This post digs deep into WordPress 5.0 Gutenberg update, Errors, Plugin breaks, its effects on SEO and solutions to some of the common problems you will encounter after update.

What is WordPress Gutenberg?

WordPress Gutenberg in simple terms is a new version of WordPress that  has evolved from the old (classic) WordPress editor to a modern WP editor which adds more layouts or blocks or builders.This means that it comes with a change on the editor interface thus affecting your Writing, editing and publishing experience.

Should you update to WordPress 5.0 Gutenberg?

As with all major wordpress updates, theme and plugin compatibility is the greatest concern. Review your plugins and theme and confim from developers whether they are compatible. If uncertain, there is no harm in waiting a little while if there is no major security fixes in the update.

Which plugins does WordPress Gutenberg break?

Below are some of the top plugins that are currently not compatible with WordPress 5.0 Gutenberg  (as at 8^th December 2018) but some developers have promised to update them in the near future.

• Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) (5.7.7)
• multiple-content-blocks (3.2.2)
• WPML
• TinyMCE Advanced (4.8.0)
• Unyson (2.7.20)
• Woocommerce 3.5.1 (Kindly note that Woocommerce 3.5.2 is the only version that is fully compatible with WordPress 5.0)

SEO effects of WordPress Gutenberg Update

WordPress 5.0 updates comes with its own seo consequences;

If your themes and plugins are not upto date then don’t be in a hurry to update. Your site will break causing errors. Search engine crawlers hate sites with errors and will penalize your rankings for that.

If there are compatibility issues, then you will notice that your site will load slowly. Site load speed matters when it comes to search rankings.

WordPress Gutenberg Update Errors and Solutions

After updating to WordPress Gutenberg be sure to do the following before contacting your developer for support;

1. Flush your Browser, Plugin and CDN cache.
2. Update your PHP to the latest version. You will have multiple errors if you don’t do this because of massive theme and plugin updates.
3. Deactivate all plugins and update them
4. Change to Twenty Nineteen theme to confirm whether it is theme compatibility issue
5. To avoid getting api-fetch.min.js:1POST URL/wp-json/wp/v2/pages/4188/autosaves?_locale=user 404 (Not Found)  or error HTTP 500 be sure that your security plugins or server is not blocking wp-json. The new editor uses wp-jsonREST API. If wp-json is enabled then reset your permalinks (To Reset permalinks:Go to permalinks, change settings then again revert to what you had before.). You can also try using: Rest Api Enable plugin. If all the solutions provided above don’t work then contact your hosting provider. It might be an issue with your servers. Some servers do disable Rest Api for security reasons.
6. If after reverting to to classic you see a blank editor with only HTML then clear your browser cache, cdn and server cache.
7. If you are trying to update on 5.0 and you are getting this error message “Updating failed” then please disable any security plugin that you are using (for instance wordfence) to confirm that it is not the culprit. Also if you are using any content delivery network like Cloudfare, ensure that it is not disabling REST API.

How  to Revert Back to WordPress Classic if Gutenberg sucks

If you have issues with Gutenberg CSS, Columns, Slow Loading website, menu break, scroll behavior, broken Icons, weird meta boxes, slow typing, breaks amp pages e.t.c then you might want to revert to classic editor as your work to resolve the issues.

To revert to the classic WordPress editor just download the Classic Editor WordPress plugin. WordPress says it will officially support classic editor plugin until December 2021 .That’s enough time for you to adapt to Gutenberg.

NOTE 1: After installing classic editor be sure to set it to classic to avoid 403 errors.

NOTE 2: Kenyayote.com uses WordPress Gutenberg and runs on Modern Blogger theme which is compatible with Gutenberg.

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