WordPress – Block Editor
Progress is a Must-Have right… and the sooner we get on the bandwagon the better right? I have a zillion things to right about luckily not all website and Internet-based, but none the less right now I am thinking WordPress and Block Editor.
What’s the problem… you are… this blog is primarily aimed at our Clients, so we always write with clients of a ‘web agency’ in mind. This month/week/whatever I am thinking progress is a must-have.
WordPress used to be really simple… just a Title and a Content box to fill, it couldn’t get more simple… if you really wanted you to you could add an image and you could do this all from home, bedroom, office or whatever, everyone can do it themselves. What a wonder and WordPress grew and grew and today around 300million websites use WordPress as their starting block.
But somewhere along the way things started to get more complicated, people wanted to do more… but also people could do a simple WordPress Blog post, the rise of the developer and ‘web agency’ came about and that has accelerated the added complications of working with WordPress.
There’s no issue with this… it is the way it is and we can do some fantastic things with WordPress – we can even make it acceptable fast in SEO terms. And there is literally hundreds of Plugins to further enhance what can be done.
Until January, however, WordPress stuck the with the principal that you have a Title and a Content box and that is all you needed, they tried really hard to keep it simple for everyone. But competition being what it is has risen and there are plenty of WordPress alternatives, from SquareSpace to WIX, Shopify to a whole host of others.
The question then became – what does WordPress do… one the one hand they are supporting 300 million websites… and even if 80% of defunct or disused it still leaves millions of very active websites… by my own estimates I suspect WordPress has about 2 million ‘web agency’ built or ‘professional’ implementation… the 300 million starts to look much smaller.
The next big note to accept is that WordPress still wants to make a bit of money, they do this with the added extras, there no real harm in that. But out of 2million websites and a lot of ‘agency’ work, comes a healthy income in Plugins and Themes for WordPress… so sadly while the creators of WordPress what to keep and encourage the 300million websites out there, sadly the ones they have to keep happy are the 2million spending customers.
And it’s this group most likely to leave should the alternatives to WordPress rise in prominence.
In short, if alternatives do what WordPress does better then why stick with WordPress.
And that is what I call progress, it’s not pretty, it is a must-have.
And that brings me back to the Block Editor, this was introduced around January 2019… a lot of people did not like it, a lot of WordPress users will be frustrated and will give up using WordPress, and by a lot I mean millions. But the gang that won’t are the 2million ‘web agency’ or ‘professional’ websites – this gang will grow.
So my advice for WordPress users is to force yourself to use Block Editor it is more clunky, but when you understand what it’s doing it is better. It is an improvement and it will allow you to do more.
Accept the Progress Must-Have and get back to enjoying WordPress for the incredibly simple and powerful platform it is.