I know I’m going to get a lot of hate for saying this, but since its introduction Gutenberg has faced a lot of criticism from WordPress developers. I think this hate has been drastically misplaced. Was it messy at the beginning? Yes. It’s been an ambitious project and it has fundamentally changed how we should build websites. They may have been overly ambitious at the beginning – kind of like when Apple removed the headphone jack – but sometimes, the best way forward involves making slightly uncomfortable changes.
If you wait for perfection, you’ll never launch. When I first started using Gutenberg, it didn’t even have a cover block. I had to manually use an image block and a text block, then mess around with CSS to get the text over the image. It was a hassle, but when they finally introduced the cover block, a lot of those problems were solved.
A Short History of Gutenberg
Gutenberg was introduced to the WordPress ecosystem in 2018 with WordPress 5.0, and it represented one of the most significant shifts in the platform’s history. Named after Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press, the project aimed to revolutionize how content is created and managed on WordPress websites. Prior to its release, most WordPress content creation relied heavily on the classic editor, which was essentially just a text box. Customization options were limited, and page builders were often needed to make sites more dynamic—but they came with bloated code and slower performance.
Gutenberg’s goal was to make website building more intuitive and flexible through the use of content “blocks.” These blocks allow users to easily add and arrange various types of content, such as images, text, and videos, with far less reliance on custom code or page builders. Over time, the block editor evolved, and now it forms the foundation of WordPress’s Full Site Editing (FSE), which allows users to edit not just content but also headers, footers, and other global elements of a site.
While the initial release of Gutenberg was met with resistance from the WordPress community, it has steadily improved and gained more acceptance. Change is hard and I think much of the resistance at the beginning was because they didn’t want to update their processes. But now, there are many more developers/designers moving towards Gutenberg.
How Gutenberg Has Changed Website Building
Gutenberg has forever changed how we build WordPress sites—and for the better. Before Gutenberg, developers had a couple of options. If you could code, you could create templates and use custom fields to populate content. If you couldn’t code, page builders were your go-to. The problem with most page builders was that they generated bloated code, making websites painfully slow.
Gutenberg sits right in the middle. It gives you a visual interface similar to page builders, but without all the unnecessary bloat. The code it outputs is much cleaner, resulting in faster websites. You can still use custom fields, or even create your own custom blocks if needed. Essentially, Gutenberg offers more flexibility without sacrificing performance.
Easier User Experience
One of the main reasons I started using Gutenberg was because I wanted my clients to be able to make their own changes. Before Gutenberg, a lot of the code was hidden in theme files, making it nearly impossible for clients to make basic updates. Even adding a simple heading could require a developer’s help. With Gutenberg, clients can easily manage their content, and if they still hire me for updates, it’s much easier and faster to implement changes.
Faster Website Building
For developers, time is money. The quicker you can launch a website, the more projects you can take on. While custom themes used to be the fastest way to get a site live, Gutenberg has changed the game. With a solid theme to handle headers and footers—like GeneratePress—you can focus solely on the content area using the block editor, speeding up the process significantly.
Two features that really make Gutenberg a productivity booster are custom blocks and reusable blocks. If I can’t find an existing block to suit my needs, I create a custom one. Once I have a design or layout, I use reusable blocks to replicate it across different parts of the site. For instance, synced blocks are great for testimonials—change one, and it updates site-wide. Unsynced blocks allow for consistency in layout, like headers, while enabling unique content.
Cleaner Code, Better Structure
Custom themes are usually faster because they’re hand-coded with minimal bloat. Page builders, however, come with a lot of extra code to facilitate visual changes, which can drastically slow down a site. Gutenberg strikes a balance—offering clean code and faster load times while maintaining visual functionality. This not only makes sites faster but also improves SEO.
A common argument against Gutenberg is its limited functionality compared to page builders. However, there are now many plugins—like GhostKit, Bricks, and Kadence—that add robust functionality to Gutenberg while maintaining clean, performant code.
A New Way to Build Websites
All of this works together to create a better way to build websites. It’s different, moving away from the PHP-focused approach that WordPress has relied on for years. This shift is why many people are resistant to Gutenberg. But objectively speaking, it’s a better, faster way to build websites.
Developers that are still using custom themes and fighting the implementation of Gutenberg are getting left in the dust. This new crop of designers and developers embracing Gutenberg can create websites faster, make them easily edited by their clients, and the websites are performing better. It’s time to embrace the hate and try out