Everything You Need to Know About Gutenberg — The New WordPress Editor!
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Almost all the WordPress users are familiar with the WordPress default Visual and Text editors that are now said to be soon replaced by “Gutenberg — The New WordPress Editor”. This switch from these text editors to Gutenberg editor is because WordPress aims to provide a modernized editing experience where everything is handled in the form of blocks, instead of custom HTML and shortcodes.
Let me tell you that Gutenberg is a bit controversial change. The reason is that millions of users are accustomed to the traditional publishing experience and it might be hard to make them satisfied with the completely new interface and features of Gutenberg.
Gutenberg is indeed considered to be a revolutionary advancement in editing experience, it urged me to test it and dive into it to know its features and implications in WordPress. I’m super excited to share it with you. So, let’s get started!
New Gutenberg Editor
Gutenberg is a new WordPress editor with page builder like features. It is currently available as a plugin in beta version. It will soon be released with WordPress 5.0 version and will take over as the WordPress default content editor. It is named after the Johannes Gutenberg founder of printing press.
? Features
To make users familiar with the unique interface and features of Gutenberg, it is available as plugin in WordPress plugins repository. While testing this plugin I discovered a number of exciting features and editing tools offered by Gutenberg. Let me tell you about them one by one.
-; Blocks
Blocks are the core feature of Gutenberg. Everything in Gutenberg is in the form separate sections of content called blocks.There are a number of block types available that you can use according to your content.
Blocks allows you to adjust you page layout in a user friendly manner. You can do a number of things with these blocks. Including,
Adding or removing of blocks
Changing alignment of blocks.
Moving blocks upwards or downwards
Adding a block between two existing block.
Editing a block separately.
The main purpose of blocks in Gutenberg is to facilitate users for editing a specific portion of content rather than making entire content a part of the edit.
-Block Types
Gutenberg provides you a with plenty of different block types. These block types are categorized into different sections:
Common blocks
Formatting Blocks
Layout Blocks
Embedding Blocks
Widgets
These sections appears in a dropdown panel when you hit the ‘Add block’ button.
-; Separate Editor for each block
One of the features that differentiate Guttenberg from the default WordPress editor is that it provides a separate editor along with each block according to the block type. If you change the block type the editor changes accordingly. Hence, making content customization a simple and easy task.
-; Edit Post Page Interface
Gutenberg is content-first editor. In Gutenberg you will get an empty canvas with a few buttons on the top navigation bar of your edit post page.
-Canvas
This is it!! On this canvas just start adding blocks and customize them to make a perfect and rich layout for your post.
-Right Sided Push Menu
There is a push menu that appears on the right side of the edit post page. It includes two tabs:
Document -; For adding tags, categories and features images.
Block-; For doing advanced customization of blocks.
-; Embeds
Using Gutenberg the task of adding embedding to your websites is no more difficult. You just have to add an embed block from the embedding blocks section in the dropdown panel of add block button. Adjust the alignment of the block. In the placeholder add your URL and that’s it!
-> Customized Blocks
Gutenberg also provides an option to make customized block. Use your shortcodes and custom HTML to make new blocks.
-> Extremely Responsive Image Gallery
Gutenberg provides a separate block for image gallery which is extremely responsive and easy to customize.
-> Text Columns
A unique new feature of Gutenberg is its “Columns Block”. It is used to make columns of text in a post.
-> Cover image
The cover image block is used to insert cover image of the post.
-> Table of Content
Blocks in Gutenberg are actually shortcodes. These codes are not visible on the front end. Gutenberg use these shortcodes to detect all the heading tags in the post and make a table of content using them. This table is displayed in side menu.
-> Additional features of Gutenberg
Some other additional features of Gutenberg includes:
-> Call to Action Button
-> Text over Images
-> Latest Post
-> Cover Text
Dealing With Blocks
Adding a new block -> To add a new block hit the add block button with plus icon.
Removing a block -> To remove a block h
Implications of Gutenberg
-> Benefits of Gutenberg
-> Drawbacks of Gutenberg
Getting Started With Gutenberg:
Although it is in development phase it’s still available as a free plugin that can be easily downloaded from WordPress online repository or from plugins section in your WordPress dashboard. But it is recommended to be used for test sites only.
Let’s create a post with Gutenberg.
Step#1
To get to know about this future WordPress editor, just Login to your WordPress dashboard and navigate through it to Plugins > Add New. Search for the Gutenberg editor then click the install button and activate it.
Step#2
After successful installation of the plugin a new menu is added to your WordPress dashboard named “Gutenberg”. Now add a new post and you would be directed to the edit post page
Step#3
Add title in the title block and your remaining content by adding new blocks and set the layout of your post.
Step#4
Hit the settings button. Add tags and featured image and select categories and publish it.
Wrap Up!
Whatever the rebel it is facing Gutenberg has a number of exciting features. In order achieve the goal of providing easy and user friendly interface to the WordPress users Gutenberg is surely a positive step in this competitive environment.
Blocks are the primary feature in Gutenberg. That is what makes Gutenberg a unique and modernized editor. It provides a number of editing tools. It is providing an ease to the WordPress users who have to write short codes and use custom HTML to add styles etc.
I suggest you to use this Gutenberg plugin and get familiar with its features and usability. Change is necessary to keep a thing competitive with this modernized world. Try Gutenberg beta version and get yourself comfortable with this upcoming change.
