Eating Crow :(
I want to walk back my criticism of the WordPress Gutenberg project. I wrote blogs expressing my frustration with the user interface of Gutenberg. I compared Elementor (a visual builder plugin) with Gutenberg because Elementor offered more control. I also broadcast my disgust because I perceived supporters of Gutenberg as living within their own tech bubble. I believe that I made these comparisons unfairly and out of ignorance.
For months now I’ve been troubleshooting performance and memory issues with my site. I’ve been trying out different PRO packages for cache programs, image optimizers, security, etc. I subscribed to Elementor PRO and Responsive PRO from Cyberchimps. And I had help with my hosting company to ensure that I was using PHP 8.1. I could not understand why I was maxing out my site’s memory and inodes. Every time I made a blog post, the site would crash. It’s been vexing.
On a whim, I disabled Elementor on one of my webcomic sites. I noticed the site was running faster. I could post without crashing my WP network install. One by one I removed Elementor from my subsites. I am noticing better performance on the back end and faster site speeds.
It took me a bit to figure out how to emulate my Elementor pages with Gutenberg. There was some time spent searching online for tips. I did install the Essential Blocks Plugin from WPDeveloper for blocks like Post Grids and Login blocks.
At the time Gutenberg rolled out I had just finished my PCC course on WordPress. I was perceiving arrogance on the side of Gutenberg supporters. Perhaps this was projection, maybe? Or my own arrogance after learning new things. If I had given Gutenberg an honest chance, perhaps I would not have spent so much time and money on website performance issues.
