So Gutenberg has arrived on WordPress dot com websites. I have activated it on this site and on a couple of other sites where I am using the Independent Publisher theme.
I am already using Gutenberg on a couple of self-hosted sites and have been since the beginning of the year, so this is familiar territory for me.
Now the people who run WordPress have this huge testbed of users from whom they can get feedback about how their new baby is performing.
I have to say that when I first started using the Gutenberg plugin on a self-hosted site, I had nothing good to say about it. It was very clunky. But it is shaping up nicely now. I don’t know yet whether the struggle is worth the outcome. That said, some talented people have made additional Gutenberg blocks for self-hosted sites from which I can see real benefits. More about that later.
For the moment – here is some coloured text.
And here is a sentence or two with the text written larger. No big deal but it is easy to do and I am sure that there will be more options as Gutenberg matures. (Note: it doesn’t work. When I publish it is the same text size as the rest of the text.)
And here is a paragraph with a drop cap at the beginning of the paragraph. It is activated with a slider in the sidebar and it is easy to use.
What doesn’t seem to be working well is the Preview. Only one way to find out what is really going on and that is to publish this post.
And the result was the it was completely messed up with tiny font size. I tried the reset text settings button and that made no difference. What did make a difference in the end was to choose another size (large) and then re-choose the medium/standard size text. And that did it.
So the team have some work to do still to get the WP.com version of Gutenberg to settle down. And so ends Day One.
Photograph Works 
What a mess. Even when I reset the text in the paragraph I had made larger size, and even when I reset every paragraph – it is still messed up.
I am going to leave it and wait for the Gutenberg kinks to be ironed out.
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Hey … I went and tried it too. Brand new territory for me. I didn’t change much, but I inserted a picture of my own and I liked that. I use that Publisher theme. I’ll keep it for now.
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With everything else, you probably don’t want to know this, David; but on (my) iPhone there appears to be zero difference in text and none of the illustration/photos… Will try to have a look on the computer later. Sorry:/
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Ah yes, I took out the illustration and rejigged the text and I think (think) it looks OK for text size now.
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Ehm, no fancy effects like different font size or drop caps show on my screen… This Gutenberg thing is hilarious. I enjoy poking fun at it… Like at Internet Explorer. But you’re right in that it’s a work in progress bound to get better, so I should stop ranting.
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I disabled Gutenberg on Photographworks.me and I went to the support forum for this theme. I explained the issue and am following up with the developer. Wouldn’t you know, though – he/they can’t reproduce the issue, haha.
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Ha 😀 How funny is that: tech troubleshooting is the only area I can think of when you don’t seek to avoid errors and learn from them but to replicate them….
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I met a man once who worked for Siemens on one of their semi-smart phones. They had millions of lines of legacy code from the previous developers and now they were afraid to touch anything for fear of never being able to find out what triggered what, that triggered something else, that…. etc.
The new theme I am using seems to be OK. That said, there is a new problem that is annoying. Safari keeps caching the pages and interfering with the posts. I clear the cache and it still sticks. I raised it with Support and it is becoming a known issue with Safari (which I am not going to stop using).
All that javascript getting tangled up in strands of spaghetti code Fun, eh?
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Oh gosh, legacy code… It’s bloat code for me that is a more immediate issue but I can vividly visualise the impending disaster of legacy code.
Caching is generally more a bother than help when working on a site. I spent hours wondering why the heck my edits don’t show up. Well, caching.
You’re a Safari user? Means you’re an Apple person? I used to do Chrome but switched to Firefox because I have a lot of use for their containers – basically batches of separate workspaces, useful when you have multiple WP accounts, for example, and want to stay logged in all of them at once.
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Yes, Apple. For years. I didn’t know about containers in Firefox. I’ll have to take a look. I use Firefox for that exact reason – for a different account to whatever I am in on Safari.
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I used to use different browsers for this purpose, but then I ran out of browsers when I had too many accounts for clients to manage regularly… So the Firefox containers work for me. Otherwise I would’ve probably stuck to Chrome… Though I like the way Opera looks.
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I heard positive things about Opera. I didn’t look at the containers in Firefox you mentioned. How do you set them up / access them?
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The containers are actually an add-on to the browser: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/. Hope it works for you!
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I installed it and I watched the video and I can’t get the containers to contain. 😦
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Ow, I’m sorry! I’d love to help but I’m not sure it would work long-distance. If you do have a question or something, let me know please!
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Found it: “Note that Containers is disabled in Private Browsing and when Never Remember History is selected in your privacy preferences. “
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Oh, I see! I had no idea. Good to know.
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Now that it’s working – Whoa! Thanks. 🙂
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Great! I’m glad to hear!
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Oops. I accidentally unfollowed you and followed you again… I was checking the name of the theme that you’re using. It looks perfect.
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🙂
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