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WordPress 5.0: A Gutenberg FAQ

194 points by se7entime 8y ago

pmlnr 8y ago
I seriously dislike the fact that an exteremely wide-spread open source project - wordpress.org - is driven by a for-profit company, wordpress.com. I guess there's no way around it, given Automattic employs most contributors, but this is not the first time when community requests and doubts are ignored (see emojis, half-baked media library refactoring, etc). On the other hand, I'd welcome if these forced changes would revive half-forgotten CMS systems - Typo3, Silverstripe, concrete5, or boost newcomers, like Grav, ProcessWire. Maybe this will break the WordPress monoculture. (downvoting an opinion, that is not how discussions should be made.)
- tvanantwerp 8y ago
  I've been looking hard for an open source replacement for the backend that would let my users edit as simply as with WordPress, but not tie my hands with PHP and an odd API for creating the front end. But so far, I haven't found anything that meets users needs like WordPress does. I wish there were more competition in this space. The closest I've seen--different services that let you create content and provide a GraphQL API--are all SaaS and not very cheap. Maybe the financial incentives to create a viable WordPress competitor that's open source just aren't there anymore...
  - eloisant 8y ago
    When you say "not very cheap", you're illustrating the problem: people don't want to spend money in their CMS. Companies spend hundreds (or more) a month on various SaaS services but are looking for dirt cheap for something as critical as their public facing website.
    - dpkonofa 8y ago
      I don't think that's it, though. I think the issue is moreso that they have to pay for the CMS and then, typically, for someone to customize it for them to make it what they want it to be. You're essentially paying a very high price for the development and paying another cost on top of that for just the platform might seem excessive to those who don't really know how it all works. People don't mind spending money on a CMS as long as they know how it fits into the project. The issue is that most developers just pick a CMS and don't pay for it because they want to keep more of the money from the client rather than because they know what they're doing and it's the best choice for the project.
    - halfastack 8y ago
      If you want it cheap, you self-host it, don't you..?
  - RobGav 8y ago
    You can try to use Publii CMS https://getpublii.com https://getpublii.com , it works very similar to WP, but generates a static output.
  - afandian 8y ago
    Have you looked at wagtail.io ?
    - FormFollowsFunc 8y ago
      I use Wagtail CMS for my sites. It’s the best CMS I have found so far. It’s built on Django. Instead of looking for plugins you just integrate with other services with Python libraries or standard REST calls. It has something similar to Gutenburg’s block based content editor called Streamfield. Which makes it easier to theme rich content compared to rich text editors. Craft CMS has something similar. One thing that is missing in Django though is asset digests you find in Rails - anytime an asset like an image updates it should give it a new name so it’s not served by the cache.
  - katzgrau 8y ago
    There are a lot of companies with a proprietary CMS in the general publishing space (TownNews, GTXcel are both popular), but you can bet that their customers and prospects are always considering a switch to WordPress for various reasons. Financial, extensibility, the fact that most people just know how to use it, not being tied into a 3 year contract, feature list, great reputation, existing users, etc. It's not easy doing what WordPress did. Other major CMSs like Drupal and Joomla came and mostly went because maintaining the level of product quality and community is harder than it looks.
  - scrollaway 8y ago
    Hi, check out Ghost. https://ghost.org/ https://ghost.org/ - It's a blog engine with support for static pages. - It's open source (NodeJS) - It's self-hostable. - It's beautiful out of the box. - It's entirely customizable. - It's markdown-powered with a great WYSIWYG editor. - There's no data lock in; excellent import/export support. I could go on. Just give it a shot. "Ghost Pro" (https://ghost.org/pricing/ https://ghost.org/pricing/) from the official team is a bit pricy if you're saying you want something cheap, but Digital Ocean has a two-click-setup droplet for a self-hosted version (seriously, I tried it, it's ridiculously simple). Referral link with $100 DO credit if you are interested: https://m.do.co/c/ea4165209ae0 https://m.do.co/c/ea4165209ae0 Some examples of small customizations of the default "Casper" theme: https://articles.hsreplay.net/ https://articles.hsreplay.net/ https://spreadprivacy.com/ https://spreadprivacy.com/ https://blog.mozvr.com/ https://blog.mozvr.com/ More of their customers: https://ghost.org/customers/ https://ghost.org/customers/
    - thedeepself 8y ago
      No ghost for me - https://ghost.org/pricing/ https://ghost.org/pricing/
  - EnderMB 8y ago
    There are loads of content management systems that follow the same model. My favourite is Umbraco, which to date is still my favourite editing experience. If you can stomach .NET, it's probably the best choice for an open-source CMS available right now.
  - js4ever 8y ago
    Check this: https://appdrag.com https://appdrag.com It's a cloud CMS and backend It's also crazy fast and serverless.
  - bovermyer 8y ago
    Check out WriteFreely: https://writefreely.org/ https://writefreely.org/ It's written in Go, is federated (ActivityPub), and is easy to set up and run.
- onion2k 8y ago
  I seriously dislike the fact that an exteremely wide-spread open source project - wordpress.org - is driven by a for-profit company, wordpress.com. Every major open source project from the Linux kernel to a popular web framework has corporate sponsors that profit from the work done on it. Profit is a powerful motivator.
  - pmlnr 8y ago
    There's a difference when there are multiple contributors, as such with the linux kernel; in that case, the power is not with one single entity.
    - CM30 8y ago
      And in WordPress' case, the issue isn't just that so much power is with one entity, but that said entity seems to be trying to push the software in a direction and at a pace that's convenient for them, regardless of what the rest of the community think about it. For example, Gutenberg is being pushed into core quite a bit before it's really ready, and to some degree it feels like it was designed for WordPress.com to compete with Wix and Squarespace rather than WordPress.org users. The problem isn't WordPress having a large company contribute it to it, nor just that Automattic has so much power. It's because Automattic are running WordPress to solve their business needs at their pace, everyone else be damned.
    - chc 8y ago
      WordPress also has multiple contributors — it's just mostly under the control of Automattic, just like React is Facebook, TypeScript is Microsoft, and Go is Google.
      - chiefalchemist 8y ago
        I think the difference is the latter three had internal projects the OSS'ed them. On the other hand, WordPress was built on the back of a "community." There is a lot of distrust, and rightfully so, from how Automattic put itself first and the WP community a distant third.
- bovermyer 8y ago
  Driving an open-source project is not the same as controlling it. WordPress has already been forked as ClassicPress and calmPress. If you don't like the direction WordPress is going, you have plenty of options.
