Introduce a Gutenberg-based editor for the front- and back-end

[philipjohn]

What's the problem?

1. Liveblog currently maintains it's own React-based editor for the frontend. With the introduction of Gutenberg on the horizon, maintaining a separate editor is inefficient.
2. With increasing numbers of WordPress sites using a decoupled set up where the frontend is not powered by WordPress, the frontend-only editing experience of Liveblog means site owners need to build their own editor, making adoption more difficult.
3. Adding AMP support to Liveblog was a great addition. Any sites that choose to use an AMP Native theme however don't have a frontend editor, because the AMP format doesn't support that.
4. There have been a number of user requests for years for a backend editor.

How do we know this is a problem?

Through it's experience with clients, WordPress.com VIP has taken lots of feedback about the desire for a backend editor. Some Liveblog users have developed their own solutions, sometimes forking Liveblog in the process which adds an extra maintenance burden for them for features that more users would benefit from.

We've spent a lot of time building a React-based editor in order to make the Liveblog editing experience great across mobile as well as desktop. This has added an extra maintenance burden and introduced plenty of bugs.

What are we doing to solve this problem?

Building a Gutenberg-based editor for Liveblog that will be present in both the frontend of a liveblog and in the backend post edit screen.

The bet

We bet that adding a Gutenberg-based editor will:

1. Improve maintainability by re-using the great work of core contributors to Gutenberg.
2. Provide the same Liveblog editing experience on the back- and front-end.
3. Reduce the burden on users of Liveblog who have decoupled setups or prefer (e.g. for security reasons) to edit on the backend.
4. Enable adoption of AMP Native liveblogs.
5. Push the boundaries of Gutenberg and encourage it's adoption.

What’s the vision?

Liveblog users and site owners will be excited to create liveblogs because it's so easy and so familiar, wherever they post from.

Timeline

This will be introduced in v2.0, scheduled for release at the end of January 2019.

Acceptance Criteria

• [ ] Users can use the editor in both the post edit screen in WP admin and on the frontend Liveblog itself
• [ ] Enabling a Liveblog within Gutenberg is as simple as adding a "Liveblog" block to the post
• [ ] A "Key Events" block can also be added to a post
• [ ] Other blocks can be included within each liveblog entry, based on a filterable whitelist
• [ ] Initially the block whitelist should include the following core blocks: Heading, Paragraph, Quote, Image, Gallery, List, Audio, Video, Shortcode, HTML
• [ ] Oembeds (such as Twitter, Facebook etc) should all embed as expected
• [ ] Users can mark an entry as a "key event"
• [ ] Users can apply a "slash command" to an event
• [ ] Each entry can have one or more authors
• [ ] The underlying data model remains the same

[philipjohn]

Noting that this replaces #216

[hrkhal]

@philipjohn What is the current ETA for this feature and for v2.0 in general?

[philipjohn]

It's been put on hold I'm afraid, and I'm no longer the lead on this plugin so can't unfortunately say when this might (if ever) happen.