In the same year I turned 4 o, WordPress finally went and did something slightly out of character – and for its age, something that it perhaps should have been clever enough to do a few years back… Just like the tattoo I finally got, at the age of 40, where most settle into the comfort of knowing who you are, and how you will look and dress for the many years to come – WordPress went and got itself a page-builder.
Was it worth the wait?
WordPress, with its 16 internet years (at least 50 human years), started a project some 2 years back and named it after an old guy… The result; as time-tested as a tattoo, a block editing experience as seen in the most popular themes and frameworks out there.
So what is this new thing, and did WordPress only now, come to a conclusion, that most of us already knew… Tattoos are cool, and so are block-based editing?
No.. I think the many page builder setups had run its course, causing WordPress to handle all sorts of data in its options tables, and markup data within content fields, to such an extent that sites became too hard to work with, and well… just plain slow. The expandability we love from plugins, custom post types and custom fields has for years now, put a strain on the table structures of the WordPress database.
It was time to take charge and regain control of what is most important to WordPress
Me, in this blog post
The most important to WordPress has always been to democratize publishing. Sometimes democratizing means putting all the great ideas others had already put into plugins and feature packed themes, into the core of a system. And so they did…
Gutenberg: the future of publishing
In core, Gutenberg lay the cornerstone for a future with no widgets no, one page – one layout, and perhaps most important, no reason to store content into only one database field for a page or post. Blocks themselves could, in theory, do away with custom fields, and enable WP to change how data is stored, in much smaller chunks of data. Data that we can pull in, when and if needed in a given view.
All of this is speculation, some closely related to ideas already alive in the WordPress community. Others just imaginations by me.
Short term
We already see the effects of putting blocks with layout capabilities into the hands of the content owners, instead of UX and design people. Blocks and their layouts and functions are now put in place, in context – or removed, if not needed in context.
Long term
Context is king, and blocks make it easier than ever to put the right blocks of content in the right context. I can’t wait to see conditional logic in blocks – based on device, surrounding blocks, geo, time or even personal information (if GDPR will allow it).
