Title: Wrong direction? Last modified: August 1, 2017 --- # Wrong direction? * [robertosimoes](https://wordpress.org/support/users/robertosimoes/) * (@robertosimoes) * [8 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wrong-direction/) * I understand the plugin is on early stage; there are many bugs and things that will be fixed and improved. * I agree with [@matt](https://wordpress.org/support/users/matt/) (Matt Mullenweg) that WordPress should offer a much better user experience. * But WordPress.org is not a proprietary software, where you can just throw away everything and start from scratch when you fill its needed. There are thousands of contributors, developing themes and plugins. Are their efforts going to be useless in the next WordPress release? * Shortcodes and custom fields are terrible UX solutions, but they’re what makes WP flexible and powerful. Gutenberg should be about providing a graphical way to use shortcodes and custom fields on a front-end editor. * I much prefer the [@iseulde](https://wordpress.org/support/users/iseulde/) (Ella Van Dorpe) approach on the Front-end Editor for WordPress plugin, which offers a real front-end experience. * Right now, Gutenberg is not a front-end editor, is a good not WYSIWYG editor, is not a page builder, and it ignores all the contributors that make WordPress so great. I’m disappointed. Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total) * Moderator [Matt Mullenweg](https://wordpress.org/support/users/matt/) * (@matt) * [8 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wrong-direction/#post-9376581) * Gutenberg is informed by everything that’s been tried (and largely hasn’t worked) so far, such as the Front end editor, other plugins, page builders, even our own attempts to evolve or replace TinyMCE in the past. * You do illustrate the difficult tightrope between improving functionality and maintaining backwards compatibility. If we took the approach you advocate for, keeping “terrible UX solutions” just because a plugin used them or people are used to them, we’d still look like this: * [https://matt.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/img_0315.jpg](https://matt.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/img_0315.jpg) * The key to breaking backwards compatibility is to make sure what’s on the other side is #worthit. Gutenberg is very much in beta and evolving rapidly, but later in the year I hope you’ll see what we think will be worth it to cause some code to need updating but will usher in a new era of democratizing publishing on the web. * Thread Starter [robertosimoes](https://wordpress.org/support/users/robertosimoes/) * (@robertosimoes) * [8 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wrong-direction/#post-9376885) * First of all, I’d like to highlight that I’m aligned with your vision that WordPress has to be User Experience driven and focus on the editor, the REST API, and the customizer. And I very much appreciate that you took your time and knowledge to make these things happen. * I’m not a web developer, but it looks like WordPress was always good at evolving without breaking compatibility, for instance, the theme I developed for my website in 2013 is still working pretty well, and it’s compatible with new WordPress versions and the same plugins. Please, correct me if I’m wrong. * Besides maintaining compatibility, my primary concern is that Gutenberg is not a real front-end editing experience, like [@iseulde](https://wordpress.org/support/users/iseulde/)( Ella Van Dorpe) solution or like Squarespace, maybe it improves only the blog posting experience, maybe. If you are designing a landing page, a product page or even a more elaborate blog post, clicking the preview button and changing to another browser tab back and forth is not a solution #worthit. (Not counting how many times I published the post/page instead of previewing it). * PS: I don’t have any affiliation with premium WP themes or plugins, nor any website builder like Squarespace or Wix. I just love WordPress, and I wish it a bright future. * [thezman](https://wordpress.org/support/users/thezman/) * (@thezman) * [8 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wrong-direction/#post-9735458) * I agree with Robert this is the wrong direction. * I believe that what I saw in **Shortcake is the direction Gutenberg should be heading** ([https://wordpress.org/plugins/shortcode-ui/](https://wordpress.org/plugins/shortcode-ui/)). Main reason being that Developers can then retain control over the output from shortcode and users get their “friendly UX” * As it now stands users already place insane things into the WP editor, I develop full time 24×7 on call and I’ve managed sites that needed hundreds of REGEX expressions to remove general user insanity from the post editor (things like adding http:// to URL’s that were missing, catching IMG tags and making them into popups, removing broken/old embeds or shortcode from deleted plugins, all kinds of nonsense people dumped into their posts/pages over the years in an effort to avoid hiring a developer) * Things like the custom fields option, (ACF, Redux, ect…) make short work of the‘ user insanity in the editor field’ problem. Ive started building SCHEMA.org tags into my theme base and they need very strict controls to validate properly… it’s clear to me that distancing developers from any WordPress field input is a step in the wrong direction. * Shortcode works because developers can control the output, I think Shortcake is the answer to Gutenberg… as long as there is little to NO html in any of the fields that general users put into WordPress then I believe we are heading the right direction and would stand by it. * To take a non-trival example: a good portion of my WordPress work is now based on removing VisualBuilder type plugin’s from people’s themes so they can validate properly, actually work, become more compliant and (in regard to responsive design) resemble some semblance of web-standards. * If Gutenberg places any HTML into the post editor I am against it. I am against any plugin that does that, all code should be IN code, not in the DB. - This reply was modified 8 years, 4 months ago by [thezman](https://wordpress.org/support/users/thezman/). - This reply was modified 8 years, 4 months ago by [thezman](https://wordpress.org/support/users/thezman/). Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total) The topic ‘Wrong direction?’ is closed to new replies. * ![](https://ps.w.org/gutenberg/assets/icon-256x256.jpg?rev=1776042) * [Gutenberg](https://wordpress.org/plugins/gutenberg/) * [Frequently Asked Questions](https://wordpress.org/plugins/gutenberg/#faq) * [Support Threads](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/gutenberg/) * [Active Topics](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/gutenberg/active/) * [Unresolved Topics](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/gutenberg/unresolved/) * [Reviews](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/gutenberg/reviews/) * 3 replies * 3 participants * Last reply from: [thezman](https://wordpress.org/support/users/thezman/) * Last activity: [8 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wrong-direction/#post-9735458)