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WordPress 6.3 Commands

Today I learned a bunch of keyboard shortcuts for the WordPress 6.3 command palette1,2,3. I actually learned quite a bit more while migrating several sites over from another website vendor. I was able to completely duplicate the previous designs with only a few custom patterns and lines of CSS using the default Twenty Twenty-Three theme blocks.

I've been consistantly impressed by the progress of the Gutenberg Editor. The command palette is spot on helping me speed up editing. The block editor also really cuts down the design barrier to entry for a lot of folks. I've built hundreds of custom themes over the the last twenty years and I can confidently say that most anyone should prefer the extensibility of using it over the previous methods. Not unlike with anything else, I'm generally a bit of a late adopter4.

At this point, the Gutenberg project is starting to take off as a full fledged site editor. There are a lot of critics out there, but I'm not one of them. However, I won't say that there aren't any issues:

  • debugging JavaScript is a bit tougher than debugging PHP.
  • I do see some drawbacks to having all of the design tools at hand for site editors because I know if you have a team all those tools, they'll use em all over the place. I think the key there is to build in some design constraints so that their options are limited in order to keep the theming consistent.
  • I also don't like all of the inline markup and styling but I think it's mostly unavoidable given the rich amount of block options. I think you could get around this with less block options and a tighter CSS build step.
  • I can foresee some of the same ole' WordPress issues when third-party plugins start hijacking the editor in all kinds of wonky ways.
  • I've seen my share of bugs in Gutenberg editor over the last couple of years and this new iteration will be no exception... like this unescapable infinite navigation loop 👇🏼

I'm just glad that it's still evolving and to be contributing financially to the WordPress ecosystem with the migrations. For most small businesses building a website, this will cut it. If they're using .com as a host, then the form builders, mailing list, and e-commerce features easily outshine the competition. For a some larger clients with more feature requests, I do think that the only way to get around some of issues, is with custom development. For now, I've got some upcoming projects migrating older WordPress sites to use the block editor and I should be learning a lot more in the coming months. I'll try to note those here and on my WP related sites5,6. I'll likely have to revamp my build process7 and I should probably revisit or condense some of my previous posts on WordPress8,9.

  1. WordPress 6.3 Release page - https://wordpress.org/download/releases/6-3/
  2. WordPress 6.3 Release video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JhJcOLySLY
  3. Rich Tabor - What's new in WordPress 6.3: The Future of WordPress is Finally Here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cYlRiZYcro
  4. David A. Windham - Late Adopter - https://davidawindham.com/late-adopter/
  5. windhamdavid on WordPress - https://windham.wordpress.com
  6. David on WordPress - https://wp.davidwindham.com
  7. Code | David Windham - WP - https://code.davidawindham.com/david/wp
  8. David A. Windham - WordPress 2.5 - https://davidawindham.com/wp-25/
  9. David A. Windham - WordPress 5.0 - https://davidawindham.com/wordpress-5/