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I think Gutenberg solves the wrong problem for Wordpress. I don't think that many people were crying out for a fancier way to store giant messy blobs in MySQL.

• gboudrias 8y ago
  I'm sort-of leaving tech, but I've worked in web dev for 8 years, and this is the first I hear of Gutenberg. From what I understand, it's better WYSIWYG. Great, but we have entire essays demonstrating how WYSIWYG is garbage. Alright but people want WYSIWYG! To me, this seems like a manifestation of the limits inherent to the simplification of UI. The frontend needs complex information to be able to correctly produce a beautiful design. Ultimately, the user needs to be aware of the concepts (too complex, apparently), or the design needs to be automated and therefore simplistic. WYSIWYG is the unhappy compromise demonstrating that consistency begets complexity. If this dilemma really is unsolvable, then Wordpress is but one of iteration in a grand cycle of its victims. I worked mainly with Drupal, and the situation there isn't much better, they've simply opted for sophistication over usability.
  • andybak 8y ago
    > we have entire essays demonstrating how WYSIWYG is garbage. I would dispute all of those essays. Explain to me what we do instead of WYSIWIG and if your answer is anything like Markdown then you've never observed real users. Hell - I hate markdown and I'm a developer. I do not understand the desire to trash WYSIWIG other than reverse Ludditism.
    • spiderfarmer 8y ago
      The Markdown vs. WYSIWYG discussion goes along the same lines as the vim vs. Word discussion. You can discuss it, but real users in the target audiences of the products simply don't care about the alternative. To each his own.
      • _mrmnmly 8y ago
        good point. I've never met any client that would like to write in markdown though, but I love it, tbh. My most desirable feature of markdown editor is drag&drop images that turns automatically into `` tags - I wish more editors offer such feature.
  • coldtea 8y ago
    >From what I understand, it's better WYSIWYG. Great, but we have entire essays demonstrating how WYSIWYG is garbage. You can find an essay demonstrating everything you care for is bad. Engineering requires measurement and proof, not essays.
  • Kagerjay 8y ago
    > Great, but we have entire essays demonstrating how WYSIWYG is garbage Markdown is great and all, I personally use it mostly for README docs and git tracking. But WYSIWYG is what most blog sites are embracing Examples (but not limited to) - Medium - Ghost → Ghost 2.0 - Webflow + Design tools - Notion + Notetaking tools - Premade website tools (WIX, squarespace, Shopify Page Builder, etc) are gaining ground over wordpress traditionally WYSIWYG has a learning curve associated with it, but it doesn't have to be complicated. Personally, I prefer GUI tools over non GUI counterparts anyhow. These include tools in atom/visual studio code for doing git commits / branching etc. People are more than willing to learn how to use a WYSIWYG interface if the value they get long term is worth it. Ideally, cost should be minimized (learning) and benefits maximized(building quick blog posts how they want). Blogs are exactly that though, you spend a little bit of time learning the framework, and spend a lot of time using it. The amount a user is willing to learn proportional depends how much they will use it long term. For a one off task, a user is not willing to spend as much time learning a WYSIWYG GUI tool, and would rather pick something more familiar like markdown or .txt. Examples include learning how to use a new video editing tool, with advanced feature sets (Adobe Premiere, etc) if you don't make videos often. Rather you would prefer learning a simpler tool instead (Adobe spark, etc) From research I've done the market is largely shifting towards WYISWYG and from a UX research standpoint, this makes sense. Getting exactly what you want lowers the barrier and confusion / expectations of what you receive. You can quote buzzfeed essays all day, but I always take research with a grain of salt unless (1) the author is reputable (2) it validates research and data I've observed from a number of various reputable sources / my own research. UX is just common sense at the end of the day ------------------------------------------------------------------ > The frontend needs complex information to be able to correctly produce a beautiful design Not necessarily true, just use a CSS framework and it simplifies a lot of the process. Take your pick with functional CSS like tailwinds, bootstrap, or just modify your own classes. WYISYWG just wraps things in classes as necessary I've looked at Gutenburg, it looks promising. I've spoken to a number of core devs from gutenburg. I don't really like the tinyMCE editor that much honestly, or the Jetpack installed wordpress.com instance. They both have issues. TinyMCE editor doesn't reflect proper nominal width for a blog at ~800px, so sometimes the results are skewed when previewed live Jetpack wordpress.com's editor is more closer to what optimal words per line / font-size / width to write should be. However, it has some serious flaws when using 3rd party plugins (such as adding prismJS code snippets) and its a pain to work with
  • wwweston 8y ago
    This is a much underappreciated point, one I first came to realize when trying to train reasonably intelligent lay users working with some of the 1st and 2nd generation WYSIWYG web tools (Fusion, Dreamweaver, and heaven help us all Frontpage). Point-and-click interfaces really only provide some degree of friction-reduction. A user who can be effective still has to think in terms of layout tools and behavior and different properties of block and inline elements that can be set, even if they don't have the language to describe these things and don't map it to syntax. That last part is the effort saved -- they don't have to map it linguistically/formally and for some people or some limited design/display problem set, that's big savings. I suspect, however, that's a significantly smaller set of people and problems than the common wisdom might indicate (and definitely smaller than "universal") and one of the reasons many web publishing tools end up providing templates + limited display options inside content and still end up being more popular than Dreamweaver.
