The planned release date for WordPress version 6.2 is Tuesday, March 28, 2023 Wednesday, March 29, 2023. This version is said to complete phase 2 of the planned development of the WordPress editor experience. Does it mean that the editor is finished? No, not by any means. It means that the editor is in a position that will allow phase 3 development to begin.

The WordPress editor project, originally called the Gutenberg Project, will continue to receive updates and improvements with future versions. Capabilities will be added and the overall editing experience will be incrementally improved. I personally would like to see improvements in the navigation block and I would Really like to see the ability to style individual cells in the Table Block.

Phase 3 Development

Phase 3 is projected to add collaboration to the editing experience. Since it’s first release WordPress has permitted only one person at a time may access a page or post in the WordPress editor. If you have given remote instruction to another individual about how to do something in the content editor you have seen the warning pop up saying the other person is currently editing the content. You would have to take editing privileges away from them or navigate to another page.

Phase 3 is supposed to change that so multiple editors may access the same content and develop the content in a collaborative way. It seems simple but it is a very complex operation. For a ‘simple’ example, if two individuals are editing content in the same area of a post or page and attempt to save their work, which one gets saved, whose changes take precedence?

What could happen is something like what we get now when we choose to look at a previous revision of our content – a screen comes up with the current version and the previous version. You select which one you want – in its entirety. Perhaps we will get a screen with three options – the current version and the versions being worked on by the two editors. Then you (but who) pick the parts you want from each to save as the update. There would, of course, have to be some sort of history of who edited content and when and possibly include a comment field for what was changed and why, similar to a commit message when using Git.

Hurts my brain to try and work through it all.

Another Take on the Editing Collaboration Challenge

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