Gutenberg

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 customisation (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 centre 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 customisation.
  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 meta boxes 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 customisation.

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 13 blocks.

core/archives
Gutenberg
core/rss
Gutenberg
core/legacy-widget
Gutenberg
core/social-link-
Gutenberg
core/categories
Gutenberg
core/block
Gutenberg
core/latest-comments
Gutenberg
core/search
Gutenberg
core/shortcode
Gutenberg
core/calendar
Gutenberg
core/tag-cloud
Gutenberg
core/navigation-menu
Gutenberg
core/latest-posts
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?

Reviews

October 4, 2019
Early Gutenberg was bad enough. Now with 6.60 NOTHING works! I have disabled my entire site, every single plugin, and used 4 alternative themes. NOTHING! When I try "ADD NEW PAGE" I get the "WHITE SCREEN OF DEATH." When I hit "EDIT" on an existing page I get "WHITE SCREEN OF DEATH." Sorry to be so harsh but is somebody at least testing this live? Thing is I'm beginning to hate Word Press for allowing this frustrating, UNuser friendly, time killer plugin to hang on. Put Gutenburg and everyone else out of their misery. Let it DIE and just start over!
October 4, 2019
At the time of this review the Classic Editor plugin - which allows you to go back to the old editor instead of using Gutenberg - has 5+ million active installations and rising, and the Disable Gutenberg plugin has 400,000+ active installations and rising. Gutenberg should be an optional plugin like all other block editors. Adding it to core WordPress and forcing it on us was a terrible misstep. I hope this gross error in judgement will be remedied soon.
October 3, 2019
This core plugin has become the most important selling feature for new WordPress clients. User can now create really compelling pieces of content without having to rely on designer and/or developer for a simple but nicely styled page.
October 2, 2019
This plugin does nothing, but only PAIN: 1. content editing is entirely slowed down!!! 2. revisions list functionality was cut off in this editor 3. there's NO ANY actual new functionality - just another wix.com clone!!! 4. totally unstable 5. this editor is DRAMATICALLY inconvenient for the most of my employees and my clients!!! GARBAGE!!! GARBAGE!!! GARBAGE!!! Please REMOVE this garbage from the further WordPress development!
October 2, 2019
I will try not to add to what has already been said 1,000 times, but I might be echoing stuff that was already said. It would be easy to complain and just say that Gutenberg sucks. While it does suck, I'm going to try to explain some of my complaints. First, it is clear that this wasn't really planned well. It wasn't well thought out. Most lead developers in a project that failed to this degree would have been fired. Instead, the team seems to double down on it. Fine, I want to believe. I want to love it. But I can't. Why? Because I love WP and I want it to be as good as it ever has been, but this plugin is a reflection of the culture change in the wp community. Where a few decide that they will dictate what is better for others even though almost the majority disagree. The reviews and the downloads clearly show that most people don't like it. Most people don't want it. Why not make it a plugin and let it be a plugin for a while until it was truly amazing. For example, here are some basic things that are just broken. Selecting text with the keyboard does not work well. I could/can highlight text with the keyboard in the classic editor and cut and paste as I wish. Can't do it with this, especially if the text spans 2 blocks or more. Pressing enter creates a new block, automatically. WTF? who decided this was a good idea? Are you forcing us to use line breaks to keep certain pieces of text together in a single block? Ugh. You could in the classic editor, select several paragraphs and apply settings to them all at once. That is not possible now. There are many inconsistencies as well. For example: The paragraph block has text and background properties for color. You can change that. GREAT! But you can't change the same settings for a list block. What!? The floating toolbar covers text that you may (and likely) need to read as you are typing the next line or paragraph, so you have to do some funny acrobatics to select and deselect different blocks just to re-read the "paragraph" above. The link button was never great, but it worked fine. Now it's wonky. There was an opportunity to add classes and other properties in the "add link" button, but that was totally overlooked, so not only do we have to deal with a funky link add button, but we *still* have to go into the code to assign properties like nofollow or other rel properties to that link. At the end, this is forcing us to do exactly the opposite of what it was supposed to do. It was supposed to make it easier to do things without touching code, but more than ever I find myself having to Go to the code view just to edit basic stuff. For a long time, we got used to TinyMCE because it works. That's why it's the most widely used editor ever, and why if it's not used, it's emulated. Almost every significant open source project uses it or a variation of it. It's easy to use, it's understandable, and people get it. With WordPress being the dominant player in the space, was it really necessary to flip this upside down? Why not improve it one step at a time. As it stands now, even as I write this, it seems that Gutenberg development didn't really have the necessary planning, resources, and testing as it should have. For average users (the majority of users), this isn't a tiny component of WordPress. The editing window *is* the core of WordPress. It's how we press those words. It's how we build most of any site. A site without content is just a deployed theme, so *content* makes everything and this broke the content flow for most people. To look at shitty services like Squarespace, Wix, and Weebly as models of what is "modern" and what WP should have done is ludicrous. I am still using Gutenberg because I believe this is how WP is moving and there's no turning back. And for new users that I introduce to WordPress, I don't even tell them about the classic editor at first. I bite my lip and my tongue and try not to lash out and complain when they can't do something that they expect to work certain way. I remain hopeful that this will be fixed soon. They don't know any different, but after some time, I've been forced (every single time) to introduce them to the classic editor and to tell them the story of how it used to be. Then they get it and they say... oh this works so much better. This is what I was expecting. But then they want a few "cool" things that Gutenberg has. Emphasis on the "" around cool, because that's what they are, "cool" not necessary. Like drop cases on a paragraph. Or bumping paragraphs up or down. It's because of this total mix of great ideas and poor implementation that I can't rate this at 1 star, but I also can't rate it at 4 or 5, I wish I could do 2.5 and split that into 2 for effort, and .5 for execution. And it's for this reason that I have and probably will continue to have a love/hate relationship with the Gutenberg editor for years to come.
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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 44 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

Enhancements

New APIs

  • Implement EntityProvider and use it to refactor the meta block attributes.

Experimental

Bugs

Performance

Various

Documentation

Mobile