A while back WordPress realized its post editing capabilities were getting old, tired, and weren’t ready for the future. Many companies would have tried to graft on kludgy fixes, in hopes of cobbling together something workable, at least for a while.
WordPress did the opposite. They realized the old editor couldn’t be updated so they replaced it. This broke things, at least initially, and there was gnashing of teeth among the traditionalists. The new editor is called Gutenberg and everything is a block. A block can be a simple as an image or it can be an entire page layout. The home page of this blog, with a 2 x 5 grid on posts is done with the Caxton Post grids block. Setting it up took about a minute. Blocks allow for much easier editing that are simultaneously way more powerful, with little coding needed.
The big news in WordPress now is the coming full site editing using blocks. Blocks will no longer just be for posts. Soon blocks will be able to be used for page design, themes, sidebars, backend, widgets, and more. This is a big deal.
Themes will become much more lightweight. No more getting locked into a ponderous theme that is hard to change.
I recently switched several sites to the Blocksy theme, which is built specifically for blocks, it’s very lightweight and configurable too. This is the future of WordPress themes.
Just saw a demo for a column block. Define the number of columns, paste the text into the first column and it automatically wraps overflow text into the next columns. Nice.
Blocks can be embedded and saved, so, for example, you can create a CTA block with header image / video, CTA button, three columns with image and txt, and reuse as needed.
“Gutenberg is on the cusp of completely disrupting WordPress. I’ll talk about how Phase 2 started, how it’s evolved, and where it’s going. We’ll examine the ways in which Gutenberg is going to change WordPress and how the ecosystem can prepare for what’s coming.”