Since its public release in 2003, WordPress has been steadily growing and gaining momentum all over the world thanks to its GPL based license, user-friendly architecture and endless flexibility.
One of WP’s most attractive features has always been the text editor, easy to use and simple to deal with, offering users a very clean interface, similar to the ones used by text editors on computers.
With the addition of the TinyMCE Advanced plugin (recently renamed “Advanced Editor Tools”) the text editor may be enhanced with several additional options.
Based on the fundamental concept of all CMs that separates content from design, hundreds of thousands (free or paid, good or bad) of themes have been developed over the years allowing users to adopt a basic architecture for their websites and then use their own content, text and images, for creating their website based on a layout usually designed by professionals. This approach had a great impact on the majority of website owners who are not design professionals but rather business owners, bloggers or even developers.
The whole idea is in having a global matrix for the website’s architecture with placeholders where specific types of content could be placed, without having to take care of each and every small part of the website individually and without altering the core code or site content.
We were given ready-made headers, footers, sidebars and other modules which always were customizable but part of a global esthetic and design approach based on layout, typography and colours defined by the theme we were using.
More advanced users have always been using CSS and code snippets for improving, customizing or extending the chosen theme’s initial design.
This philosophy has slowly but steadily been eroded, initially with the appearance of “page builders” in the mid-2010s. Those tools are intended in giving users full control of each page’s element and structure, regardless of the theme used. What might look like a great idea at first basically became the best option for breaking nicely thought and designed themes! Users with no basic design knowledge were suddenly offered to change everything, without really knowing what they were doing. In terms of visitors usability, speed and SEO the results have been devastating.
In addition to creating confusion between content and design, and giving unexperienced users way too much flexibility over design, you had the great privilege of being locked in with the builder you are using- and this is the exact opposite result of what you can expect from WP themes: the ability to switch from one to another without damaging your content.
In 2018, with version 5.0, WordPress decided to take control of the situation the worst way. Instead of improving their existing editor, they decided that, from that version on, everything will be designed and edited in blocks!
Initially, this terrible idea was launched as a plugin named Gutenberg that quickly became one of the worst-rated plugins in the WP repository. Despite this, blocks replaced the Classic Editor in version 5.0 and the new editor – if it’s still possible to call this interface by that name – started looking like this, before even adding any of the numerous “block addons” on the market:
Start building blocks they said…
Sorry but I don’t want to build blocks, I just want to use a theme that will be used as the foundation of my website and then add text and images by following a layout made by professional designers.
Gutenberg blocks were designed primarily for WordPress.COM accounts, the same way Jetpack was created for them because they are not able to install plugins, in order to compete with similar editors and builders in the market. They aim in slowing down the popularity of external page builders and, supposedly, allow WP to take back full control of content creation. Unfortunately, and as expected, adoption by WP users has not really been successful but most theme shops and designers jumped in too early by creating themes with “blocks” and, of course, selling a plethora of add-ons that allow breaking your theme even further…
This rapidly became the playground of single-site owners spending their time redesigning their site all over again every now and then instead of taking care of their content – if any.
On the other hand, freelancers and agencies dealing with clients, especially small businesses, kept working the Classic way, either by installing Classic Editor, which rapidly became one of the most popular plugins in the WP repository, or one of the many others, similar ones, like the excellent Disable Gutenberg (that enables both the Classic Editor and Classic Widgets) or Classic Editor Addon. It also seems there is a way to disable this terrible annoyance without using plugins!
Others, more radicals, switched to ClassicPress which forked WordPress version 4.9 and further maintains and develops future clean and secure versions without blocks.
Meanwhile, WordPress/Automattic mouthpieces like WP Tavern are constantly praising Gutenberg’s achievements day after day, week after week, but always forget to publish market share and usage stats. How many people are really using this block horror? If you are so proud of your achievements why not publish real stats of public adoption?
Do you remember when WordPress gurus were telling us that page builders were THE thing?
The same guys will now tell you page builders are slowing down your site and try convincing you to switch to Gutenberg blocks. And, sure, they have a great new addon or plugin for that, no worries.
Create new pages from scratch every time you add a new one is the new thing.
This cosmic-level nonsense reached new heights when version 2 of GeneratePress premium introduced a theme builder! A block-based theme builder that is, of course… Sorry guys, I don’t want to build a theme, I just want to find one that fits my needs.
– What next? A WordPress builder maybe? Build your own CMS with those blocks, that’s really fun!
WP 5.8 was published on July 20, 2021, and removed support for the widgets everyone was using by stating that it was now better to use Gutenberg for designing widgets (lol)… At the same time Classic Widgets, a plugin that restores the normal widgets we all use and know, was launched and Disable Gutenberg plugin also added support for the same. Just 3 months later, the Classic Widgets plugin reached 500,000 active installs and it continues to grow the same way Classic Editor does. In March 2022 this plugin already reached 1+ million active installations!
In the early 2010s homepage sliders were the thing, then came page builders and finally blocks.
Now sliders are a big NO-NO and page builders are slowing down your site they say.
So people are now removing sliders and page builders from their sites.
Guess what they will be removing next…
Just ignore the noise and keep working the Classic way!
UPDATES:
- On May 11, 2022, Joost de Valk, CEO of the well known Yoast SEO plugin, posted this article on his blog about WP’s market share which is suddenly shrinking and shared it at the FB group “Advanced WordPress” where is generated lots of reactions and has then been reported at WP Tavern, official and desperate Gutenberg propaganda machine that usually posts a majority of block related promotional articles and totally ignores whatever else is happening in the WP ecosystem. The boat is sinking full of empty blocks…
— CONTACT US —
Well said. WordPress for business end clients need to maintain brand consistency and usability.