WordPress

The first version of WordPress was released in 2003 by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. It was a small yet promising platform, based on PHP and MySQL, offering features like a new admin interface, comment moderation, and support for permalinks. It started as a simple blogging tool focused on clean typography and easy publishing. Over the years this modest venture grew into something which would revolutionize the future of the internet and today is the de facto tool for building websites. In 2004 the concept of Plugins was conceived opening the door to community-powered customization. The next year saw the introduction of the Themes, thus allowing users to change the look of their sites easily. The same year brought a WYSIWYG editor and improved admin UI. Slowly but surely WordPress evolved from it’s humble beginnings, WordPress evolved into a full Content Management System (CMS). The main reason it became the dominant CMS is because WordPress is open-source software, meaning its source code is publicly accessible, free to use, and can be modified or distributed by anyone. This open-source nature allowed for a large community of developers to contribute and collaborate on its development, fostering innovation and customization.

Although WordPress was becoming more user friendly all the time with the development of numerous Plugins and the introduction of Custom Posts, Widgets, Headers & Footers, Menus etc, its was still mainly the preserve of software professionals as a basic understanding of coding was required to create a website. This all changed when firstly Page Builders and then more importantly the Gutenberg Block Editor came along in 2018. This gave everyone the chance to build Websites without any coding skills. These days, you don’t need to be a developer, experienced engineer, or graphic designer to build a website, anyone can do it.

The release of the first WordPress Page Builders was a game-changer. Gone were the days when you needed to write code just to create a custom layout or tweak your design. Page builders gave users drag-and-drop control over their websites, making powerful design accessible to everyone. However, although websites were now easier to create, at first they were probably overwhelming for beginners. The first Page Builder was released by WPBakery in 2011 and within a couple of years they had over a million active installs. They are still around and claim to now be up to 5 million installs. As more players entered the market Page Builders popularity exploded. Competitors such as Beaver, Divi, and Bricks introduced new features and made them easier to use. Elementor is considered the most successful and is estimated to have over 12 million installs. So even though the the advent of the Gutenberg Block Editors and it’s spin-offs posed a huge threat to Page Builders, they are still going strong and new ones are entering the market every year.

Page Builders are probably still more popular than Block Editors, but we are of the opinion that the tide is changing and that the momentum from the WordPress Foundation is unstoppable. This does not mean we think that Page Builders will die. On the contrary, we think they will thrive because the companies behind them are commercial enterprises that will exploit any opening to make their products more appealing. A single unified builder isn’t likely due to the open-source nature of WordPress and the business models of page builder companies, but a convergence between the two approaches is very likely. We have already seen signs of a blending of Page Builders into Gutenberg. Elementor has a block for inserting its layouts whilst Bricks, Stackable, and Kadence are built on top of Gutenberg, combining the best of both worlds.

The WordPress Foundation is a non-profit organization established in 2010 by WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg. Its primary mission is to ensure that the WordPress software and its freedoms are preserved for the long term, regardless of who’s in charge or what commercial interests arise. It’s stated core mission is to promote, protect, and ensure free access to the WordPress software projects and their freedoms, acting as a steward of the WordPress open-source project, supporting the software and the global community surrounding it.

The Foundation owns the WordPress trademark, ensuring they are used in ways that align with the spirit of the project. This prevents misuse by commercial entities trying to profit unfairly from the brand and support efforts to educate people about open-source software and help them become active contributors. By championing the Four Freedoms of Open Source (to use, study, modify, and distribute the software), the Foundation ensures that no one can “lock down” WordPress or make it proprietary. From hosting events to enabling international collaboration, the Foundation helps grow and maintain the global WordPress community.

Much like the WordPress Foundation, Automattic was also established by WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg in 2005…but for vastly different purposes. It’s a private, distributed technology company best known for operating WordPress.com, the hosted version of WordPress.

