I am using this nightmare for the past 20 years, and I couldn't agree more with you. In the 21st century, it looks and feels like it was put together with a hammer.
Oh boy, I couldn't agree more. Especially if you try to teach your customers to use it (after delivering the website) 😊 "What is a post?", "What is a"page" and why can't I add page to the navigation directly from the page editing screen?", "Why my Woocommerce shop order numbers are random and not sequential?" Etc etc
100% aligned with your perspective here Paul. We need to have these discussions despite how painful they are.
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Total agree. WP is a mess since Gutenberg started. And the distances to do some basic stuff are so large. Click left, edit right, go back to the middle, add something go left top again. Its nearly unusable. Mostly i build an interface with ACF for my clients. But this can't be the way.
Gutenberg was an ill-conceived, unwanted, disaster forced upon us which gets worse with every release that seems to be more about developers doubling down on this hot mess rather than giving the community better tools and a better experience. Elementor (and other page builders) have been the only significant positive advancement to Wordpress in years and are largely the single reason to stick with Wordpress. Dump Gutenberg and begin thinking like your customers who largely have resisted it -- and with good reason. Thanks Paul for your great comments and giving voice to that which has been on the minds of many.
It all feels like the results of building a tool without a UX and UI team and process that communicates and plans with the development team. The challenge now is getting it all aligned. It’s been 6 years and it’s like they dug a hole so deep, it’s harder to get out of. And what’s worse, they keep digging.
100% agree, its a DISASTER Typical programmer delusions of "fix what is NOT BROKEN, and introduce new confusing features NO ONE ASKED FOR, while leaving the BROKEN ISSUES in place"
I'm am experienced WP user and to this day I struggle with block editor. First thing I do on every install is turn off this shitshow and use ACF plus standard editor. I've tried to teach clients on how to format a blog post few times and well... mission impossible. And how do you teach something which you yourself cannot use properly. 😀
Been using WordPress from the start and I hate the path it's going. Used to love building sites with it and users found the old editor very easy to add and edit content. Now clients need detailed instructions because what was once an easy to use (just like MS Word) content editor is now a mishmash of stuff. Editing a bit of text has become a multiple-click event, and if you click one thing it covers the other.. total pain in the back side.
Spot on! I hate core WordPress with a passion! I hate Elementor too, but I'm forced to used it anyway because of all the clusterf*ck that WordPress has become. Simple things like editing user permissions have to be done with a plugin. The default dashboard widgets can't be deactivated without a plugin. Default login url is another plugin. Can't deactivate core scripts/styles without a plugin. What in blue hell are GRAVATARS? Gutenberg sucks! Classic editor was waaaaay user friendly. Atleast you knew what you were getting I can rant on and on 😑
100% I love WordPress for three reasons: 1) It's supported by a countless number of plugins to make the end product highly functional and the WP dashboard less crappy. Without these, WordPress would be useless. 2) Currently, it's popular for being popular (like Kim Kardashian being famous because she's famous. She's not talented in any way. She's just..there). Because of that, there are TH-cam tutorials abounds if I ever need help with anything. I often times do. 3) I've been using it for 14 years so I know it. None of the reasons I've listed above include "because it's excellement". If anything, what makes it good is because pagebuilders like Elementor and the infinite plugins beat WordPress into submission and force it to be good (kind of)
Nailed it there. It's only the excellent plugins that make it an option. I either use a page builder or create a theme from scratch the traditional way. Even with page builders I'll abstract that interface away from the client and use ACF for the client to input content. For the first time in my almost 20 years using WordPress I'm facing the prospect of at some point moving away from it.
The other day I had to give a lesson to a class on wordpress and I found the new features to explain. I really struggled to make logical sense of the workflows to use. More than the ux esperience, it is the logic of the menus and submenus that is a nightmare.
Your criticism is valid and constructive. My frustration is (1) working with container blocks, there is not a coherent way to know which type of container has what properties. (2) Editing a post and you see the need to change a template, when finished with the template, you cannot directly return to the post. Wordpress suffers from ADHD.
I completely agree, I am a wordpress developer like 10+ years, and I am afraid to jump on the new FSE because it feels as you described. I cant imagine as you said if you are a new user...
First of all, I agree with all of your points. This last 6.6 update is a wake-up call for me. It shows that WP doesn't have a competitor but I hope that the direction they are going in will inspire programmers to get creative. Speaking of, what really saved them are genius visionaries like the creators of Elementor and classic theme developers. Bloggers have already a lot of work with crafting the article and preparing the gfx assets and SEO and and and. The last thing we need is this mess WP has become. I am ready to move on as soon as I can find a way to do so.
I followed the same path you took and it brought me to the correct locations. Then I checked the beginning of the video, yours was on v6.5.5. I'm on v6.6
Had this conversation at work the other day, Wordpress is a good solution if we need a designer (full-stack) to manage the client website before we get too crazy and have to bring on an Engineer to do custom development. We do Framer (easy builds), Custom Dev for Advanced stuff and Wordpress can be used for an in-between. But if Wordpress and/or elementor could level up like the UI of Framer or Squarespace, that would be awesome!
Paul, you are right. It is really difficult for our clients to understand how to either edit a post or page. We would really apreciate consistence as well because a lot of functionalities have a new look and other look extremely old. What should be an onboarding simple experience requires a lot of tutorials to teach users how to use it. And Gutenberg feels like a bad word yet.
@Paul, is it time to have a large scale poll that can be brought to WP? Maybe if there is enough traction with all of the different WP developers, integrators, trainers, and other interested parties, that might bring a little more needed attention to this and a cohesive message to Automattic/WP.
For me that's a completely different target group. As a developer those 3 are hell. Sure, wordpress could step up the gutenberg game finally but at the moment it's more about what elementor or bricks can deliver to folks who can't code.
@@jensgurLet me get this straight. Wordpress is democratizing publishing by not allowing you to build a decent website unless you’re fluent in HTML, CSS, JS (even some React if you want to really extend Gutenberg), PHP and whatever new JSON structure they add to extend Gutenberg once every two months? I’m all for learning web fundamentals to be a web designer, but some people want to be just that, We Designers. For them, HTML, CSS, JS is enough, and they really wish for their CMS to allow them to build the rest of the structure visually. Right now Wordpress core is practically banishing web designers to Framer and Webflow (which are not nightmares in any way other than data ownership) in order to keep Gutenber child friendly or something, instead of actually considering making it helpful for web design. I really wish all the Wordpress fundamentalists would stop with the elitism and understand their use case is not the one and only correct way to build websites. Does your end result have performance, accessibility, responsiveness, extensibility, and does it look good and help achieve business goals? Great. You’ve built a great website. We would all be using Gutenberg if it would actually help us achieve the above mentioned without requiring us learning 4-5 languages or frameworks.
