Gutenberg is a project from WordPress aimed at creating a new publishing experience. It will completely change the way you create pages and posts. For those who don’t know, a WYSIWYG, “what you see is what you get,” editor allows you to see what the end result will look like while you are editing. When you edit a page in WordPress right now, it’s more like, “what you see is what you get, sort of.” The Gutenberg project is designed to change that and create a truer WYSIWYG experience in WordPress with more control and customization of content on your WordPress site.
What’s new to WordPress content editor:
The Gutenberg project identifies the individual elements that make up a page or post and gives them individual properties that you can manipulate. Each element of content is broken down into “blocks,” and each of those blocks give editors individualized control of each element.
For example, a text block allows you to type your text, but then you can manipulate elements like font size, font color, and background color all within the same block. Blocks also allow you to choose where on your page or post, desired content appears.
Types of blocks include:
- Text Block
- Media Blocks including image, gallery, audio and video
- Heading Blocks
- Columns
- Quote Blocks
- Cover Image Blocks
- Widget Blocks like Recent Posts
Here is what the editing experience for a column block looks like! No more switching to code view to:
This is not a full list as Gutenberg is still in development. Themes can also create their own blocks and if you use a particular block again and again, you can save the block to use across your site.
The Gutenberg project opens up all kinds of opportunities for easier page customization.
The Gutenberg editor will replace the current page and post editor starting in WordPress version 5.0. There is no firm date for this release yet, and there will be a way to use the classic editor for those who need it.
We are currently testing Gutenberg with our current set of themes and plug-ins and will strive to make the transition for our customers as smooth as possible.
If you want to learn more about Gutenberg, you can test out the editing experience yourself on the Testing Gutenberg site.
