Change: WordPress’ Gutenberg Editor

I probably mentioned this before but my postings will become infrequent, mainly because WordPress will soon change its editor to Gutenberg which is what I’m trying to use right now. But some of my plug-ins and WordPress Gutenberg do not play nice with each other. So if I want to use Gutenberg I must deactivate the Site Origin Widget bundle and Site Origin Builder before the Gutenberg will work properly. If I need to use Site Origin because I can’t figure out how to do in Gutenberg (or the option is not available yet), then I need to deactivate Gutenberg. Once I’m finished blogging, then I have to reactivate everything.

Right now I’m persisting on learning Gutenberg although Site Origin is easier and have more options for designing. The Gutenberg is in testing phase though so I imagine that in the future there will be more cool options, so I need to know how to work with it. And besides, it is kind of fun to play around with the new editor.

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Learning Pains

But there’s also some learning pains: every time I do a somewhat complicated blog, it can take me upwards to six hours to do a post and during that time, my Wi Fi can go blink. I don’t know if it’s my Wi Fi, my machine, my internet connection or my WordPress administration site, but I generally have to shut down my machine for a while before I can get the Wi Fi working or before I can access my WordPress administration site again. So that shutdown adds to my posting time.

Yesterday, I must have started around 5 pm and did not finish until 11 pm. My Wi Fi problems did not hit until towards the end and then I had to wait an hour before I could go back into my admin site to finish up my post. The biggest problem though, was the copying my macro program from Excel or Word into the Gutenberg editor. The copying process created formatting issues – really bad formatting issues. The best one left me with so much spaces between each line of code. The other problem I had but I eventually figured out was the uploading my Excel so the file could be seen on screen. The most obvious option provided by Gutenberg only created the file name and the option to download the file, so in order for you to see how my file looked, you had to download it first. I wanted you to be able to see it right on the page which I was previously able to do. I finally figured out how to do it by going to my prior posts with these emails and looking at the HTML code, but this took a while and I had to log out of my WordPress admin site twice.

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It Takes A Long Time

So between the creation or imagination of the artwork and the manhandling of the Gutenberg editor, it just takes a long time to get a post done – almost a full working day, which is unbelievable. Depending on the artwork, it can be between 4 hours to 6 hours (sometimes that is spread over the week) for each artwork – whether realistic or abstract. Admittedly, the abstract ones is more towards 2 to 3 hours but some of the others are longer. And then the Gutenberg manhandling adding another 4 to 6 hours per posting. And then there is the time for the actual writing, which is really stream of consciousness writing, but it can involve researching the articles I want to reference. The writing is admittedly on a spill out on the page and so does not take as much time as the artwork or the wrestling of the Gutenberg editor. Previously I was posting 2 or 3 times a week but now I’m edging down to one.

Because the Gutenberg is just putting me over the edge of patience.

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How are Others Handling This?

I do wonder about those who are not techies. I’m not a techie in the usual sense of the word but I am curious about all of this website process so I have more patience. But those who just want to write may have more problems. For instance, “they” advise that we test the Gutenberg and learn how to use it on a test site rather than a production site. How are people doing this? Did they purchase another domain name for testing purposes? Or do they have pages that never see the light of day (the Publish button is never hit)? Then there is the learning and the relearning as WordPress do program iterations. So a month ago, I might have learned one way of using a Gutenberg tool but the WordPress team then updates the tool and the way to use it changes. So now I have to relearn. That has happened at least once. I also noticed that options that were available a month ago are now no longer available. Oops! Now what do I do? So I have to find another way of doing what I want to do.

Then there are the website designers who have to manage their clients’ websites. They have to go through each of their clients’ sites and test them to see if they will work with Gutenberg. They might have to do a lot of hand holding and coaching. That’s probably a headache.

And the theme developers…I imagine they have to learn how to work with the Gutenberg coding and incorporate it into their themes. The developers might have to tweak all of their themes that are out in the wild to make the themes work with Gutenberg. Same thing for the plug-in developers.

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So this is a massive undertaking. I hope WordPress irons out this Gutenberg before rolling it out to the world because the response could be nasty. Already, in reading the initial responses to the initial Gutenberg, some were complaining about the use of “blocks” which I thought was a minor thing because there are plug-ins that help you design your page or post that uses blocks and they are really easy and fun to use: Site Origin Builder, Elementor, Divi, and there may be others. I was using Site Origin Builder and it uses the concept of blocks and it gives you a lot of flexibility of how you want to arrange the page. The real issue will be ease of use and the ability to even do a post. For me, unless I deactivate either Gutenberg or Site Origin, I can’t do a post at all. One of them needs to be deactivated before I can do a post (or a page). Now I may not be a techie but I am a creative problem solver, especially when I use Google to figure out what others have done.

But others may not be as creative in such problem solving. So I hope WordPress irons out everything before putting it into production. Supposedly it was going to be live at end of November; otherwise, it will go live in January 2019 – at least that was what I read the last time. So, we’ll see.