Unless those web developers and clients are willing to pay for those solutions which they’re not cheap, you’re right. One of WP'S selling point is that it’s open source, and then there’s an old mindset that open source developers are very technical which that has changed over the years and as more non-technical people used it. They want something more intuitive like a basic word processor for web development
@@danielacosta9763 Majority of my clients don't really care what CMS I use, they usually have a set budget and specific requirements. The key to which are Support, Reliability, Speed, UX etc. Don't get me wrong I love WordPress (and Drupal) but WordPress is currently all over the place in terms UX (both as a developer and designer) as compared to Webflow.
I started using WordPress when the menu was at the top and the sidebar menu was a third party plugin. Back then, the sidebar menu was the coolest thing. I've always hated the Dashboard.
OMG - retired last year and thought I would learn a new hobby writing a blog, posting travel photos for family - so this summer made some good progress on WP and elementor was trying lots of features - then this update hit me like with new foreign displays and no continuity - I was asking just about every question you asked - how do I …? Much more difficult. A major failure for logical thinkers who are learning.
I am 100% in agreement with all of this. Cost of living crisis, elections, and climate change be damned - WordPress and its direction is the thing that gives me the most stress and frustration in my life. Literally. I really genuinely hate that I’ve painted myself into this ecosystem corner. I want to do things well, and I want to do things properly, but this all makes it nigh on impossible. I need to rethink my career. (and you didn’t even touch on the absolutely god-awful experience of theme development)
Agreed. I have a friend who rang me up the other day saying that she needs help with creating a simple WP blog, even though she managed to create one 4 years ago without any troubles. Guess what, that was a classic theme back then. Who thought that FSE should get its completely detached interface was wrong, give FSE the old WP look and feel and fix the CMS capabilities. THEN work on a new WP backend design. Also we need to differentiate between a WordPress for Advanced users that want to create professional websites and a WordPress for Basic users that just want to get their Blog online.
I totally agree. The disaster started with Gutenberg. It was a dead-end from the beginning and as it looks like, since then, the development-team of WordPress is so frustrated with what they had done, that they just didn't care anymore about the system and moved on to other projects.
I like the idea behind blocks and I think core blocks are more functional in 6.6 than before. But yes, UX is a real problem. I have been using the block editor for a long time but sometimes I get lost in it. I still believe it will be more useful in the next versions.
It doesn't seem it's been 6 years, does it? These (and a few more) are exactly the points of my criticisms about WordPress's UX/UI and how it has been neglected, especially (but not only) for those just starting out. It's a nightmare. What’s more: if you point out too many critical points you start to receive criticism that you have “fear of change”. These points seem pretty obvious to me, and some broken features haven't even been addressed in your video. Thanks Paul!
I’m still convinced that the Gutenberg project as a whole was the right thing to do: WordPress absolutely needed to become more modern, more user friendly, and more powerful in many aspects. But I totally agree with all the findings in this video as well: The current user interface is very confusing, inefficient - and it’s changing with every release. I can imagine that such a project is not a simple task, and it’s even more complex with an open source software where you typically have limited resources and complex decision making processes. But to see what we have more than five years after the first release of WordPress with the block editor is devastating. The development is extremely slow, and it obviously lacks a clear plan how the end result should look like.
I am a photographer and my website uses some theme that I have been using fir the past few years. Recently I planned to build few sites for some other work and instead of buying a theme I thought of us8ng the block editor and create what I want. After a few days, I got the hang of it. My experience with photos hop helps cos I understand layers and the block editor is pretty much layers. But for someone who has no clue about it, it's a mess. I am still finding so many things wh8ch make no sense at all. I am also a open source enthusiast. Not a developer but from time to time I like to install new Linux distros to see what's new. Open source has a huge issue in that they have absolutely no clue about UI/UX. They develop with their "nerd" community in mind. No wonder companies like Apple sell so well cos they understand the end user so well. It's appalling that WordPress UI/UX is so bad.
Have we already forgotten how unintuitive TinyMCE was? Gutenberg blows it out of the water for content editing, not to mention how many things are now possible with blocks that were impossible with TinyMCE. I do agree that the core team could take another pass at the UI and perhaps make some advanced blocks like Group more hidden so an average user doesn't stumble upon them. As a WordPress developer you should already be disabling all the non-used blocks and building page templates for users already! And if you are comparing Gutenberg to a page builder, you probably have a massive bias towards your page builder of choice. It's like switching from Photoshop to GIMP, you don't like it because you can't find anything. But it doesn't mean it's not capable.
@stanislavkhromov your comment is the most balanced in the comment section. I think Gutenberg and block themes are brilliant. It still needs some work with its responsiveness,, but you can work around it.
TinyMce is unitutive? Debatable, but that's not the point. Gutenberg is much more powerful but it's packaged in a way that makes using it a headache. And that's the point of the video. It has great features but terrible user experience.
I absolutely agree! I am actually embarressed when trying to explain to my clients how stuff works in their brand new website I just created fot them:)
The problem with updating the wordpress core to newer tech is that it would have broken pretty much all themes and plugins. So the team could only layer new modern features on top of it. Which is causing the old/new ui disconnected we are seeing. It was either we have a great intuitive ui but old plugins/themes would break or we keep plugin/theme compatibility but have an ui disaster. A better option imo(in hindsight) would have been update everything regardless in a major version. But still keep a few old versions on long term support so people can have time to transition. Having the core rebuilt using something like react would have taken wp to the next level.
My blood pressure goes up when I see Gutenberg. Gutenberg compared to Elementor is like a bullock cart compared to a 2024 BMW M5. The developers should admit that they can't do it. They are wasting their time and our brain cells. They should try their luck in the roofing industry or mowing lawns. And they should stop desecrating the memory of Johannes Gutenberg. I suggest you rename their creations from Gutenberg to Mekk Elek. Mekk Elek was a character in a 1970s Hungarian puppet series who destroyed everything he touched.