- briandear 8y ago
  It’s not the opinion that is being downvoted, but the implication— that open source backed by service driven companies is a bad thing. Without the enterprise Linux companies, Linux would likely be more of a niche since developers at their day jobs wouldn’t typically be using it, so you necessarily reduce the talent pool of people willing to contribute or adopt. Also, developing software takes money. WordPress in my opinion is a good model. The idea that for profit support is bad doesn’t seem to be supported by evidence. Look at Swift for example, or Go, or React or Redis. Even Rails gets substantial intellectual and practical support from Basecamp and wouldn’t even have existed if it weren’t for a for-profit company. Many of the great features of Rails came out of a Basecamp business need. Wordpress is similar. Wordpress isn’t perfect, but thank you Automatic for working on it.
- jim_bailie 8y ago
  I up-voted you because you mentioned Processwire. Holy God is that a wonderful piece of work. We're getting ready to deploy an enormous amount of content using this platform and it's been a real pleasure working with it.
vezycash 8y ago
Are they ditching php? Webhosts have the most to gain financially from a switch to node.js powered WordPress.
- sschueller 8y ago
  I think we are ditching WordPress...
- kennydude 8y ago
  No, it's all frontend as far as I can tell.
- Ivoah 8y ago
  Care to explain how webhosts would gain financially by switching to node.js?
- iDemonix 8y ago
  This makes no sense at all.
- Implicated 8y ago
  This isn't node powered at all.
GeneralMaximus 8y ago
I know a lot of people dislike PHP and WordPress, but I haven't found _anything_ that comes close to it in terms of sheer extensibility and plugin ecosystem. There's a plugin for pretty much anything you might want to do with a platform. I even moved my personal Jekyll-powered blog to WordPress a few years ago. My favorite thing about WordPress is that it's a known quantity. There's an easy to follow tutorial teaching you pretty much anything you might want to do with the software. PHP isn't the prettiest language, and WordPress itself feels a bit creaky at times. But it's a practical tool. It does the job, and does it very well. Since I'm a JavaScript developer, I was optimistic about Ghost becoming a viable alternative to WordPress. Sadly, Ghost's plugin API still doesn't seem to be complete. Without that, it can't replace WordPress for anything besides basic blogging. That seems to be the niche the Ghost developers are interested in, though, so I don't think it's coming anytime soon. I'm really excited to see this release. Gutenberg is certainly a step in the right direction for the editor, and I'm planning to upgrade all my websites over the next few weeks!
- joekrill 8y ago
  You're absolutely right. The big issue (for me, at least), is that it's a security nightmare. At least last I used it. It seemed there were security exploits popping up every day. Either from the core codebase, or from some random plugin everyone seemed to be using. I think that was just the nature of how their plugin system works? I'm not sure if anything's changed, but _maintaining_ a WordPress install is not fun and requires constant - almost tiring - oversight.
  - caseydm 8y ago
    I agree security issues are the main drawback. This can be mitigated by using managed hosting providers. I've had several wordpress sites running on managed hosts for years with little oversight and no issues.
  - GeneralMaximus 8y ago
    That's a fair point. I usually spend some time hardening my WordPress installs, and keep all of them updated. I also disable a few features of the WordPress dashboard, including updating WordPress core and installing themes/plugins. I do these tasks from the command line using WP-CLI. This setup lets me do 99% of my everyday work using the WordPress UI. For the remaining 1%, I can SSH and use the command line. I've had a scare or two in the past, but in general my websites haven't been large enough to be lucrative targets. Maybe someone who's running larger blogs can chime in on the security issues. If you want a one click solution, DigitalOcean's WordPress droplet has a lot of security stuff pre-configured for you. They even integrate fail2ban with the WordPress login screen, which is something I never even considered of doing.
wtmt 8y ago
Maybe I’m in the minority here. Is this the “new editor coming soon” on wordpress.com blogs? If yes, I tried it and was left more confused than before (features like copying an existing post with its categories, tags and content in order to create a new post were missing). So I switched back. I’ve found WordPress becoming more complicated to administer and use over the years. I hope aiming towards simplicity doesn’t inadvertently add more complexity.
- personlurking 8y ago
  The move seems aimed more at website building (ex. Wix) than blogging. These should be two different products because the blocks-based idea makes WP.com unusable for blogging, IMO. As a 10-year user, if they remove the option to revert, I'll be taking my blogs elsewhere.
artichokeheart 8y ago
The big problem with 5.0 is that it's not actually ready and they are shipping because of Wordcamp. There are 152 open issues that they conveniently allocated 1 to 5.0, 28 to 5.0.1 and the rest to future point releases. https://make.wordpress.org/core/2018/12/06/5-0-gutenberg-status-update-dec-6/ https://make.wordpress.org/core/2018/12/06/5-0-gutenberg-sta... The introduction of Gutenberg is a huge change and yes if you've been following the development, you're probably ready for the major changes but if you weren't following along you're in for a nasty, buggy, surprise.
- sparkzilla 8y ago
  100% agree. Gutenberg should not given a public release until it is at least as well formed as the various page builders that are already out there.
- stevenicr 8y ago
  "if you weren't following along you're in for a nasty, buggy, surprise. " this scares me and may bring tears. I don't have time to backup all the sites I have with custom themes and plugins. Hope someone writes a tutorial on how to undo this update, including the database and change over to the class press fork.
  - keepkalm 8y ago
    Yeah, I think it deleted all my plugins this morning. Yay.
adevx 8y ago
I know this is not for everyone, but sometimes it makes sense to jump off the CMS bandwagon and build a custom site. First I used Drupal but got tired of rewriting the site on every major release and jumped on WordPress. Then on WordPress I realized I could not create the user experience I was after without committing massive amounts of time and resources in custom plugins/themes. Leaving me too dependent on a moving target that might take a direction I don't agree with. It looks like there is a plugin for everything, but having them all play nice together is difficult. The more plugins the bigger the security risk, and the greater the risk of an update breaking your site. I rewrote the site in Node.js/Express with Vue.js and server side rendering. The ecosystem is ready with so many libraries to quickly get up and running. Another major benefit is being able to design your own database instead of having everything stored as a post (WordPress).
- two2two 8y ago
  I would love to do something like this. Drupal was a nightmare for me as a designer. Wordpress is much more manageable, but HTML/CSS/Javascript are king for me to have full control. What I'd like to learn next is implementing a database to cover the CMS side of things. Any resources you care to share that would put me on that path?
