The WordPress block editor (a.k.a. Gutenberg) comes with a feature called “reusable blocks.” They are blocks, saved for later, edited in one place.
Have you ever wanted to:
Re-use the same snippet of text across posts and pages?
Save complex layouts to spare you having to copy/paste from one post to another?
Reusable blocks can do these things.
Like templates, you mean?
Not quite. Think of reusable blocks as snippets of globally synchronized content that are personal to you. You can edit all your reusable blocks in one place, and any post or page you inserted that block into, get the updated version as well.
Where you might use templates to structure your website, you can use reusable blocks to structure your content. For example:
A testimonial on your homepage and your product page.
A “this post is part of a series” box that you insert part-way through your article.
A “Follow me on social media” section you can weave into the prose of your popular article.
Complex but static blocks, such as a “Subscribe to my newsletter” box, a contact form, a survey, quiz, or polls.
Key properties are that reusable blocks are unbeatable when you want to reuse a snippet of content, edit it in one place, and have the changes propagate to every instance.
Show me how
To create a reusable block, open the block editor and create the content you want to reuse:
Now select the content you want to turn into a reusable block, then click the three-dot “More” menu and choose “Add to Reusable blocks.”
Voilà, you’ve now created a reusable block. From now on, you can find this block, and any other you create, in the “Reusable blocks” tab in the block library:
This is also where you can insert the newly created block on any of your posts or pages.
Where do I edit my existing reusable blocks?
To edit a reusable block, select it and make your edits. When you make an edit, the Publish button will have a little dot indicator:
This dot indicates you’ve made a global change that potentially affects posts beyond just the one you’re editing, the same as when you’re editing templates. This lets you confirm the change was intentional.
Another way to edit your reusable blocks is to click the global three-dot “More” menu and selecting “Manage all reusable blocks”:
This takes you to a section letting you edit, rename, export, or delete every reusable block you created.
What else can I do?
Here are a couple of tips and tricks you can leverage to get the most out of reusable blocks.
Give them a good name
When you name a reusable block, you are essentially choosing your search terms, as the name is what you search for in the block library (or when you use the “slash command,” typing / in an empty paragraph):
Avoid names such as “Gallery” or “Image,” as that’ll be annoying when you just want to insert one of those. You can avoid that with a unique name, such as “My author biography.”
Insert in the best place of your content flow
One obvious benefit of reusable blocks is that they are just blocks, just like everything else in the block editor. That means you can insert it anywhere in your content. You might want your rich author biography to sit at the top or bottom of the post, but This post is part of a series box that might sit well two or three paragraphs not to disrupt the reading flow.
A design shortcut
Maybe you created a complex layout you’re happy with, a call to action with the right image and buttons, and it took a while to get it just right. Go on and save it as a reusable block: even if you mean to insert it only to convert it to a regular block, it might still save you a minute.
To convert a reusable block to regular (blocks, select it and click the “Convert to regular blocks”:
Need to move to another site? You can both export and import reusable blocks. Go to the Manage all reusable blocks section from the global three-dot “More” menu, hover over the block you want to export, and click “Export as JSON”:
The downloaded file can be imported on any WordPress 5.0 or newer website.
Try it
Create a draft post and play around with Reusable Blocks to see how you might start using them. You can always delete them when you’re done playing.
You can test importing and using a small reusable block I created as an example. It’s a “Further reading” block that shows the four latest posts from the category “Featured”:
It might work well as a highlight in an article, giving the reader something new to read or awareness of your other content.
The videos in this post show the reusable blocks flow in the upcoming WordPress 5.7.
The first release candidate for WordPress 5.7 is now available! 🎉
Please join us in celebrating this very important milestone in the community’s progress towards the final release!
“Release Candidate” means that the new version is ready for release, but with millions of users and thousands of plugins and themes, it’s possible something was missed. WordPress 5.7 is slated for release on March 9, 2021, but your help is needed to get there—if you haven’t tried 5.7 yet, now is the time!
You can test the WordPress 5.7 release candidate in two ways:
Try the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (choose the “Bleeding edge” channel and Beta/RC Only” stream options)
Thank you to all of the contributors who tested the Beta releases and gave feedback. Testing for bugs is a critical part of polishing every release and a great way to contribute to WordPress.
