A New WordPress Editor Is Coming, Here Is Our Plan

by Ronnie Burt
July 8, 2019

For the past two years, the WordPress community has been hard at work on re-thinking and re-designing the way we all create and edit content in WordPress posts and pages.

The code name for this project has been ‘Gutenberg’, and it will be released in the next major version of WordPress in as soon as a few days!

The best way to get a preview of the experience is visiting this page here.

Here at CampusPress, we’ve been actively testing the new editor for months, and we are excited about the new modern and flexible editor. However, it is a fairly big change, so we would like to share our plan for how we will roll this out. We also discuss some reasons why you may wish to delay this release at the end of this post below.

The Plan!

Once the latest WordPress 5.0 version is fully released, we will begin upgrading all test and development networks for those customers that have them. This will give those that use custom plugins and themes access to try them out with the new editor in advance. We will also finish off updated documentation during this time. If you would like access to a test network and don’t currently have one, just reach out and we’ll get that created for you.

Then, after significant quality assurance and testing, we will announce a planned upgrade during one of our regular Tuesday change windows. We are aiming for January 16th for this update, but given the holidays and depending on how testing goes, this date may be delayed further.

When we apply the update, we will upgrade your sites to the latest WordPress version, but force the ‘Classic Editor’ network-wide. You can then choose to allow users to have access to the new ‘Gutenberg’ block editor or turn it off completely. We will then work with you on a plan going forward.

Ideally, we would like all customers to be fully on the new editor by July 2019 in order to better ensure compatibility with future upgrades and updates to WordPress core, plugins, and themes.

We’re Here To Help

We expect that this will be a seamless and pain-free upgrade experience, and we are already doing a ton of testing to ensure that this is the case.

If you are using custom plugins or themes, especially with page builders or that interact extensively with the page and post editor, you will want to give special consideration to testing those before the release. We don’t expect any actual technical issues, but any concerns will be more around training, documentation, and getting all users familiar with the new editor.

We know that changes can sometimes be a challenge. We’re excited about what these changes will bring for WordPress and all of our customers and the faculty, staff, and students that use it daily. Our team is here to talk through any and all questions, and to ensure that we make this as smooth as possible.