WordPress 5.0 is Coming!

Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress, CEO of Automattic, and Lead Developer for WordPress 5.0 said yesterday evening in a post on Make WordPress Core that following no other issues should arise, WordPress 5.0 will be released Thursday, December 6th, 2018. That comes the day before WordCamp US starts in Nashville, Tennessee.

Change can be hard. Especially when it is thrust upon us with a 2 day “Get ready because here it comes” notice. However, a 2 day heads up is so much better than none at all. They could have pressed publish Monday evening and that be it. The notice post was met by some strong feelings on both sides of the fence. I can understand it as most everyone would have been happy if the date was pushed back to January. Plus, December 6 will be a very high travel day for many in the WordPress Community. However, is there ever really a good day to push publish? Isn’t it always a “here goes nothing”, close our eyes, and hope for the best moment. 

So no matter what, December 6th will come and go and Gutenberg will be here to stay. We might as well make the most of it. Right now Can’t Speak Geek is actually using Gutenberg. We decided to give it a try during the site re-launch to learn how to use it before we HAVE to learn how to use it. 

Now, if pressing update is still giving you such anxiety that you can not sleep at night, you can always put off Gutenberg. Before you update, download and install the Classic Editor Plugin on your website and activate it. Once activated, feel free to update your site like normal. You will keep the classic editor instead of switching over to Gutenberg.

If you use a page builder like Beaver Builder, never fear as your site pages will not change unless you click to convert the site over to Gutenberg blocks. This is the same thought process as if you have a page built on the page builder and then switch it over to the classic editor, it will lose its styling now. 

In the end once the inevitable “change” feeling wears off, Gutenberg should be a great editor for the masses and it will help users unfamiliar with coding to create some pretty fantastic pages. 

Gutenberg Roundup

• Creator Courses – Various Gutenberg Lessons 
• Gutenberg Times 
• WordPress 5 Essential Training by Morten Rand-Hendriksen 
• WordPress.org Gutenberg Handbook (Already has designer/developer and contributor but user handbook is coming soon) 
• Gutenberg Demo 
• WP 101 – Introduction to Gutenberg 
• WPSessions – Intro to Gutenberg Development 
• Data Driven Labs – How to Use the New WordPress 5.0 Gutenberg Editor
• Joe Casabona – Upgrade to WordPress 5.0 & Gutenberg Without Breaking Your Content
• WP Shout – Trying Out WordPress 5.0’s Gutenberg Editor Today

We will update this article once WordPress’s docs are live to add the official Make WordPress Gutenberg documentation once it is rolled out. 

Michele Butcher-Jones

Head Geek at Can't Speak Geek

Michele is the Head Geek at Can't Speak Geek. During the day she works for Thrive Agency as their WordPress Technical Support Specialist. She is also a beginners and advanced WordPress instructor and travels the globe sharing her love of WordPress. When not on the computer Michele enjoys spending time with her husband and daughter. Sometimes she takes the time off to read a great book.