Please test your plugins and themes against WordPress 5.7 and update the Tested up to version in the readme file to 5.7. If you find compatibility problems, please be sure to post to the support forums, so those can be figured out before the final release.
If you think you’ve found a bug, you can post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. We’d love to hear from you! If you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file one on WordPress Trac, where you can also find a list of known bugs.
This maintenance release includes 5 bug fixes. These bugs affect WordPress version 5.6.1, so you’ll want to upgrade.
You can download WordPress 5.6.2 directly, or visit the Dashboard → Updates screen and click Update Now. If your sites support automatic background updates, they’ve already started the update process.
WordPress 5.6.2 is a small maintenance release focused on fixing user-facing issues discovered in 5.6.1. The next major release will be version 5.7, currently scheduled for release on March 9, 2021.
Gutenberg 10.0 released this week, February 17, 2021, marking the 100th release of the Gutenberg plugin; the 100th release of a journey that started more than four years ago when Matt announced the project at WordCamp US 2016.
Where We Started
The past four years have not always been an easy journey. Shipping something this impactful is not easy, and there was precedent for keeping the editor as it was: WordPress had already tried to replace TinyMCE a couple of times already. What would be different this time around? The worry was “not much” and initially, very few people actively joined the project.
Six months later came WordCamp Europe 2017 and the first release of the plugin. The editor was nowhere close to being usable, but it “clicked” for some. The reactions to the presentation were hopeful, but afterward, there was a lot of pushback.
Gutenberg was (and is) an audacious project. With a project this big it attracted a lot of attention, and it became difficult to discern constructive debate from mere opposition. We each come with our context, and some people had a fixed idea about what they wanted for the project. Some wanted to reuse an existing page builder, others wanted to revive the Fields API project, some wanted it to be front-end-first, others wanted it just to replace the classic editor’s content area, some wanted it to be in Vue.JS, others wanted no change at all. With a product used by 40% of the web, you hope to find consensus, and when compromises have to be made, it can be difficult for those involved to avoid feeling that their voice is being ignored.
We have also made quite a few mistakes: stability wasn’t great in some releases, performance suffered in others, and accessibility as well. But we kept pushing forward, using feedback to improve the editor and the project in all aspects until its first inclusion in WordPress 5.0, and we’re still working to improve it today.
Where We Are
It’s a delight to see some people who strongly disagreed with the initial vision or approach to Gutenberg gradually come to enjoy using the editor and join the project to carry on its vision. Others might still not like it; some won’t ever use it. One thing is certain; we’ll continue doing our best to push forward, improve what’s already shipped, and ship new exciting features. We’ll continue making mistakes and hopefully continue learning from them.
Wednesday marked the 100th release of Gutenberg, and while that looks remarkable on the outside, the release itself holds what all the other releases did. It holds improvements to the existing features, it fixes bugs that users reported, adds new features, and it highlights experiments with new ideas.
What is remarkable about the release is the people. The ones who were with us from the start, the ones who were with us but left, the ones who joined in our journey, everyone who helped along the way, everyone who provided feedback, everyone who got their hands dirty, and everyone who tried to use this editor, extend it and provide ideas.
WordPress 5.7 Beta 3 is now available for testing! 🗣
This software is still in development, so it’s not recommended to run this version on a production site. Consider setting up a test site to play with it.
You can test the WordPress 5.7 Beta 3 in two ways:
Install/activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (select the Bleeding edge channel and the Beta/RC Only stream)
The current target for final release is March 9, 2021. That’s just three weeks away, so your help is vital to making sure that the final release is as good as it can be.
Some Highlights
Since Beta 2, 27 bugs have been fixed. Here is a summary of some of the included changes:
Adjusted color contrast on various admin buttons to improve accessibility and readability (#52402)
Replaced editor typeface with system fonts to improve privacy and performance (#46169)
Added i18n support to register_block_type_from_metadata function (#52301)
Media upload errors are now more accessible (#47120)
New filter to modify how pagination links are rendered when using paginate_links function (#44018)
How You Can Help
Watch the Make WordPress Core blog for 5.7-related developer notes in the coming weeks, which will break down these and other changes in greater detail.