• dwd 8y ago
  I think their problem is they still think of WordPress as firstly, a blogging platform. This is good for bloggers and wordpress.com but adds nothing for anyone that used WordPress as a base platform for something different. It's the something different that differentiates it from SquareSpace.
  • chmars 8y ago
    Gutenberg makes blogging actually very difficult. You can’t just write because everything is a block or some other element … https://www.manton.org/2018/10/23/wordpresss-gutenberg-vs.html https://www.manton.org/2018/10/23/wordpresss-gutenberg-vs.ht...
    • dwd 8y ago
      Then you have to wonder who it's for. It's seeming like an excuse to replatform like Magento 2 did but try to force everyone over. There are as many sites still on Magento 1 as 2 which they would want to avoid.
      • jhabdas 8y ago
        Gutenberg was designed to attract new development talent. No one brags about being able to do OOP/OOD in WordPress. Unfortunately they choose React and that will turn out to be the biggest mistake Automattic ever made.
        • CM30 8y ago
          I think this probably cuts to the core of the reasoning behind Gutenberg more than many other thoughts on it do. It's not about making WordPress better, it's about seeming 'cooler' among other developers by embracing the new shiny thing (React) rather than going with a simpler, more battle tested solution written in PHP and Vanilla JavaScript. And I suspect this is the case with quite a few recent WordPress changes to be honest. The people behind it don't want to be seen as the folks making the 'beginner' or 'amateur' CMS, they want to be up with the 'cool' kids working for Google/Facebook/Netflix/Airbnb/whatever with React and Vue and Angular and what not. For them, stuff like Gutenberg (and arguably even the REST API) feel like attempts to move WordPress away from the 'CRUD sites for small businesses and non programmers' market to the 'professional' one. Yet that's exactly where the market is for WordPress, and that ease of use that attracted beginners and lower end agencies is why WordPress got so popular in the first place. You didn't need a lot of experience with frameworks and build processes and MVC structures and what not to get started, you could just copy or hack together some simple code to get things the way you wanted, and use third party themes/plugins to do the rest. Trying to make things more complicated or move the core of the system over to a JavaScript framework basis (as some suspect Automattic may be trying to do) will just kill a large part of the WordPress community, and remove the ease of use aspect that makes it so popular at all.
• Illniyar 8y ago
  From my experience you use WordPress because of it's massive amount of plugins and themes, and because it's simpler to configure those plugins then other options (like drupal).
• indigochill 8y ago
  Definitely this. I've had a Wordpress site for years that I've let sit dormant. Recently I got the "I should build a personal site" bug, but rather than jump on Wordpress I set up a Github Pages site and just put a redirect on my Wordpress site to that one. Why? 1. Static is secure. Wordpress is a notorious target for hackers and I see constant attacks even against my empty, worthless Wordpress site. But you can't attack a site that doesn't take any input or perform any logic besides choosing which page to display. 2. Markdown is simple and does the job. I don't need anything fancy to write my thoughts and link to resources I find useful. 3. I find Jekyll to be more flexible than Wordpress. Technically both can be used to make any kind of static site, but I find the customization friction to be lower with Jekyll. 4. I like the built-in version control I get with git/Github. 5. I like editing my site with an IDE where all files from content to style are intuitively accessible rather than navigating Wordpress' interface. 6. Github pages includes HTTPS and DDOS protection that I don't need to think about (or even know about). It's just built in. 7. It's in keeping with the open source spirit to have my personal site open source. Anyone can go in and look at what I'm doing, how I'm doing it, and even the history of how the site evolves. They could even fork it if they really wanted to for some reason.
