WordPress launched a sleek visual editor and named it after the German publisher Johannes Gutenberg who introduced the printing press in Europe in the 15th century, I thought that naming by WordPress is quite an oxymoron! This would only be my second post in Gutenberg, and ever since I have embraced WordPress blogging as a regular activity I’ve considered it as an art form of composing thoughts that are interspersed with emotions and delivered through phrases. Others might simply label this creative outfall as ‘content’. That it requires the blogger to reconcile with the technology & design first is only a part of a challenging journey in publishing a blog post. But it cannot, rather, technology should not make it any more complicated in putting at risk a writer’s heartfelt endeavour. What about the non-techies then? Bottomline, blogging platforms should aim to minimize any barriers, minimize fuss, and allow writers in publishing their views creatively & constructively.
It’s time to hail WordPress for achieving this goal and for introducing Gutenberg’ which I was amazed to ‘test-drive’ in their latest update. It’s also available as a plugin although Gutenberg would be a standard feature with the future release of WordPress 5.0. Least to say, when I thought about how the Classic editor could be further enhanced WordPress has just provided a modern & sleek replacement. Firstly, I’ve taken a fancy to the metaphor of ‘blocks’ as a WYSIWYG feature, these are movable containers carrying media such as images, audio, gallery, paragraphs, etc., (ah! similar to Gutenberg’s ‘movable type’ printing press) and each block which can be individually customized. In contrast, the Classic editor treated the entire post as a single structure and all media had to be inserted & refined from the toolbar. The other attribute which stood out for me was the often used ‘link’ feature which has now become more focused and it’s easier to choose whether or not a link should open in a new window. I’m pretty certain in the coming days these collective features would provide a new visual language to the blog posts here. I’m certainly open to experimenting in the coming days.
That being said, although there are some glitches and I’m still learning the ropes, I am particularly eager to see how the other taskbar functions through third-party plugins would be integrated within Gutenberg (or not!!). With that, I’d like to say that WordPress has become a robust, most widely-used blogging platform which is why it should now aim to integrate popular blogging features into its core program, such as SEO or web analytics which are currently being delivered through third-party plugins. This would not only provide efficiency to the non-techie bloggers, it’d drastically minimize security concerns, make the platform faster, and enable WordPress to become a clear alternative to the competition.