Watch: Ross Wintle Struggles to Create a Simple Post in Gutenberg 2.3

Ross Wintle highlights a few basic features that are still lacking with Gutenberg. Writing inline <code> and pasting URLs are nearly impossible.

We first learned about this video from the MasterWP newsletter. It’s loaded with excellent content, but they also provide commentary to go along with it. If you’re into WordPress at all, I highly recommend it.

In the video, you’ll get a glimpse into the frustration of performing what should be relatively simple tasks.

  • editing a permalink; or even viewing the permalink in its true form (not just ?p=3107)
  • adding a non-embeddable URL on a new line
  • using backticks to create inline <code>

After several minutes of frustration, Ross jumps back to the classic editor and completes all of these tasks within about 30 seconds.

Watch the Frustrating Gutenberg 2.3 Demo

Moving Forward From Here

These are certainly not small, isolated issues. They have the potential to affect a large group of users, and they undoubtedly need to be dealt with.

Here’s the good news:

  • WordPress is already working on editing permalinks, and there’s a lot of good discussion around it
  • Gutenberg is still in beta, folks. Let’s have some faith that these issues will be resolved before it’s added to core.
  • The Classic Editor plugin let’s you use both Gutenberg and the classic editor simultaneously (see how)

Gutenberg is the future of WordPress, and while this video raises some serious concerns, it’s not time to panic. If you look at the sheer number of fixes & enhancements that are included with each new release, it’s an impressive list.

Most of these issues will be fixed before Gutenberg is officially released. The Gutenberg team fully understands the impact this will have on the community, and I highly doubt they would release something that would frustrate a large cohort of their user base.

What You Can Do to Help

  • Record & publish demo videos, just like this one
  • Test it for yourself
  • If you see something, say something. Report issues on github.
  • If you’ve got the technical chops, help out. It’s a community project.

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