Testing for bugs is a vital part of polishing the release during the beta stage and a great way to contribute. ✨
If you think you’ve found a bug, please post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. We would love to hear from you! If you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file one on WordPress Trac. That’s also where you can find a list of known bugs.
WordPress is open source software, maintained by a global network of contributors. There are many examples of how WordPress has changed people’s lives for the better. In this monthly series, we share some of the amazing stories that are lesser-known.
Pooja Derashri shares the story of how she went from being an introvert from a small village in India to becoming a developer and working on international projects, thanks to the WordPress community.
As her interest grew, Pooja started following some WordPress-based groups on Facebook, where she first heard about conference-style WordPress events known as WordCamps. She later joined her first WordCamp in Ahmedabad, India. This three day event in 2017 opened up a new world—the WordPress community—and what would become a life changing moment. “WordCamp Ahmedabad has one of the best WordPress communities in India,” she said, “and everyone, including organizers and attendees were so humble and welcoming.”
The thirst for learning
A fascination with how things worked and a desire never stop learning were traits that shone through in Pooja from a young age. She moved from Banera, a rural village in India, to a nearby city, where she lived with her uncle while completing her higher education. With her enthusiasm for learning, she decided to become an engineer. When thinking back on that time she says, “Being from a rural background, people in my village tended not to be keen on the idea of sending their girl child to another city for further studies. Fortunately, that was not the case for me because my parents were immensely supportive of me and my interests. They’ve always encouraged me to believe in myself and fulfill my dreams. With their support, I pursued my engineering in electronics and communication.”
Discovering the opportunities in web development
On completing her engineering training, Pooja was not sure what to do next. One of her friends suggested that she should explore web development. The idea intrigued her, and she sought out learning resources to study. She also secured an internship as a PHP Developer to give herself the chance to learn alongside professionals in the field.
Getting started with WordPress
“I found WordPress surpassed other platforms. The vast knowledge base made it easy for me to learn.” – Pooja
This internship led Pooja to her first job where she discovered a range of content management systems. Her view of the opportunities offered by these systems changed when the manager assigned her a small project using the WordPress platform.
She recalls: “I found WordPress surpassed other platforms I had worked on earlier. The vast knowledge base made it easy for me to learn.” She soon became comfortable managing WordPress, working with plugins and themes, and wanted to learn it more in-depth.
Pooja soon joined WPVibes as its first team member. Being part of a new startup gave her a lot of experience and a chance to be involved in new processes. As the company expanded they started providing custom plugin development services per the client’s requirement and created some free and paid plugins. Pooja said, “We found it very exciting and productive. Today, we are a team of 10.”
Encouragement from the WordPress community
Contributing to WordPress increases your knowledge
At the event, she was able to listen to speakers from India and abroad, many of whom shared their journey with WordPress and how it had changed their lives. “One of the most inspiring sessions was by Rahul Bansal,” she said. “He talked about contributing to WordPress and giving back to the community. He also explained how contributing to WordPress can help you to enhance your knowledge. It inspired me to contribute to WordPress.”
The WordPress community of Ahmedabad continued to inspire Pooja and her husband Anand Upadhyay, and they later started a Meetup group in their home city of Ajmer as part of their contribution to the community. They continue to be involved in supporting local users through the Ajmer Meetup.
At the next WordCamp Pooja attended, she joined its contributor day, which brings users together to give back to the open source platform and global community. Most of the contributors she met were interested in giving time to the WordPress CMS. She decided to venture into a different path and took her first steps by joining the WordPress TV group, where you can explore videos from WordPress events across the world. She also discovered the joy of translating into her local language, and is a Polyglot contributor for the Hindi language.
In 2019, she was selected as a volunteer for WordCamp Asia in Bangkok, Thailand, and it became an impetus to become even more involved with the community. She was very excited about this role, and to be part of her first WordCamp outside India. Sadly, due to the global COVID pandemic, the event had to be cancelled. Her enthusiasm has not diminished and she is eagerly waiting to support in-person WordCamps in the future and meet even more members of the global community.
