WordPress 5.0 is coming, keep calm and carry on

Yeah, You Can Just Google “Gutenberg editor“

WordPress 5.0 and the new Gutenberg editor are really cool, and closer than ever to production release [apparently Nov. 19, 2018].
Recently WordPress was updated to 4.9.8 and it’s now bringing in a pretty big announcement:

At this point you should really wonder: "what are we really talking about here?"

Gutenberg is the new editor for WordPress.
It is named after Johannes Gutenberg, the modern printing press inventor. The current WordPress visual editor requires a lot of us to utilize short-codes/plugins and custom HTML code to make things work and look nice(r).

The goal with Gutenberg is to make this easier.

Gutenberg is embracing “little blocks” construction approach, so you can go very simple or very complicated, just adding or removing content blocks (left, right, top, down); but there is more than that and WordPress core developers hope to add more advanced layout options in the near future also for all the other websites sections other than the content, such as: sidebars, widgets, headers, etc.

At this point you should wonder: "why bothering with this update?"

Well, Gutenberg will break things! end of the story.

We will all experience glitches and for the oldest websites probably major failure or total site crashes will occur. Bye, good luck…

…seriously, don’t worry too much, things are often presented with the worst case scenario in mind (just remember the millennium bug), but better be ready for some challenges and glitches ahead of us.

In the last 6 months I tested at least 25 websites with Gutenberg, and few of my personal sites have even Gutenberg enabled into production, including this one where I’m posting this article:

I’m still alive despite the innovation!

The reason why I’m writing is because there are few things you need to keep in mind:

1. You will need to learn how to use Gutenberg, it is a totally alien experience if you are only used to standard text editors.
2. This is a Gutenberg sandbox to play around with it:
   TestGutenberg.com
3. You need to have all your ducks in a row:
   solid and reliable backup system in place, solid hosting tech support.
4. If you are a client of my WUSS package and/or if you are hosted on my WHC Canadian server there is nothing to be worried about;
   if things break, we will revert the changes, go back to a regular working production site and find a solution in a separate staging environment.
5. If you are not any of the 2 above, please contact your hosting provider to make sure that the backup systems are working properly and that you can easily revert changes and fix issues quickly.
   

WordPress 5.0 is coming, it’s bringing Gutenberg, be happy and blog on!

Resources

Say hello to Gutenberg: https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/

Preparing For WordPress Gutenberg: https://youtu.be/9uP9gxbZEYU

To be continued…

I suggest you give it a try here:

TestGutenberg.com

Thanks for reading, I will publish updates about Gutenberg and WordPress in this post or in the comments below.

Giorgio