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MRW Simplified Editor

By Mark Root-Wiley

Description

Help your site’s editors create semantic content and style it with the theme for consistent formatting and portable content. This plugin removes blocks and other styling options to help editors focus.

I built this plugin for use on client sites. I hope you’ll find it useful! This is an opinionated plugin. Read an in-depth reasoning behind the decisions made by this plugin in the post “A WordPress Formatting Manifesto.” If you find it compelling, then you’ll probably like this plugin!

Contribute on Github.

Block Editor Features

This plugin greatly simplifies the block editor by hiding all of the following features. Filters are provided for developers to adjust what is hidden (including making it easier to hide additional blocks).

  • Infrequently Used Core Blocks such as Verse, Table, Audio, Video, etc., and all Query- and Site-related blocks. See FAQ for full list of hidden blocks.
  • All Core Block Styles and the “Default style” feature
  • Some Block Editor Settings: Drop Cap, Heading 1, Heading 5, Heading 6, image percentage and pixel sizing, font sizing by pixel, open links in new tabs (mostly hidden)
  • Default Color & gradient settings (Custom theme palettes/settings are never hidden)
  • Block Patterns (WP 5.5+)
  • Block Directory (WP 5.5+)
  • Infrequently Used Jetpack Blocks – See FAQ for full list of hidden blocks.
  • “Upload” and “Insert from URL” image options to encourage use of Media Library

The plugin also improves the editor by:

  • Increasing prominence of contrast errors
  • Styling “Save draft” as a button

Classic Editor / Classic Block Features

Reduces editor to a single row of buttons: “Styleselect” (Headings 2-4 and Blockquote as well as Strikethrough, Subscript, Superscript, Preformatted, and Code), Bold, Italic, Add/Edit Link, Break Link, Horizontal Rule, Paste as Plain Text, Remove Styles, Special Characters, Undo, Redo, Help, Distraction Free Mode.

Note on WordPress version Support

Due to frequent changes to the block editor, features are only guaranteed for the latest version of WordPress.

Screenshots

  • The Block Editor simplified, here with no colors or drop caps for the Paragraph block.

  • The "Classic" block of the WordPress block editor also reflects the impact of this plugin in the Classic Editor.

FAQ

Full List of Hidden Blocks

Hidden Core Blocks:

  • Text & Media Blocks: Audio, Code, Next Page, Preformatted, Shortcode, Spacer, Table, Verse, Video
  • Widget Blocks: Archives, Calendar, Categories, Latest Comments, RSS, Search, Tag Cloud
  • Query-Related Blocks: Query, Archive Title (Query Title), Post Title, Post Content, Post Date, Post Excerpt, Post Featured Image, Post Tags & Categories (Post Terms)
    Page List
  • FSE Blocks: Login/Out, Page List, Site Logo, Site Tagline, Site Title

Hidden Core Embeds:

  • Amazon Kindle, Animoto, Cloudup, Crowd Signal, Daily Motion, Hulu, Mixcloud, Polldaddy, Reverbnation, Smugmug, Speaker, VideoPress, and WordPress.tv

Hidden Jetpack Blocks:

  • Markdown, Star Rating, Repeat Visitor, OpenTable, Revue, Eventbrite Tickets, GIF, Calendly, and WhatsApp Button

Plugin Filters

The plugin provides numerous filters that allow developers to hide or unhide additional blocks, block styles, or editor settings.

Code Examples for Plugin Filters

Visit the GitHub wiki for examples of filters to show/hide a block, block style, or editor setting.

Reviews

Makes TinyMCE More User Friendly

June 4, 2018
It's easy to underestimate how much skill goes into formatting content to look nice in the WordPress editor. This plugin not only makes it easier for users to learn how to work with tinyMCE, but it also helps them get better results by removing buttons that really shouldn't be there in the first place. With this plugin, I don't have to spend my time explaining to every client why they should never use the color tool, the underline tool, or heading 1. Plus, no one will ever get confused because the second row of buttons is hidden, and they don't know where it went. Developers can configure this plugin as they need to, everyone else can just activate it and let it do its thing. It's a great plugin.

Removing the Crud From the Text Editor

September 30, 2017
The title of the plugin might be a mouthful, but it does exactly what i wanted. Simplifies the tinymce editor to a single line of the most useful options and removes everything thats not. This is something you could do on your own, but in situations where you don't want to maintain your own code, this plugin is darn simple and useful.
Read all 3 reviews

Contributors & Developers

“MRW Simplified Editor” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Contributors

Translate “MRW Simplified Editor” into your language.

Interested in development?

Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.

Changelog

2.5.0 (August 16, 2021)

  • tl;dr – WordPress 5.8 support and fixes, more hidden blocks by default, new filters to quickly unhide categories of hidden blocks
  • [Fix] Use updated block_editor_settings_all filter instead of deprecated block_editor_settings. Support for old filter will be removed in a future version
  • [New] Hide Shortcode block since shortcodes work in a Paragraph block
  • [New] Hide Archives, Categories, and Latest Comments widget blocks by default after almost never using these
  • [New] Hide all new Full Site Editing/FSE and Query-related blocks (e.g. Query Loop, Post Title, Site Logo, etc.)
  • [New] Add new filters mrw_hidden_core_blocks, mrw_hidden_widget_blocks, mrw_hidden_query_blocks, and mrw_hidden_post_blocks that can be used to unhide entire group of related blocks with __return_empty_array().
  • [Fix] Re-hide drop-cap after change in WordPress settings array.

2.4.0 (January 7, 2021)

  • [Fix] Hide Embeds which were previously hidden. Refactoring of embeds in WordPress 5.6 broke the previous way of hiding them
  • [Dev] Introduce new mrw_hidden_embeds filter. Embeds are no long hidden via the mrw_hidden_blocks.
  • [Dev] Improve consistency of how filters are applied

2.3.0 (January 3, 2021)

  • WordPress 5.6 support confirmed
  • [New] Hide Jetpack Blocks: Markdown, Star Rating, Repeat Visitor, OpenTable, Revue, Eventbrite Tickets, GIF, Calendly, and WhatsApp Button. Adds mrw_jetpack_hidden_blocks filter, allowing developers to easily unhide these blocks while also making it easier to hide other Jetpack blocks!
  • [Fix] (!!!) Hide Dropcap setting in Editor (big props to @xemlock and @joppuyo on Github)
  • [Fix] Resolve notice from Block Editor Colors plugin when using a theme without a custom color palette.
  • [Fix] Only add body classes that hide editor settings on the Block Editor screen
  • [Dev] Deprecated Filters (Sorry for doing this again, last time I foresee): Replace “disabled” with “hidden” and “style variations” with “block styles” for improved clarity.
    • mrw_disabled_blocks ➡ mrw_hidden_blocks
    • mrw_disabled_style_variations ➡ mrw_hidden_block_styles
    • mrw_disabled_block_editor_settings ➡ mrw_hidden_block_editor_settings
  • [Docs] – Moved Filter references and code examples to GitHub wiki

Full Changelog

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