Gutenberg: the default block editor of WordPress

Gutenberg is the content editor integrated into WordPress, officially introduced with version 5.0 of the CMS in December 2018 and named in honor of Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the movable-type printing press. Its introduction represented one of the most significant changes in the history of WordPress, marking the transition from a classic text editor, similar to a traditional word processor, to a block-based system. Every element of a page, whether it is a paragraph, an image, a video or a quote, becomes an independent block that can be moved, customized and configured individually. This approach radically changed the way content is created within WordPress.

Gutenberg’s block system is designed to be intuitive even for less technical users: adding a new element simply means clicking the plus symbol, choosing the desired block type and starting to work. Each block has its own customization options accessible through a sidebar, allowing users to modify colors, sizes, alignments and other parameters without touching the code. Over time Gutenberg evolved by introducing patterns, which are predefined and reusable combinations of blocks, and Full Site Editing, a feature that allows users to modify not only content but also structural parts of the site such as headers and footers using the same block-based logic.

The introduction of Gutenberg was not without controversy: many users and developers were initially disoriented by the radical change from the previous editor, and some plugins and themes were not ready to support the new system. Over time, however, the situation stabilized, Gutenberg matured considerably and today it is considered by the WordPress community to be the official standard for content creation. Compared to page builders such as Elementor or WPBakery, Gutenberg has the advantage of being fully integrated into the WordPress core without burdening the site with additional code, and it represents the direction in which the entire WordPress ecosystem is moving in the long term.