WordPress’s new Gutenberg Editor, aka WordPress Block Editor, is becoming more popular every day. Gone are the days when learning HTML or PHP was the only way to achieve certain visual results. With Gutenberg, our options are almost limitless. Skeptical users are complaining about Gutenberg’s inconsistency and bugs. Yes, the new editor still has many bugs (October 2020), but it’s improving by the day and, without a doubt, a huge step forward compared to the old WordPress classic editor.
Gone are the days when learning HTML or PHP was the only way to achieve certain visual results. With Gutenberg, our options are almost limitless.
What is the Gutenberg Editor?
If you are already familiar with the Gutenberg approach, skip this section. WordPress has been working on a new Editor, called Gutenberg, for quite some time. The idea behind Gutenberg is to use a Lego-like approach to building a web page (and, in the future, the entire website). Users have access to a palette of predefined blocks that implement the most common functional areas of a typical web page. Instead of writing obscure HTML code or proprietary WordPress shortcuts, we can now add blocks to our page, such as Paragraph, Heading, List, Image, YouTube Video, and so on. There are dozens of different blocks out of the box, and we can also create our own blocks. Blocks are like objects: they have a position (which we can change by moving them up or down the page), a set of properties we can use to customize them to match our website style, and placeholders for our content. We can now add all sorts of new content to our page without worrying about the underlying HTML. That’s big, very big, especially for WordPress users.
The idea behind Gutenberg is to use a Lego-like approach to building a web page. Users can access a palette of predefined blocks for most common functional areas of a typical web page. Instead of writing obscure HTML code or proprietary WordPress shortcuts, we can now add blocks such as Paragraph, Heading, List, Image, YouTube Video, and so on.
The Layout vs Columns Gutenberg Dilemma
Let’s explore one challenging difference: the Layout block versus the Columns block. Both can be used to create a section of your page divided into 2 or more columns. For basic use, the two blocks are equivalent, but as we begin to use them, we discover some important differences.
Comparing WordPress Columns Block with Layout Block
| Columns Block | Layout Block | |
|---|---|---|
| Background Color | No | Yes |
| Min Number of Columns | 2 | 1 |
| Max Number of Columns | 6 | 4 |
| Individual Column Padding | No | Yes |
| End Gutters Control | No | Yes |
| Width Granularity | 1% | 1/12 |
| Nestability for Columns Block | Yes | Yes |
| Nestability for Layout Block | Yes | Yes |
Creating a Layout Block
Here is a simple visual sequence of actions (clicks) to create a Layout Block in WordPress.
Creating a Column Block
Here is a simple visual sequence of actions (clicks) to create a Column Block in WordPress.
Which one to choose?
My experience with WordPress suggests that the Columns Block is more mature and therefore more reliable and easier to configure. The Layout Block has been designed to be much more powerful and flexible, but it still needs a few more releases to improve usability and reliability. The Gutenberg Editor is still a very young product. It’s going through a series of frequent, significant releases, and at this stage, each release can make a huge difference compared with the previous one. I’m confident that in a few months or a year the layout block will a complete replacement for the columns block. Very few people will miss the old way of building WordPress pages. At the moment (October 2020), one of the major issues with the Layout Block is the conflicts with existing (not yet updated) themes and possibly with our own custom CSS.
