Wordpress 5.0 - The Incoming 'Gutenberg' Disaster

Ryuzaki

お前はもう死んでいる
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Let's get the basics out of the way so we can stay on topic:
Yeah, we all hate Wordpress' continued bloat with the Rest API and this new nonsense. Yeah, we love Wordpress for its mass adoption and generally painless use. Yeah, some of us have already abandoned ship and many of us will follow soon.

Okay, so Wordpress is working on version 5.0, which is one of those huge landmark version changes. So what's so fundamentally different that it warrants a tick over on the big number?

Gutenberg

Johannes Gutenberg invented the first printing press in 1439 and was the first European to use movable type, so it's only right that this be named after the O.G. Wordpresser. So what is it?

YiO9qGh.jpg

What Created The Impetus For This Change?

You remember the recent fiasco where TinyMCE decided to patch a "vulnerability" that's been in place for a decade and never been a problem, only to create a giant problem, only to roll it back? It was that "noopener noreferrer" mess that screwed up affiliate tracking for any program that wanted to see where the referral traffic was coming from (like Amazon).

My guess is that that fiasco was a nail in the coffin for Wordpress using TinyMCE, which is the open source, third party text editor it's used since forever. Third party reliance is something that should be saved for plugins.

Add to the fact that Wix, Weebly, and Squarespace are eating up a huge portion of the small business community that need a website, and Wordpress is getting worried they won't get ahold of the people with money to spend. The problem is that Wordpress see's the drag-and-drop WYSIWYG non-sense from the late 1990's as a threat to their growth. It's "easier" than the "install a theme and write a post" method I guess. Medium, Facebook, and a few others are moving the text editor game forward, in Wordpress' eyes and they don't want to be left out. Basically we need access to more emoji's.

Add on the massive popularity of a few plugins that are drag and drop editors for Wordpress like Thrive Architect, Visual Editor, and whatever, I can't remember their names.

What is Wordpress' Gutenberg?

So you can see where this is going. Gutenberg is a fricking "page builder" for Wordpress. The problem is that this isn't going to be a plugin or an option. It's going to roll out as the core feature for Wordpress 5.0.

Let's kill some fears and introduce some annoyances real fast:
  • The Text Editor you know and love will be gone, but you can still use it with a plugin.
  • Meta Boxes you know and love will be gone, but they're going to create some plugin to save it.
  • Trillions of plugins are going to break and so far Wordpress hasn't created the API to tie into this new visual editor.
So Gutenberg is going to be a visual editor, because why not. If they're going to axe TinyMCE then they need to show 'improvement' over it. One of the shitty parts is that it's a "block editor" meaning it can only deal with block-level elements, or basically it handles rows on a website with no way of managing columns. So it's already a sad, crippled version of what they want it to be.

It's also going to create a cluster-fuck of a mess of HTML and CSS to get this done. Everything is going to end up wrapped in some kind of <block> div.

Finally, even the simplest things like pressing enter to create a new paragraph are likely going to require a ton of keyboard shortcuts to be memorized, because you have to drag and drop a Paragraph Block in first, then double click in it to enable typing, etc.

Bs8QOQZ.png

So apparently this thing is available for you to start trying in it's broken, incomplete form, as a plugin, with the warning to only use on development sites, not live.

I'm not entirely sure what the deal is with meta boxes but apparently they're going bye-bye, meaning Advanced Custom Fields, normal default custom fields, Yoast SEO, and hell, most everything you see on the Page & Post editing pages are going to be gone, and right now there's no solution to the conundrum. I have no clue what the point of this is, which is why everyone's reactions are so alarmist right now.

Speaking of "react", Wordpress wants to rely more and more heavily on Javascript frameworks and the Rest API. My opinion on the javascript is that I don't care if it's on the backend to make things "pretty and shiny." The Rest API is nothing but a giant vulnerability (I never shared it before in order to not draw attention to it and it's easy for it to be missed here, so I'll say that I already found a way to see the login names of every account on any Wordpress site that didn't disable the Rest API).

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There's an example of the blocks you'll be dragging and dropping. Like Youtube videos, because it's easier to drag and drop a Youtube block, double click or find the gear icon, click into the field to paste the URL to the video, and press okay, than it was to just paste the URL and let oEmbed handle it.

What's the Problem?

I don't think we even comprehend the scope of the problem yet. It will cascade to most plugins, most Wordpress sites, and a majority of sites on the internet.

This is what the need for constant progress and improvement buys you. A push until you lose touch with your current user base, which is huge, in order to add another 5% of users onto that base. And you're fundamentally pulling the rug and the entire ground out from under the other 95% so you can get small business owners to pay for Wordpress.com hosting and buy a vanity domain.

We'll see how it shakes out, but I wanted to make sure you guys knew about this and see it coming. The shit storm is inbound. Winter is coming.
 
Holy ...

I was actually thinking of writing my own custom DB script for my project Cloud City ... And didn't, because hey, I got WP, right?

F me...

F all of us....

F this.
 
Anyway, everyone should find a new alternative, I did read in some place here that CMS database-less ones are good but in my own two website I use Silver Stripe CMS very good, and has alot of ways to customize as I see fit.
 
I was actually thinking of writing my own custom DB script for my project Cloud City ... And didn't, because hey, I got WP, right?.

Yeah, I've toyed with finding another CMS that I like that is more minimal, or creating my own with Laravel or even from the ground up. I can't imagine it'd be that hard if you went with the most basic of needs, and then added only what you wanted on top of that. Same with really diving into my own CSS skeleton, taking that to the next level.

If you have the skills to do these things and can get them done in a reasonable time frame, the upsides seem pretty tasty. Security is the one worrisome part.
 