I totally agree. In Norway we have this saying that translate something like this into English: "Like a group of drunken sailors on a shore leave". Somehow I feel like this group was responsible for the UI/UX 😢 But jokes aside. I have seriously tried to get to grips with the core WP, Gutenberg, full site editing and so on, but I don't get it and I always return to my favourite page builder, basically because of the points you make in this video.
I agree already. Not much has changed since it was born. It's just been added to and added to, bits slapped on at seemingly random places with little thought to making a modular and extensible UI that caters to tasks the user needs to do here and now. Tragically, I think WordPress at this point are scared of making the much-needed changes that would make working with websites far more efficient, because it'll aggravate those users who hate learning new things. They should maybe build an optional new UI. I realize the biggest issue is getting plugin designers to adopt it, but perhaps a level of user customization could mean that it doesn't really matter if plug-in used to have its settings, buttons or inputs here or there, as you could decide for yourself where they appear.
I spent so much frustration in WP. As you quite rightly pointed out. I spent so much time trying to learn about the various links to other pages and options. WP is great but not intuitive.
I mainly use Elementor, so I haven't looked at FSE yet. But my limited experience when using Gutenberg isn't that great. It's small stuff, like when I'm editing a post and have a bulleted list, I press enter to start a new paragraph below it and it looks fine. But when you publish it, there's no space between the list and paragraph, so you have to add another space in the editor that doesn't look quite right but is somehow correct. And yeah, the whole typography settings are just rubbish. Another pain point is when I'm porting over several posts from an existing site that wasn't built in Wordpress. So I copy over the text, hit publish, but how do I add a new post from within the editor? The Classic Editor has a simple 'Add New' button at the very top. But in Gutenberg? If it's there, it's hidden pretty damn well. I have to back out of the editor and go back to the Posts page, and create a new one from there. It's not a site-breaking thing, but it doesn't make me very interested in leaving page builders and joining the Gutenberg / FSE experience. A lot of the stuff shown in this video was new to me since I haven't needed to dive into 'core' Wordpress, and it looks awful. The menu system particularly looks just...broken.
A ####### MEN. Add on the top WordPress's absolutely terrible overall platform-level communication. This video echoes most of Kevin's rants, but in a much more digestible format and tone. What really stinks right now, is that WordPress just does not care. Because they still feel like the king in the room, they completely ignore anything outside their reality distortion bubble. WP is not alone in that most tech companies are acting this way, but WordPress gives this attitude of we're really trying, yet completely ignoring real world issues. Automattic could just take a pause and actually have an open forum (where they do more than act like they are listening and maybe even take notes. But, they won't, because in their minds, they know everything.
As you say, they don’t seem to care and the explanation is the fact that Mullenweg has gained the most personal satisfaction and adulation from all this with all the investments. To him it’s all jazz at this stage and he just throws it out there for everyone to fight over the bones. For those of us looking in, it looks more like, as one person said to me recently, a cacophony of noise from a badly trained drum circle. As somebody above said it’s the best mankind can come up with and to a degree this reflects roughly to the crumby state of the tech industry as a whole. We’re at the stage, with a lot maturation still ahead of us.
Sorry, of course WP UX/UI can be improve but frankly this is not the priority. Rather media management (coming in the future backoffice), responsive features for mobile (not sure to see them one day 🙄),advanced responsive menus and missing blocks (powerful table, conditional content, icon list, popup, animation, maps, basic forms...)... are more important than questions about UX/UI. See for example the recent TH-cam video of Adam Preiser/WP crafter on WordPress 6.6 regarding Responsive and limitations of Intrinsic... and why WordPress is not a good usable tool for mobile design.
This year, I completely stepped back from WordPress. Likewise, I have stepped back from the page builder approach of designing websites. As you already mentioned, the UI and UX in WordPress is total disaster. Next year, a new law will come into effect in Europe, stating that all company websites in Europe must have accessible features. How will WordPress handle this? Even though WP continues to dominate the market, there are far more intuitive CMS options available. I personally switched to Grav for creating dynamic websites. For everything else, I use Jekyll as a Static Site Generator. I have significantly more freedom in designing a website. Although I now have to edit everything in the source code myself, I am not limited by a page builder. Even Grav isn't perfect and has some downsides. But it does better than WP most of the time. The WordPress API has also become far too complicated over the years. Designing themes is no longer enjoyable. Programming custom plugins with the API has become an absolute nightmare. WordPress has lost its focus and has become way too complex. Since Gutenberg, it has only gotten worse. It feels like with every major update, WordPress is filled with even more bloatware.
It's all well and good until they need ecommerce like Woo. Or calendar/tickets, or membership stuff, etc. I'm not building those things from scratch because my "better CMS" doesn't have any good commercial addons.
9:17 - old blog-based terminology haunts new block-based experience. A nostalgic and tribal attachment to tradition; Web 1.0 literacy By definition, "paragraph" can't be merged due to it's over-specificity. It could if generalized to 'text', which is also consistent with 'image'.
Figuring out this FSE UI makes me want to give up and code everything instead. HTML and CSS haven't changed all that much, so why do we need to reinvent the wheel of web design.
I wonder why Elementor page builder is so smooth to work with, compared to Wordpress based page builders, e.g. Spectra. Most graphic designers are transitioning to Webflow (i like to do the same and brush up on my skills in HTML, CSS and Javascript).
You have said what I have been trying to say but you are doing a fantastic way better job of saying it! Thank you! This is so true it hurts. Classic Plugin forever!
I prefer the classic editor. Tbh the UX does not bother me. I think Gutenberg shoukd be the optional plugin not the classic editor. I dont think WP should be trying to be the next elementor etc. It just needs to concentrate on core stability, speed, security etc, and let the plugin developers do the rest.
WTH is wrong with the Wordpress DEV Team ? Please pass on this video to the wordpress team... Very important review comments / insights shared by Paul..
100% agree, if there wasn't ACF I doubt I would use it. It feels very reactionary right now trying to be a bit of everything and all built on an aging platform.