  - malydok 8y ago
    I believe that the static site generators of this day are the next step in custom web development. I'm currently working on a Gatsby.js project using Contentful as the content provider and it really feels like the stack of the future - build with all the shiny tools but send a fast, static website to the end user.
  - adevx 8y ago
    For what it's worth, I went with PostgreSQL, decided not to use an ORM but a query builder (knex.js). Knex.js gives you database migrations and is good for basic querying. It is easy to drop down to raw SQL if you need something more complex or optimized.
  - cityzen 8y ago
josefresco 8y ago
As someone who hosts over 150 WordPress websites for small businesses ... I'm not thrilled about this release and the work it will entail given the editor overhaul. Another user posted this: https://make.wordpress.org/core/2018/12/06/5-0-gutenberg-status-update-dec-6/ https://make.wordpress.org/core/2018/12/06/5-0-gutenberg-sta... Also this posted by the author of Advanced Custom Fields, a very popular plugin: https://twitter.com/wp_acf/status/1070089217479307264 https://twitter.com/wp_acf/status/1070089217479307264
- calibas 8y ago
  Supposedly, you just install this and you're good to go: https://wordpress.org/plugins/classic-editor/ https://wordpress.org/plugins/classic-editor/ I just tried updating to 5 on a test copy, as far as I can tell it didn't break anything.
  - citilife 8y ago
    The drop in boxes on 5 were too small on my system to edit (looked like it had a max width of 600px. This essentially forced my hand for the classic-editor because I couldn't drop in images and what not. Really strange error to have on the first day. The boxes for editing should be based on percent (I shouldn't have to edit them).
  - willio58 8y ago
    For as long as that plugin is supported..
    - hrrsn 8y ago
      2022 at the earliest.
- usaphp 8y ago
  Have you tried managing it using https://managewp.com https://managewp.com? I was in your shoes and it saved me a lot of headache
leonk 8y ago
No mention here about Gutenberg's lack of support for accessibility standards. They pretty much went full steam ahead and left the accessibility team behind. See: https://rianrietveld.com/2018/10/09/i-have-resigned-the-wordpress-accessibility-team/ https://rianrietveld.com/2018/10/09/i-have-resigned-the-word...
- motdiem 8y ago
  There's a whole paragraph in the linked article talking about accessibility - it looks to me that they're mostly planning to improve it in the next few point releases. It's too bad they couldn't bake it in from the start, but at least they seem to acknowledge it
  - ahoy 8y ago
    not "couldn't" but "refused to"
- photomatt 8y ago
  That article is now two months old and a lot has changed and improved since then. You also have to compare apples to apples: don't just compare writing in a single text area to manipulating complex blocks, try to accomplish the same task (like putting two captioned images side by side) in both interfaces.
- dpkonofa 8y ago
  Is the summary of that article basically "No one on the accessibility team knows React so we can't help?". If so, then that's more the accessibility team's fault than it is the rest of the dev team. Granted, accessibility should be a priority for the whole team, but when it's your team's job to do that singular part of the development, maybe you should be resigning and let someone who knows what they're doing take over...
- indysigners 8y ago
  I also found it pretty shocking to learn (https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2018/12/gutenberg-accessibility-situation/#what-happened https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2018/12/gutenberg-accessibi...) that @photomat did hold a potential professional engagement hostage over Marcy Sutton’s personal blog decision... although he seemingly did reverse that, but still, the whole attitude is fairly disturbing in doesn’t help where there already are lots of emotions involved.
Slashbot 8y ago
Gutenberg, and this whole medium.com style look to websites layouts and interactivity just makes me think it is about time for an Apocalypse. Probably starting with silicon valley going down in a sink hole (make it goolag first).. like real soon please. I'd rather go back to reading sites off geocities with starry backgrounds and little animated gif's everywhere..at least those looked like someone had fun putting them together, than this automated fking pile of readability styled over sized fonts design for people who can't see good shit that is getting spewed out from so called website 'designers' and 'content writers' if you in anyway like this style of a website design and user experience for readers, just kys... I mean at least think about it, perhaps reflect on how awful you are as a human.
- nsriv 8y ago
  Imagine getting this worked up about black text on white backgrounds.
  - Rexel 8y ago
    lol..the fontsizes are big, the designs are incredibly basic like it is designed for adult sized baby children (known as SJW's) with reading and comprehension difficulties..aah it all making sense now, this new push for a dumbed down internet. Needs to start with dumbed websites right? ;)
- deltron3030 8y ago
  Could you describe your online reading conditions? Device, distance to screen etc.?
o_____________o 8y ago
Here's the holy land: - React components (Gutenberg) - You can visually edit react components (Gutenberg) - You can render the site with anything (Gatsby?) Wordpress made some insane decisions with Gutenberg, like 1. storing the parameters (data you enter visually into the component) in an HTML comment (!!!) alongside the rendered HTML and 2. deciding to show the equivalent of "FATAL ERROR IN THIS COMPONENT" when the component author makes any adjustment to the markup output. Their idea for the latter was for you, the component author, to keep a deprecated version of any change alongside the new version. They have the start of something great but crippled it with laughably bad decisions. Feels like... well, developing in the PHP ecosystem again. More specific discussion: https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/10444 https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/10444
neya 8y ago
This looks very similar to Sir Trevor: http://madebymany.github.io/sir-trevor-js/example.html http://madebymany.github.io/sir-trevor-js/example.html
balibebas 8y ago
And then Gutenberg became Zola. Gutenburg is a tough keyword to rank for anyway. Here's how you can speed up your site under the new weight: https://after-dark.habd.as/feature/fetch-injection/ https://after-dark.habd.as/feature/fetch-injection/
usaphp 8y ago
For anyone who is managing multiple wordless sites and is scared of the amount of work it will take to update and check compatibility of each of them, I strongly recommend trying https://managewp.com https://managewp.com, it made my life so much easier with managin our company blogs
andy_adams 8y ago
Is anyone else impressed with WordPress/Automattic's willingness to "just ship" despite things not being perfect? As someone who struggles shipping software that basically nobody uses, I don't know if I'd have the guts to say "it's good enough" on a project as big & widely used as WordPress.
- matthiaswh 8y ago