  • johnchristopher 8y ago
    Most people that need a blog or a CMS aren't a self-one-man-ruby-sql-sysop-devop-shop though. Not the same market.
  • debaserab2 8y ago
    Wordpress was never really the competition for you if those are your needs. Here's what wordpress does that most CMS's either don't do well, or cost money to do: - Have a user friendly administration section that anyone can use regardless of technical expertise (by user friendly, I mean have WYSIWYG editor for all posts and make it extremely simple to manage content via a UI -- not CLI) - Have roles for users with restrictable access - Have a plugin ecosystem that allow just about any customization to be easy enough to implement that paying a freelancer to do so is quite affordable - Have an entire theming eco-system that is very alive, with plenty of free or paid options to make a site look professional
• pasta 8y ago
  Imho ProcessWire is the best alternative to Wordpress if you need to use PHP and are a developer. It separates the CMS from the front-end and has a very good API to get the data from the CMS.
  • smashingfiasco 8y ago
    I’ve use PW before and it’s not too bad. The API is really great and so much nicer than working with WP custom fields (etc). The only downside was the back office... a bit dated (looks like something from 2009). The way the CMS works and the thinking behind it are great though. Grav is cool, if you need PHP you’re good with flat file. Off topic, but my most fav CMS of all time is definitely Umbraco. It’s built on .NET, but it’s insanely fun to work on. Between all three if these CMSes, I cringe when I hear “Wordpress.”
• modernerd 8y ago
  > I don't think that many people were crying out for a fancier way to store giant messy blobs in MySQL. This is clearly not the problem that Gutenberg aimed to solve. The problem it solves is more what your second paragraph mentions: “how do I insert custom content that isn't just text in a way that looks consistent on the front and back end”? Adding complex content in a visual way is a real problem in pre-Gutenberg WordPress, to the extent that a thriving cottage industry of page builders now exists, each with their own take on how to add and edit content. Gutenberg hopes to remove the need for such page builders in many cases, (and eventually) unify the WordPress (and Drupal) community so they can offer custom content types as native blocks under a common API. For relational content, there are still custom post types and taxonomies. > IMO Wordpress could do a lot more for itself long term by improving the flexibility and power of its core, rather than its WYSIWYG. It's doing that too, with the REST API, with WP-CLI becoming a “blessed” project, and with future plans for Gutenberg as a means to control widgets and other site areas, rather than just post content.
  • pknight 8y ago
    I think it is a mistake to view Gutenberg as something designed to solve problems for users. > Adding complex content in a visual way is a real problem in pre-Gutenberg WordPress It's not an actual problem though, is it? That cottage industry already fulfills the needs of those the subset of users that need more than what the tinymce implementation WordPress offers out of the box. It's better to understand Gutenberg not as a problem solving project but as a reaction to two things that the project leader has trained his focus on. First, there's this premise that everything is moving to javascript and php is legacy, so WordPress should evolve to run on javascript while casting aside PHP somehow. Fail that and the project could go under is an anxiety that exists. Second, there's the itch for WordPress.com to compete on more level terms with the state of hosted solutions like WIX, Weebly, Squarespace who offer increasingly simple visual building experiences. This is where wp.com wants to compete and win new users choosing between other hosted providers. Mullenweg wants to have WP be an even bigger monopoly. These are two anxieties driving Gutenberg. Gutenberg channels energy toward accomplishing a conversion from a PHP-centric project to a Javascript one, while making a play for new users who are choosing between the hosted version of WP and other hosted solutions. On a technical level, Gutenberg doesn't really convincingly solve technical problems. It makes it easier for developers to tack on GUI driven content elements, which was possible before, but something that many developers didn't get right or didn't know how to do. It doesn't provide a better WYSIWYG experience. The editor screen and the front-end are going to look and feel very different. The biggest new obstacle to arriving at a better WYSIWYG is the fact that in Gutenberg the interface markup is a first class citizen, with the content merely existing deeply nested inside its components in editing mode. While editing, every paragraph, every image, every element is surrounded by endless amounts of divs and scaffolding. When designing a document's CSS you style according to the markup that is shown to users, now with Gutenberg you have to take into account the fact that while editing elements are nested deep inside a convoluted set of divs. So we're still storing messy blobs, but now we're going to split up those blobs and add more mess while in editing mode.