By the time time this rolls out I doubt I'll have any sites left on WordPress that I actually care about.

I'm afraid to update plug-ins, child themes, and do small WordPress updates as it is.

This sounds like a nightmare.
 
Funny thing is that I used to have a database-driven site a few years (6? 8?) back.
It was a golf-course site, believe it or not.

I took a free (!!) DB and script, polished it up, added some more details and made it run nicely on some PHP.

That one did surprisingly fine, but I sold it.

Time to dive back into that.
 
I actually love this. Wordpress will have lived long enough to see itself destroyed.

I want to live in a world where CMS developers just make things that are simple, useful AND robust, as opposed to micromanaging every aspect of user behavior. You don't have to do all the things. Just choose a few core things and do them well.
 
Where does it end?
People can't be assed to learn HTML or CSS, so we give them themes.
People can't be assed to select from a row of buttons to embed a picture, so we give them drag-and-drop.

This is like Geocities and Angelfire and Dreamweaver levels of stupid.

People can't be assed, so we removed any intellectual barrier to entry. Now everyone can litter the internet! No, just keep that confined to Twitter and Facebook and let actual contributors have a voice in the rest of the web.
 
I dont have the time to reply to this properly right now, so i am droping this post so i remember to pick it up later, but i will say:

Custom fields are not going to go away.

Developers hate wordpress architecture but continue to use it for a reason.

General purpose Cms is a lot harder than most realise
 
Any time frame for release?
I can't imagine they would do this knowing it would break 90% of the sites out there.
 
Chaos is a ladder.

Third-party plugins will be reinvigorated to force their clients to buy into a new, upgraded plugin that works 5.0 and onwards. Plugin developers that are slow will be out-manuevered by fresh Devs with new code. That's good for the WordPress economy.

Millennials will be like "oh hey writing like this makes me feel cool and glorious", so they will won't feel the cost.

Existing site owners will tolerate the updates if not solely for continued security patches. Which means they have to buy more plugins. All the while thinking of jumping ship. They won't, that's why they buy plugins and themes in the first place. It's just the cost of laziness/unwillingness to learn.

Meanwhile sporadic website breakages means ranking opportunities for the ones that a) haven't updated b) use not-wordpress cmses.

But truthfully i think it's quite cool and it won't be too big of a shit show unless they force the update on you like Windows does. They do still use TinyMCE under the hood, which is also a shame. Maybe someone will make a github flavored markdown editor.

I'm glad I fully moved to Grav to fully explore this opportunity.
 
They do still use TinyMCE under the hood, which is also a shame. Maybe someone will make a github flavored markdown editor.

Never understood why they would not move away from that, or at least make the editor changeable / modular.
TinyMCE is a frigging nightmare.
 
I'm glad I fully moved to Grav to fully explore this opportunity.
Grav does look very yummy, but maybe something for the future for me...

My opinion on Gutenberg is that it is a step in the right direction for Wordpress - TinyMCE is pretty minimal and breaks often and people are now used to better editing experiences, such as Medium. Add to that the rise of services such as Wix that allow a better overall "design experience" and you have Wordpress lagging behind the curve by quite a long way.

If Wix or Squarespace were to concentrate on offering a better SEO experience I think they could easily overtake Wordpress in a few years, especially if Gutenberg is really going to be the disaster you are predicting.
 
I don't even want to hear about WP updates...

Because I know each one that rolls out will cause far more problems than it solves...

In the form of security issues, bloat, plugins failing to work, server performance issues, productivity, etc.
 
From the outside, to me, it looks like they assumed they'll never fix the shitshow of security, updates and constant stuff breaking down and said fuck it, let's do something in a more controlled environment and less customisable by code (aka SquareSpace). Otherwise if they think they can keep the current wordpress and improve on it with this gutenberg stuff, I hope there are some programmers who write magic code.
 
The Rest API is nothing but a giant vulnerability (I never shared it before in order to not draw attention to it and it's easy for it to be missed here, so I'll say that I already found a way to see the login names of every account on any Wordpress site that didn't disable the Rest API).

Login names you say? That is pretty worrying. On the positive side - wordpress is still much better than joomla hahaa
 
Although I'm developing video games right now, I've some WordPress websites that generate me earnings, so this also affects me.

I think in my case I'll choose to take an existing CMS that is light and simple and create on it my own CMS adapted to my needs. Creating a CMS from scratch would be very time-consuming and I don't have the skills to do so.
 
A lot of you all are bitching.

I'd only be doing that if I was only having to worry about my own sites. If that's the case, I get it and I understand. However, I also look at it as time to freshen up on skills, knowledge, improve old projects, and maybe get a kick in the ass that some of you all might need too.

However, for those of you with clients.. why the complaining?

I see dolla dolla bills y'all.
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This is job security for some of you all.

Time to pad the hourly rate and project scope and make some cash.
 
Oh there will be work to be had for sure.

Wordpress is a great reflection of the PHP programming language (Hint: that's not a good thing). It's only bested in volatility by the Javascript world.
 
I helped build my company's site using Laravel. It's worked really well for us and allowed us to do a lot of customization without hacking the shit out of it (like we would have with WordPress). Also, our industry is very big on being secure (it's an ecommerce site that sells precious metals).

Any one else in here ever built a site using Laravel?
 
I don't have anything significant in production with Laravel, but I have worked with it. It's a decent framework. The thing I like about it is the structure as well as the availability of packages to cover most common use cases. Stuff like having a good Stripe API package, or user authentication package, form validation, etc.

These days, for most uses, I think having a fairly complete framework is key. Most of the time it's too much of a pain to "roll your own", because why waste time reinventing the wheel unless you truly have a unique need.
 
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