Especially if you are self-hosting WordPress, you might have noticed that WordPress 5.0 has been born.
I’m not a WordPress aficionado, so I don’t really pay much attention to most of the WordPress new features, but something you can’t avoid is the new editor. It’s completely different.
The new editor has been available for some time for the previous WordPress version as the “Gutenburg Plugin”. The dashboard has been encouraging you to try it for ages. Once you get to WordPress 5.0 you can switch back to the original editor using the “Classic Editor” plugin, that will allegedly be supported until 2021.
What are/were my my first impressions? I previously tried the Gutenberg plugin and pretty much hated it, and switched back right away. 🙂 Now it is the main editor I’m going to try and stick with it.
I think the first thing that might freak you out is the idea of blocks. At first it seems really odd, as it implied to me I’ve got to add a new block every time I want a new paragraph. Not so! You just type and it figures out the block thing out for you. Type “return” and you start a new block. I think I’m probably guilty of over-thinking a lot of this stuff, rather than going with the flow and just seeing what happens.
I find it interesting how in some aspects of my life I’m quick to embrace change, like in the Oracle world, but in other parts of my life changes cause me problems. I think it probably comes down to what I’m interested in. I’m just not interested in blogging tools. I’m interested in blogging itself.
I’m also acutely aware that I often resist change, then a couple of weeks down the line I can barely remember a time before the change. I’m pretty sure that will be the case here. Today it took me a few minutes to figure out how to put that WordPress logo in the top-left of this post, whereas previously it took a second. I think it’s actually easier now and more WYSIWYG than it was before, but when it’s different, it feels wrong. 🙂
So that’s it. Give it a go and see what you think!
Cheers
Tim…
PS. I expect a whole bunch of updates to come in the next few weeks as they discover all the bugs and security holes they’ve put into the new version. 🙂
