Gutenberg is finally good enough — here is what changed

For years the honest advice was that WordPress's own editor was not ready for client sites. That stopped being true. If you last evaluated Gutenberg in 2020, the thing you disliked no longer exists.

What changed

• theme.json. Colours, typography, spacing and layout defined once, in one file, and enforced in the editor. Editors see only the options you allow — which is what stops a site drifting.
• Block patterns. Pre-built section layouts an editor can insert and fill in. This is what most people actually wanted from a page builder.
• Block locking. You can allow text editing while preventing someone dragging a section apart.
• Query loops. Listing posts, filtered, without a plugin or custom code.

What it still is not

It is not a free-form drag-and-drop canvas. You cannot position an element wherever you like on a page, and the block editor's own interface is less immediately obvious than a builder's. For a marketing team that wants to invent a new layout every week, a builder remains easier.

Why it matters commercially

A Gutenberg-based custom theme has no licence fee, no builder major-version migrations, and dramatically less CSS and JavaScript on the front end. Loading a page becomes your own markup plus a small amount of core styling. On mobile connections that difference is measurable, and Core Web Vitals are a ranking input.

The sensible setup

A custom theme, theme.json holding the design tokens, six to ten patterns covering the sections the site genuinely uses, and two or three custom blocks for the things unique to the business — a pricing table, a team grid, a testimonial. Editors get freedom inside a system rather than freedom to break it.

Migrating from a builder

Do not attempt an automated conversion. Builder markup does not translate. Rebuild page by page, starting with the templates that repeat, and keep the URLs identical so nothing is lost in search. It is slower to start and finishes sooner than fighting a converter.