Why?

I genuinely tried to like it. That’s a problem. At no point did I feel like I wasn’t forcing myself to find some value in it.

I waited until I started hearing that it was usable and tried again. The state and direction of the whole thing makes me question why this is a thing. I wouldn’t care if this were just a plugin but considering it’s part of the core and been shoved down everyone’s throat means I have to care. That and the classic editor will be supported for so long.

The new editor takes what was done with the classic but with extra steps. Shoving everything into the sidebar kills productivity for me since what took one click is now hidden in unnecessary sidebar panes. It’s removed the new page/new post button and now I have to find it in the dropdown. The code editor button is in an inconvenient place and is about 1/3 of the overall page width for… reasons? I’ll admit I don’t focus much on accessibility, but its quite literally a dumbed down classic editor with extra steps. Editing text is quite difficult since there are suddenly rules to what used to be a freeform editor. I’m not a huge fan of the tinymce but this made me appreciate it so much more after forcing myself to use Gutenberg a few times.

I’ve seen endless posts praising it and stating that this needed to happen but, again, why? What’s actually been accomplished here? I’ve seen people compare it to a competitor to wix or squarespace but it genuinely isn’t. From a market standpoint the rating alone should deem it an overwhelming failure.

Anyway, I don’t think the thing should be abandoned by any means because there are some people that genuinely love the thing. That’s awesome. That’s the beauty of wordpress plugins and wordpress as a platform. I love using Elementor for some sites, for example, but I wouldn’t force it into the core.