Description

Gutenberg is more than an editor. While the editor is the focus right now, the project will ultimately impact the entire publishing experience including customization (the next focus area).

Discover more about the project.

Editing focus

The editor will create a new page- and post-building experience that makes writing rich posts effortless, and has “blocks” to make it easy what today might take shortcodes, custom HTML, or “mystery meat” embed discovery. — Matt Mullenweg

One thing that sets WordPress apart from other systems is that it allows you to create as rich a post layout as you can imagine — but only if you know HTML and CSS and build your own custom theme. By thinking of the editor as a tool to let you write rich posts and create beautiful layouts, we can transform WordPress into something users love WordPress, as opposed something they pick it because it’s what everyone else uses.

Gutenberg looks at the editor as more than a content field, revisiting a layout that has been largely unchanged for almost a decade.This allows us to holistically design a modern editing experience and build a foundation for things to come.

Here’s why we’re looking at the whole editing screen, as opposed to just the content field:

1. The block unifies multiple interfaces. If we add that on top of the existing interface, it would add complexity, as opposed to remove it.
2. By revisiting the interface, we can modernize the writing, editing, and publishing experience, with usability and simplicity in mind, benefitting both new and casual users.
3. When singular block interface takes center stage, it demonstrates a clear path forward for developers to create premium blocks, superior to both shortcodes and widgets.
4. Considering the whole interface lays a solid foundation for the next focus, full site customization.
5. Looking at the full editor screen also gives us the opportunity to drastically modernize the foundation, and take steps towards a more fluid and JavaScript powered future that fully leverages the WordPress REST API.

Blocks

Blocks are the unifying evolution of what is now covered, in different ways, by shortcodes, embeds, widgets, post formats, custom post types, theme options, meta-boxes, and other formatting elements. They embrace the breadth of functionality WordPress is capable of, with the clarity of a consistent user experience.

Imagine a custom “employee” block that a client can drag to an About page to automatically display a picture, name, and bio. A whole universe of plugins that all extend WordPress in the same way. Simplified menus and widgets. Users who can instantly understand and use WordPress — and 90% of plugins. This will allow you to easily compose beautiful posts like this example.

Check out the FAQ for answers to the most common questions about the project.

Compatibility

Posts are backwards compatible, and shortcodes will still work. We are continuously exploring how highly-tailored metaboxes can be accommodated, and are looking at solutions ranging from a plugin to disable Gutenberg to automatically detecting whether to load Gutenberg or not. While we want to make sure the new editing experience from writing to publishing is user-friendly, we’re committed to finding a good solution for highly-tailored existing sites.

The stages of Gutenberg

Gutenberg has three planned stages. The first, aimed for inclusion in WordPress 5.0, focuses on the post editing experience and the implementation of blocks. This initial phase focuses on a content-first approach. The use of blocks, as detailed above, allows you to focus on how your content will look without the distraction of other configuration options. This ultimately will help all users present their content in a way that is engaging, direct, and visual.

These foundational elements will pave the way for stages two and three, planned for the next year, to go beyond the post into page templates and ultimately, full site customization.

Gutenberg is a big change, and there will be ways to ensure that existing functionality (like shortcodes and meta-boxes) continue to work while allowing developers the time and paths to transition effectively. Ultimately, it will open new opportunities for plugin and theme developers to better serve users through a more engaging and visual experience that takes advantage of a toolset supported by core.

Contributors

Gutenberg is built by many contributors and volunteers. Please see the full list in CONTRIBUTORS.md.

Features

• Support setting a width to the column block.
• Support showing Post Content or excerpt in the Latest Posts block.
• Support headers and footers in the Table block.

Enhancement

• Improve the UX of the Group block by using the individual block appender.
• Support updating images using Drag & Drop.
• Clarify the name of the inline code format.
• Add a usability warning when audio/video autoplay is applied.
• Replace the Page Break block icon with Material version.

