As WordPress keeps us all on the hook waiting for their revolutionary update, the Gutenberg Editor, they’ve released a plugin for beta testing. WordPress 4.8 was recently launched in early June, an update that featured more straightforward text and image editing sidebar widgets. As a whole, the most recent update was far more user friendly for admins that aren’t fluent in HTML.
The closer Gutenberg gets to being released in full, the more time it has for bugs to be worked out. WordPress co-counder, Matt Mullenweg decided to take this approach back in 2016, a move that gave his team more time to develop its features rather than meet a scheduled deadline.
Per the beta release, Gutenberg will show progress in three areas: The Editor, The WordPress REST API, and The Customizer. This comes as good news to anyone who has been comparing the user experience of Medium and Squarespace to WordPress. This new version of WordPress will eliminate shortcodes and complicated widgets that can be cumbersome to new users.
Mullenweg expects Gutenberg to “leapfrog” other online platforms, as it benefits from a vast community of users diligently reporting bugs, in combination with WordPress’s industry leading technology. The user-friendly “little block” editors are at the core of this update.
Though Gutenberg is not quite a front-end editor as many experts are pushing for, it does move closer in that direction. A front-end editor would essentially enable the admin to edit their webpage by simply logging in, clicking edit, and alter the content in real time.
A web developer can dream.
Mullenweg expects Gutenberg to be released with the 5.0 update, though there’s no signal when that will happen. In the meantime, we’ll keep an eye on the updates as they come.
