Is v2 taking into account new developments over at ACF concerning Gutenberg?

[j-mccarthy]

Hi,

I'm not aware of how exactly, ACF are changing the way fields are built and handled once Gutenberg is merged into core but, i'm sure there will be many changes over the next year.

When building Fewbricks V2, are these changes plus Gutenberg itself and what it means for the future of common place WordPress development being considered?

[folbert]

I am super late to the table, sorry about that. After almost a year of doing other real-life stuff, I am back developing Fewbricks2.

That is an interesting question and I am thinking that as long as ACF takes care of handling Gutenberg, Fewbricks2 will do whatever ACF does since Fewbricks ultimately registers fields using ACFs own functions.

I am aware of ACF blocks for Gutenberg and will be sure to check it out and see how that can be implemented in Fewbricks2.

[alicam]

In my experience so far, ACF in Gutenberg obviously introduces the acf_register_block() function. But it also means a few different ways to do things. And thus some really interesting possibilities for FewBricks2 perhaps.

For a start, default content settings for blocks. Or reusable block libraries with preset content. In every WordPress "monster" theme you buy on ThemeForest, they've gone and built loads of templates for various types of businesses and these are always easily repurposed for other uses by the purchaser. That's one of the attractions of such themes - despite their awful plugin bloat.

Could FewBricks provide a way of creating a library of ACF-powered Gutenberg blocks that are pre-baked? As the developer I'd want to create three different Google Map blocks, say. Or 10 different Call-to-Action blocks with slight differences in styling or HTML element placement.

I'd create these for my client as "template blocks" that they can then load up, change or customize a bit, and hey presto... work done.

On another note, I think we'll find that Gutenberg replaces, to some degree, how we've used Flexible Content Fields in the past. These were used to create layouts. Gutenberg does that with blocks. FCFs allow layout elements to be moved around. Gutenberg does that. But what about moving elements around WITHIN a Gutenberg block? I still use Flexible Content Fields for that. Which is still very powerful.

Finally, ACF is BOTH useful for what going on in a Gutenberg block, but ALSO for old style meta-boxes. The latter are used for stuff that you want on the page, but not configured from within a Gutenberg block. The subtleties of which way to go are being explored by everyone, I suppose.

So I encourage you to try it, @folbert. It will give you (good) ideas!

A

[folbert]

Thanks for your input @alicam .

I am not trying to start a discussion about Gutenberg here (there's plenty of those to go around already) but have to admit that I have, so far, stayed away from Gutenberg completely. Largely due to the rather negative buzz that has surrounded it, my insufficient knowledge of modern JS and the fact that I am not prepared to throw my clients in untested waters.

Having said that, I have kept up to date with ACFs take on how to create Gutenberg blocks and without having taken a deeper look at it, I can't see that it should require too much extra code, if any at all even, in Fewbricks core for it to work with ACFs Gutenberg functions.

My plan is to release 2.0 without even glancing at Gutenberg-support (so it will be Gutenfree :) ) because I want it ready for a major project which I will start in early 2019. And then, if needed, I will try to release a new minor version with support for ACFs Gutenberg support. Regardless it wont be before ACF have released at least 5.8 which will include more Gutenberg functionality if I understand this blog post from ACF correctly.

[alicam]

That's fine, to a point. 5.8 is out now. Gutenberg is going to be big. And it does introduce some very good opportunities for ACF. In your shoes I wouldn't totally ignore it. From a marketing point of view, even, making Fewbricks2 a Gutenberg-friendly thing is just smart :)