New Gutenberg Widget Block Editor is now the official widget editor for WordPress, new block-based widget editor is introduced in WordPress in version 5.8 which was released in July 2021. With this new update, Gutenberg Editor is now one more step closer to full site editing.
In this new update, the old widget editor automatically gets removed and you are forced to use the new widget-based editor. There are some ways to have this editor back which we will talk about later in this article but that is also a temporary solution and you have to use the new editor in the future so why not learn now and if you are already familiar with Block Editor you don’t need anything extra to learn it.
In this article, we are going to learn what is new Gutenberg Widget Block Editor, how we can use it, how better it is from the old editor, how you can use the old editor, and some more common questions that may occur in your mind. So let’s know all about this new Gutenberg Widget Block Editor.
Table of Contents
What is New Gutenberg Widget Block Editor?
As you all have probably know WordPress is planning to make the new Gutenberg Editor a full-fledged complete website builder and unlocking Full Site Editing capability with it. And new Widget Editor is part of that plan, the main concept of it is that you can edit your website widgets as blocks using the same blocks and design principal as you use in Gutenberg Page/Post Editor.
You can use all the blocks available in WordPress and all the third-party blocks in this new widget editor. And the whole experience will be the same as editing any page or post using a block editor.
How to Use Gutenberg Widget Block Editor?
You can access this new editor from two locations, one is from the Dashboard>Apperanece>Widgets and another is from the page customizer. In both places where you used to see the old editor after 5.8, you’ll see the new Widget Block Editor.
In widgets, you can use every single block that Gutenberg offers, but also there some widgets that are specially designed for widgets such as archive, calendar, categories, latest posts, page list, and so on.
The use of this new editor is completely identical to the block page/post editor you can add, delete and move blocks.
When you access your block from Dashboard>Apperanece>Widgets you’ll see all the widgets that are on your site, you can collapse or show any widget and make edits. As shown in the image above.
However, when you access the widget from the page customizer you’ll only be able to see the widget which is being used on the page as you can see in the above image.
To add a block just click on the plus button, search for the block you are looking for, and click on the block or you can drag and drop the block in the widget area.
How Better is Widget Block Editor from Classic Widget Editor?
The new widget block editor is superior to the old classic widget editor in every way. The biggest advantage is a live preview, you can check in real-time how your widget will look on your website which makes editing a lot easier. The new widget editor is also very easy to use. A lot of new blocks are available which makes editing very easy.
How to Use the Old Editor?
If you are wondering how you can use the old editor then you should know that the WordPress team has released a plugin that can still let you use the old editor for your widgets, you can get classic widget plugin from the plugin store, if you don’t wanna use the plugin, we have actually written a complete article how to disable Gutenberg Block Editor in that article you can find how you can disable widget editor without any plugin.
Some Common Questions
Now let’s take a look at some common questions which most of us had.
Can you opt-out to use Widget Block Editor?
Yes, you can opt-out by disabling the widget block editor, however, the classic widget only promised to get support till 2022 and after that, there is no opt-out option officially.
Where can you get the technical details of Widget Block Editor?
If you wanna get technical details about Widget Block Editor, then visit this link to check it out: https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/projects/27
How do report any bugs or share suggestions?
If you wanna report any bugs or wanna share suggestions you can share them at https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues
Conclusion
Now you should be able to edit your WordPress widgets using the new Gutenberg Widget Block Editor. Let us know if you are using a new widget editor or switched to classic and why you did that in the comment below. Meanwhile, we have written a lot of good content about Gutenberg and I highly recommend you to check them out.
