Gutenberg

Description

“Gutenberg” is a codename for a whole new paradigm for creating with WordPress, that aims to revolutionize the entire publishing experience as much as Johannes Gutenberg did the printed word. The project is following a four-phase process that will touch major pieces of WordPress — Editing, Customization, Collaboration, and Multilingual.

Following the introduction of post block editing in December 2018, Gutenberg later introduced full site editing (FSE) in 2021, which shipped with WordPress 5.9 in early 2022.

What Does Gutenberg Do?

Gutenberg is WordPress’s “block editor”, and introduces a modular approach to modifying your entire site. Edit individual content blocks on posts or pages. Add and adjust widgets. Even design your site headers, footers, and navigation with full site editing support.

Each piece of content in the editor, from a paragraph to an image gallery to a headline, is its own block. And just like physical blocks, WordPress blocks can be added, arranged, and rearranged, allowing users to create media-rich content and site layouts in a visually intuitive way — and without workarounds like shortcodes or custom HTML and PHP.

We’re always hard at work refining the experience, creating more and better blocks, and laying the groundwork for future phases of work. Each WordPress release includes stable features from the Gutenberg plugin, so you don’t need to install the plugin to benefit from the work being done here.

Early Access

Are you a tech-savvy early adopter who likes testing bleeding-edge and experimental features, and isn’t afraid to tinker with features that are still in active development? If so, this beta plugin gives you access to the latest Gutenberg features for block and full site editing, as well as a peek into what’s to come.

Contributors Wanted

For the adventurous and tech-savvy, the Gutenberg plugin gives you the latest and greatest feature set, so you can join us in testing and developing bleeding-edge features, playing around with blocks, and maybe get inspired to contribute or build your own blocks.

Discover More

  • User Documentation: Review the WordPress Editor documentation for detailed instructions on using the editor as an author to create posts, pages, and more.

  • Developer Documentation: Explore the Developer Documentation for extensive tutorials, documentation, and API references on how to extend the editor.

  • Contributors: Gutenberg is an open-source project and welcomes all contributors from code to design, from documentation to triage. See the Contributor’s Handbook for all the details on how you can help.

The development hub for the Gutenberg project can be found at https://github.com/wordpress/gutenberg. Discussions for the project are on the Make Core Blog and in the #core-editor channel in Slack, including weekly meetings. If you don’t have a Slack account, you can sign up here.

FAQ

How can I send feedback or get help with a bug?

The best place to report bugs, feature suggestions, or any other feedback is at the Gutenberg GitHub issues page. Before submitting a new issue, please search the existing issues to check if someone else has reported the same feedback.

While we try to triage issues reported here on the plugin forum, you’ll get a faster response (and reduce duplication of effort) by keeping feedback centralized in GitHub.

Do I have to use the Gutenberg plugin to get access to these features?

Not necessarily. Each version of WordPress after 5.0 has included features from the Gutenberg plugin, which are known collectively as the WordPress Editor. You are likely already benefitting from stable features!

But if you want cutting edge beta features, including more experimental items, you will need to use the plugin. You can read more here to help decide whether the plugin is right for you.

Where can I see which Gutenberg plugin versions are included in each WordPress release?

View the Versions in WordPress document to get a table showing which Gutenberg plugin version is included in each WordPress release.

What’s next for the project?

The four phases of the project are Editing, Customization, Collaboration, and Multilingual. You can hear more about the project and phases from Matt in his State of the Word talks for 2021, 2020, 2019, and 2018. Additionally, you can follow the biweekly release notes and monthly project plan updates on the Make WordPress Core blog for more up to date information about what’s happening now.

Where can I read more about Gutenberg?

Reviews

January 9, 2023
This plugin is for daredevils. It will give you access to some of the new and experimental features that are not part of Gutenberg yet. Sometimes things may look a little bit weird, but you'll also get stuff like cool animations before other users. So if you want to be in the WordPress avantgarde the Gutenberg plugin is a must. I you are a more conservative WP user this plugin may not be for you at all. I think that the low rankings of this plugin is not deserved, but probably the plugin is misunderstood. My recommendation is: try it - and you'll know new features before they appear in WP.
January 9, 2023 1 reply
Irritating, confusing, slowing down writing of big articles.
January 6, 2023
It reminds me when I was trying to build my own editor some 15 years ago 🙂 I also created query loop blocks for example. Later I used Drupal for about 10 years and always missed this feature. How happy I was when I found it back on Gutenberg. Anyway, Gutenberg is for me a real (r)evolution. A game changer in my way to create and sell websites. So obvious. Here are 2 tips I found usefull when it comes to build customized website: first, use no parent theme. Start blank! Second, use the 'Meta Field Block' extension to render your custom post data. Cheers to the Gutenberg community, Florent
December 26, 2022 2 replies
This plugin represents what is wrong with WordPress. Most of my clients don't know much about the Internet and the arrival of Gutenberg completely lost them. It would be time for WordPress to step back and abandon this gas factory that is Gutenberg.
December 24, 2022
Since Gutenberg was forced on WP users a few years ago, 90% of the outdoor/fishing/hunting blogs I followed have stopped blogging or let their sites die. All of them said it's because they didn't like Gutenberg, had a theme and writing process that was quick and easy for them to use for posts and they had no interest in learning anything new, especially since it was difficult for them to use. I tried to tell them there was a way to disable GB, but they weren't interested in messing around with it. In a recent interview with Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Automattic, he specifially says "I think that everyone should blog more". And yet, Wordpress is single handedly destroying people's interest in blogging by forcing Gutenberg down their throats. On my own site, Waterdog Journal, I have been using the Twenty Twelve Theme for years and it does everything I need to make posts with lots of photography. I have no interest in redesigning my site, which GB seems more geared toward, and it's quick and easy to do what I need to do with the Twenty Twelve Theme. I played with GB for about an hour when it first came out and quickly decided it was not something I was interested in and only made blogging more difficult. I searched for ways to disable GB and briefly used the Classic Editor, but it still had remnants of GB. Then I found Disable Gutenberg and it does a great job of basically making Wordpress work like GB doesn't exist. The day Disable Gutenberg stops working is the day I give up on WP altogether. Based on the volume of 1 star ratings GB has, I don't know why WP doesn't take the suggestion so many have made. Leave WP the way it's always been and make GB a plugin people can install if they think it works for them. Instead, all that's being done is the destruction of sites that once had great blogs. You would think WP would take Matt Mullenwegs' comment to "blog more" a little more seriously and help rather than hinder the process. Funny to me, even this comment section is using blocks, which I found really annoying.
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Contributors & Developers

“Gutenberg” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Contributors

“Gutenberg” has been translated into 53 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

To read the changelog for the latest Gutenberg release, please navigate to the release page.