The Gutenberg editor has been a much hyped enhancement to WordPress this year. A beta plugin for the experience is now available for download in the WordPress.org plugin directory. Don’t take the risk of installing a beta plugin on a production site, it will work just as well locally hosted.
As a first reaction, I have a hard time not comparing Gutenberg to the “Calypso” editor I’ve come to love on WordPress.com. Matt Mullenweg has made it clear that JavaScript is the future of WordPress, and Gutenberg drives that point home in case anyone hasn’t been listening.
That said, if one hasn’t tried a page-builder plugin like Site Origin, the functionality feels pretty bizarre. Calypso may seem like a close jump in aesthetics, but when it comes to the button pressing it’s not at all the same. Compared to the current editor that comes in WordPress core… it’s hard to compare at all. This is the kind of change that would be the spearhead of a whole product redesign if WordPress wasn’t released so incrementally.
The “Text” version of the editor still needs work: the buttons don’t really do anything at all. But from the looks of things, once it’s ironed out it will feel very familiar to the Text editor in the current editor.
Who is excited for this new editor? Who is most leery? Who is this really a “big win” for?
Alex Gustafson 