/i-have-resigned-the-word...</a>
You guys need to check the 1 star reviews for Gutenberg on the link below for some good comedy. Most reviews are 1 star.<p><a href="https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/gutenberg/reviews/?filter=1" rel="nofollow">https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/gutenberg/reviews/?filt...</a>
Maybe I’m in the minority here. Is this the “new editor coming soon” on wordpress.com blogs? If yes, I tried it and was left more confused than before (features like copying an existing post with its categories, tags and content in order to create a new post were missing). So I switched back. I’ve found WordPress becoming more complicated to administer and use over the years. I hope aiming towards simplicity doesn’t inadvertently add more complexity.
This reminds me of Drupal 8 which was a massive departure from previous versions. As a part-time Drupal user with a handful of sites. The changes in Drupal 8 were just too much for me. Suddenly I had to learn Composer before I could do anything. Nothing wrong with Composer but if you aren't fulltime PHP developer this is just too much to learn to use a CMS. Installing Drupal changed from just unzipping a file to a whole convoluted process (I know I exaggerate).<p>The technologists were happy but the hobbyists not so much.
Is anyone else impressed with WordPress/Automattic's willingness to "just ship" despite things not being perfect?<p>As someone who struggles shipping software that basically nobody uses, I don't know if I'd have the guts to say "it's good enough" on a project as big & widely used as WordPress.
For what Automattic want WordPress to be, WP 5 seems to be a sensible move. WP is a viable choice for the Squarespace and Wix crowd that want to build a website without knowing anything about how to design or code. These services are eating their (lucrative) lunch, and a move toward ease of building makes real sense.<p>Sadly, this isn't the reason WP is popular. People use it because it's the most popular CMS, because of the marketed belief that it's the easiest to use, and because there is a perceived belief that it's quick to develop features because "we'll just use a plugin for that". While there are many teams out there that do WP "right", I'd say they are in a small minority. Most WP sites I've used have been a total mess.<p>I've used a lot of content management systems and frameworks in the past, and while it's on a framework many refuse to use, I'd say the best open-source CMS available for user experience and extensibility is Umbraco. While the core community can be a bit reclusive to outsiders, and HQ eager to push profitable products, Umbraco is easy to use, easy to install, and has a rich ecosystem of plugins to allow developers to build stuff easily. I liken it a bit to the early Rails community in how it acts.<p>As far as WP is concerned, I feel that WP is too big to simply be a site builder to some, and a framework to others, making Gutenberg a knee-jerk reaction that doesn't really solve either problem. The best thing they could do is accept that WP developers are analogous to React developers or Rails developers in that they define themselves by their framework of choice, and to do that WordPress needs to expand into its own PHP framework. Gutenberg can be a part of that, but it would be a part of the framework, not the driving force behind page creation.<p>Disclaimer: A few years ago, I was making a tidy side income from porting WP sites to Umbraco, and if I weren't too busy I'd continue to do it because there is no shortage of pissed off clients with crappy WP sites that want a usable CMS.
This looks very similar to Sir Trevor:<p><a href="http://madebymany.github.io/sir-trevor-js/example.html" rel="nofollow">http://madebymany.github.io/sir-trevor-js/example.html</a>
I updated a test sight to 5.0. I activated Gutenburg. I played with the blocks. I looked for - having just done some Shopify work for a friend - a way in WP to preview page (while on desktop) that simulated mobile. Again, like Shopify.<p>Afaik there is no such preview. I'm aware "the WordPress way" is fond of turning its back on industry standards. But ignoring "mobile first"? If the dev team missed that, what else did they miss?
surprised no one has mentioned the fork, <a href="https://www.classicpress.net/" rel="nofollow">https://www.classicpress.net/</a><p>I brought up similar issues times ago when WP was rolling out major changes that were likely to break things and not add any value to a majority of WP users. Glad to see enough others have banded together to actually make a good fork a serious option now.<p>I have already begun using a couple of plugins that convert WP sites to static html /css - so no updates needed, no more breaking things from auttomatic.<p>Unfortunately some of WP sites I'm running need to stay open to udpates regularly, fingers crossed I can revert them when the update rolls out.
If you have ever used Medium.com or the inspired niche of editors that followed, you will love Gutenberg.<p>It's in this niche of editors where other names would be Dropbox Paper, and obviously the best in niche Notion.so - but Gutenberg is quite decent so far.
I’ll just leave this here: <a href="https://www.alexkras.com/how-to-rollback-wordpress-5-to-older-version/" rel="nofollow">https://www.alexkras.com/how-to-rollback-wordpress-5-to-olde...</a>
I seriously dislike the fact that an exteremely wide-spread open source project - wordpress.org - is driven by a for-profit company, wordpress.com. I guess there's no way around it, given Automattic employs most contributors, but this is not the first time when community requests and doubts are ignored (see emojis, half-baked media library refactoring, etc).<p>On the other hand, I'd welcome if these forced changes would revive half-forgotten CMS systems - Typo3, Silverstripe, concrete5, or boost newcomers, like Grav, ProcessWire.
Maybe this will break the WordPress monoculture.<p>(downvoting an opinion, that is not how discussions should be made.)
For anyone who is managing multiple wordless sites and is scared of the amount of work it will take to update and check compatibility of each of them, I strongly recommend trying <a href="https://managewp.com" rel="nofollow">https://managewp.com</a>, it made my life so much easier with managin our company blogs
Gutenberg, and this whole medium.com style look to websites layouts and interactivity just makes me think it is about time for an Apocalypse. Probably starting with silicon valley going down in a sink hole (make it goolag first).. like real soon please.<p>I'd rather go back to reading sites off geocities with starry backgrounds and little animated gif's everywhere..at least those looked like someone had fun putting them together, than this automated fking pile of readability styled over sized fonts design for people who can't see good shit that is getting spewed out from so called website 'designers' and 'content writers' if you in anyway like this style of a website design and user experience for readers, just kys... I mean at least think about it, perhaps reflect on how awful you are as a human.