Hands-on WordPress Gutenberg demo

In case you missed it, the WordPress team is working on a huge update called Gutenberg. Instead of a big, blank editing window, Gutenberg uses drag-and-drop blocks to make more complex layouts simple for non-coders.

In the video accompanying this post, I take a look at Gutenberg today (6 April 2018). I walk through just a few of its features, and also show you what happens to content *not* created in Gutenberg.

The test environment

The setup is a local install, with a StudioPress Genesis child theme. The content was originally created in the classic editor, not Gutenberg, on a WordPress.com site. I exported it from my WordPress.com blog as XML, then imported it to the demo site you see in the video.

I don’t know how different the experience would be if the Gutenberg editor was integrated with the WordPress core (as it will be soon) vs. the plugin installation I tested. I also don’t know how much the features and editing experience will change between now and Gutenberg’s release with WordPress 5.0.

Experiment #2

After I made this demo video I installed the plugin onΒ this site. A little crazy, since this site is my bread and butter. But I risk breaking things so you don’t have to πŸ˜‰

Unlike what I described in my previous post about Gutenberg, activating the plugin didn’t cause my site to rearrange itself. This site uses the same StudioPress Genesis theme I tested in the video. But when I did attempt to make changes to an existing post, I repeatedly got an error message saying it couldn’t be saved.

The issue could be a plugin conflict. Whatever it is the site is more of a real-world case than a fresh install on a local machine with the only plugins being Akismet and the Hello Dolly I didn’t bother to delete.

More?

Want more details on Gutenberg? Kinsta has a decent post covering more features, as well as pros and cons. It’s a couple months old, but still largely relevant. Check it out here.

Got a website or blog you care about? Want to make sure you get a heads up on Gutenberg-related changes that will affect your site? Join my list.

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