Her determination to be part of making WordPress and sharing skills has only increased, which has led to contribute to the WordPress Training team. This team manages lesson plans and prepares content to support people who are training others to use WordPress. The team recently joined a few other teams to launch Learn WordPress, which brings learning materials together for users of all levels, and Pooja contributed to two different teams during the project.
Message to the WordPress Community
Pooja is eager to share her belief in the power for good in the WordPress community. “There is a huge community to help you with your learning, so start learning and try to give back to the community. It doesn’t matter if you are not comfortable with programming, there are many different ways in which you can contribute.”
“What I have learned in my life is that it doesn’t matter from where you came and what background you have. All that matters is your hard work and positive attitude towards life.”
This post is based on an article originally published on HeroPress.com, an initiative focused around people in the WordPress community created by Topher DeRosia.
WordPress 5.7 Beta 2 is now available for testing! 🗣
This software is still in development, so it’s not recommended to run this version on a production site. Consider setting up a test site to play with it.
You can test the WordPress 5.7 Beta 2 in two ways:
Install/activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (select the Bleeding edge channel and the Beta/RC Only stream)
The current target for final release is March 9, 2021. That’s just four weeks away, so your help is vital to making sure that the final release is as good as it can be.
Some Highlights
Since Beta 1, 38 bugs have been fixed. Here is a summary of some of the included changes:
Italicized text has been removed to improve accessibility and readability (#47326)
Pause any playing media when closing the the media modal (#48562)
Gutenberg editor support for custom spacing (#51760)
Resolved Menu UI issues on medium-large screen sizes (#49576)
Admin UI color palette: ensure that all interactive elements have an appropriate contrast ratio (#52402)
How You Can Help
Watch the Make WordPress Core blog for 5.7-related developer notes in the coming weeks, which will break down these and other changes in greater detail.
Testing for bugs is a vital part of polishing the release during the beta stage and a great way to contribute. ✨
If you think you’ve found a bug, please post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. We would love to hear from you! If you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file one on WordPress Trac. That’s also where you can find a list of known bugs.
This maintenance release features 20 bug fixes as well as 7 issues fixed for the block editor. These bugs affect WordPress version 5.6, so you’ll want to upgrade.
You can download WordPress 5.6.1 directly, or visit the Dashboard → Updates screen and click Update Now. If your sites support automatic background updates, they’ve already started the update process.
WordPress 5.6.1 is a short-cycle maintenance release. The next major release will be version 5.7.
For WordPress, 2021 started on a high note. Read on to learn about updates from last month.
WordPress release updates
WordPress project executive director — Josepha Haden (@chanthaboune) shared big picture goals for WordPress in 2021. Highlights include shipping Full Site Editing — first on the Gutenberg plugin in April 2021 and later in core (with WordPress 5.8), improved learning opportunities on learn.wordpress.org, and better tooling for contributors. As per the updated WordPress roadmap, WordPress version 5.7 is planned to launch in March 2021 and WordPress 5.8 in June 2021. Some related updates:
Proposal to return to in-person WordPress events in safe locations
The Community team is discussing an updated proposal to create a decision-making checklist for meetup organizers. The proposal is aimed at locations that have more effectively contained COVID-19 (such as New Zealand and Taiwan, for instance) so that local meetup groups in these areas can organize safe, in-person events. According to the proposal, in-person meetup organizers should review local/global health instructions based on resources and complete a checklist — which recommends whether to organize an event or not based on the organizer’s inputs and other factors. Compulsory safety precautions should be taken for any in-person meetup, and participants/organizers can share event feedback with WordCamp Central. The proposal is still being discussed, so if you have any thoughts, please share them in the comments. Please note: WordPress meetups and WordCamps are still online at this time and will continue to remain online until further notice.
Contributor teams released Gutenberg Version 9.7 on January 6th and Version 9.8 on January 20th. Version 9.7 allows users to drag block patterns from the inserter right into a desired position within the editor. It also has a new block variations feature and several improvements to reusable blocks. Version 9.8 makes the spacer block semi-transparent, adds a variation icon to the block switcher, adds site editor content to an iframe, and stabilizes Full Site Editing (FSE) by removing the auto drafts feature.
