Phovos

I’ll try recording the issue but it’s hard to reproduce. If I leave SSL Zen alone for a few days or deactivate the plugin and reactivate it after 48 hours, the ability to verify reappears. Am I perhaps hitting some sort of limit, e.g. the Let’s Encrypt limit for domains or something? Maybe because I’m using SSL Zen on several websites at once?

I have a screenshot of it happening here, but waiting a week seems to have fixed itself.

You actually bring up a really good point – is this (relatively) sudden change going to completely screw up WordPress’s marketing, as well as the marketing and advertising and tutorials and work (and so on) of everyone who uses, develops and makes money off of WordPress?

You shouldn’t disable the ability to deactivate in any way in the first place. I wouldn’t have a problem if I could deactivate straight away no matter what I click on.

Please do change this because it’s annoying, deactivating should be a one-click action.

If I click on the X it doesn’t deactivate the plugin. I have to open it up again, make sure I click on NONE of those options and THEN deactivate it.

Firstly, thank you for taking the time to leave a review and letting us know how your experience with Gutenberg has been!

As for your review, we don’t modify review ratings, but some times there may be hiccups in the system and the value wasn’t included, and the default value is 5. You can edit your review at any time to fix this though!

Eh I must have messed up then. My bad.

As for the spacing around blocks, this can actually be modified by your theme, allowing them to give as close a representation of how the content will look on the front end as possible (we even encourage them to do so). This was, in part, possible with the classic editor as well, but Gutenberg gives them much more control and allows for a much cleaner and truer representation of what things will look like, if themes chose to make use of it.

This would be alright but only really if it’s automatic. If one has to fiddle around with a theme to make what’s seen on the editor match what’s on the website then at the end of the day does it really make much difference? If one of your goals is to make backend match frontend then perhaps frontend editing would have been a better idea.

You can still see the toolbars up top and similar, although not easy to discover right away if you click the ellipsis in of the editor there’s an option to fix the toolbar to the top of the editing screen. You can even add the classic editor into Gutenberg (we added it as a block for those that feel more comfortable with it, or need that little bit of extra control over their content).

Cloned text is intended more for repeated content, it’s there to give flexibility to users, and if you don’t need it for your posts, you don’t have to use it.

But that’s the thing. Things shouldn’t be “not easy to discover right away”, requiring clicking on some little dots. Really, this is my biggest issue with the new system, that it’s kinda not really clear and obvious what you’re being presented with. You get a plain, blank screen and some options on the side, with important things like the Publish button stuck away at the top, next to what looks like two options menus (the gear and the ellipsis), and everything else being stuck behind the “Block” tab.

And cloned text really does feel like something a page builder would use. Is it really something that people use on blog posts and the like?

What about it doesn’t fit with the rest of WordPress, and how do you see it blending in better?

I feel that it goes past the layout of all other WordPress pages. The menus and everything you want to edit are on the right of the page, rather on the left like the Customizer and the normal WordPress menu, losing the boundaries between what is menu and options and what is one’s content. Everything else is squished up at the top of the page rather than having some breathing room, and a lot of labels are replaced with symbols rather than basic text.

Rather than being presented with boxes you can fill in, it’s got a clean, surgical look. Like a blank piece of paper.

As for your last concern, the one of hours and cost. We’ve been actively educating developers for over a year now, with talks and workshops at WordCamps, as well as frequent updates on developer related areas here on www.remarpro.com. This means that anyone interested in adding specific support or interactions with Gutenberg should have been at least in the loop by now and have an idea of what needs doing.

I should note though, that for what I suspect is a majority of plugins, they won’t have to change anything, only plugins that interact directly with the editor will you see a need for larger changes to be properly compatible once it is released.

That doesn’t actually cover the man hours and time and money that will be required to update plugins though. Sure they’re in the loop but they’ve got to spend time and money to fix their stuff up because WordPress has suddenly decided to completely shake up their editor. And at the same time, it’s a whole new learning experience, sites that have multiple levels of users will have to reteach how to use the new editing system.

I should also note that this change won’t affect existing content, we will not retroactively go through every posts, page, etc. and modify. When you open old content you’ll be shown a legacy block with your content in the classic editor inside the new editor window. You can then choose to convert it to the new format, or leave it as is.

Well that’s good, I guess. But that still leaves us with the following:

We do also have some alternatives for those that feel they are not ready for the new experience just yet. You can use the Classic Editor plugin to force the current look once WordPress 5.0 is released, or you could use Gutenberg Ramp to enable it only for some content at a time if you for example wish to test it out on pages, but not on posts to begin with.

It seems paradoxical to make a large change and force users to get a plugin to go back. Why can’t we keep things as we are and have a plugin to change things? You’re dragging users forward rather than giving them the option to move forward themselves. And that just leaves a sour taste in a lot of people’s mouths.

My biggest issue is that this system will be rolled into WordPress 5.0. As a plugin, it’s not something I enjoy using at all, but I can see maybe some people would like a very simplified pagebuilder-esque sort of thing. But in a CMS that applauds having choices, it seems weird to force out such a big change.

The thing is, you WILL go ahead with this, no matter what users and developers say.

If you click on any of the options, accidentally or otherwise, you can no longer skip and deactivate at all, as shown in this screenshot.

The option to deactivate should never, ever be blocked.

Thank you for the consideration, and thank you for the plugin.