Gutenberg has not even been officially released yet and is already causing disruption in the WordPress ecosystem. Before I get too deep into this post I want to preface it by saying I am a fan of Gutenberg, and I believe in the long run its going to do great things for WordPress. I believe that the WordPress ecosystem is having an extreme case of who moved my cheese syndrome. Article after article has come out against Gutenberg but one thing I think people have failed to realize was that it is still being developed. What users have been testing is not a finished product which is why its not in core yet. I’ve been keeping up with the project since it was first announced and I will admit, I had some reservation in the beginning but those have been going away with each new release. With that said there is one market that no one can deny that Gutenberg is disrupting and that is page builders.

Many have wondered if and how page builders would adapt, or collapse as a result of Gutenberg. The first project I seen to announce that they were ending active development because of Gutenberg was Tailor Page Builder. It was kind of an initial shock to see that announcement but considering that its relatively a smaller project with about 3,000+ installs it didn’t really send up any major red flags. Today though I woke up to the news that WPMU was ending their Upfront project. WPMU is a major player in the premium plugin space, and after investing over 1 Million into the initial release of Upfront this seems like a major 1-2 punch from Gutenberg.

While some builders are folding under Gutenberg pressure others are trying to adapt. Beaver Builder recently released a beta version of their plugin that works with Gutenberg. SiteOrigin is also working on adapting and working with Gutenberg.

Bottom line Gutenberg is coming, and its going to change WordPress. It will make things better but also rock the boat in its initial release. Like with any growing pains though we will all learn to adapt, and then wonder how we ever lived without it before.