Gutenberg / Block Editor

Gutenberg is WordPress’s built-in block editor that replaced the classic TinyMCE-based editor in 2018, organizing content into modular “blocks” — paragraphs, images, headings, columns, custom patterns — that editors can drag, configure, and reuse without touching code.

Why blocks matter

The block editor turns design systems into editor tools. Once a brand’s layouts ship as block patterns, a comms manager can build new pages by composing existing blocks rather than asking engineering for a custom template. That makes editorial throughput a function of staff capacity, not engineering availability.

How Hello World uses Gutenberg

• Custom block patterns matching the design system, registered in PHP under the theme’s /patterns/ directory.
• Core blocks (heading, paragraph, columns, image) styled via theme.json to match brand tokens.
• Custom blocks only when behavior — not just appearance — is required; otherwise we extend core blocks.
• theme.json for site-wide design tokens (colors, fonts, spacing) so brand changes propagate without editing every block.

When Gutenberg isn’t the right tool

Highly structured content (member directories, product catalogs, event registries) is better modeled as custom post types with ACF or REST endpoints than as freeform block compositions. Gutenberg is for editorial content; relational data still wants schema.