WordPress 5.0 – My Thoughts After the Dust Settled
WordPress version 5.0 came out a few weeks back at this point. I have upgraded most of my sites to the latest version. It has some pros and cons, but overall it was not a big change except for the new Gutenberg editor. This is what my experience was during the upgrade.
Gutenberg Editor
The new editor, Gutenberg, is totally different. It tries to break down the content we are making into blocks that can size and shape themselves better to mobile than the original editor. It feels more like Wix or Visual Composer than the Classic Editor. The new editor, despite being unfamiliar and lacking compared to better visual editors, still feels good to use. I think overall I prefer the Classic Editor still, but I may warm up to this over time. Every single client that edits their own site asked for the Classic Editor, so I switched them back. Gutenberg was just too unfamiliar to them, perhaps they will warm up to it over time, but the transition came as unwelcome for most people.
Download: Classic Editor plugin
Broken Plugins and 500 Errors
I had a few sites that got 500 errors after the upgrade. All but one was fixed by switching permalinks to default in the Dashboard, then switching them back. Backup your stuff if you are not sure what this does. That last website that was still having problems had a plugin that served as an events calendar and had partially malfunctioned during the upgrade. It was giving 500 errors only on its own calendar page, the others were okay. Had to find an alternative plugin for that one after basic troubleshooting. Overall this was an easy upgrade, not much went wrong.
Progress
The last note I want to mention is that it feels like WordPress has changed its philosophy a bit, or maybe just decided to move faster with updates. This Gutenberg update seemed to break their former philosophy on updates that seemed to have a slow and steady pace, giving users a familiar experience each time. We will have to see what the future brings.
Final Thoughts
Overall I think the upgrade was pretty painless, but the new editor Gutenberg is going to take some time for people to adopt. For the meantime I am using Classic Editor plugin to keep my clients happy.