Write Books With the Block Editor

December 16, 2024 | General | test.tag | 3 minutes of reading

If you need a little push to start writing this winter, in the comfort of your familiar editor, here it is! You can now use the Block Editor to create electronic books and other documents—all completely offline. What a full circle moment for Gutenberg!

The Block Editor contains so many features I miss when writing in other editors. It produces clean, semantic markup. You can paste in content from anywhere and the editor will clean it up for you, or paste a link onto selected text to auto-link. The List View and Outline panels allow you to easily navigate and inspect the content. And we’re constantly iterating on the Block Editor: more features and improvements are on the way, such as refined drag and drop interactions coming in early 2025.

All this inspired me to wrap our editor in an app that can read and write local files—just as other document editors do. It turns out that EPUB is the best file format to store the content, because EPUB is an open standard for e-books that is essentially a ZIP file containing HTML and media—HTML like your WordPress posts!

And just like that, the WordPress Block Editor can also be used to write books! The cool thing about EPUB files is that any e-book app, such as Kindle and Apple Books, can open it. So even if someone doesn’t have this editor, they can still easily read the content, which makes the files it produces portable.

The editor allows you to create a cover, so you can easily distinguish between the books or documents you write. It will also treat each heading as a chapter so you can easily navigate content when opened in an e-book reader.

The term “book” should be taken broadly. While the file that the Block Editor produces is primarily used for e-books, you can create any document with it. It’s possible to export your document to a DOCX file in case you need it, though the more complex blocks are not supported yet.

It is still very much a nascent project. There’s many features left to be added, such as revisions and the ability to open any externally created EPUB files, or even DOCX files, so keep an eye out for these in the coming weeks and months! If you’re interested in this editor, it’s all open source, and I welcome any kind of help.

For now, the demo editor is installable as a Progressive Web App (PWA) in Chrome. While it’s totally usable without installation, it does give you some nice benefits such as allowing you to open the EPUB files directly from your OS. In the future we might wrap it in proper native apps. Your feedback is welcome on GitHub!

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block editor, Community, General, Gutenberg, Themes, Updates

WordPress Community Creates 1,000 Block Themes in 1,000 Days

October 23, 2024 | block editor, Community, General, Gutenberg, Themes, Updates | 2 minutes of reading

In nearly 1,000 days, the WordPress community has created 1,000 Block themes—coming together to use the full potential of the Site Editor and unleash new creative possibilities for everyone.

First introduced in WordPress 5.9, Block themes have steadily evolved, improving flexibility and functionality for themers, users, and agencies alike. Now, design tools allow customizing almost every detail. With style variations, users can change the overall look of their site in a few clicks. You can even use curation options to customize the editing process itself. But we’re not done! We can’t wait to keep pushing Block themes even further. Thank you to every early adopter who, by embracing early features with passion, helped shape the Block themes we love today with feedback and testing.

If you haven’t yet explored Block themes, check out some of the resources below to get inspired:

Use one of the 1,000 Block themes available and see what you can create. For an easy way to explore, try WordPress Playground to quickly get started with a temporary site.
Read the Theme handbook to understand types of themes, how themes work, and how to get started building.
Use the Create Block Theme plugin to streamline Block theme creation with a dedicated tutorial on Learn WordPress that will help you get started.
Get inspired by watching and joining community members building themes together. This is a great way for folks new to Block themes to learn, hands-on.

Let’s celebrate and share our contributions! Please comment on the Theme Team’s post dedicated to highlighting this milestone to share your favorite Block theme and thank those who have contributed along the way.

Thank you to @kristastevens for editorial help, @beafialho for the featured image, and @kafleg for reviewing.

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Community, General

Expanding Our Code of Conduct to Protect Private Conversations

October 18, 2024 | Community, General | 2 minutes of reading

At the heart of our community is our shared pledge to create a space that is harassment-free, welcoming, and inclusive for all. Our Community Code of Conduct already outlines a clear set of expectations, while also providing examples of unacceptable actions. Today, we are reinforcing our values by adding another element to our list of unacceptable behaviors: Publishing private messages without consent.

Why This Addition Matters

The relationships we build within our community often involve private discussions. These conversations may involve sensitive matters, personal experiences, or simply casual exchanges. Regardless of the content, every individual should feel confident that their private communications will remain private unless they grant explicit permission to share them.

Sharing private messages without consent is a breach of trust that can also lead to unintended harm, including emotional distress or misrepresentation. When members of our community feel they cannot trust others in their personal conversations, it undermines the collaborative spirit that is crucial to our collective success.

How This Change Protects the Community

By explicitly addressing the publication of private messages without consent, we are reinforcing an existing unacceptable behavior in our Community Code of Conduct: Other conduct which could reasonably be considered inappropriate in a professional setting. Sharing private communications without permission is a clear violation of professional integrity.

This new addition ensures that private messages receive the same level of protection as personal information and that sensitive communications shared in confidence will not be disclosed without prior consent. An important exception to this is when sharing private messages is necessary for reporting incidents or concerns to the Incident Response Team, as part of our commitment to maintaining a safe and respectful environment.

Ultimately, this change encourages honest, constructive engagement across all levels of participation.

Moving Forward Together

The strength of our community lies in the trust we place in one another. By clarifying and reinforcing our expectations, we are taking another step toward maintaining an inclusive, respectful, and safe environment for everyone.This new addition will take effect immediately, and violations will be handled in accordance with our existing enforcement guidelines. Together, we can ensure our community remains a place of collaboration, trust, and mutual respect.

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