Updated opinions about Gutenberg editor

Last weekend, I had spare hours to try and play more with the Gutenberg editor. Some days ago, I admitted that my opinions about this new sophisticated editor are notgood ones. However, after playing with Gutenberg in some hours, I started to change my own opinion about it. Here’s the details of my updated opinions about Gutenberg editor.

It’s not that bad

I realize that many people hated it and give only a one-star rating. I can’t blame them because Gutenberg breaks many things on their site.

Imagine if you had a highly customized WordPress site for e-commerce, and suddenly after the update to WordPress latest version, your site messed up.

But for my own blog, with default WordPress setup, Gutenberg is not that bad.

Here’s how I begin to use Gutenberg.

• First, deactivate the “Classic Editor” plugin which is installed by default.

• Second, open up one of my draft posts.

• Convert it to that famous “blocks”.

• Explore each of “block” option.

• See all kinds of “blocks” type: paragraph, headings, list, gallery, and even columns.

• Continue to finish up that draft posts and preview it.

So, the experience is not that bad once I fully understand how Gutenberg works. Even when I need to customize the HTML, there’s an option to switch to HTML mode on each block. This actually makes easier for me to customize each HTML section.

Even more, Gutenberg gives me options to include a widget into the post body. This is not possible unless I installed some additional plugins when I still used the Classic Editor.

Gutenberg vs Classic Editor

Below I write the pros and cons of both Gutenberg and Classic Editor. When writing this, I use the column block of Gutenberg editor.

Pros of Gutenberg

• Easy to build customized post format.

• Ability to include widget into the post body.

• Richer format with many blocks: gallery, column, widget

• Easy to customize each block HTML.

• Richer insights about content structure.

Cons of Gutenberg

• It may break your site’s format. Be careful.

• Not many themes explicitly said supported its blocks. Make sure you checked with your theme provider.

• Need to check each block to run Grammarly checker.

• Grammarly checker did not work with some blocks like column.

Pros of Classic Editor

• Most people are very familiar with it.

• Grammarly works well to check all of contents in one click

• Simple to edit

• Most people still love it.

• It did not break advanced customized site

• Simple insights about content structure.

Cons of Classic Editor

• Out of date. Some years in the future, WordPress will stop the support for this

• Hard to customize the post format unless you are proficient with HTML and CSS.

• For WordPress 5.x, you need to install it as an additional plugin.

• As it’s already out of date, there’s probability that many themes and plugins will stop their support too.

Again, should I switch to Gutenberg now?

May opinion on this one has not changed. Just wait for the announcement that WordPress will drop the support for Classic Editor.

Or, maybe it’s the time to switch to Gutenberg when the most important plugin you used also have dropped their support on the Classic Editor.

No more puzzling

Not really. After digging it deeper, I feel more comfortable with Gutenberg now. The one that I missed is the ability to check the whole content with Grammarly. I hope the Grammarly team will keep up with this soon.

Though each block seems had its own editor, now I begin to like that feature. The editor inside the block did not have that much formatting option show up and hide some of them so it’s fine for me.

Low rating

It still makes sense if people give it low ratings. After all, this new Gutenberg update breaks things on their site. If only the WordPress team keeps this Gutenberg as a plugin or installed it as a default plugin like “Hello Dolly” to catch people attention, the story may be different. It may have a higher rating.

Unfortunately, the WordPress team decided to merge it into the core and replace the default editor with Gutenberg. It feels like you’re being forced to use it. And we all know that we hate to be forced to use something we don’t know. Though, it’s something that may be useful for us.

So, those are my updated opinions about Gutenberg editor. It is still far from perfect but the Gutenberg is a promising editor when you have tried it thoroughly.