  Quite the contrary. "Just ship" is a great approach for individuals or startups. WordPress is a behemoth that powers a significant portion of the web, including numerous enterprise corporations, and is the lifeblood of thousands of freelancers and agencies. They should hold themselves to a much higher standard. When WordPress ships a bug, or a security vulnerability, or drastically and negatively alters the user experience the repercussions are vast and long-lasting. I can't imagine how many man-hours and how many millions (billions?) of dollars it costs every time this happens.
  - andy_adams 8y ago
    I know what you're saying, but on the flip side: How many billions (trillions?) of dollars has been created by WordPress? And it keeps growing! I feel that this "shipment" has been fairly responsible, with the Classic Editor plugin as a fallback for people who don't want Gutenberg.
Vanderson 8y ago
Will Gutenberg actually help Wordpress? I don't think so. Why? Most site owners aren't designers and don't do layout or content building well at all. Maybe I am short sighted on this though. Much of my business has been replacing sites that run on Wordpress with my own CMS Archetype. Even though it lacks a lot of the power of mass of WP plugins, it makes up for it with simplicity of production and ease of use. Some site owners want more control/power over layout building, and others would be overwhelmed by the extra features of Gutenberg. Will Gutenberg become a core complaint of WP in the future? Maybe. The biggest complaints I've gotten about Wordpress are these: 1. Can't hand it off to clients to edit their own content, because it's too hard to learn. Or if you do train someone, it turns into a cycle of retraining. (though this seems to be Gutenberg's real target goal) 2. Updating is painful. Plugins break on a regular basis. 3. Security, WP sites get hacked alot. Think this is primarily because most WP sites aren't run by professionals, but individuals. But also, #2 applies here, there's motivation to _not_ upgrade because of the possibility of breaking the site. There are others, but Gutenberg would not solve these 3 largest problems with WP that I have run into.
- nyc111 8y ago
  > Will Gutenberg actually help Wordpress? I don't think so. Why? Most site owners aren't designers and don't do layout or content building well at all. Maybe I am short sighted on this though. I agree! I use wordpress.com because I DON'T WANT TO DESIGN MY SİTE. Nor do I want to design each individual post. I want my blog to have a uniform look. I may make some tweaks to CSS and that's all. I don't want to think about design. WP is arrogantly pushing the new editor but I tried it and I see no use for it. I think it should only be an option for people who want to design their own site. It's true that there is no other place I can take my blog to. WP knows this and they know they can get away with it.
kareldonk369 8y ago
You guys need to check the 1 star reviews for Gutenberg on the link below for some good comedy. Most reviews are 1 star. https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/gutenberg/reviews/?filter=1 https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/gutenberg/reviews/?filt...
mmsimanga 8y ago
This reminds me of Drupal 8 which was a massive departure from previous versions. As a part-time Drupal user with a handful of sites. The changes in Drupal 8 were just too much for me. Suddenly I had to learn Composer before I could do anything. Nothing wrong with Composer but if you aren't fulltime PHP developer this is just too much to learn to use a CMS. Installing Drupal changed from just unzipping a file to a whole convoluted process (I know I exaggerate). The technologists were happy but the hobbyists not so much.
- mgbmtl 8y ago
  Composer mostly replaces 'drush make'. You can still download zip files (for core, themes and modules). Composer helps if you have to manage complicated modules. For example, CiviCRM is CMS-agnostic and bundles its own versions of Symfony, Guzzle, etc. If we only used zip files, we would end up with library conflicts. Composer helps fix that. (However, I agree that Drupal tends to make things insanely complicated, and the upgrade process is underwhelming.)
asadkn 8y ago
If you have ever used Medium.com or the inspired niche of editors that followed, you will love Gutenberg. It's in this niche of editors where other names would be Dropbox Paper, and obviously the best in niche Notion.so - but Gutenberg is quite decent so far.
stevenicr 8y ago
surprised no one has mentioned the fork, https://www.classicpress.net/ https://www.classicpress.net/ I brought up similar issues times ago when WP was rolling out major changes that were likely to break things and not add any value to a majority of WP users. Glad to see enough others have banded together to actually make a good fork a serious option now. I have already begun using a couple of plugins that convert WP sites to static html /css - so no updates needed, no more breaking things from auttomatic. Unfortunately some of WP sites I'm running need to stay open to udpates regularly, fingers crossed I can revert them when the update rolls out.
chiefalchemist 8y ago
I updated a test sight to 5.0. I activated Gutenburg. I played with the blocks. I looked for - having just done some Shopify work for a friend - a way in WP to preview page (while on desktop) that simulated mobile. Again, like Shopify. Afaik there is no such preview. I'm aware "the WordPress way" is fond of turning its back on industry standards. But ignoring "mobile first"? If the dev team missed that, what else did they miss?
akras14 8y ago
I’ll just leave this here: https://www.alexkras.com/how-to-rollback-wordpress-5-to-older-version/ https://www.alexkras.com/how-to-rollback-wordpress-5-to-olde...
EnderMB 8y ago
For what Automattic want WordPress to be, WP 5 seems to be a sensible move. WP is a viable choice for the Squarespace and Wix crowd that want to build a website without knowing anything about how to design or code. These services are eating their (lucrative) lunch, and a move toward ease of building makes real sense. Sadly, this isn't the reason WP is popular. People use it because it's the most popular CMS, because of the marketed belief that it's the easiest to use, and because there is a perceived belief that it's quick to develop features because "we'll just use a plugin for that". While there are many teams out there that do WP "right", I'd say they are in a small minority. Most WP sites I've used have been a total mess. I've used a lot of content management systems and frameworks in the past, and while it's on a framework many refuse to use, I'd say the best open-source CMS available for user experience and extensibility is Umbraco. While the core community can be a bit reclusive to outsiders, and HQ eager to push profitable products, Umbraco is easy to use, easy to install, and has a rich ecosystem of plugins to allow developers to build stuff easily. I liken it a bit to the early Rails community in how it acts. As far as WP is concerned, I feel that WP is too big to simply be a site builder to some, and a framework to others, making Gutenberg a knee-jerk reaction that doesn't really solve either problem. The best thing they could do is accept that WP developers are analogous to React developers or Rails developers in that they define themselves by their framework of choice, and to do that WordPress needs to expand into its own PHP framework. Gutenberg can be a part of that, but it would be a part of the framework, not the driving force behind page creation. Disclaimer: A few years ago, I was making a tidy side income from porting WP sites to Umbraco, and if I weren't too busy I'd continue to do it because there is no shortage of pissed off clients with crappy WP sites that want a usable CMS.