A brand new WordPress site is for a designer/developer or for a site administrator/owner? 1, the interface is okay. 2, some complex and advanced things should be hidden (templates and patters basically), but activable
I have been using WP for a few years. I'm not a developer, just an end user who also likes to tinker around. One thing i absolutely hate is that adding a post, a user is only shown the title and content section. The user then adds without seeing what the final page is going to look like. It would be so much simpler to show the user the template of the post, and they can fill in the relevant details like the featured image or headings or whatever. So much easier. Hope that changes soon. Nad in fhe new block editor, i hate that all the options are not shown to the user by default. For example, in the typography section so many options are hidden. Why TF should these be hidden? Its ridiculous. Why cant they show all the options by default? Hiding options makes no sense.
"Especially if you try to teach your customers to use it (after delivering the website) 😊" - I am such a customer and struggle till today to come around wordpress with its thousands of plugins. I think for them its a money machine and from this side it surely works (at least until now). May be this video can be a wake up call.
I agree with you. But I also fear that when they make it easier for beginners, they will forget about the experts. That means a hundred more clicks before you come to the point where you want to get. And I don't understand it. With so many people supporting WordPress, there should be a few that have a good experience with UX and UI design.
100% agree. A great project made deliberately incomplete to sell plugins and templates? The media gallery is chaotic and primal. The media library is chaotic, almost unusable without plugins.
The evolution of a Frankenstein UI: a cut-and-shut CMS that feels like the worst aspects of design by committee. I wish WP would approach the backend similarly to the front - basic building blocks to build "up" what is required, rather than working against a pre-built solution that's imperfect for almost all use cases. Kirby CMS has precisely the right approach to this. Thanks for the video Paul.
I’m a Bricks user so have avoided most of this. But I had NO IDEA things had gotten so bad in Core. Just what the hell is going on with Wordpress HQ. I can see someone forking wp into a more sane, stripped down version as a schism waiting to happen.
thanks! I was gonna create a channel to just address all those horrible "time loosers"... it's so inefficient and I really don't have time to make videos.. thanks for reading my mind! @Gearyco also should jump on the train highlighting those unbelievably overdue "time loosers"... thanks again! I hope WP finally takes web development SERIOUS. cheers mate.
This happens where pure developers are developing a platform. It was alright back in the days, but in 2024 this is not really acceptable any more. We can see it in the US, where design led CEO are making tons of money because they actually care about the users and not the software itself. What is interesting to see also, is that Matt is angry that people are not adopting Gutenberg enough, but people will never adopt it 100% because it's a nightmare to use in the first place, and I'm almost afraid to say that is too late to make bigger changes to it. There are great page builders that are doing a much better job than Gutenberg at the moment. I like wordpress, but there are companies who understand users, and they will take a huge part of the market if not other headless options will.
😄I love the way that you give them free UI/UX advices and this is invaluable and so funny at the same time, thank you for this video and I hope they watch it and listen to you.
Wordpress excelled at being a basic framework with great, standardized, stable hooks for third party solutions. It's trying to be everything now and doing nothing well.
Isn't it mind-blowing how a popular platform like this has such bad UI/UX? I've been using it for over 15 years and it still feels so confusing and unnecessarily complicated to use.
I was excited because I thought the project would get us away from short codes, but in its implementation with JavaScript, it has just added so much unnecessary duplication (i'm looking at you styles) and obfuscation.
It’s embarrassing bro how little WP itself has advanced in all these years. Yes it’s all because of the best theme and plugin developers own enhancements that we still embrace the platform. The rate at which my despised platforms Wix and Squarespace are embracing Ai and best Ui UX we will see how all shakes out
They should buy Kadence and go that route. The Gutenberg concept is really good under the bonnet, but the user interface is a horror. I feel like the project has lost its vision. As if entropy (ego-driven developers) had gained the upper hand ... The backend frontend principle also clashes with the full page editing and the template editing in the middle rides the horse to death. The will to simplicity has been strangled. Another 2 years and we will have a successor for Typo3.
I am using this nightmare for the past 20 years, and I couldn't agree more with you. In the 21st century, it looks and feels like it was put together with a hammer.
100% agree. Even worse: this nightmare is the best humanity has made so far. We are still at the Stoneage of website builder.
@@meygavox
I still remember Microsoft's FrontPage :)
Precisely my experience as a newcomer 😂
A hammer? You are generous, assuming they even used a real tool. I'd say the back heel of a shoe.
Absolutely agree! I used to work with the Webflow, and just started to learn WordPress, and just wonder, why people still using this platform?
Oh boy, I couldn't agree more. Especially if you try to teach your customers to use it (after delivering the website) 😊
"What is a post?",
"What is a"page" and why can't I add page to the navigation directly from the page editing screen?",
"Why my Woocommerce shop order numbers are random and not sequential?"
Etc etc
100% aligned with your perspective here Paul. We need to have these discussions despite how painful they are.
Total agree. WP is a mess since Gutenberg started. And the distances to do some basic stuff are so large. Click left, edit right, go back to the middle, add something go left top again. Its nearly unusable. Mostly i build an interface with ACF for my clients. But this can't be the way.
That's exactly how I work - all ACF based. The UI is totally unusable for end-users, barely usable for techies.
I am so glad I never got into that Gutenberg crap. Stayed with Elementor and the Classic Editor.
Gutenberg was an ill-conceived, unwanted, disaster forced upon us which gets worse with every release that seems to be more about developers doubling down on this hot mess rather than giving the community better tools and a better experience. Elementor (and other page builders) have been the only significant positive advancement to Wordpress in years and are largely the single reason to stick with Wordpress. Dump Gutenberg and begin thinking like your customers who largely have resisted it -- and with good reason. Thanks Paul for your great comments and giving voice to that which has been on the minds of many.
It all feels like the results of building a tool without a UX and UI team and process that communicates and plans with the development team. The challenge now is getting it all aligned. It’s been 6 years and it’s like they dug a hole so deep, it’s harder to get out of. And what’s worse, they keep digging.
100% agree, its a DISASTER
Typical programmer delusions of "fix what is NOT BROKEN, and introduce new confusing features NO ONE ASKED FOR, while leaving the BROKEN ISSUES in place"
💯💯💯💯💯
I'm am experienced WP user and to this day I struggle with block editor. First thing I do on every install is turn off this shitshow and use ACF plus standard editor. I've tried to teach clients on how to format a blog post few times and well... mission impossible. And how do you teach something which you yourself cannot use properly. 😀
Been using WordPress from the start and I hate the path it's going. Used to love building sites with it and users found the old editor very easy to add and edit content. Now clients need detailed instructions because what was once an easy to use (just like MS Word) content editor is now a mishmash of stuff. Editing a bit of text has become a multiple-click event, and if you click one thing it covers the other.. total pain in the back side.
