The pre-Gutenberg editorial experience in WordPress leaves much to be desired. There is the ostensibly what-you-see-is-what-you-get content editor that is invariably augmented with metaboxes to collect additional information about how the post should be displayed, including content that appears above or below the post body, or in a sidebar, or inserted into the post’s metadata. There are two primary problems with this approach—it is necessarily non-visual, and relies heavily on using post previews to understand what the published post will look like; and it is rigid, because PHP templates control what appears where outside of the freeform content editor. Gutenberg, properly utilized, solves both of these problems by bringing content into the primary editor flow as blocks which can be fully visualized and re-ordered, allowing content editors to see and understand what a post will look like and how it will behave before publishing, without needing to continually refresh a post preview.
This talk will discuss how developers can support content editors and publishers by moving away from metaboxes to custom blocks and post-level metadata. I will explain how to think Gutenberg-first during design and development, and showcase examples of these approaches in practice.