• gbuk2013 8y ago
  > Why does someone select Wordpress in 2018? I can tell you why I do it. I host a couple of WP instances on my server. One for a non-profit sports organisation I am involved in and one for my mom. In both cases I look after the WP install itself (config, updates etc) and they deal with all the content. WP provides a UI that is easy enough for them to use to do so. I am certainly not interested in building anything “custom” for them.
  • Fomite 8y ago
    This. I run a hobby blog, and Wordpress is primarily...not work.
• donohoe 8y ago
  >> Wordpress core continues to be basically a simple blog engine I think you need to think beyond personal and marketing blogs. WordPress is much much more... Quartz (qz.com) is built on WP. So was Wired (wired.com) and The New Yorker (www.newyorker.com). I had a hand in both The New Yorker and Wired and may other large media companies are built on WP. To characterize it as a "simple blog engine" is mis-leading. Gutenberg, while having its teething problems, is a big change. Big changes will cause upheaval. It will cause both petty and important disputes to rise to the surface. I think this is no different.
  • OtterCoder 8y ago
    No, it is a simple blog engine that has been stretched, shimmed, cranked, and jerry-rigged beyond all recognition and sanity. The very idea that people try to host e-commerce on the platform is an embarrassment and a shame to security and safety. It encourages the pattern of hiring non-technical staff to manage the blog-store-landing-page-franken-whatever site, who are in turn encouraged to install reams of untrusted code via plugins. It is built on a frankly bizarre pattern of page and route management. It uses broken versions of a fairly broken language. It is enormously resource-hungry. I could go on, but to sum up, my experience working with WordPress has been nothing but a repeated nightmare.
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  • pmlnr 8y ago
    <rant-ish content> agreeing with sibling, WordPress _is_ a blog engine that has been twisted and squeezed to support other things. BuddyPress is probably the ugliest manifestation of this, one of the slowest, sluggiest, buggiest things I've ever touched. I praise the extreme simplicity of the WordPress database structure, but that is also a very serious limitation. Examples if issues: - WP is ridiculously rigid when you want to scale it - that is due to having it's file storage as and actual file storage, without any abstraction. - The media library is an utter mess since the backbone.js mockery added in 3.5, with inconsistent use of filter and hooks on backend vs frontend. - It's forcing compatibility with long dead PHP versions. (5.2. That is before namespaces.) - I only supports MySQL but maintains MyISAM compatibility, so no foreign innodb keys, no cascade delete, no nothing. It should never have wished to become other, than a blog/small website engine without first making long, long overdue backend fixes. But instead, for many years now, I'm seeing the community being neglected; features that are questionable, pushed through (emojis, REST API, Gutenberg); WP.org without a clear focus, and without answering decades old threads, like a database abstraction layer. All that said, WordPress is easy to use - but I'd welcome an extremely simple, WYSIWYG, small, static site builder instead, with proper support for media, portfolios, galleries, with a WordPress importer, which could easily take over the mess, that WordPress, my once loved CMS had become. </rant-ish content>
• scarecrowbob 8y ago
  "I don't think that many people were crying out for a fancier way to store giant messy blobs in MySQL." If you've ever had to deal with out fo date, page builder generated shortcode messes, that is actually a problem that people would like to solve :D Like, a standardized way of creating a mess is much better than 10 unstandardized ways to make a mess, right? But that's most of modern JS and PHP work anyhow :D
• DoreenMichele 8y ago
  Why does someone select Wordpress in 2018? Because for whatever reason, people are failing to realize that Blogger is vastly better.