{"id":4849,"date":"2018-08-06T11:30:24","date_gmt":"2018-08-06T06:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thedevcouple.com\/?p=4849"},"modified":"2018-08-06T11:30:30","modified_gmt":"2018-08-06T06:30:30","slug":"wordpress-plugins-adopting-gutenberg-a-case-study-featuring-gravity-forms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedevcouple.com\/wordpress-plugins-adopting-gutenberg-a-case-study-featuring-gravity-forms\/","title":{"rendered":"WordPress Plugins Adopting Gutenberg \u2014 A Case Study Featuring Gravity Forms!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ever since Matt Mullenweg’s announcement about the new WordPress editor at State of the Word 2017<\/a>, the community has been trying to assimilate the Gutenberg blocks<\/strong>. Till now people have shared different views \u2014 be it in the form of A Visit From St. Gutenberg<\/em><\/a> or some long-form articles featuring the perks & pains of Gutenberg.<\/p>\n

Such reaction from the community is kind of natural. When WordPress means way more than just a piece of software<\/strong> to you then having such concerns is normal. But considering the competition which other CMSs offer, major updates to WordPress are crucial<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Long story short, you love it or hate it, Gutenberg is coming!<\/strong><\/em> I believe this is what the Next WordPress<\/strong><\/em> will look like and as soon as it gets merged with the core, a lot of things in the WordPress community will start changing. Or will it be wrong if I say that the change is already there?<\/p>\n

WordPress developers\/agencies have geared their products towards Gutenberg compatibility and have started building a new niche which will feature a completely different set of WordPress themes, plugins, interaction, automation tools, site building, etc.<\/p>\n

Today, I will be reviewing how WordPress plugins are adopting Gutenberg and where it is leading!?<\/p>\n

\"Wordpress<\/a><\/div>\n

For a case study, I will be talking about the development and compatibility of Gravity Forms with Gutenberg. Reason being, Carl Hancock<\/strong><\/a> \u2014 Co-founder of Gravity Forms \u2014 has been a keen advocate of Gutenberg <\/strong>in the right for the right reasons. As a result, Gravity Forms<\/strong><\/a> became one of the early adopters of Gutenberg<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Currently, the Gutenberg version of Gravity Forms exists as an optional add-on. Their recent update is Gravity Forms Gutenberg v1.0 Beta 3<\/a> which is now available on the Downloads page. It will live as an add-on until WordPress 5.0 and we might see more changes and releases till then.<\/p>\n

\ud83c\udfa9 Gutenberg Plugins Compatibility Database<\/h2>\n

Daniel Bachhuber<\/a> has created a database of top 5,000 WordPress plugins<\/strong> from WordPress.org repository to test<\/strong> their compatibility with Gutenberg<\/strong>. For this purpose, he has also curated a process to create a new WordPress site on the fly and test each plugin separately. He published a report on his initiative on April 25, 2018. Below is an excerpt from his report<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

 \u26a1<\/h2>\n

Since the announcement of the database on March 1st, 2018, 70 people have been granted testing status. However, out of 5000 plugins, we\u2019re still at 4139 untested plugins. No companies have stepped up to contribute a significant amount of person-hours. Of the 861 tested plugins:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • \u2705 219 (25.44%) are compatible.<\/li>\n
  • \u26a1\ufe0f 518 (60.16%) are likely compatible.<\/li>\n
  • \ud83d\udca5 25 (2.9%) are likely not compatible.<\/li>\n
  • \u274c 39 (4.53%) are not compatible.<\/li>\n
  • \ud83d\udd25 60 (6.97%) are in \u201ctesting\u201d, which means someone started a test and abandoned the process.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div><\/div>\n

    Looking at the results are pretty promising<\/strong> and it’s good to see how the community is adopting change. However, the plugins might undergo major changes and releases as Gutenberg gets future updates. This could be the reason why other plugins are still waiting for Gutenberg beta release before they finally join the league.<\/p>\n

    Personally, I believe adopting Gutenberg early and changing with time would be way more beneficial for the teams. This way, developers will get time to work on their skill set and get used to the new react blocks. And making changes, later on, would be much easier. \ud83d\udcaf<\/p>\n

    However, check out the awesome Gutenberg Compatibility Project<\/a> by Daniel Bachhuber. He’s looking for volunteers to test the plugins and help him out. So, if you have got some time maybe go help him test a few plugins.<\/p>\n

    \ud83d\udd25 Gravity Forms & Gutenberg<\/h2>\n

    As mentioned earlier, Carl Hancock<\/a> has been an advocate of Gutenberg since its early days. I have seen him evangelizing Gutenberg through his Twitter<\/a> profile as well as other public platforms. Talking about the adoption of Gutenberg he says:<\/p>\n

    As the developer of a major WordPress plugin, Gravity Forms, we intend on fully embracing Gutenberg. We will be introducing all kinds of new features and functionality as a result. <\/p> \u2014 Carl Hancock \u2014 Co-founder Gravity Forms<\/cite><\/a><\/blockquote>\n

    In early February 2018, they launched the first beta version<\/a> of Gravity Forms as an add-on<\/strong> to their current stable release. At the time of writing this article, they’ve released the 4th beta version<\/strong> of their Gutenberg add-on<\/a> which shows the commitment and passion of Gravity Forms team towards Gutenberg.<\/p>\n

    The first release was kind of a major overhaul of Gravity Forms. It included support from Gravity Forms blocks<\/strong>, conditional logic<\/strong>, legacy shortcodes support<\/strong>, and reusable blocks<\/strong>. Till then they’ve merged a number of pull requests, solved issues, and improved on their work. Right now, it supports MailChimp add-on<\/strong> and support for other add-ons is coming soon.<\/p>\n

    \ud83d\udc49\ud83c\udffb Looking at the development pace of Gravity Forms, we can expect a full-fledged plugin by the time Gutenberg gets ready<\/strong>. Other developers can follow the suit of Gravity Forms to get their products ready and improve with time. Also, Gravity Forms has open sourced their add-ons blocks on GitHub<\/a>, so that other folks can also learn the development of complex blocks. That’s a lot of interesting stuff going on from Gravity Forms folks! \ud83d\udc4f<\/p>\n

    Like Gutenberg, team Gravity Forms plans to merge Gravity Forms blocks into Gravity Forms core after the release of WordPress 5.0:<\/p>\n

    \n

    The Gravity Forms blocks we develop for Gutenberg will reside in their own Gravity Forms Add-On for development purposes until WordPress v5.0 is ready for public release. We will then merge all of our Gutenberg blocks into Gravity Forms core. https:\/\/t.co\/G82Lnv6Wld<\/a><\/p>\n

    — Carl Hancock \ud83d\ude80 (@carlhancock) February 7, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n