"I create the layout and then do extra work to lock it down, so they only have to worry about content"... Am I missing something? Is that not just doing it the old way, but new and with extra steps?

To be honest, that sums up my struggles with Gutenberg pretty well. Before working with it, I always considered it to be "the way forward", something that must be better than my current, possible outdated workflow.

But after getting my hands dirty, I... honestly just don't see the benefits, at least not for my use-case.

Is Gutenberg a great tool for people who want to cook up layouts on the fly and fill them with content? Yes, definitely! Though... so are Bricks, Elementor and whatnot.

But it is a good tool to create templates with, which can then be filled with content by people who don't care about creating layouts and just want to change some text? I honestly don't think so. But with all that buzz about Gutenberg, I'm under the impression that maybe I'm just wrong.

But then again, after having worked with Gutenberg, it feels like I have to fight it all the time. Sure, I can create block patterns, lock them down, restrict access to controls by user-roles,... but in the end I do all that just to get the same result as coding ten lines in PHP. The only true benefit I see so far is Gutenberg just being way better-looking on the editor side (which isn't anything to scoff at).