Completely agree Paul. It is astonishing that WP is the way it is after so many years. I’m embarrassed when I introduce clients to the backend.
I will lost client..
I always thought so, even more so with Gutenberg.
Everything is spot on. If it weren't for Elementor, I probably wouldn't use Wordpress))))
You nailed it! Elementor is actually saving Wordpress from going down.
Same here !
Spot on! I hate core WordPress with a passion! I hate Elementor too, but I'm forced to used it anyway because of all the clusterf*ck that WordPress has become.
Simple things like editing user permissions have to be done with a plugin. The default dashboard widgets can't be deactivated without a plugin. Default login url is another plugin.
Can't deactivate core scripts/styles without a plugin. What in blue hell are GRAVATARS? Gutenberg sucks! Classic editor was waaaaay user friendly. Atleast you knew what you were getting
I can rant on and on 😑
Go try bricks. Trust a dev that went through all these page builders and FSE. Go try bricks builder!
100% I love WordPress for three reasons:
1) It's supported by a countless number of plugins to make the end product highly functional and the WP dashboard less crappy. Without these, WordPress would be useless.
2) Currently, it's popular for being popular (like Kim Kardashian being famous because she's famous. She's not talented in any way. She's just..there). Because of that, there are TH-cam tutorials abounds if I ever need help with anything. I often times do.
3) I've been using it for 14 years so I know it.
None of the reasons I've listed above include "because it's excellement". If anything, what makes it good is because pagebuilders like Elementor and the infinite plugins beat WordPress into submission and force it to be good (kind of)
I rest my case - as I said in the video, the eco-system plugs the many, many holes in the whole experience.
Nailed it there. It's only the excellent plugins that make it an option. I either use a page builder or create a theme from scratch the traditional way. Even with page builders I'll abstract that interface away from the client and use ACF for the client to input content. For the first time in my almost 20 years using WordPress I'm facing the prospect of at some point moving away from it.
Absolutely nailed it! I'm currently not using WordPress, but I have every now and then in the past 15-20 years and it actually always felt like that.
Such a mess, so sad. We are lucky having tools like Bricks. Thanks, Thomas! ♥
The other day I had to give a lesson to a class on wordpress and I found the new features to explain. I really struggled to make logical sense of the workflows to use. More than the ux esperience, it is the logic of the menus and submenus that is a nightmare.
Waiting for a comment from Kevin Geary 😅
Your criticism is valid and constructive. My frustration is (1) working with container blocks, there is not a coherent way to know which type of container has what properties. (2) Editing a post and you see the need to change a template, when finished with the template, you cannot directly return to the post. Wordpress suffers from ADHD.
I completely agree, I am a wordpress developer like 10+ years, and I am afraid to jump on the new FSE because it feels as you described. I cant imagine as you said if you are a new user...
First of all, I agree with all of your points. This last 6.6 update is a wake-up call for me. It shows that WP doesn't have a competitor but I hope that the direction they are going in will inspire programmers to get creative. Speaking of, what really saved them are genius visionaries like the creators of Elementor and classic theme developers.
Bloggers have already a lot of work with crafting the article and preparing the gfx assets and SEO and and and. The last thing we need is this mess WP has become. I am ready to move on as soon as I can find a way to do so.
Spot on! I refuse to touch Gutenberg with a 10-foot pole due to these and other similar reasons.
Despite that I'm getting used to the core interface, I have to admit THIS CRITICISM IS CRAZY TRUE
I followed the same path you took and it brought me to the correct locations. Then I checked the beginning of the video, yours was on v6.5.5. I'm on v6.6
Had this conversation at work the other day, Wordpress is a good solution if we need a designer (full-stack) to manage the client website before we get too crazy and have to bring on an Engineer to do custom development. We do Framer (easy builds), Custom Dev for Advanced stuff and Wordpress can be used for an in-between. But if Wordpress and/or elementor could level up like the UI of Framer or Squarespace, that would be awesome!
I think that you are 'spot on' with your opinion Paul. I find FSE too difficult so I stay away from it. Thanks for speaking up about this
Oh My Word.... it is like you've been in my head for the last 8 months!!!! And it wasn't exaggerative at all.
Paul, you are right. It is really difficult for our clients to understand how to either edit a post or page. We would really apreciate consistence as well because a lot of functionalities have a new look and other look extremely old. What should be an onboarding simple experience requires a lot of tutorials to teach users how to use it. And Gutenberg feels like a bad word yet.
@Paul, is it time to have a large scale poll that can be brought to WP? Maybe if there is enough traction with all of the different WP developers, integrators, trainers, and other interested parties, that might bring a little more needed attention to this and a cohesive message to Automattic/WP.
I hate Gutenberg. The first thing I do is install the classic editor plugin
You are absolutely right 👍
If this continues, Wordpress will keep losing market share to the likes of Webflow, Framer, Wix Studio etc.
For me that's a completely different target group. As a developer those 3 are hell. Sure, wordpress could step up the gutenberg game finally but at the moment it's more about what elementor or bricks can deliver to folks who can't code.
@@jensgur WordPress has already lost market to these new entrants, and will continue to.
@@jensgurLet me get this straight. Wordpress is democratizing publishing by not allowing you to build a decent website unless you’re fluent in HTML, CSS, JS (even some React if you want to really extend Gutenberg), PHP and whatever new JSON structure they add to extend Gutenberg once every two months?
I’m all for learning web fundamentals to be a web designer, but some people want to be just that, We Designers. For them, HTML, CSS, JS is enough, and they really wish for their CMS to allow them to build the rest of the structure visually.
Right now Wordpress core is practically banishing web designers to Framer and Webflow (which are not nightmares in any way other than data ownership) in order to keep Gutenber child friendly or something, instead of actually considering making it helpful for web design.
I really wish all the Wordpress fundamentalists would stop with the elitism and understand their use case is not the one and only correct way to build websites. Does your end result have performance, accessibility, responsiveness, extensibility, and does it look good and help achieve business goals? Great. You’ve built a great website.
