Today WordPress released its latest update, 5.0 nicknamed “Bebo” paying homage to the pioneering Cuban jazz musician Bebo Valdés. Within this update they also introduced a new way to edit your WordPress website called Gutenberg.
Say hello to the new editor
WordPress has made some big upgrades to the editor, changing the way users build their sites. This new block-based editor, dubbed Gutenberg, is the first step toward an exciting new future with a streamlined editing experience across your site. It will provide more flexibility with how content is displayed. Whether you are building your first site, revamping your blog, or write code for a living.
Building with Blocks
This new block-based editor won’t change the way your content looks to your visitors. What it will do however, is let you insert any type of multimedia in a snap and rearrange to your heart’s content making your site truly unique. Each piece of content will be in its own block; a distinct wrapper for easy maneuvering. If you’re more of a techie when it comes to building sites, lets say an HTML and CSS sort of person, then the blocks won’t stand in your way. WordPress is here to simplify the process, not the outcome.
The WordPress community has made a ton of blocks available by default, and more get added by those same people every day. Here are just a few of the blocks to help you get started making your site:
Freedom to Build, Freedom to Write
The new editor provides a more consistent treatment of design as well as content. If you’re building client sites, you can create reusable blocks to save you time as you build more and more pages. This also will let your clients add new content anytime they wish to do so, while still maintaining a consistent look and feel of the overall site.
A Stunning New Default Theme
Now introducing Twenty Nineteen, the new default theme that shows off the power of this new editor that has been built.
Designed for the block editor
The Twenty Nineteen theme features custom styles for the blocks available by default in 5.0. It makes extensive use of editor styles throughout the theme, so that, what you create in the editor is what you see on the frontend of your site.
Simple, type-driven layout
The new editor features ample whitespace, and modern sans-serif headlines paired with classic serif body text. The new Twenty Nineteen is built to be beautiful on the go. It uses your users own system fonts to increase loading speed. No more long waits on slow networks for things to load!
Versatile design for all sites
The Twenty Nineteen theme is designed to work for a wide variety of use cases. Whether you’re running a photo blog, launching a new business, or supporting a non-profit, this theme is flexible enough to fit your everyday needs.
Developer Happiness
Protect
The all new blocks provide a comfortable way for users to change content directly, while also ensuring the content structure cannot be easily disturbed by accidental code edits they may make. This allows the developer to control the output, building polished and semantic markup that is preserved through edits and not easily broken by anyone.
Compose
You can take advantage of a wide collection of APIs and interface components to easily create blocks with intuitive controls for your clients. Utilizing these not only speeds up development work but also provide a more consistent, usable, and accessible interface to all users you manage.
Create
The new block standard opens up a path of exploration and imagination when it comes to solving your users needs. With the unified block insertion flow, it’s easier for clients and customers to find and use blocks for all types of content they wish to make. Developers can focus on executing their vision and providing a rich editing experience, rather than fussing with difficult APIs all the time.
Keep it Classic
Do you prefer to stick with the familiar Classic Editor? Not a problem! Support for the Classic Editor plugin will remain in WordPress through 2021 if you wish to continue for now.
The Classic Editor plugin offered by WordPress restores the previous WordPress editor and the Edit Post screen you are familiar with. It also lets you keep using plugins that extend it, add old-style meta boxes, or otherwise depend on the previous editor. To install the plugin, visit the plugins page and click the “Install Now” button next to “Classic Editor”. After the plugin finishes installing, click “Activate”. That’s it, you’ll still have the old way of editing until 2022!
Note to users of assistive technology: if you experience usability issues with the block editor, they recommend you continue to use the Classic Editor for the best results.
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