The Great New WordPress (5) Gutenberg block editor and how it can help speed up your workflow
OK, so what's this new WordPress 5.0 (Gutenberg) Block Editor thing all about?
WordPress released it's substantially upgraded version 5.0 in December 2018. It came bundled with the new GUTENBERG BLOCK EDITOR, which caused quite a stir throughout the global WordPress community. Like it, love it or lump it, blogging in the post-Gutenberg world will never be the same again...
Who was Gutenberg?
Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg (1400-1468) was a German blacksmith, goldsmith, inventor, printer, and publisher who introduced printing to Europe with the printing press. His introduction of mechanical movable type printing to Europe started the Printing Revolution and is regarded as a milestone of the second millennium, ushering in the modern period of human history.
It played a key role in the development of the Renaissance, Reformation, the Age of Enlightenment, and the scientific revolution and laid the material basis for the modern knowledge-based economy and the spread of learning to the masses [WIKIPEDIA]
Why Now?
Lots of places provide you the business owner with your the ability to guild your own website using special, platform-specific DIY website building software. Wix, Weebly, and Squarespace to name but three. This has created an increasing amount of competition in the industry. With this in mind, WordPress invested thousands of hours of development time into developing its own native Drag 'n' Drop page builder (GUTENBERG) to help new WordPress users to build their websites more intuitively.
Classic Editing
The older WYSIWYG editor (now called CLASSIC) obliged WP site owners / admins to contantly "preview"a site's visual progesss during its development phase. While this method adds extra steps and is relatively easy to use, it now feels quite clunky compared to WP 5.0's new REAL TIME updgade.
Gutenberg proposes...
Individual content blocks of different types (rather than one deep text block) Real time previews (instead of having to shif between editor and preview screens) Intuitive interaction with other plugins
How will this effect your website?
A New Revised workflowA bit like shifting from Windows to Mac maybe? It may take you a couple of days to learn all about (and test) the new controls and features before you become Block-fluent. Irrespective of your WordPress experience in website building with WordPress, you have to take some time and learn about the widgets and plugin settings. But once you've got used to it you'll never go back. Gutenberg makes it much easier and reduces the learning curve.
New Features Are Arriving all the time
Intuitive Drag 'n' Drop interface Individual block formatting Pre-designed blocks that include gallery, cover image, list, quote, verse(?), heading, separator, page break...Block background color options
We like this
An interesting aspect of the WordPress update is you can now write your content off-site and paste it on WordPress without worrying about the formatting options at all. You just convert the (eg) text to blocks once your Dashside and you're free to make all the changes you want. They've even thought to add a special WYSIWYG block (mimicking the Classic Editor) called CLASSIC BLOCK to keep everyone happy!