Don’t update your WordPress theme yet to WP 5.0 & Gutenberg. Why ? Because your old WordPress theme may start acting up or there will be parts that will not work. What is the story with the new block-based editor called Gutenberg ?
Gutenberg is a complete redesign and re-imagination of the WordPress editor. With the new version of WordPress already here – WordPress 5.0 – the default way that people create content with WordPress has changed radically.
What’s new with Gutenberg ?
- The platform’s focus is moving towards a more intuitive site-building experience. WordPress already leads the pack in terms of market share. And by improving WordPress’ site-building functionality, the core team aims to hold that market share against the rise of hosted website builders.
- Some improvements to the WordPress Rest API. The WordPress Rest API helps developers create more feature-rich products by making it easier to send and pull data from your website. This update means developers will be able to more easily create applications using the platform as a framework.
- Building custom themes becomes easier. In the past, you needed at least a simple development background to put together a WordPress theme. With Gutenberg, theme creation will become much more accessible thanks to blocks.
- Page builder plugins might lose some relevance. There are a lot of fantastic page-builder tools that you can use with WordPress, some of which rival professional platforms. Gutenberg won’t be a match for them at first, but it might dissuade people from using them in the long run.
Gutenberg affects themes and plugins too
Aside from your own editing experience, Gutenberg also brings important changes to a lot of your favorite plugins and themes. For example, we’ll probably see the emergence of a lot of Gutenberg-friendly themes, which will be designed to take advantage of all the new features the editor offers.