Description
The block editor was introduced in core WordPress with version 5.0 but the Gutenberg project will ultimately impact the entire publishing experience including customization (the next focus area). This beta plugin allows you to test bleeding-edge features around editing and customization projects before they land in future WordPress releases.
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:
- The block unifies multiple interfaces. If we add that on top of the existing interface, it would add complexity, as opposed to remove it.
- 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.
- 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.
- Considering the whole interface lays a solid foundation for the next focus, full site customization.
- 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.
Blocks
This plugin provides 17 blocks.
- core/categories
- Gutenberg
- core/block
- Gutenberg
- core/site-title
- Gutenberg
- core/tag-cloud
- Gutenberg
- core/post-title
- Gutenberg
- core/latest-comments
- Gutenberg
- core/archives
- Gutenberg
- core/calendar
- Gutenberg
- core/social-link-
- Gutenberg
- core/legacy-widget
- Gutenberg
- core/navigation
- Gutenberg
- core/latest-posts
- Gutenberg
- core/shortcode
- Gutenberg
- core/search
- Gutenberg
- core/post-content
- Gutenberg
- core/template-part
- Gutenberg
- core/rss
- Gutenberg
FAQ
- How can I send feedback or get help with a bug?
-
We’d love to hear your bug reports, feature suggestions and any other feedback! Please head over to the GitHub issues page to search for existing issues or open a new one. While we’ll try to triage issues reported here on the plugin forum, you’ll get a faster response (and reduce duplication of effort) by keeping everything centralized in the GitHub repository.
- How can I contribute?
-
We’re calling this editor project “Gutenberg” because it’s a big undertaking. We are working on it every day in GitHub, and we’d love your help building it.You’re also welcome to give feedback, the easiest is to join us in our Slack channel,
#core-editor
.See also CONTRIBUTING.md.
- Where can I read more about Gutenberg?
-
- Gutenberg, or the Ship of Theseus, with examples of what Gutenberg might do in the future
- Editor Technical Overview
- Design Principles and block design best practices
- WP Post Grammar Parser
- Development updates on make.wordpress.org
- Documentation: Creating Blocks, Reference, and Guidelines
- Additional frequently asked questions
Reviews
Contributors & Developers
“Gutenberg” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors“Gutenberg” has been translated into 46 locales. Thank you to the translators for their contributions.
Translate “Gutenberg” into your language.
Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Changelog
Features
- Adding a menu to visually switch between edit and navigation modes and announce the mode changes to screen reader users.
- Support adding a caption to the Table block.
- Implement a Welcome Guide modal.
Enhancements
- Use a Fixed Block Toolbar on Mobile Web.
- Block UI:
- Remove the parent block from the block title component.
- Remove dashed outlines for child and parent blocks.
- Remove hover styles.
- Navigation block:
- Keep a single place to trigger the “Open in a new tab” option.
- Fix overflow by allowing wrapping of menu items.
- Fix double click to open the appender.
- Add a type=submit to the search suggestion buttons.
- Support justifying the menu items.
- Use correct classnames for navigation link block save output.
- Remove the inspector controls.
- Improve the block multi-selection:
- A11y: Use the browser’s selection default color.
- Polish the styles.
- Responsive multi-selection.
- Allow pasting on multi-selection.
- Improve the Image blocks replacement flow/UI.
- Disable the HTML mode in the Cover block.
- Add friendly offline error messages on Rest API request failures.
- Round the focal point coordinates.
- Popover & Dropdowns: Consistently and smoothly adjust the position on scroll.
- Remove clearing the block selection on sidebar tab switch.
- Separate editor notices by border instead of margin.
- Allow drag and dropping images into the featured image box.
Bug Fixes
- Prevent resized Image blocks from overlapping the boundaries of the block.
- Fix wrong link to attachment page after replacing images.
- Fix Media & Text block: “Crop image to fill entire column” reset on image change.
- Fix the Snackbar notices position.