194 points by se7entime 8y ago

I seriously dislike the fact that an exteremely wide-spread open source project - wordpress.org - is driven by a for-profit company, wordpress.com. I guess there's no way around it, given Automattic employs most contributors, but this is not the first time when community requests and doubts are ignored (see emojis, half-baked media library refactoring, etc). On the other hand, I'd welcome if these forced changes would revive half-forgotten CMS systems - Typo3, Silverstripe, concrete5, or boost newcomers, like Grav, ProcessWire. Maybe this will break the WordPress monoculture. (downvoting an opinion, that is not how discussions should be made.)

tvanantwerp 8y ago
I've been looking hard for an open source replacement for the backend that would let my users edit as simply as with WordPress, but not tie my hands with PHP and an odd API for creating the front end. But so far, I haven't found anything that meets users needs like WordPress does. I wish there were more competition in this space. The closest I've seen--different services that let you create content and provide a GraphQL API--are all SaaS and not very cheap. Maybe the financial incentives to create a viable WordPress competitor that's open source just aren't there anymore...
- eloisant 8y ago
  When you say "not very cheap", you're illustrating the problem: people don't want to spend money in their CMS. Companies spend hundreds (or more) a month on various SaaS services but are looking for dirt cheap for something as critical as their public facing website.
  - dpkonofa 8y ago
    I don't think that's it, though. I think the issue is moreso that they have to pay for the CMS and then, typically, for someone to customize it for them to make it what they want it to be. You're essentially paying a very high price for the development and paying another cost on top of that for just the platform might seem excessive to those who don't really know how it all works. People don't mind spending money on a CMS as long as they know how it fits into the project. The issue is that most developers just pick a CMS and don't pay for it because they want to keep more of the money from the client rather than because they know what they're doing and it's the best choice for the project.
  - halfastack 8y ago
    If you want it cheap, you self-host it, don't you..?
- RobGav 8y ago
  You can try to use Publii CMS https://getpublii.com https://getpublii.com , it works very similar to WP, but generates a static output.
- afandian 8y ago
  Have you looked at wagtail.io ?
  - FormFollowsFunc 8y ago
    I use Wagtail CMS for my sites. It’s the best CMS I have found so far. It’s built on Django. Instead of looking for plugins you just integrate with other services with Python libraries or standard REST calls. It has something similar to Gutenburg’s block based content editor called Streamfield. Which makes it easier to theme rich content compared to rich text editors. Craft CMS has something similar. One thing that is missing in Django though is asset digests you find in Rails - anytime an asset like an image updates it should give it a new name so it’s not served by the cache.
- katzgrau 8y ago
  There are a lot of companies with a proprietary CMS in the general publishing space (TownNews, GTXcel are both popular), but you can bet that their customers and prospects are always considering a switch to WordPress for various reasons. Financial, extensibility, the fact that most people just know how to use it, not being tied into a 3 year contract, feature list, great reputation, existing users, etc. It's not easy doing what WordPress did. Other major CMSs like Drupal and Joomla came and mostly went because maintaining the level of product quality and community is harder than it looks.
- scrollaway 8y ago
  Hi, check out Ghost. https://ghost.org/ https://ghost.org/ - It's a blog engine with support for static pages. - It's open source (NodeJS) - It's self-hostable. - It's beautiful out of the box. - It's entirely customizable. - It's markdown-powered with a great WYSIWYG editor. - There's no data lock in; excellent import/export support. I could go on. Just give it a shot. "Ghost Pro" (https://ghost.org/pricing/ https://ghost.org/pricing/) from the official team is a bit pricy if you're saying you want something cheap, but Digital Ocean has a two-click-setup droplet for a self-hosted version (seriously, I tried it, it's ridiculously simple). Referral link with $100 DO credit if you are interested: https://m.do.co/c/ea4165209ae0 https://m.do.co/c/ea4165209ae0 Some examples of small customizations of the default "Casper" theme: https://articles.hsreplay.net/ https://articles.hsreplay.net/ https://spreadprivacy.com/ https://spreadprivacy.com/ https://blog.mozvr.com/ https://blog.mozvr.com/ More of their customers: https://ghost.org/customers/ https://ghost.org/customers/
  - thedeepself 8y ago
    No ghost for me - https://ghost.org/pricing/ https://ghost.org/pricing/
- EnderMB 8y ago
  There are loads of content management systems that follow the same model. My favourite is Umbraco, which to date is still my favourite editing experience. If you can stomach .NET, it's probably the best choice for an open-source CMS available right now.
- js4ever 8y ago
  Check this: https://appdrag.com https://appdrag.com It's a cloud CMS and backend It's also crazy fast and serverless.
- bovermyer 8y ago
  Check out WriteFreely: https://writefreely.org/ https://writefreely.org/ It's written in Go, is federated (ActivityPub), and is easy to set up and run.
onion2k 8y ago
I seriously dislike the fact that an exteremely wide-spread open source project - wordpress.org - is driven by a for-profit company, wordpress.com. Every major open source project from the Linux kernel to a popular web framework has corporate sponsors that profit from the work done on it. Profit is a powerful motivator.
- pmlnr 8y ago
  There's a difference when there are multiple contributors, as such with the linux kernel; in that case, the power is not with one single entity.
  - CM30 8y ago
    And in WordPress' case, the issue isn't just that so much power is with one entity, but that said entity seems to be trying to push the software in a direction and at a pace that's convenient for them, regardless of what the rest of the community think about it. For example, Gutenberg is being pushed into core quite a bit before it's really ready, and to some degree it feels like it was designed for WordPress.com to compete with Wix and Squarespace rather than WordPress.org users. The problem isn't WordPress having a large company contribute it to it, nor just that Automattic has so much power. It's because Automattic are running WordPress to solve their business needs at their pace, everyone else be damned.
  - chc 8y ago
    WordPress also has multiple contributors — it's just mostly under the control of Automattic, just like React is Facebook, TypeScript is Microsoft, and Go is Google.
    - chiefalchemist 8y ago
      I think the difference is the latter three had internal projects the OSS'ed them. On the other hand, WordPress was built on the back of a "community." There is a lot of distrust, and rightfully so, from how Automattic put itself first and the WP community a distant third.
bovermyer 8y ago
Driving an open-source project is not the same as controlling it. WordPress has already been forked as ClassicPress and calmPress. If you don't like the direction WordPress is going, you have plenty of options.
briandear 8y ago
It’s not the opinion that is being downvoted, but the implication— that open source backed by service driven companies is a bad thing. Without the enterprise Linux companies, Linux would likely be more of a niche since developers at their day jobs wouldn’t typically be using it, so you necessarily reduce the talent pool of people willing to contribute or adopt. Also, developing software takes money. WordPress in my opinion is a good model. The idea that for profit support is bad doesn’t seem to be supported by evidence. Look at Swift for example, or Go, or React or Redis. Even Rails gets substantial intellectual and practical support from Basecamp and wouldn’t even have existed if it weren’t for a for-profit company. Many of the great features of Rails came out of a Basecamp business need. Wordpress is similar. Wordpress isn’t perfect, but thank you Automatic for working on it.
jim_bailie 8y ago
I up-voted you because you mentioned Processwire. Holy God is that a wonderful piece of work. We're getting ready to deploy an enormous amount of content using this platform and it's been a real pleasure working with it.

