How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Gutenberg

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Gutenberg, I hate you!

Yeah, that was me right after WordPress rolled out it’s new block editing/writing tool, Gutenberg. It appeared one day on my posts, causing much confusion. I did try working with it for a time and then quickly gave up. I downloaded the WordPress Classic editor and have been using that ever since.

Well, ever since last week. I finally decided to give it another try after reading some more recent articles about the improvements they’ve made to it. I’m glad I did.

Gutenberg Blocks, and Why You Will Love Them.

The think I hated about the change was the idea that all your paragraphs had to appear in their own individual block. I just didn’t see the advantage in that, and it felt really cludgy at the time. But when I worked on it this week, I found it to be very easy to master.

As you’re writing, the paragraph blocks just create themselves, seamlessly. Then, when you want to add a photo or HTML code, you just insert a block in between and paste the code – no more switching back and forth between Visual and Text modes. It’s all one piece.

Gutenberg’s New Features

I also downloaded Gutenberg Blocks – Ultimate Addons for Gutenberg. This add-on provides you with a bunch of more pre-made block layouts to help you create some complex layouts very easily (like the Post Carousel at the end of this article.) I’m able to get rid of a separate add-on that did that for me, while it’s pretty much built in to Gutenberg.

I really like the in-line editing of the HTML code especially. Before, all you would see was little grey-box placeholders, indicating that you’ve got something there, and you have to switch to the Text mode to see it. Now you can see it and change it much more quickly and easily. So if you’re running seasonal ads, for example, you can just open your post and swap out the new code with the old very quickly. (Check out how I can place my ads now in my travel blog, Cowboy Concierge.)

If you haven’t at least played with Gutenberg, you might want to give it a try. Create a dummy post and play with all the different types of blocks to see how they work and what they do. You may find yourself convinced to finally turn off that old “Classic” editor.