It’s common to confuse the WordPress Foundation with Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, Jetpack, and WooCommerce. The difference is that the Foundation is a not-for-profit entity that owns the WordPress trade mark and is dedicated to ensuring open free access to the software. Automatic on the other hand is a commercial business which uses the software to make money. So the Foundation is the guardian of WordPress, and Automattic is just one of the many contributors and stakeholders in the ecosystem.

While WordPress.com is its most recognized product, Automattic has developed or acquired a many of the best known tools used by millions of websites. The best known being WooCommerce, Jetpack, Aksimet, Gravatar, Tumbler, and many more. These ventures have turned Automattic into a billion dollar company and this is what distinguises it from the WordPress Foundation. Having said that, Automattic plays a huge role in the WordPress ecosystem while also contributing heavily to the open-source project itself. It’s a full-time contributor to core WordPress development Sponsoring WordCamps and meetups globally and driving adoption of the Gutenberg the Block Editor described in our website.

The WordPress Foundation announced the introduction of the Gutenberg block editor, which replaced the Classic Editor, with the release of WordPress 5.0 in December 2018. Whilst the announcement was significant it was not an entirely unexpected change. It was a well anticipated update that reflected WordPress’s long-term vision for a more flexible and user-friendly platform. However, such a drastic change still sent shock waves through the WordPress community. There was a tremendous amount of resistance and criticism and if you scour the internet you will see that this is still the case. In truth, it’s obvious that developers who had been working with the Classic Editor for years would not take kindly to the new approach. Not because they would have any problems adjusting, but because it posed a serious challenge to their livelihood. After all, who needs to pay often huge fees to write code when it might not be required any more. The reality is that there is more work around then ever for coders. While Gutenberg simplifies content creation for many, it also created new opportunities for developers to create custom blocks, themes, and plugins. It also created a huge boost in the volume of new websites being developed, all of which would drive the necessity for all business to have an internet and social media presence.

Regardless of any criticism to the introduction of Gutenberg, the WordPress Foundation were well aware that changes were required and inevitable. The fast development and use of Page Builders, made it obvious that the Classic Editor approach was outdated and that if WordPress did not move with the times, rivals would come along and eat their business. The wisdom of their decision is reflected in the steady rise in the CMS share since the Block Editor was introduced. Whatever people might think about Block Editors, we think everyone understands that Gutenberg is the future even if they don’t like it.

The Gutenberg Block Editor was introduced to give users more design flexibility, less reliance on custom code, and a modern editing experience that competes with visual site builders. Although it shares many of the innovations that Page Builders introduced into website creation, there are also fundamental differences. The main difference lies in their approach to content creation and page design. Gutenberg uses a block-based system for adding content, while Page Builders use a drag-and drop interface for visual page design. Although often Page Builders are cited as being more suitable for building large complex websites while Block Editors are more suited to simpler websites, we would take issue with this. There is really nothing you can do with Page Builders that you can’t do with Block Editors and Plugins.

A very important advantages to Block Editor is that because Gutenberg is a built in native feature of WordPress, the performance can be expected to be better. It’s lightweight & fast compared to Page Builders which often have many features hard coded which many users might never want to use. The end result is the the performance of websites built with Block Editors will be optimized, in other words quicker that those built using Page Builders. Also because of this performance advantage Block Editors are are considered to be more Search Engine Optimization (SEO) friendly than Page Builders.

Block Editors introduce the concept of WordPress Full Site Editing (FSE) which is not a feature of Page Builders. This is a suite of features that allows users to customize and build entire website using blocks. This means you can design and modify headers, footers, sidebars, page templates, and even global styles, all within the WordPress editor, without needing to touch code. In simple term, instead of editing just content, you can now edit your entire website structure using the same drag-and-drop blocks.

Traditional page builders like Elementor, Divi, and WPBakery were originally built to work within the constraints of WordPress—not with the core tools like Full Site Editing. Now that FSE is here, the lack of integration is creating a gap. Users want one unified interface to manage everything. FSE provides that. Page Builders still often require multiple steps, settings, or even custom code to change the global layout.