We would all be using Gutenberg if it would actually help us achieve the above mentioned without requiring us learning 4-5 languages or frameworks.
Unless those web developers and clients are willing to pay for those solutions which they’re not cheap, you’re right. One of WP'S selling point is that it’s open source, and then there’s an old mindset that open source developers are very technical which that has changed over the years and as more non-technical people used it. They want something more intuitive like a basic word processor for web development
@@danielacosta9763 Majority of my clients don't really care what CMS I use, they usually have a set budget and specific requirements. The key to which are Support, Reliability, Speed, UX etc. Don't get me wrong I love WordPress (and Drupal) but WordPress is currently all over the place in terms UX (both as a developer and designer) as compared to Webflow.
I totally agree. I'm a new WP user - forced by employer. There's nothing intuitive about the admin interface.
And I always thought I was too stupid. Apparently many, many people feel the same way. Thanks for this video from a professional!💕🤔
You're so welcome!
I started using WordPress when the menu was at the top and the sidebar menu was a third party plugin. Back then, the sidebar menu was the coolest thing. I've always hated the Dashboard.
OMG - retired last year and thought I would learn a new hobby writing a blog, posting travel photos for family - so this summer made some good progress on WP and elementor was trying lots of features - then this update hit me like with new foreign displays and no continuity - I was asking just about every question you asked - how do I …? Much more difficult. A major failure for logical thinkers who are learning.
I am 100% in agreement with all of this. Cost of living crisis, elections, and climate change be damned - WordPress and its direction is the thing that gives me the most stress and frustration in my life. Literally.
I really genuinely hate that I’ve painted myself into this ecosystem corner. I want to do things well, and I want to do things properly, but this all makes it nigh on impossible. I need to rethink my career.
(and you didn’t even touch on the absolutely god-awful experience of theme development)
Agreed. I have a friend who rang me up the other day saying that she needs help with creating a simple WP blog, even though she managed to create one 4 years ago without any troubles. Guess what, that was a classic theme back then. Who thought that FSE should get its completely detached interface was wrong, give FSE the old WP look and feel and fix the CMS capabilities. THEN work on a new WP backend design. Also we need to differentiate between a WordPress for Advanced users that want to create professional websites and a WordPress for Basic users that just want to get their Blog online.
I totally agree. The disaster started with Gutenberg. It was a dead-end from the beginning and as it looks like, since then, the development-team of WordPress is so frustrated with what they had done, that they just didn't care anymore about the system and moved on to other projects.
As front-end who's new to WP, all you said is what I feel at the moment and now I also understand why as of now I don't enjoy working with WP.
I like the idea behind blocks and I think core blocks are more functional in 6.6 than before. But yes, UX is a real problem. I have been using the block editor for a long time but sometimes I get lost in it. I still believe it will be more useful in the next versions.
It doesn't seem it's been 6 years, does it? These (and a few more) are exactly the points of my criticisms about WordPress's UX/UI and how it has been neglected, especially (but not only) for those just starting out. It's a nightmare.
What’s more: if you point out too many critical points you start to receive criticism that you have “fear of change”. These points seem pretty obvious to me, and some broken features haven't even been addressed in your video.
Thanks Paul!
I’m still convinced that the Gutenberg project as a whole was the right thing to do: WordPress absolutely needed to become more modern, more user friendly, and more powerful in many aspects. But I totally agree with all the findings in this video as well: The current user interface is very confusing, inefficient - and it’s changing with every release. I can imagine that such a project is not a simple task, and it’s even more complex with an open source software where you typically have limited resources and complex decision making processes. But to see what we have more than five years after the first release of WordPress with the block editor is devastating. The development is extremely slow, and it obviously lacks a clear plan how the end result should look like.
I am a photographer and my website uses some theme that I have been using fir the past few years. Recently I planned to build few sites for some other work and instead of buying a theme I thought of us8ng the block editor and create what I want. After a few days, I got the hang of it. My experience with photos hop helps cos I understand layers and the block editor is pretty much layers.
But for someone who has no clue about it, it's a mess. I am still finding so many things wh8ch make no sense at all. I am also a open source enthusiast. Not a developer but from time to time I like to install new Linux distros to see what's new.
Open source has a huge issue in that they have absolutely no clue about UI/UX. They develop with their "nerd" community in mind. No wonder companies like Apple sell so well cos they understand the end user so well. It's appalling that WordPress UI/UX is so bad.
Have we already forgotten how unintuitive TinyMCE was? Gutenberg blows it out of the water for content editing, not to mention how many things are now possible with blocks that were impossible with TinyMCE.
I do agree that the core team could take another pass at the UI and perhaps make some advanced blocks like Group more hidden so an average user doesn't stumble upon them. As a WordPress developer you should already be disabling all the non-used blocks and building page templates for users already!
And if you are comparing Gutenberg to a page builder, you probably have a massive bias towards your page builder of choice. It's like switching from Photoshop to GIMP, you don't like it because you can't find anything. But it doesn't mean it's not capable.
How can your takeaway from this video be to hide more things from experts?
@@EmSixTeen Because the video was about reviewing the content authoring experience, not about Gutenberg as a page builder replacement.
@stanislavkhromov your comment is the most balanced in the comment section. I think Gutenberg and block themes are brilliant. It still needs some work with its responsiveness,, but you can work around it.
TinyMce is unitutive? Debatable, but that's not the point. Gutenberg is much more powerful but it's packaged in a way that makes using it a headache. And that's the point of the video. It has great features but terrible user experience.
I absolutely agree! I am actually embarressed when trying to explain to my clients how stuff works in their brand new website I just created fot them:)
I´m looking to test some alternatives to WordPress, any recommendation?
I wondered why people were going to Substack. This UI is why.
The problem with updating the wordpress core to newer tech is that it would have broken pretty much all themes and plugins. So the team could only layer new modern features on top of it. Which is causing the old/new ui disconnected we are seeing. It was either we have a great intuitive ui but old plugins/themes would break or we keep plugin/theme compatibility but have an ui disaster.
A better option imo(in hindsight) would have been update everything regardless in a major version. But still keep a few old versions on long term support so people can have time to transition. Having the core rebuilt using something like react would have taken wp to the next level.
