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Let's get the basics out of the way so we can stay on topic:
Okay, so Wordpress is working on version 5.0, which is one of those huge landmark version changes. So what's so fundamentally different that it warrants a tick over on the big number?
Johannes Gutenberg invented the first printing press in 1439 and was the first European to use movable type, so it's only right that this be named after the O.G. Wordpresser. So what is it?
What Created The Impetus For This Change?
You remember the recent fiasco where TinyMCE decided to patch a "vulnerability" that's been in place for a decade and never been a problem, only to create a giant problem, only to roll it back? It was that "noopener noreferrer" mess that screwed up affiliate tracking for any program that wanted to see where the referral traffic was coming from (like Amazon).
My guess is that that fiasco was a nail in the coffin for Wordpress using TinyMCE, which is the open source, third party text editor it's used since forever. Third party reliance is something that should be saved for plugins.
Add to the fact that Wix, Weebly, and Squarespace are eating up a huge portion of the small business community that need a website, and Wordpress is getting worried they won't get ahold of the people with money to spend. The problem is that Wordpress see's the drag-and-drop WYSIWYG non-sense from the late 1990's as a threat to their growth. It's "easier" than the "install a theme and write a post" method I guess. Medium, Facebook, and a few others are moving the text editor game forward, in Wordpress' eyes and they don't want to be left out. Basically we need access to more emoji's.
Add on the massive popularity of a few plugins that are drag and drop editors for Wordpress like Thrive Architect, Visual Editor, and whatever, I can't remember their names.
What is Wordpress' Gutenberg?
So you can see where this is going. Gutenberg is a fricking "page builder" for Wordpress. The problem is that this isn't going to be a plugin or an option. It's going to roll out as the core feature for Wordpress 5.0.
Let's kill some fears and introduce some annoyances real fast:
It's also going to create a cluster-fuck of a mess of HTML and CSS to get this done. Everything is going to end up wrapped in some kind of <block> div.
Finally, even the simplest things like pressing enter to create a new paragraph are likely going to require a ton of keyboard shortcuts to be memorized, because you have to drag and drop a Paragraph Block in first, then double click in it to enable typing, etc.
So apparently this thing is available for you to start trying in it's broken, incomplete form, as a plugin, with the warning to only use on development sites, not live.
I'm not entirely sure what the deal is with meta boxes but apparently they're going bye-bye, meaning Advanced Custom Fields, normal default custom fields, Yoast SEO, and hell, most everything you see on the Page & Post editing pages are going to be gone, and right now there's no solution to the conundrum. I have no clue what the point of this is, which is why everyone's reactions are so alarmist right now.
Speaking of "react", Wordpress wants to rely more and more heavily on Javascript frameworks and the Rest API. My opinion on the javascript is that I don't care if it's on the backend to make things "pretty and shiny." The Rest API is nothing but a giant vulnerability (I never shared it before in order to not draw attention to it and it's easy for it to be missed here, so I'll say that I already found a way to see the login names of every account on any Wordpress site that didn't disable the Rest API).
There's an example of the blocks you'll be dragging and dropping. Like Youtube videos, because it's easier to drag and drop a Youtube block, double click or find the gear icon, click into the field to paste the URL to the video, and press okay, than it was to just paste the URL and let oEmbed handle it.
What's the Problem?
I don't think we even comprehend the scope of the problem yet. It will cascade to most plugins, most Wordpress sites, and a majority of sites on the internet.
This is what the need for constant progress and improvement buys you. A push until you lose touch with your current user base, which is huge, in order to add another 5% of users onto that base. And you're fundamentally pulling the rug and the entire ground out from under the other 95% so you can get small business owners to pay for Wordpress.com hosting and buy a vanity domain.
We'll see how it shakes out, but I wanted to make sure you guys knew about this and see it coming. The shit storm is inbound. Winter is coming.
Yeah, we all hate Wordpress' continued bloat with the Rest API and this new nonsense. Yeah, we love Wordpress for its mass adoption and generally painless use. Yeah, some of us have already abandoned ship and many of us will follow soon.