Want to contribute to the Training team? Follow the Training team blog, or join them in the #training channel in the Make WordPress Slack.
Further Reading
Round 1 of the Full Site Editing (FSE) outreach program has wrapped up. As a result, gaps were identified in the Gutenberg 9.6 template-switching experience – you can follow the issues in GitHub. You can follow issues in GitHub and submit questions to the team. The program identified gaps in the current template-switching experience that shipped with Gutenberg 9.6. You can follow the issues reported in GitHub. Do you have questions about the FSE program? You can now submit them here as part of the outreach program.
People of WordPress — A cross-team initiative led by the Marketing team to highlight WordPress contributors is back with a post featuring Thelma Muelte of Zimbabwe. If you are an active contributor to a WordPress.org team or a local WordCamp, contact the Marketing Team with the #ContributorStory tag to be featured in the series.
Joseph Haden (@chanthaboune) launched a podcast titled WP Briefing which is aimed at WordPress users, builders, and contributors of all levels. The podcast – which is available on all major platforms, will include overviews of WordPress philosophy, community success stories, and major updates.
WordPress 5.7 Beta 1 is now available for testing! 🗣
This software is still in development, so it’s not recommended to run this version on a production site. Consider setting up a test site to play with the new version.
You can test the WordPress 5.7 Beta 1 in two ways:
Install/activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (select the Bleeding edge channel and the Beta/RC Only stream)
The current target for final release is March 9, 2021. That’s just five weeks away, so your help is vital to making sure that the final release is as good as it can be.
So what’s new? 🤔
Improvements in Core
Lazy-load iframes Now you can enable lazy-loading of iframes by adding the loading="lazy" attribute to iframe tags on the front-end.
Migrating from HTTP to HTTPS is streamlined Switching a WordPress site from HTTP to HTTPS has proven to be a pain for all involved. While on the surface, the Site Address and WordPress Address have to be updated, content with embedded HTTP URLs remains unchanged in the database. With this release, migrating a site to HTTPS is now a one-click interaction. URLs in the database are automatically replaced when the Site and WordPress Address are both using HTTPS. Also, Site Health now includes an HTTPS status check.
Standardize colors used in WP-Admin CSS to a single palette This change collapses all colors used in the CSS to one of the available shades of blue, green, red, yellow, grey, black, and white. The palette makes it simpler than ever to build components your users can read, because half the range gives you great contrast with white type and a half with black, according to current accessibility guidelines.
Ongoing cleanup after update to jQuery 3.5.1 jQuery deprecations in WordPress Core and bundled themes show up a lot less often, and the notifications make more sense to the user.
New Robots API The new Robots API allows the filter directives to be included in the ‘robots’ meta tag. Also, the directive max-image-preview:large is now included by default to allow large image previews to be displayed in search engines (unless the blog is marked as not being public).
Improvements in the Editor
Inserter drag and drop: Blocks and block patterns can now be dragged directly from the inserter into the post canvas.
Full height alignment: Blocks such as the Cover block now can have an option to expand to fill the entire viewport.
Block variations: The icon and description of a block variation is now shown in the block inspector, and a new dropdown in the block inspector lets you switch between block variations.
Reusable blocks: Several enhancements to the usability and stability of reusable blocks have been made, and reusable blocks are now saved at the same time that the post is saved.
Buttons block: The Buttons block now supports vertical alignments, and you can set the width of a button to a preset percentage.
Social Icons block: You can now change the size of the icons in the Social Icons block.
Font size in more places: You can now change the font size in the List and Code blocks.
Many many other enhancements and bug fixes. To see all of the features for each release in detail check out the Gutenberg release posts: 9.3, 9.4, 9.5, 9.6, 9.7, 9.8, and 9.9.
How You Can Help
Watch the Make WordPress Core blog for 5.7-related developer notes in the coming weeks, which will break down these and other changes in greater detail.
Testing for bugs is a vital part of polishing the release during the beta stage and a great way to contribute. ✨
If you think you’ve found a bug, please post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. We would love to hear from you! If you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file one on WordPress Trac. That’s also where you can find a list of known bugs.
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