In 2019, developers plan to extend the changes in WordPress 5.0 well beyond posts and pages to sidebars, footers, menus, and more. The process will eventually make it possible to change different parts of your site within a common interface. But, for now, this change is just the post editor: WordPress developers are calling it “Gutenberg,” for the platform revolution it’s leading. Hold on to your mousepads!

Easy Preview, Revise, and Publish

A big benefit of the new editor is that there are fewer surprises when publishing posts, and it helps break the endless cycle of save-and-reload we do to preview our content before we publish it. This means you can expect the content in the editor to look more like your published work in the front-end.

With this release, you can look forward to a much more flexible and intuitive content creation experience, making it that much easier to create the content your audiences are hungry for.

Building With Blocks Boosts Creativity

Content in the new editor is built with blocks. Blocks can be textual elements — such as paragraphs, lists, blockquotes, and headings — and also galleries, buttons, social embeds, and more.

Mixing these rich elements with written content used to require hard-to-decipher shortcodes, but the new editor will make it easier to arrange your page the way you want, and see where different elements will appear.

We’re especially stoked about the adjustable side-by-side Media & Text block, which provides an easy and flexible way to do something that can feel iffy and brittle in the old editor.

It’s ready when you’re ready.

This new editor has been heavily tested on hundreds of thousands of sites, so it’s set to be a reliable new tool. However, some sites may depend on plugins or themes that aren’t yet updated to be compatible with the new features of WordPress 5.0 — so, some of us may have to wait before diving in.

If your WordPress website is running on a customized theme, or you just aren’t ready for the WordPress Revolution of 2018, never fear!  WordPress developers have also created the Classic Editor plugin for those of us who like things just fine the way they are, thanks. Install and activate the Classic Editor plugin and you can continue to use the old editor a while longer; developers have committed to supporting it through 2021.

Need someone to talk to about WordPress 5.0? We’re still getting to know it better, too, but we’re here to go on this journey together with you.

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Pssst! The video clip above above was recorded on the Gutenberg live demo site, where you can try out the new editor right now.