Okay, so Wordpress is working on version 5.0, which is one of those huge landmark version changes. So what's so fundamentally different that it warrants a tick over on the big number?
Gutenberg
Johannes Gutenberg invented the first printing press in 1439 and was the first European to use movable type, so it's only right that this be named after the O.G. Wordpresser. So what is it?
What Created The Impetus For This Change?
You remember the recent fiasco where TinyMCE decided to patch a "vulnerability" that's been in place for a decade and never been a problem, only to create a giant problem, only to roll it back? It was that "noopener noreferrer" mess that screwed up affiliate tracking for any program that wanted to see where the referral traffic was coming from (like Amazon).
My guess is that that fiasco was a nail in the coffin for Wordpress using TinyMCE, which is the open source, third party text editor it's used since forever. Third party reliance is something that should be saved for plugins.
Add to the fact that Wix, Weebly, and Squarespace are eating up a huge portion of the small business community that need a website, and Wordpress is getting worried they won't get ahold of the people with money to spend. The problem is that Wordpress see's the drag-and-drop WYSIWYG non-sense from the late 1990's as a threat to their growth. It's "easier" than the "install a theme and write a post" method I guess. Medium, Facebook, and a few others are moving the text editor game forward, in Wordpress' eyes and they don't want to be left out. Basically we need access to more emoji's.
Add on the massive popularity of a few plugins that are drag and drop editors for Wordpress like Thrive Architect, Visual Editor, and whatever, I can't remember their names.
What is Wordpress' Gutenberg?
So you can see where this is going. Gutenberg is a fricking "page builder" for Wordpress. The problem is that this isn't going to be a plugin or an option. It's going to roll out as the core feature for Wordpress 5.0.
Let's kill some fears and introduce some annoyances real fast:
- The Text Editor you know and love will be gone, but you can still use it with a plugin.
- Meta Boxes you know and love will be gone, but they're going to create some plugin to save it.
- Trillions of plugins are going to break and so far Wordpress hasn't created the API to tie into this new visual editor.
It's also going to create a cluster-fuck of a mess of HTML and CSS to get this done. Everything is going to end up wrapped in some kind of <block> div.
Finally, even the simplest things like pressing enter to create a new paragraph are likely going to require a ton of keyboard shortcuts to be memorized, because you have to drag and drop a Paragraph Block in first, then double click in it to enable typing, etc.
So apparently this thing is available for you to start trying in it's broken, incomplete form, as a plugin, with the warning to only use on development sites, not live.
I'm not entirely sure what the deal is with meta boxes but apparently they're going bye-bye, meaning Advanced Custom Fields, normal default custom fields, Yoast SEO, and hell, most everything you see on the Page & Post editing pages are going to be gone, and right now there's no solution to the conundrum. I have no clue what the point of this is, which is why everyone's reactions are so alarmist right now.
Speaking of "react", Wordpress wants to rely more and more heavily on Javascript frameworks and the Rest API. My opinion on the javascript is that I don't care if it's on the backend to make things "pretty and shiny." The Rest API is nothing but a giant vulnerability (I never shared it before in order to not draw attention to it and it's easy for it to be missed here, so I'll say that I already found a way to see the login names of every account on any Wordpress site that didn't disable the Rest API).
There's an example of the blocks you'll be dragging and dropping. Like Youtube videos, because it's easier to drag and drop a Youtube block, double click or find the gear icon, click into the field to paste the URL to the video, and press okay, than it was to just paste the URL and let oEmbed handle it.
What's the Problem?
I don't think we even comprehend the scope of the problem yet. It will cascade to most plugins, most Wordpress sites, and a majority of sites on the internet.
This is what the need for constant progress and improvement buys you. A push until you lose touch with your current user base, which is huge, in order to add another 5% of users onto that base. And you're fundamentally pulling the rug and the entire ground out from under the other 95% so you can get small business owners to pay for Wordpress.com hosting and buy a vanity domain.
We'll see how it shakes out, but I wanted to make sure you guys knew about this and see it coming. The shit storm is inbound. Winter is coming.
