How WordPress reigns and controls the world of web design and development is something that every person knows who has anything to do with the web development and design. WordPress with huge promises entered the web-design world and soon was giving its competitors a run for their money. In 2011, WordPress was powering 13% websites and this number has expanded to an impressive 32% in 2018.
As of now, WordPress has knocked Joomla, a big name, almost out of CMS market and it looks like most developers are interested only in WordPress.
What makes WordPress so popular and useful is that WordPress has such a wide array of fascinating plugins and all-purpose themes that, with a little effort, even a person who has just a moderate computer knowledge can put them to use to build a full-fledged professional website, which would be absolutely impossible without WordPress.
Divi Page Builder, WP Bakery Page Builder, Beaver Builder are some names among many others which, for all practical purposes, allow you to create professional layouts very easily, if your website is WordPress-based. All these plugins are paid, but let me tell you that their price is nothing to what they offer, because these plugins have all that you can need to start a web design business.
Top 6 WordPress plugins that you really need to know
- Divi Layout Builder
- Formidable Forms Pro
- Toolset
- Multi-seller WooCommerce addon to create marketplace website
- Frontend Live CSS editing Plugins
- WordPress security Plugins to make website hackproof
That said, for the last one year, WordPress core developer team is working on its own layout builder which is designed to provide a user with the functionality of making a custom page layout without any need for a plugin. This plugin is at present in beta and available to use for free from WordPress plugin repository. This plugin has been named Gutenberg. The plugin is soon expected to replace the default post editor of WordPress to join WordPress core.
I tried Gutenberg to see for myself and as far as my personal opinion is concerned I’d say it is a good initiative and quite lucrative especially for those whose budgets don’t allow them to buy paid plugins. On the other hand, in terms of the functionality and features, Gutenberg is absolutely no match for paid plugins like Divi Builder. If you really want to make an analogy between a paid plugin and Gutenberg, I’d say that if Divi Builder is an avid athlete of 20, full of energy and passion, Gutenberg is just a newborn, frail and fragile yet full of promises.
As I said that Gutenberg, at the moment, is just a starting and if all goes well, it has all the possibilities to develop into a petty good, full-fledged builder in the future. But it may take no less than five to six years.
But it is quite possible that the paid plugins and Gutenberg may join together to work for a better user experience.
Another looming question is:
“ Does Gutenberg have all the potential to replace the classic post/page HTML/text WordPress editor?”.
The answer is: yes and no.
Yes, because, of course, Gutenberg is all set to become the default text/html editor. No, because, if you want to use the old editor, you can feel free to download and use it as a free plugin.
Now An Overview Of features of Gutenberg Editor
Gutenberg lets us edit content on frontend without using any plugin
For the last eight years, WordPress users have been looking for a blog editor which they could use to edit their content on frontend pages. To this end, some plugins were developed off and on but none of them was consummate, or I should rather say, they failed to serve the purpose. Let me be clear here that what I’m talking about here is the frontend content editor for bloggers and not for web editors, because both are quite different and Divi Builder and Beaver Builder are far superior to and more advanced than Gutenberg when it comes to the web design.
Gutenberg provides the writers with advanced formatting options.
Apart from the simple text formatting, Gutenberg comes with column reaction, readymade blocks and advanced block formatting option, which is really helpful to bloggers as these features are essential tools to represent the content fantastically. For example, while writing an article if I need to write text in two columns side by side with two two different background colours in each column, I am now able to do. this all with the native text editor of WordPress, doing away with any need to worry about the custom html and shortcode
So, for advanced formatting, Gutenberg is really going to come in handy for the writers.
Gutenberg does not involve a network of complicated shortcodes
On the other hand, if you create some content using Gutenberg, all your content is saved in form of HTML. In case of disabling Gutenberg, HTML formatting may disappear yet the text content will still be readable by a human and a search engine and this feature really makes Gutenberg stand out.
Gutenberg will make things easier for developers
Many developers have traditionally been resorting to third party layout builders like Divi Builder and Visual Composer to make their plugins user friendly. Two such examples are Toolset Views and Formidable Forms Pro View. Now that WordPress has its own default editor, which will give its users power to create block-based layouts, these developers can take a sigh of relief.
To display the data in custom format, Formidable Forms View requires you to write your own HTML code. Gutenberg, I hope, will make it all as easy as pie.
Gutenberg May Turn Out To Be Robinhood Of WordPress.
There’s no two ways about it that the way WordPress core development team has designed Gutenberg and is coming along with it, with Gutenberg, even the users who cannot afford the premium layout builder themes and plugins will be able able to make a page layout with little effort. So, in other words, we can say that Gutenberg lets you design a website at no extra cost at all, provided you have a web hosting to run your WordPress on.
My Opinion
All things considered, Gutenberg is undoubtedly a very, very good endeavour, which will immediately or ultimately be beneficial for all, whether you are a starter and cannot afford to buy paid plugins or a content writer or a plugin developer. I don’t think that Gutenberg is going to affect the market share of premium layout builder plugins, because those who believe in a serious web design business, they always go for the advanced and well-polished versions of things with a good technical support system.
So, friends, anyone who is connected to WordPress in any way should heartily welcome the launch of Gutenberg without any prejudice that it may affect the business of web designers or web developers.