Bug Fixes

• A11y:
  • Fix focal point picker input labels.
  • Add role to the copy all content menu item.
  • Add focus style to the document outline panel.
  • Update the save indicator contrast to pass AA.
  • Fix The tabbing order in the Gallery Block.
  • Improve the contrast of the button focus styles.
  • Fixed focus state of pressed AM/PM buttons.
  • Fix the URLInput aria properties.
  • Avoid showing pre-publish panel buttons as links.
  • Fix the focus state of the links shown as buttons.
• Fix RTL keyboard interactions.
• Fix updates to RichText formats not being reflected in the UI synchronously.
• Fix extra line breaks added when pasting from Google Docs.
• Fix copy, paste JavaScript errors in paragraph blocks with locking enabled.
• Fix format buttons incorrectly toggled on RichText blur.
• Preserve the caret’s horizontal position when navigating blocks.
• Case-insensitive search for existing categories.
• Prevent the Code block from rendering embeds or shortcodes.
• Fix the SandBox component usage outside the WP-admin context.
• Fix the  Cover block’s deprecated version attributes.
• Fix the webpack dependency plugin: filename function handling.
• Support watching block.json changes in our build tool.
• Fix ServerSideRender remaining in loading state when nothing is rendered.
• Fix the server-side registered blocks in the widgets screen.
• Show the block movers in the widgets screen.
• Decode the HTML entities in the post author selector.
• Fix inconsistent heading sizes between the classic and the heading blocks.
• Add check for author in post data before meta boxes save request submission.
• Allow blocks drag & drop if locking is set to “insert”.
• Fix Youtube embed styles when used multiple times in a post.
• Proxy the code/block-editor replaceBlock action in the core/editor package.
• Use block-editor instead of editor in cover block.
• Fix block showing an error in Safari when focused.
• Fix small visual error in the active state of the formatting buttons.
• Fix the pinned plugins buttons styles when toggled.
• Set caret position correctly when merging blocks using the Delete key.

Documentation

• Clarify best practices pertaining to Color Palette values.
• Use Block Editor instead of Gutenberg when appropriate in the Handbook.
• Omit docblocks with private tag in the API Docs generation.
• Update docs for selectors & actions moved to block-editor.
• Update i18n docs to use make-json command from wp-cli.
• Consolidate doc generation tools.
• Fix next/previous links issue.
• Webpack dependency plugin: Document unsupported multiple instances.
• Add a DevHub manifest file to allow synchronizing the documentation to the DevHub.
• Typos and tweaks: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15.

Various

• Support and use the shorthand Fragment syntax.
• Update to Babel 7.4 and core-js 3.
• Upgrade simple-html-tokenizer dependency.
• Pass individual files as arguments from watch to build script.
• Automate the scripts dependencies generation.
• Clean DropZone component’s unused state.
• remove __unstablePositionedAtSelection component.
• Refactor core/edit-post INIT effect to use action-generators and controls.
• Improve eslint disable comments.
• Fix NaN warning when initializing the FocalPointPicker component.
• Export React.memo in the @wordpress/element package.
• Improve the specificity of the custom colors styles.
• Preload the autosaves endpoint to avoid request when loading the editor.
• A11y: Add support for Axe verification in e2e tests.
• Refactor the File block to use the block.json syntax.
• Remove redundant duplicated reducers.
• Add integration tests for blocks with deprecations.
• Allow non-production env in wp-scripts build.
• Use React Hooks in the BlockListBlock component.
• Add an e2e test for custom taxonomies.
• Fix intermittent failures on block transforms tests.
• Remove componentWillReceiveProps usage from ColorPicker.
• Add an experimental CPT to be used in the block based widgets screen.
• Split JavaScript CI tasks to individual jobs.
• Remove unnecessary aria-label from the block inserter list items.

Mobile

• Add a first version of the video block.
• Fix the Auto-scroll behavior on List block.
• Fix the list handling on Android.
• Improve accessibility of the missing block.