vezycash 8y ago

Are they ditching php? Webhosts have the most to gain financially from a switch to node.js powered WordPress.

sschueller 8y ago
I think we are ditching WordPress...
kennydude 8y ago
No, it's all frontend as far as I can tell.
Ivoah 8y ago
Care to explain how webhosts would gain financially by switching to node.js?
iDemonix 8y ago
This makes no sense at all.
Implicated 8y ago
This isn't node powered at all.

GeneralMaximus 8y ago

I know a lot of people dislike PHP and WordPress, but I haven't found _anything_ that comes close to it in terms of sheer extensibility and plugin ecosystem. There's a plugin for pretty much anything you might want to do with a platform. I even moved my personal Jekyll-powered blog to WordPress a few years ago. My favorite thing about WordPress is that it's a known quantity. There's an easy to follow tutorial teaching you pretty much anything you might want to do with the software. PHP isn't the prettiest language, and WordPress itself feels a bit creaky at times. But it's a practical tool. It does the job, and does it very well. Since I'm a JavaScript developer, I was optimistic about Ghost becoming a viable alternative to WordPress. Sadly, Ghost's plugin API still doesn't seem to be complete. Without that, it can't replace WordPress for anything besides basic blogging. That seems to be the niche the Ghost developers are interested in, though, so I don't think it's coming anytime soon. I'm really excited to see this release. Gutenberg is certainly a step in the right direction for the editor, and I'm planning to upgrade all my websites over the next few weeks!

joekrill 8y ago
You're absolutely right. The big issue (for me, at least), is that it's a security nightmare. At least last I used it. It seemed there were security exploits popping up every day. Either from the core codebase, or from some random plugin everyone seemed to be using. I think that was just the nature of how their plugin system works? I'm not sure if anything's changed, but _maintaining_ a WordPress install is not fun and requires constant - almost tiring - oversight.
- caseydm 8y ago
  I agree security issues are the main drawback. This can be mitigated by using managed hosting providers. I've had several wordpress sites running on managed hosts for years with little oversight and no issues.
- GeneralMaximus 8y ago
  That's a fair point. I usually spend some time hardening my WordPress installs, and keep all of them updated. I also disable a few features of the WordPress dashboard, including updating WordPress core and installing themes/plugins. I do these tasks from the command line using WP-CLI. This setup lets me do 99% of my everyday work using the WordPress UI. For the remaining 1%, I can SSH and use the command line. I've had a scare or two in the past, but in general my websites haven't been large enough to be lucrative targets. Maybe someone who's running larger blogs can chime in on the security issues. If you want a one click solution, DigitalOcean's WordPress droplet has a lot of security stuff pre-configured for you. They even integrate fail2ban with the WordPress login screen, which is something I never even considered of doing.

wtmt 8y ago

Maybe I’m in the minority here. Is this the “new editor coming soon” on wordpress.com blogs? If yes, I tried it and was left more confused than before (features like copying an existing post with its categories, tags and content in order to create a new post were missing). So I switched back. I’ve found WordPress becoming more complicated to administer and use over the years. I hope aiming towards simplicity doesn’t inadvertently add more complexity.

personlurking 8y ago
The move seems aimed more at website building (ex. Wix) than blogging. These should be two different products because the blocks-based idea makes WP.com unusable for blogging, IMO. As a 10-year user, if they remove the option to revert, I'll be taking my blogs elsewhere.

artichokeheart 8y ago

The big problem with 5.0 is that it's not actually ready and they are shipping because of Wordcamp. There are 152 open issues that they conveniently allocated 1 to 5.0, 28 to 5.0.1 and the rest to future point releases. https://make.wordpress.org/core/2018/12/06/5-0-gutenberg-status-update-dec-6/ https://make.wordpress.org/core/2018/12/06/5-0-gutenberg-sta... The introduction of Gutenberg is a huge change and yes if you've been following the development, you're probably ready for the major changes but if you weren't following along you're in for a nasty, buggy, surprise.

sparkzilla 8y ago
100% agree. Gutenberg should not given a public release until it is at least as well formed as the various page builders that are already out there.
stevenicr 8y ago
"if you weren't following along you're in for a nasty, buggy, surprise. " this scares me and may bring tears. I don't have time to backup all the sites I have with custom themes and plugins. Hope someone writes a tutorial on how to undo this update, including the database and change over to the class press fork.
- keepkalm 8y ago
  Yeah, I think it deleted all my plugins this morning. Yay.

adevx 8y ago

I know this is not for everyone, but sometimes it makes sense to jump off the CMS bandwagon and build a custom site. First I used Drupal but got tired of rewriting the site on every major release and jumped on WordPress. Then on WordPress I realized I could not create the user experience I was after without committing massive amounts of time and resources in custom plugins/themes. Leaving me too dependent on a moving target that might take a direction I don't agree with. It looks like there is a plugin for everything, but having them all play nice together is difficult. The more plugins the bigger the security risk, and the greater the risk of an update breaking your site. I rewrote the site in Node.js/Express with Vue.js and server side rendering. The ecosystem is ready with so many libraries to quickly get up and running. Another major benefit is being able to design your own database instead of having everything stored as a post (WordPress).

