WordPress is creating guides and tools to help publishers migrate to their block based editor Gutenberg and away from commercial WordPress page builders and private closed source content management systems like Wix.
While it’s understandable that WordPress might want to help publishers and businesses migrate away from Wix, some perceive it as a somewhat controversial move to create a guide to undermine software publishers who are a part of the WordPress ecosystem itself.
WordPress Page Builders
The mission for WordPress has always been to make it easy for publishers and business people to easily create beautiful websites. But that goal has eluded WordPress for years.
Software developers like Elegant Themes (makers of Divi page builder) and Elementor created point and click solutions that enabled users to visually webpage templates using a visual interface that made creating webpages as simple as drawing.
Page builders enabled users to drag and drop text boxes, forms and images in order to create the site visually. These elements can be moved around a page, resized and colored with just a few mouse clicks within an easy to use intuitive interface.
Then WordPress released their Gutenberg Full Site Editor that essentially replicated the visual block-based page builder experience.
Users continued using page builders because Gutenberg initially fell short of the more polished user interfaces of commercial page builders.
But it was only a matter of time before WordPress caught up and that day is just about here as WordPress continues to iteratively make Gutenberg increasingly easy to use.
That’s created an impression with developers that commercial page builders like Divi and Elementor will eventually lose their relevance in the WordPress ecosystem once Gutenberg reaches parity with them.