It’s now been three years since WordPress introduced Gutenberg, its controversial block-based editor that replaced the traditional editing interface we’d all become accustomed to. When it was first announced, the reaction from the WordPress community was decidedly mixed, with some welcoming the prospect of a more modern way to build webpages and others questioning why something that had worked perfectly well for years needed replacing in the first place. Having spent a considerable amount of time developing WordPress websites, I can understand both sides of the argument, although I’m still not entirely convinced that Gutenberg is the best solution for every type of website.
The idea behind Gutenberg is relatively straightforward: rather than editing a page using a single text editor, you build it using individual blocks representing paragraphs, headings, images, columns and other elements. These blocks can be rearranged, customised and combined to create layouts that would previously have required a developer or a separate page builder plugin. In theory, this should make WordPress considerably more accessible to people without technical knowledge, but does it actually make managing a website any easier?
What’s Wrong with the Classic Editor?
Before Gutenberg arrived with WordPress 5.0 in December 2018, editing a page was generally a relatively straightforward process. You opened the page, entered your content into an editor that looked rather like Microsoft Word, and clicked Update when you’d finished. It wasn’t particularly sophisticated, but it did exactly what most people needed it to do.
Of course, there were limitations, particularly when it came to creating more complicated layouts. Adding columns, buttons or other design elements often involved shortcodes, custom HTML or additional plugins, none of which were particularly intuitive for somebody who simply wanted to update their website.
Gutenberg attempts to solve these problems by making individual elements easier to manage. If you want to add an image alongside some text, for example, you can use a Media & Text block rather than worrying about HTML or CSS. Similarly, creating columns, adding buttons or embedding videos is considerably more straightforward than it was with the Classic Editor.
However, I do wonder whether WordPress has made the relatively simple task of editing text unnecessarily complicated in the process. Sometimes, all I want to do is change a couple of paragraphs without having to worry about which block I’m selecting or why the editor has decided to display another toolbar.
Is Gutenberg Actually Easier to Use?
I think this depends largely on what you’re trying to achieve and how comfortable you are with WordPress. For somebody creating their first website, Gutenberg can be quite appealing because it allows them to experiment with layouts without understanding how the underlying code works. The ability to drag elements around and see approximately how they’ll appear on the finished page is certainly useful, particularly when compared with the old editor.
However, I’ve also found that Gutenberg can become frustrating when working with more complicated layouts. Selecting the correct block isn’t always as straightforward as it should be, particularly when blocks are nested inside columns or groups, and making relatively minor adjustments can sometimes involve navigating through several different settings panels.
There’s also the issue of consistency. Just because Gutenberg allows somebody to change colours, font sizes and layouts doesn’t necessarily mean they should be doing so. If you’re managing a corporate website with established branding and carefully designed page templates, giving every content editor the ability to experiment with the appearance of individual pages could quickly result in a rather inconsistent website.
Fortunately, developers can restrict which blocks and editing options are available, but that introduces another layer of configuration that needs to be considered when building the website.
What About Advanced Custom Fields?
Personally, one of my preferred approaches to developing WordPress websites has always been using Advanced Custom Fields (ACF), which allows developers to create specific fields for different types of content. Rather than asking a client to build an entire page layout themselves, you can provide clearly labelled fields for headings, descriptions, images and other information, while the website’s theme controls how everything is displayed.
I particularly like this approach because it separates content from presentation. If a client wants to update a heading or replace an image, they can do so without accidentally changing the layout or breaking something that took several hours to develop.
Of course, Gutenberg and ACF aren’t mutually exclusive. ACF Pro supports the creation of custom Gutenberg blocks, allowing developers to combine structured fields with the flexibility of the block editor. This is potentially a useful compromise, particularly when clients need to create pages containing different combinations of predefined content sections.
However, for websites with relatively fixed layouts, I’m not convinced that introducing Gutenberg necessarily offers an advantage over a straightforward collection of custom fields. Sometimes, providing people with fewer options actually makes a website easier to manage.
What About Page Builders?
Another consideration is how Gutenberg compares with established page builders such as Elementor, Divi and Beaver Builder, which have been providing visual editing functionality for WordPress for years.
These tools generally offer considerably more control over layouts and styling than Gutenberg, although that flexibility can come at the expense of additional complexity and potentially unnecessary code. I’ve encountered websites built using page builders that contain enormous amounts of HTML and CSS for layouts that could have been achieved much more efficiently with a properly developed theme.
One of Gutenberg’s advantages is that it’s part of WordPress itself, meaning there’s less reliance on third-party software and potentially fewer compatibility issues to worry about. However, it still doesn’t offer the same level of design flexibility as some dedicated page builders, which might disappoint people expecting a complete drag-and-drop website development system.
WordPress is clearly working towards addressing this, particularly with its ongoing Full Site Editing project, which aims to allow users to edit more of their websites through the block interface.
What’s Coming Next?
WordPress 5.8, released in July, introduced several improvements to Gutenberg, including the ability to use blocks in widget areas and additional support for editing page templates. These changes represent another step towards allowing users to manage more of their websites without modifying theme files.
The next major release, WordPress 5.9, is currently scheduled for January 2022 and is expected to introduce further Full Site Editing functionality, including new ways to manage templates, navigation and global styles through block-based themes.
This could be a significant development, although I’m interested to see how practical it will be for businesses with bespoke websites that require more control over their layouts and functionality. There’s clearly a difference between allowing somebody to customise a personal blog and giving several employees access to modify the structure of a large corporate website.
Should You Be Using Gutenberg?
Despite my reservations, I think Gutenberg has improved considerably since its original release, and there are certainly circumstances where I’d recommend using it. For blogs and websites where content editors regularly need to create different page layouts, the block-based approach can be very useful, particularly when developers have configured the available blocks properly.
However, I wouldn’t suggest that every existing WordPress website needs to abandon the Classic Editor immediately. In fact, WordPress has recently confirmed that the Classic Editor plugin will continue receiving support through 2022, which suggests there’s still a substantial demand for the older approach.
Personally, I think the best solution is to choose whichever editing experience makes managing a particular website as straightforward as possible. If Gutenberg provides useful flexibility without introducing unnecessary complexity, then it’s a perfectly reasonable option. If a website is easier to maintain using ACF and the Classic Editor, I don’t see any particular reason to change it simply because WordPress is moving in a different direction.
Ultimately, the people editing a website generally aren’t interested in which technology is being used behind the scenes. They just want to update their content without accidentally breaking anything, and I’d argue that making that process as simple as possible should be the priority.
Gutenberg is undoubtedly becoming a more capable editor, but more functionality doesn’t automatically make something better: sometimes, the simplest solution is still the most effective.