two2two 8y ago
I would love to do something like this. Drupal was a nightmare for me as a designer. Wordpress is much more manageable, but HTML/CSS/Javascript are king for me to have full control. What I'd like to learn next is implementing a database to cover the CMS side of things. Any resources you care to share that would put me on that path?
- malydok 8y ago
  I believe that the static site generators of this day are the next step in custom web development. I'm currently working on a Gatsby.js project using Contentful as the content provider and it really feels like the stack of the future - build with all the shiny tools but send a fast, static website to the end user.
- adevx 8y ago
  For what it's worth, I went with PostgreSQL, decided not to use an ORM but a query builder (knex.js). Knex.js gives you database migrations and is good for basic querying. It is easy to drop down to raw SQL if you need something more complex or optimized.
- cityzen 8y ago

josefresco 8y ago

As someone who hosts over 150 WordPress websites for small businesses ... I'm not thrilled about this release and the work it will entail given the editor overhaul. Another user posted this: https://make.wordpress.org/core/2018/12/06/5-0-gutenberg-status-update-dec-6/ https://make.wordpress.org/core/2018/12/06/5-0-gutenberg-sta... Also this posted by the author of Advanced Custom Fields, a very popular plugin: https://twitter.com/wp_acf/status/1070089217479307264 https://twitter.com/wp_acf/status/1070089217479307264

calibas 8y ago
Supposedly, you just install this and you're good to go: https://wordpress.org/plugins/classic-editor/ https://wordpress.org/plugins/classic-editor/ I just tried updating to 5 on a test copy, as far as I can tell it didn't break anything.
- citilife 8y ago
  The drop in boxes on 5 were too small on my system to edit (looked like it had a max width of 600px. This essentially forced my hand for the classic-editor because I couldn't drop in images and what not. Really strange error to have on the first day. The boxes for editing should be based on percent (I shouldn't have to edit them).
- willio58 8y ago
  For as long as that plugin is supported..
  - hrrsn 8y ago
    2022 at the earliest.
usaphp 8y ago
Have you tried managing it using https://managewp.com https://managewp.com? I was in your shoes and it saved me a lot of headache

leonk 8y ago

No mention here about Gutenberg's lack of support for accessibility standards. They pretty much went full steam ahead and left the accessibility team behind. See: https://rianrietveld.com/2018/10/09/i-have-resigned-the-wordpress-accessibility-team/ https://rianrietveld.com/2018/10/09/i-have-resigned-the-word...

motdiem 8y ago
There's a whole paragraph in the linked article talking about accessibility - it looks to me that they're mostly planning to improve it in the next few point releases. It's too bad they couldn't bake it in from the start, but at least they seem to acknowledge it
- ahoy 8y ago
  not "couldn't" but "refused to"
photomatt 8y ago
That article is now two months old and a lot has changed and improved since then. You also have to compare apples to apples: don't just compare writing in a single text area to manipulating complex blocks, try to accomplish the same task (like putting two captioned images side by side) in both interfaces.
dpkonofa 8y ago
Is the summary of that article basically "No one on the accessibility team knows React so we can't help?". If so, then that's more the accessibility team's fault than it is the rest of the dev team. Granted, accessibility should be a priority for the whole team, but when it's your team's job to do that singular part of the development, maybe you should be resigning and let someone who knows what they're doing take over...
indysigners 8y ago
I also found it pretty shocking to learn (https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2018/12/gutenberg-accessibility-situation/#what-happened https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2018/12/gutenberg-accessibi...) that @photomat did hold a potential professional engagement hostage over Marcy Sutton’s personal blog decision... although he seemingly did reverse that, but still, the whole attitude is fairly disturbing in doesn’t help where there already are lots of emotions involved.

Slashbot 8y ago

Gutenberg, and this whole medium.com style look to websites layouts and interactivity just makes me think it is about time for an Apocalypse. Probably starting with silicon valley going down in a sink hole (make it goolag first).. like real soon please. I'd rather go back to reading sites off geocities with starry backgrounds and little animated gif's everywhere..at least those looked like someone had fun putting them together, than this automated fking pile of readability styled over sized fonts design for people who can't see good shit that is getting spewed out from so called website 'designers' and 'content writers' if you in anyway like this style of a website design and user experience for readers, just kys... I mean at least think about it, perhaps reflect on how awful you are as a human.

nsriv 8y ago
Imagine getting this worked up about black text on white backgrounds.
- Rexel 8y ago
  lol..the fontsizes are big, the designs are incredibly basic like it is designed for adult sized baby children (known as SJW's) with reading and comprehension difficulties..aah it all making sense now, this new push for a dumbed down internet. Needs to start with dumbed websites right? ;)
deltron3030 8y ago
Could you describe your online reading conditions? Device, distance to screen etc.?

o_____________o 8y ago

Here's the holy land: - React components (Gutenberg) - You can visually edit react components (Gutenberg) - You can render the site with anything (Gatsby?) Wordpress made some insane decisions with Gutenberg, like 1. storing the parameters (data you enter visually into the component) in an HTML comment (!!!) alongside the rendered HTML and 2. deciding to show the equivalent of "FATAL ERROR IN THIS COMPONENT" when the component author makes any adjustment to the markup output. Their idea for the latter was for you, the component author, to keep a deprecated version of any change alongside the new version. They have the start of something great but crippled it with laughably bad decisions. Feels like... well, developing in the PHP ecosystem again. More specific discussion: https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/10444 https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/10444

neya 8y ago

This looks very similar to Sir Trevor: http://madebymany.github.io/sir-trevor-js/example.html http://madebymany.github.io/sir-trevor-js/example.html

balibebas 8y ago

And then Gutenberg became Zola. Gutenburg is a tough keyword to rank for anyway. Here's how you can speed up your site under the new weight: https://after-dark.habd.as/feature/fetch-injection/ https://after-dark.habd.as/feature/fetch-injection/

usaphp 8y ago

For anyone who is managing multiple wordless sites and is scared of the amount of work it will take to update and check compatibility of each of them, I strongly recommend trying https://managewp.com https://managewp.com, it made my life so much easier with managin our company blogs

andy_adams 8y ago

Is anyone else impressed with WordPress/Automattic's willingness to "just ship" despite things not being perfect? As someone who struggles shipping software that basically nobody uses, I don't know if I'd have the guts to say "it's good enough" on a project as big & widely used as WordPress.

matthiaswh 8y ago
Quite the contrary. "Just ship" is a great approach for individuals or startups. WordPress is a behemoth that powers a significant portion of the web, including numerous enterprise corporations, and is the lifeblood of thousands of freelancers and agencies. They should hold themselves to a much higher standard. When WordPress ships a bug, or a security vulnerability, or drastically and negatively alters the user experience the repercussions are vast and long-lasting. I can't imagine how many man-hours and how many millions (billions?) of dollars it costs every time this happens.
- andy_adams 8y ago
  I know what you're saying, but on the flip side: How many billions (trillions?) of dollars has been created by WordPress? And it keeps growing! I feel that this "shipment" has been fairly responsible, with the Classic Editor plugin as a fallback for people who don't want Gutenberg.

