Firstly: i LOVE gutenberg and we even created a nice page builder on top of it.
But this week i kinda got fed up a little bit, because since it appeared, we try to push it to our clients and explain how it is used, but they all come back to us that for pages it is ok but for blogs they want classic editor back, because it is “difficult to use”, and they don’t understand all those “paragraphs and columns”, their wording.
This also reminds me how it is also very developer unfriendly because of the way react is implemented. ACF does a brilliant job making it easy for us to create custom blocks with a couple of lines of php, with all the fancy fields acf provides, but without ACF, creating custom blocks is a nightmare.
Also client feedback: gutenberg editor doesn’t feel “solid” compared to elementor (i will never understand his bc i hate elementor), but the feedback is clear: it feels fragile, and skeleton-ish.
This is just a random rant from my part, and the reason i post this because i would like to hear about your opinions on the matter, especially those who work with non-tech clients.
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IMHO, clients need some education and it’s our (web devs/agencies) to take a lead here and deliver the usable and safe environment for them to work in.
I’m building a starter theme for the agency I work for. It uses ACF Pro to create blocks from within the theme. I disabled all default blocks and created custom ones via ACF. I find those custom blocks to be easier to use for the clients as you can switch between Preview and Edit mode and it contains some familiar fields that are similar to the Classic Editor. I don’t use columns and other Gutenberg stuff as I find it hard to work with or modify to my needs.
I found that the “Classic Editor” block is helpful in certain instances, especially for clients.
But ACF can definitely help focus clients on what needs to be added rather than looking for the right block.
I’ve now build a couple of sites with ACF + Gutenberg, but honestly reverted back to using ACF Flexible Content as Page Builder. The editing experience is so much more “robust” for clients who just want to change content.
Unpopular opinion: Live/Wysiwyg page editing is the most overrated feature in web design
ACF should be core at this point. They need to buy it or replicate it. I’d rather have that than Gutenberg.
I don’t think the customers are wrong tbh. WordPress replicated a page builder experience, when multiple better page builders already existed in the market. Obviously the client thinks the focused page builders are better, otherwise that conversation wouldn’t have happened.
I feel like Gutenberg is one of those things everyone pretends to like because it’s core WordPress and we’re ‘supposed’ to like it.
I use Divi, and there’s zero need for Gutenberg. In fact if you use any advanced theme, there’s literally no need for Gutenberg. I don’t get why their strategy was to make it the default editor experience.
I know I’ll be downvoted for this, but there’s a reason ‘Classic Editor’ has over 5 million active installs.