If you’re familiar with the world of WordPress you’ll know that the next version of WordPress will ship with a new editor called Gutenberg. You can read all about Gutenberg over here and try it out too.

I confess I’ve been a late adopter till now; sure I’ve experimented with Gutenberg locally but I haven’t used it on a production site, mainly because on the one public site I currently personally manage, I simply didn’t have the time to be concerned with Gutenberg  compatibility and also I didn’t want all post types edited with Gutenberg.

What is Ramp?

I work within WordPress.com VIP at Automattic and today we released a new plugin to help with Gutenberg testing and transition called Ramp.

Ramp basically let’s you control how you enable Gutenberg on your site. From the wordpress.org download page it says.

Activating Gutenberg Ramp plugin adds a settings screen where you can enable Gutenberg selectively (for specific post types). For even greater control, you can specify Gutenberg loading behavior in code. Ramp works with both the plugin version of Gutenberg, and the core version, providing a seamless transition.

Read more about Ramp and see a video of it in action over here.

Using Ramp

I installed and activated Gutenberg and Ramp on a site I run.

I enabled Gutenberg only for posts..

.. and hey presto, it just worked and the custom fields were fine too. The existing content appeared within a classic block.

I made some edits, everything  worked fine then as another test, I disabled Gutenberg. The content was as before. I’ve turned it back on again now and will look forward to using Gutenberg and seeing how editors get on with it. I’m sure they’ll love it too.

Obviously test very thoroughly on your own sites, I’ve done all this on a small low traffic, low risk site.

At WordPress.com VIP, an internal project has been running for months to prepare and support our clients for Gutenberg. That has involved writing documentation, conducting workshops, bringing members of the Gutenberg team to the 2018 VIP Workshop #, #, offering training videos, collaborating with the Gutenberg team and also producing the Ramp plugin.

It’s just great to see this plugin now publicly released and know that it can help others and not just VIP clients start using Gutenberg in a super easy way. And I love that we’re contributing.

What’s more, I’m now really looking forward to moving some shortcodes to Gutenberg and writing my first blocks.

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P.s. WordPress.com VIP is hiring and if you’re interested in seeing what Enterprise WordPress and support looks like, get in touch. 🙂