My blood pressure goes up when I see Gutenberg. Gutenberg compared to Elementor is like a bullock cart compared to a 2024 BMW M5. The developers should admit that they can't do it. They are wasting their time and our brain cells. They should try their luck in the roofing industry or mowing lawns. And they should stop desecrating the memory of Johannes Gutenberg. I suggest you rename their creations from Gutenberg to Mekk Elek. Mekk Elek was a character in a 1970s Hungarian puppet series who destroyed everything he touched.
I disagree. Gutenberg with some enhancements like Kadence is great.
Gutenberg is the worst non-intuitive tool i ever met 🤦
I totally agree. In Norway we have this saying that translate something like this into English: "Like a group of drunken sailors on a shore leave".
Somehow I feel like this group was responsible for the UI/UX 😢
But jokes aside. I have seriously tried to get to grips with the core WP, Gutenberg, full site editing and so on, but I don't get it and I always return to my favourite page builder, basically because of the points you make in this video.
Thank you, Paul! I'm a new user, and you are just voiced my thoughts!
I agree already. Not much has changed since it was born. It's just been added to and added to, bits slapped on at seemingly random places with little thought to making a modular and extensible UI that caters to tasks the user needs to do here and now. Tragically, I think WordPress at this point are scared of making the much-needed changes that would make working with websites far more efficient, because it'll aggravate those users who hate learning new things. They should maybe build an optional new UI. I realize the biggest issue is getting plugin designers to adopt it, but perhaps a level of user customization could mean that it doesn't really matter if plug-in used to have its settings, buttons or inputs here or there, as you could decide for yourself where they appear.
I use WordPress. Many are switching over the Webflow and Framer. On on the fence about it, at least for now. What are your thoughts?
I like that all Wordpress creators have finally agreed about the random Block Editor random naming being harming to all users.
Your humor is more European than British! Keep on! (By the way... in this video... I agree with you 100%)
I spent so much frustration in WP. As you quite rightly pointed out. I spent so much time trying to learn about the various links to other pages and options. WP is great but not intuitive.
This Guy is Really helpful. Thanks a ton
I mainly use Elementor, so I haven't looked at FSE yet. But my limited experience when using Gutenberg isn't that great. It's small stuff, like when I'm editing a post and have a bulleted list, I press enter to start a new paragraph below it and it looks fine. But when you publish it, there's no space between the list and paragraph, so you have to add another space in the editor that doesn't look quite right but is somehow correct. And yeah, the whole typography settings are just rubbish.
Another pain point is when I'm porting over several posts from an existing site that wasn't built in Wordpress. So I copy over the text, hit publish, but how do I add a new post from within the editor? The Classic Editor has a simple 'Add New' button at the very top. But in Gutenberg? If it's there, it's hidden pretty damn well. I have to back out of the editor and go back to the Posts page, and create a new one from there. It's not a site-breaking thing, but it doesn't make me very interested in leaving page builders and joining the Gutenberg / FSE experience.
A lot of the stuff shown in this video was new to me since I haven't needed to dive into 'core' Wordpress, and it looks awful. The menu system particularly looks just...broken.
OMG, spot on. Couldn't agree more. Loving the rant.
I still use clasic editor
A ####### MEN. Add on the top WordPress's absolutely terrible overall platform-level communication.
This video echoes most of Kevin's rants, but in a much more digestible format and tone. What really stinks right now, is that WordPress just does not care. Because they still feel like the king in the room, they completely ignore anything outside their reality distortion bubble. WP is not alone in that most tech companies are acting this way, but WordPress gives this attitude of we're really trying, yet completely ignoring real world issues. Automattic could just take a pause and actually have an open forum (where they do more than act like they are listening and maybe even take notes. But, they won't, because in their minds, they know everything.
As you say, they don’t seem to care and the explanation is the fact that Mullenweg has gained the most personal satisfaction and adulation from all this with all the investments. To him it’s all jazz at this stage and he just throws it out there for everyone to fight over the bones. For those of us looking in, it looks more like, as one person said to me recently, a cacophony of noise from a badly trained drum circle.
As somebody above said it’s the best mankind can come up with and to a degree this reflects roughly to the crumby state of the tech industry as a whole. We’re at the stage, with a lot maturation still ahead of us.
Sorry, of course WP UX/UI can be improve but frankly this is not the priority. Rather media management (coming in the future backoffice), responsive features for mobile (not sure to see them one day 🙄),advanced responsive menus and missing blocks (powerful table, conditional content, icon list, popup, animation, maps, basic forms...)... are more important than questions about UX/UI. See for example the recent TH-cam video of Adam Preiser/WP crafter on WordPress 6.6 regarding Responsive and limitations of Intrinsic... and why WordPress is not a good usable tool for mobile design.
Excellent Paul, tragically true and extremely funny! Thanks for your sense of humor, we learn so much more... and better 😊.
This year, I completely stepped back from WordPress. Likewise, I have stepped back from the page builder approach of designing websites. As you already mentioned, the UI and UX in WordPress is total disaster. Next year, a new law will come into effect in Europe, stating that all company websites in Europe must have accessible features. How will WordPress handle this?
Even though WP continues to dominate the market, there are far more intuitive CMS options available. I personally switched to Grav for creating dynamic websites. For everything else, I use Jekyll as a Static Site Generator. I have significantly more freedom in designing a website. Although I now have to edit everything in the source code myself, I am not limited by a page builder. Even Grav isn't perfect and has some downsides. But it does better than WP most of the time.
The WordPress API has also become far too complicated over the years. Designing themes is no longer enjoyable. Programming custom plugins with the API has become an absolute nightmare. WordPress has lost its focus and has become way too complex. Since Gutenberg, it has only gotten worse. It feels like with every major update, WordPress is filled with even more bloatware.
It's all well and good until they need ecommerce like Woo. Or calendar/tickets, or membership stuff, etc.
I'm not building those things from scratch because my "better CMS" doesn't have any good commercial addons.
"The simplification has led to more complexity." 9:58💡🤔
9:17 - old blog-based terminology haunts new block-based experience.
A nostalgic and tribal attachment to tradition; Web 1.0 literacy
By definition, "paragraph" can't be merged due to it's over-specificity.
It could if generalized to 'text', which is also consistent with 'image'.
Figuring out this FSE UI makes me want to give up and code everything instead. HTML and CSS haven't changed all that much, so why do we need to reinvent the wheel of web design.
