Make WordPress Core

Opened 4 years ago

Last modified 3 years ago

#50214 new feature request

Consider introducing the concept of "Editors"

Reported by: johnstonphilip's profile johnstonphilip Owned by:
Milestone: Awaiting Review Priority: normal
Severity: normal Version:
Component: Editor Keywords:
Focuses: ui, administration Cc:

Description

The recent release of the Iceberg Editor plugin https://github.com/useIceberg/iceberg-editor (built on Gutenberg) has got me thinking about the concept of "Editors" and Publishing flows. The REST API opens up a huge world of possibilities in regards to editing/publishing experiences. WordPress core itself currently has 2 "Editors" (until at least 2022, perhaps longer):

  • The Block Editor (Gutenberg)
  • The Classic Editor (5+ million installs)

There are many other plugins which introduce other Publishing experiences:

If WordPress embraced these Publishing flows with a proper Editor/Publisher Registry, it would allow all of these amazing Publishing experiences to be used together, with the user being empowered to pick the right tool for the right job.

This would even open up possibilities for plugins like WooCommerce, where a "Product Editor" could be created for "Products", allowing a completely streamlined experience for publishing products.

Every type of content (and especially for post_types) could benefit from a streamlined publishing experience. For example, for publishing videos, a Video Editor (plugin) could emulate YouTube's step-by-step publishing experience.

If WordPress core created a proper registry for Editors/Publishers, it could empower both developers and users to build streamlined and focused publishing experiences right into the WordPress dashboard in a way that a single Editor never could.

This seems like a natural next-step in the WordPress journey, especially watching the explosion of creativity and user-response (millions upon millions of installs) happening around publishing experiences and flows for WordPress.

A flow for creating a new post might look like this:

  1. Click on "Create new post"
  2. If multiple Editors are installed+registered for this post_type, show an Editor Picker. If only a single Editor exists for this post_type, immediately show it.
  3. You now experience the publishing experience provided by that Editor, and publish.
  4. Future edits to that post will automatically use the Editor initially chosen.
  5. When viewing your existing posts in the posts UI table, a column for "Editor" is shown to indicate "Gutenberg", "Elementor", etc.

I think ideally this registry is something that would exist in WordPress core, giving developers an official API to work with, and a consistent flow for users to pick their editor of choice.

Attachments (1)

Screen Shot 2020-07-10 at 3.18.09 PM.png (142.7 KB) - added by johnstonphilip 4 years ago.
Possible flow during post creation

Download all attachments as: .zip

Change History (6)

This ticket was mentioned in Slack in #core by johnstonphilip. View the logs.


4 years ago

#2 @SergeyBiryukov
4 years ago

  • Component changed from General to Editor
  • Focuses ui administration added

@johnstonphilip
4 years ago

Possible flow during post creation

#3 @johnstonphilip
4 years ago

I just attached a (really rough) mockup of an approach that could be used during post creation from the Posts page in wp-admin. The idea with that would be to build editor choices into the "Add New" button, if they are available.

Last edited 4 years ago by johnstonphilip (previous) (diff)

#4 follow-up: @noisysocks
3 years ago

Neat idea 🙂

What do you think, @azaozz? It could be a good way to eventually "hand off" the Classic Editor plugin to the community.

Since it's a big change, I'd encourage anyone that is interested in this feature to create a feature plugin that explores implementing this. There are lots of technical and UX considerations that will need some iteration. After there's a clear user and developer benefit, we can discuss merging the plugin into Core.

#5 in reply to: ↑ 4 @azaozz
3 years ago

Replying to noisysocks:

I'd encourage anyone that is interested in this feature to create a feature plugin that explores implementing this.

Yeah, it is a good idea but pretty hard to implement (in the UI). As with all frequently used "actions", there are several ways to start a new post: The above button, the sub-menu item under all post type menus (posts, pages, any editable CPTs), and direct links from other admin pages. Adding an editor selector to just one of these places won't be enough :)

There were some attempts to add something like that to the Classic Editor plugin before the initial release, but they were removed in favor of having a "switch editor" link/button. Having a feature plugin to explore this further is the right way to go.

Last edited 3 years ago by azaozz (previous) (diff)
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