Vanderson 8y ago

Will Gutenberg actually help Wordpress? I don't think so. Why? Most site owners aren't designers and don't do layout or content building well at all. Maybe I am short sighted on this though. Much of my business has been replacing sites that run on Wordpress with my own CMS Archetype. Even though it lacks a lot of the power of mass of WP plugins, it makes up for it with simplicity of production and ease of use. Some site owners want more control/power over layout building, and others would be overwhelmed by the extra features of Gutenberg. Will Gutenberg become a core complaint of WP in the future? Maybe. The biggest complaints I've gotten about Wordpress are these: 1. Can't hand it off to clients to edit their own content, because it's too hard to learn. Or if you do train someone, it turns into a cycle of retraining. (though this seems to be Gutenberg's real target goal) 2. Updating is painful. Plugins break on a regular basis. 3. Security, WP sites get hacked alot. Think this is primarily because most WP sites aren't run by professionals, but individuals. But also, #2 applies here, there's motivation to _not_ upgrade because of the possibility of breaking the site. There are others, but Gutenberg would not solve these 3 largest problems with WP that I have run into.

nyc111 8y ago
> Will Gutenberg actually help Wordpress? I don't think so. Why? Most site owners aren't designers and don't do layout or content building well at all. Maybe I am short sighted on this though. I agree! I use wordpress.com because I DON'T WANT TO DESIGN MY SİTE. Nor do I want to design each individual post. I want my blog to have a uniform look. I may make some tweaks to CSS and that's all. I don't want to think about design. WP is arrogantly pushing the new editor but I tried it and I see no use for it. I think it should only be an option for people who want to design their own site. It's true that there is no other place I can take my blog to. WP knows this and they know they can get away with it.

kareldonk369 8y ago

You guys need to check the 1 star reviews for Gutenberg on the link below for some good comedy. Most reviews are 1 star. https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/gutenberg/reviews/?filter=1 https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/gutenberg/reviews/?filt...

mmsimanga 8y ago

This reminds me of Drupal 8 which was a massive departure from previous versions. As a part-time Drupal user with a handful of sites. The changes in Drupal 8 were just too much for me. Suddenly I had to learn Composer before I could do anything. Nothing wrong with Composer but if you aren't fulltime PHP developer this is just too much to learn to use a CMS. Installing Drupal changed from just unzipping a file to a whole convoluted process (I know I exaggerate). The technologists were happy but the hobbyists not so much.

mgbmtl 8y ago
Composer mostly replaces 'drush make'. You can still download zip files (for core, themes and modules). Composer helps if you have to manage complicated modules. For example, CiviCRM is CMS-agnostic and bundles its own versions of Symfony, Guzzle, etc. If we only used zip files, we would end up with library conflicts. Composer helps fix that. (However, I agree that Drupal tends to make things insanely complicated, and the upgrade process is underwhelming.)

asadkn 8y ago

If you have ever used Medium.com or the inspired niche of editors that followed, you will love Gutenberg. It's in this niche of editors where other names would be Dropbox Paper, and obviously the best in niche Notion.so - but Gutenberg is quite decent so far.

stevenicr 8y ago

surprised no one has mentioned the fork, https://www.classicpress.net/ https://www.classicpress.net/ I brought up similar issues times ago when WP was rolling out major changes that were likely to break things and not add any value to a majority of WP users. Glad to see enough others have banded together to actually make a good fork a serious option now. I have already begun using a couple of plugins that convert WP sites to static html /css - so no updates needed, no more breaking things from auttomatic. Unfortunately some of WP sites I'm running need to stay open to udpates regularly, fingers crossed I can revert them when the update rolls out.

chiefalchemist 8y ago

I updated a test sight to 5.0. I activated Gutenburg. I played with the blocks. I looked for - having just done some Shopify work for a friend - a way in WP to preview page (while on desktop) that simulated mobile. Again, like Shopify. Afaik there is no such preview. I'm aware "the WordPress way" is fond of turning its back on industry standards. But ignoring "mobile first"? If the dev team missed that, what else did they miss?

akras14 8y ago

I’ll just leave this here: https://www.alexkras.com/how-to-rollback-wordpress-5-to-older-version/ https://www.alexkras.com/how-to-rollback-wordpress-5-to-olde...

EnderMB 8y ago

For what Automattic want WordPress to be, WP 5 seems to be a sensible move. WP is a viable choice for the Squarespace and Wix crowd that want to build a website without knowing anything about how to design or code. These services are eating their (lucrative) lunch, and a move toward ease of building makes real sense. Sadly, this isn't the reason WP is popular. People use it because it's the most popular CMS, because of the marketed belief that it's the easiest to use, and because there is a perceived belief that it's quick to develop features because "we'll just use a plugin for that". While there are many teams out there that do WP "right", I'd say they are in a small minority. Most WP sites I've used have been a total mess. I've used a lot of content management systems and frameworks in the past, and while it's on a framework many refuse to use, I'd say the best open-source CMS available for user experience and extensibility is Umbraco. While the core community can be a bit reclusive to outsiders, and HQ eager to push profitable products, Umbraco is easy to use, easy to install, and has a rich ecosystem of plugins to allow developers to build stuff easily. I liken it a bit to the early Rails community in how it acts. As far as WP is concerned, I feel that WP is too big to simply be a site builder to some, and a framework to others, making Gutenberg a knee-jerk reaction that doesn't really solve either problem. The best thing they could do is accept that WP developers are analogous to React developers or Rails developers in that they define themselves by their framework of choice, and to do that WordPress needs to expand into its own PHP framework. Gutenberg can be a part of that, but it would be a part of the framework, not the driving force behind page creation. Disclaimer: A few years ago, I was making a tidy side income from porting WP sites to Umbraco, and if I weren't too busy I'd continue to do it because there is no shortage of pissed off clients with crappy WP sites that want a usable CMS.