Column Blocks in Gutenberg

I mentioned before that I am using the Gutenberg plugin on a self-hosted WordPress site. Today I was working with columns of text. In Gutenberg, everything is a block (as in building block). Images are blocks, headings are blocks, tables are blocks, quotes are blocks. And columns are blocks.

By their nature column blocks are a container for two or more columns, and within that container are the blocks for the individual columns. They are all wrapped up together ready for use.

As I found out today, the container block in the columns block is skittish.

To see what I mean by that, please read the article I wrote about it that links to a short video that illustrates how fiddly it is in the back end to find the bit of block you want.

Here is the link to Columns Blocks (article will open in a new tab or window)

On the plus side, lots of things used to be more skittish Gutenberg and have now settled down. The Gutenberg team are coding at a rapid rate and things are starting to shape up. I just took a look around for new blocks that people are making – pull quotes, pricing tables…

I think there will be a real possibility that users will be able to make pretty much whatever they want with whatever theme they like, rather than have to look for another theme or use a page builder.

Against that, I guess one could ask then why not just use a page builder and forget all this Guttenberg stuff?

Maybe the answer to that is that not all page builders provide all the features one might want and not all page builders are free. In the interests of the great mass of users, maybe Gutenberg will live up to its promise.

First though, it has to get the columns block right.

Update

I posted the video of the ‘hover’ problem in a FaceBook Gutenberg group I am in, and Bjarne Oldrup mentioned this option in Divi and agreed that Gutenberg would benefit from having this feature. I have to wonder whether the code implementation is an easy task…