What New Wealthy Affiliate Members Should Know About WordPress, Gutenberg & GeneratePress
I’ve just had one of those light bulb moments.
Even after all this time I still feel I am one of the new Wealthy Affiliate members when it comes down to how things work as I was still a bit unsure about the relationship between GeneratePress, Gutenberg, and WordPress itself. Every time I saw GeneratePress listed as a theme, I backed away — it sounded complicated, and the name made it seem like it might be another version of WordPress entirely. I don’t think I ever even clicked to look inside it.
And then there’s the Gutenberg Block Editor — or as Batman (Eric Cantu) calls it under his WordPress Wisdom training — the default WordPress editor. Which, to be honest, confused me even more at first. Why not call it Gutenberg Wisdom? Haha.
So, if I am still confused then there must be other new Wealthy Affiliate members that are too, and if you’ve ever been scratching your head like I was, here’s the version that finally made sense for me:
WordPress.org = The Engine
This is your foundation. It’s the platform your whole site runs on. Pages, posts, plugins, menus, users — it all lives inside here.
And yes, per research I double-checked with Mr Chat, WordPress is open-source and powers over 40% of the entire internet. That’s the scale we’re talking about, huge! No wonder it’s recommended to all new Wealthy Affiliate members.
GeneratePress = The Look (Your Theme)
Now, when I first started looking for themes, I spent hours — honestly, days — trying to find something I liked. But I wasn’t yet informed enough to understand how those choices could impact site speed, layout flexibility, or long-term editing. And I still chose wrong , twice!
GeneratePress kept showing up, but I kept skipping it. Turns out it’s not complicated — it’s just a clean, lightweight theme you install inside WordPress. It controls how your site looks: headers, fonts, spacing, layout.
It doesn’t replace WordPress — it works with it. And the free version is more than enough to get started.
Gutenberg = The Builder
This is the editor built into WordPress by default — and it’s come a long way. You may hear it called the Block Editor, and that’s exactly what it is: instead of typing into one giant textbox, you now build content using blocks — for paragraphs, images, columns, buttons, and more.
You don’t need to write code or mess with shortcodes, even if we could — it’s all done visually.
In Plain English:
You run your site on WordPress
You pick a theme like GeneratePress to control how it looks
You build your content using Gutenberg, which is already built in
Why It’s So Confusing at First:
Gutenberg looks and feels like a builder, but it isn’t as flashy as Elementor or Divi — or even the more beginner-friendly Beaver Builder, which is known for its visual drag-and-drop style and cartoon beaver branding.
GeneratePress sounds like it might compete with WordPress or Gutenberg — but it doesn’t
The phrase “block themes” and “full site editing” only recently started to mean something for most users, so older posts and training may not explain it clearly
Should You Use Gutenberg?
Yes — especially now.
It’s fast, flexible, and unless you’re going for a very complex layout, you probably won’t need any extra page builders. That means fewer plugins to slow down your site, and fewer costs down the road.
This is why Eric Cantu and others promote it so heavily — and now, I get it.
Nearly all New Wealthy Affiliate members already have so much to take on board, but getting this right and follow the recommendations of using the Gutenberg editor is something I wish I had understood a lot earlier.
But if you’re new, and no one explains how these parts fit together, it’s easy to feel like you’ve missed a step or are doing something wrong. Hopefully, this helps clear things up if you’ve been feeling the same way I was.
Let me know if you’ve had similar “wait, what is that actually for?” moments. We’ve all been there — and once it clicks, everything gets easier.
I hope this is helpful to some of you. After all the hours I have put in as a new Wealthy Affiliate members these last 9 months and I am still having those “Duh” moments! Who knows this may help you avoid my misunderstandings.
Happy Easter to you all
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Author: Rob
Ps. This is the company that taught me how to build this site and 3 others in 6 months, they keep their promises.