So needed to be said. Thanks Paul.
Gutenberg is the worst thing happened to WordPress
Sorry, my clients prefer Gutenberg and at least try to learn it. The original wordpress editor was crap.
@@ricardocarrera2 prefer Gutenberg? dis they tried the original editor? - I am sure the original editor needed a revamp, but gutenberg was not.
No, All the different page builders are the worst thing that happened to WordPress, it should never have been allowed...
@JohannFritz78 nobody wants to keep using a plain text box.
@@vigilantezack Try using Gutenberg with Kadence...
I wonder why Elementor page builder is so smooth to work with, compared to Wordpress based page builders, e.g. Spectra. Most graphic designers are transitioning to Webflow (i like to do the same and brush up on my skills in HTML, CSS and Javascript).
You have said what I have been trying to say but you are doing a fantastic way better job of saying it! Thank you! This is so true it hurts. Classic Plugin forever!
I prefer the classic editor. Tbh the UX does not bother me. I think Gutenberg shoukd be the optional plugin not the classic editor.
I dont think WP should be trying to be the next elementor etc. It just needs to concentrate on core stability, speed, security etc, and let the plugin developers do the rest.
You are 100% spot on.
WTH is wrong with the Wordpress DEV Team ?
Please pass on this video to the wordpress team...
Very important review comments / insights shared by Paul..
100% agree, if there wasn't ACF I doubt I would use it. It feels very reactionary right now trying to be a bit of everything and all built on an aging platform.
A brand new WordPress site is for a designer/developer or for a site administrator/owner?
1, the interface is okay.
2, some complex and advanced things should be hidden (templates and patters basically), but activable
I have been using WP for a few years. I'm not a developer, just an end user who also likes to tinker around. One thing i absolutely hate is that adding a post, a user is only shown the title and content section. The user then adds without seeing what the final page is going to look like. It would be so much simpler to show the user the template of the post, and they can fill in the relevant details like the featured image or headings or whatever. So much easier. Hope that changes soon.
Nad in fhe new block editor, i hate that all the options are not shown to the user by default. For example, in the typography section so many options are hidden. Why TF should these be hidden? Its ridiculous. Why cant they show all the options by default? Hiding options makes no sense.
"Especially if you try to teach your customers to use it (after delivering the website) 😊" - I am such a customer and struggle till today to come around wordpress with its thousands of plugins. I think for them its a money machine and from this side it surely works (at least until now).
May be this video can be a wake up call.
Yes I also agree. I think WP has gone downhill in terms of UI ever since legacy editor was removed as standard.
I spent half an hour just making the section full width.
I agree with you. But I also fear that when they make it easier for beginners, they will forget about the experts. That means a hundred more clicks before you come to the point where you want to get. And I don't understand it. With so many people supporting WordPress, there should be a few that have a good experience with UX and UI design.
We developers, might not know the insights of this UX but the Designers who designed it kept it secretly in their minds.
I don't think an actual designer has ever worked on this mess.
100% agree. A great project made deliberately incomplete to sell plugins and templates? The media gallery is chaotic and primal. The media library is chaotic, almost unusable without plugins.
The evolution of a Frankenstein UI: a cut-and-shut CMS that feels like the worst aspects of design by committee. I wish WP would approach the backend similarly to the front - basic building blocks to build "up" what is required, rather than working against a pre-built solution that's imperfect for almost all use cases. Kirby CMS has precisely the right approach to this. Thanks for the video Paul.
If only there was away we could all tag Mr Matt or automattic directly in this pist
I’m a Bricks user so have avoided most of this. But I had NO IDEA things had gotten so bad in Core.
Just what the hell is going on with Wordpress HQ. I can see someone forking wp into a more sane, stripped down version as a schism waiting to happen.
thanks! I was gonna create a channel to just address all those horrible "time loosers"... it's so inefficient and I really don't have time to make videos.. thanks for reading my mind! @Gearyco also should jump on the train highlighting those unbelievably overdue "time loosers"... thanks again! I hope WP finally takes web development SERIOUS. cheers mate.
Can you contribute those changes you talk about?
This happens where pure developers are developing a platform. It was alright back in the days, but in 2024 this is not really acceptable any more. We can see it in the US, where design led CEO are making tons of money because they actually care about the users and not the software itself. What is interesting to see also, is that Matt is angry that people are not adopting Gutenberg enough, but people will never adopt it 100% because it's a nightmare to use in the first place, and I'm almost afraid to say that is too late to make bigger changes to it. There are great page builders that are doing a much better job than Gutenberg at the moment. I like wordpress, but there are companies who understand users, and they will take a huge part of the market if not other headless options will.
i agree with you!
😄I love the way that you give them free UI/UX advices and this is invaluable and so funny at the same time, thank you for this video and I hope they watch it and listen to you.
Wordpress excelled at being a basic framework with great, standardized, stable hooks for third party solutions. It's trying to be everything now and doing nothing well.
Isn't it mind-blowing how a popular platform like this has such bad UI/UX? I've been using it for over 15 years and it still feels so confusing and unnecessarily complicated to use.
I deal with Gutenberg the same way I deal with horror movies. Pull a blanket over my eyes and repeat to myself - don't look don't look!
Sadly 100% true! The ecosystem for extending and the freedom to install it on almost any low-end server is the unbeatable strength of WP for me.
I was excited because I thought the project would get us away from short codes, but in its implementation with JavaScript, it has just added so much unnecessary duplication (i'm looking at you styles) and obfuscation.
It’s embarrassing bro how little WP itself has advanced in all these years. Yes it’s all because of the best theme and plugin developers own enhancements that we still embrace the platform. The rate at which my despised platforms Wix and Squarespace are embracing Ai and best Ui UX we will see how all shakes out
If it weren't for Elementor I'd still be working in Dreamweaver or something similar like Brackets
Well said, thank you!
They should buy Kadence and go that route. The Gutenberg concept is really good under the bonnet, but the user interface is a horror. I feel like the project has lost its vision. As if entropy (ego-driven developers) had gained the upper hand ...
The backend frontend principle also clashes with the full page editing and the template editing in the middle rides the horse to death. The will to simplicity has been strangled.
Another 2 years and we will have a successor for Typo3.
Sums it up for me.
FSE is rubbish compared to the Customizer, all we needed was a few extra template areas.