- Save the Verse block line breaks as single characters.
- Remove has-background-dim-NaN classname from the Cover block.
- Normalize the keys of the apiFetch preloaded data to avoid unnecessary Rest API calls.
- Fix CSS styles of the ColorPicker component.
- Update the Inspector slots to use the bubblesVirtually slots Fixing RichText usage in Inspector controls.
- Move the Modals and Popovers to the right position in the DOM.
- Fix alignment of date picker days when used in block.
- Fix alignment of ToggleControl label.
- Fix the toggled state in the block toolbar buttons.
- Fix the multi-select inspector padding.
- Fix the behavior that allows writing by clicking anywhere in the canvas.
- Prevent private posts with a future date from becoming public on update.
- Fix useColors crashes if contrast checkers are not specified.
- Render metaboxes as a single seemless unit to fix styling issues for themes with colored backgrounds.
- Fix the FontSizePicker custom option.
- Fix reusable blocks showing up as too tall.
- Fix Drop Cap + alignment producing a gap between paragraphs.
- Fix Cover to Image block transform when no image is used in the Cover block.
- Ensure empty classname is not output onto table element.
- Fix scrolling the sidebar on mobile.
- I18: Fix the Code block example string.
APIs
- Support a disabled prop in the RichText component.
- Add a new CustomSelectControl component.
- Add a new TextHighlight component.
- Add a new CustomGradientPicker component.
- Add useViewportMatch React hook to the @wordpress/compose package.
- Allowing changing the aXe config in the @wordpress/just-puppeteer-axe package.
Experiments
- Block Content Areas:
- Add a demo templates directory.
- Add the Template Part block.
- Add documentation for the current state of the experiment.
- Widgets screen:
- Clear the block selection when clicking outside the widget areas.
- APIs:
- Add a new __experimentalResolveSelect API to the data package.
- Add color detection and contrast checks support to the useColors hook.
Documentation
- Improvements to the Getting Started documentation.
- Include TypeScript type checking in Testing Overview.
- Add JSDoc recommendations.
- Reintroduce NodeJS LTS support commitment.
- Typos and tweaks: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
Performance
- Avoid rerendering the EditorRegions component on each click.
- Flatten and simplify the align hook rendering.
- Shim the meta attribute source on block registration.
Various
- Storybook: Add StoryShots integration to generate unit tests.
- Work on the stability of e2e tests: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
- Use consistent theme colors and font sizes in e2e tests.
- Travis: Skip the deploy stage on PRs.
- And a Travis job to check the IE11 compatibility of the produced JavaScript builds.
- Avoid usage of editor store on block editor reusable blocks inserter.
- Replace the fs-extra dependency with rimraf.
- RSS block: Remove PHP 5.2 compatibility code.
- Update the Columns block to use the Patterns API.
- Refactor the BlockToolbar component to use React hooks.
- Refactor the BlockDraggable component for a simpler React tree.
- Refactor the BlockHTML component to use React hooks.
- Refactor the BlockList component to use React hooks.
- Refactor the BlockInsertionPoint component to use React hooks.
- Split @wordpress/urls into multiple modules/files to allow better tree-shaking.
- Improve the Storybook setup to allow updates on style changes.
- Enforce consistent usage of Button and ToolbarGroup components.
- Use the colors hook in the Paragraph block.
- Add missing actions and tests for lockPostAutosaving, unlockPostAutosaving.
- Collapse passed tests in Travis jobs.
- Add side effects property to the @wordpress/components package to allow tree-shaking.
- Add a script to perform patch releases for old npm package versions.
- Reuse the URLInput component in the Social Links block and disable suggestions.
- Improve and simplify reusable block styles.
- Refactor the Gallery edit component to be semi-cross-platform.
- Run tests using the same environment version used for development.
- Add CPU/Network slowdown configuration options to the e2e tests setup.
- Enable Type checking for the @wordpress/token-list package.
- Move the changelog.txt and readme.txt files to the Github repository.