It’s a bold move to use the name of the famous printing press inventor, Johannes Gutenberg, as the title for WordPress’s 5.0 editor update. Like the original Gutenberg streamlined aspects of printmaking, the Internet’s largest website platform wants the update to simplify making posts and building web pages for those who aren’t familiar with shortcode and HTML building techniques. Especially if you’re new to WordPress, this is good news, but it positively affects more experienced designers too.
So What Is Gutenberg?
It’s a revision to an already very good editor in WordPress. The current editor, while powerfully versatile, carries a lot of the accessibility problems of other sophisticated plugins like it: a lot of that versatility happens as a result of coding knowledge. Gutenberg, introduced in 2017 by Matt Mullenweg, makes the WordPress editor more visually-oriented, meaning you can use common personal computing gestures, like drag and drop blocks, to actually design websites without getting too deep into the coding process.
Blocks, the most fundamental unit of the new editor, include pretty much every type of information for your website, including cover images, text, audio, video, headers, footers, buttons, and your own code.
The Old In The New
Which is not to say those traditional coding methods are going away. The Gutenberg update allows for both new, less tech-savvy techniques with established and more technical practices, and has the potential to encourage new designers to take steps into learning more about the programming side when and if they’re ready.
Some Specific Changes
Since the main goal of Gutenberg is to be a less intimidating alternative for WordPress’s open-text editor, it’s good to list what users don’t have to do that they once did in the original editor:
- No longer necessary to copy and paste links for embedding
- Don’t need to write specialized shortcode for different plugins
- Don’t have to upload content from the media library or add short-coded HTML
- No longer necessary to add widgets to page sides for content
Our team is experienced in using WordPress’s Gutenberg. Contact our team at FreshySites if your are considering a redesign of your website!
