WordPress 5.0 Gutenberg & Flothemes

With WordPress 5.0 Gutenberg to be released till the end of 2018 (the date has shifted again), many are wondering, what is Gutenberg? How will this affect my website? What steps are Flothemes taking to update their themes?

WordPress 5.0 is a huge update and change to the WordPress platform. Expect to see  more big changes in the future. They are adapting a “block building” system, almost the exact same as what we offer here at Flothemes at the moment. Add a block, add the content, voila, pages created.

What is Gutenberg and WordPress 5.0

Gutenberg is WordPress’ completely new re-design, that changes the way you add content to your site. You may have seen already the Gutenberg plugin added in version 4.9 of WordPress, it’s just a glimpse of what is going to happen next.

As mentioned, Gutenberg is the new block builder. There will be at least 15 types of blocks available upon release and it’s going to let you create some pages more easily in the future.

Blocks included in Gutenberg release:

The great thing about Gutenberg is that everything will now be a block, including text, images, widgets, shortcodes, custom HTML, etc. You will now have moderate drag & drop functionality, will be able to edit page content live and see the changes as they happen. Gutenberg will allow themes to get more creative and include more custom blocks (read as greater flexibility).

How will this affect your site?

The overall experience of using WordPress is going to change forever. You’ll need to get used to using WordPress again and it will take a little time to get comfortable with the new editing experience. But don’t worry, you can install the official classic editor plugin that will allow you to keep using the old options, while testing and getting used to the new editor.

Themes and plugins may also have to change to keep up to date with the new builder. Some of them may become irrelevant, or hopefully get exciting updates to fall in line with the new framework.

What’s next for Me & Flothemes?

We have been testing the beta version of Gutenberg and it’s compatibility with our themes. As we are using similar principles already, we are in a great position to take advantage of WordPress 5.0 updates. If and where possible we aim to integrate smoothly with Gutenberg in 2019 as we continue to innovate our themes while WordPress changes.

If you’re not ready for WordPress 5.0 make sure to turn off auto updates for WordPress. If you are ready, make sure that before you update – you have a full backup of your site, including content. Check in with your hosting, as some providers offer automatic site backups. If you don’t have a backup strategy in place for your site, make sure you check out the following back up tutorial.

For now the process of building your sites will remain exactly the same. You can continue to use your theme to create your beautiful website. As we integrate further with Gutenberg we will announce it publicly so you are aware about any major changes in how you can use our themes. The only thing that will change is the current content editor at the top of the page, which will now offer the Gutenberg experience.

Conclusion

The future is looking bright for the WordPress platform, we believe we can expect things to change drastically over the next 2 years as the platform grows and the providers of themes and plugins evolve to be fully integrated with the new WordPress experience. For now, if you want to give Gutenberg a try, there are a few things you can do:

1. Do a full backup of your your website before starting anything, including content. Everything.
2. Update your flotheme to its latest version. Same goes for plugins.
3. Make sure to clear the browser cache to avoid visual or functional issues.
4. If there are incompatibility issues with any of the plugins or theme, install the official classic editor plugin that will allow you to keep using the old options.

That’s it for now. Stay tuned for more news!

Flothemes Team,
Supporting You.