WordPress Gutenberg 11.5, introduced a week ago, includes a new widget group block that fixes several bugs and significantly improves the widget block editing experience.
The new feature, called Widget Group Block, brings a true full bug-free site editing experience to the WordPress widget block area.
WordPress widgets
WordPress widgets are features that are typically found in the sidebars and footer area of a typical web page.
The widget area can, for example, contain calendars, search bars, site navigation and links to the latest articles.
WordPress layout showing widget areas
Problems with editing widgets
The WordPress Gutenberg project is in the middle of a four-phase rollout, Phase 2 to be precise.
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The objective of phase 2 is:
“Personalization – Full Site Editing, Block Templates, Block Directory, Block Based Themes”
The above statement means that the “blocks” method of building a website will extend to all areas of a website.
The widget area had some issues that needed to be resolved.
A bug report was filed in June 2021 regarding issues with the Widget Editor.
“In the new widget editor, I cannot recreate the .c-widget> .c-widget__title structure in blocks unless you are using the ‘Legacy Widgets’ block.
Therefore, it is not possible to place new widgets using this unified block design.
One of the issues was that it was not possible to add a header to a widget area using the Gutenberg widget block editor.
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For example, if you have a widget area for an archive, adding the title will no longer display as before.
Adding a title to a widget worked well with the old way of doing things.
Appearance of the previous widget
Adding a title using the new Gutenberg block editor was sketchy and gave an unsatisfactory result.
How the widget area behaved in Gutenberg
WordPress improves widget block editing
WordPress fixed these issues and created a new widget group block. Now, publishers can more easily create blocks, add them to a group, and deploy them site-wide.
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According to WordPress:
“This new block replicates the familiar experience of being able to add a title to a group of blocks and allows you to group any block together, making it easy to move and lay out content the way you want.
This both helps the compatibility of older themes when migrating to the new editor and allows for a more consistent experience for creating widget areas.
New widget group block
The new WordPress widget group block solves the title issue. Now editors can add a title like in the old editing method, but in a way that is compatible with older themes.
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The new widget group block solves two issues:
- “The markup of the resulting model is significantly different from that of classic widget markup.
- Unable to control markup and output of “title” widget when using kernel / header for title. “
Gutenberg 11.5 is a big step forward
The goal of the WordPress Gutenberg project is to make it easy for publishers to create beautiful websites without having to think about coding.
One of the advantages of using Gutenberg Blocks to build a website is that it results in a very fast website.
The latest version of Gutenberg introduces a host of new updates and is a solid step towards a full site editing experience.
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Quotes
Basic editor improvement: introduction of widget group block
Add a “Widget group” block to the widget screens
WordPress Widget Title Bug Report
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