Creating A New Post Using Gutenberg

Guten Tag! and welcome to this week’s WordPress Wednesday about the Gutenberg editor.

Today, we’re going to walk through creating a brand-new post using the new, Gutenberg block editor. Some people are a little hesitant about using it because of how different it looks and functions. But it’s quite easy and uber-flexible once you get the hang of it.

We’re going to start to familiarize you with using the block editor by creating a new post using Gutenberg. You can read on and/or watch the video tutorial.

How to Create a New Post with Gutenberg

When you select “Posts” from the menu and choose “Add New,” you’ll see it looks very different from the classic editor.

But Gutenberg makes it easy to see what to enter where. Guess what! The big letters that spell out “Add Title” is where you type the title, which will become your “H1” header for the post.

And where it page reads, “Start writing or type / to choose a block,” Gutenberg is giving you a choice. Just start typing your body content, and you’ll be adding a paragraph block.

If you wanted to have something else at the top of your post, such as a header image, using the / symbol is just one of the ways to tell Gutenberg that you want a different type of block in this spot. The various ways for adding different kinds of blocks, such as an audio block or a video block, are demonstrated in different posts on our blog.

Formatting a New Post in Gutenberg

If you look at the right navigation bar, you’ll see that it tells you which kind of block you’re currently working in. In this area, you can change the font size, with small, normal, medium, large, and huge as your options.

You also have the option change the color of your text, as well as the color of the background, in that specific block. Being able to do this block by block gives you a little bit of flexibility with design.

Familiar Options in Gutenberg

The right-hand navigation menu is also where you’ll find some familiar document settings. To see these options, click on the “Document” (versus “Block”) tab at the top of the menu.

• Visibility: Just as with the classic editor, you select the visibility for the post – whether you want it to be public, private, or password protected.
• Publish: You also still have the option to set a publish date for your post. You can publish it “now,” schedule it to publish in the future, or even backdate the post.
• Author: Finally, you can select who the author is.

Each of these setting choices is available by clicking on the setting and selecting your desired option.

Permalinks for a New Gutenberg Post

Still focusing on what you’ll find in the right-hand navigation, if you scroll down to “permalink,” your going to see a permalink that’s a bunch of numbers and symbols. Don’t freak out. This is a temporary permalink that will update to the title of your post once you click on “Save” or “Publish.”

Additional Gutenberg Settings

We don’t need to walk you through all the settings available in the menu. They’re all the same options you had with the classic editor. The interface for selecting them just looks a bit different, and now you know where to look for options like categories and tags.

At the End of the Day

The Gutenberg editor is intuitive and has many similarities to other app’s drag and drop features. Once you give it a try, you’ll probably get the hang of it quickly. If you get stuck on adding or working in any particular block in Gutenberg, come back to the blog and select the “WordPressWednesday” category at the top of the page. It will lead you to all our explanations for working in your different block options.

Until then, happy Gutenberg blogging!