Main Idea
Site Editor Tips You Might Not Know About
The WordPress block editor has been in core for over five years now, and the site editor has been in WordPress core for two years (and it’s been a year since the beta label was removed from the feature).
Yet because of the rapid pace of development of these two key features of the CMS, there are a lot of things that people miss, including some really cool features and tools in the editors that can help speed up your content creating workflow.
So let’s take a look at some block and site editor tips and tools that you might not know about right now.
Copy and Paste Styles
Tired of going through a set of group blocks and having to make the same changes to the styling over and over and over again?
You don’t have to waste your time with that.
Instead, you can copy and paste those styles. Simply click the more options button in the toolbar for the block you want to get the styles for and then click “copy styles”. Then navigate to the block you want to paste the styles to and hit “past styles”. And now you’re all set. No more wasting time.
Do note that you might have to mess with your browser’s settings to get it to work. I know Firefox loves to throw a fit the first couple of times I try to use this feature.
Slash Commands
Tired of always having to go to the block inserter to add in a block that you know for sure that you want to use? You don’t have to go through the hassle of the inserter every single time.
Instead, you can use the slash (/) in the editor and then type the name of the block you want to add. The block will appear in a dropdown which you can then select to add it to the page. There’s no need to mess with the inserter anymore.
It’s a sure fire way to speed up your workflow in the editor.
Block List in the Editor
Want a quick overview of all of the blocks that are in the post, page or template that you’re working on? You’ll want to check out the block list for that.
You can find the block list on the left side of the main toolbar. It’s the button with the list-esque icon.
When you click that button, the left sidebar will appear with a list of every block in use on the post, page or template. This is a great way to find the block you want to edit or to move blocks around in different orders or do anything else you need with the blocks.
It’s an exceptionally easy way to speed up your workflow.
Block Styles
This one is dependent on the theme you’re using, but you can use block styles to quickly style a block that you’re working on.
To do this, select a block that you want to apply styles to and then hit the styles icon in the right-hand inspector column. If the theme has block styles for that block, you’ll see a list of them in the top of that tab. You can choose one to apply to the block.
These styles generally include changing border radius, drop shadows, etc.
Unfortunately, as I mentioned above, this really depends on the theme and the developer as there’s currently no way for a user to create their own block styles yet.
Edit Your Page Templates from the Block Editor
Finally, you can now jump into editing a page template right from the block editor.
To do this, go to the block editor for a page. Then in the right-hand inspector column under the “Page” tab, click on the page template. A popover menu should appear where you can edit the template, swap the template for the page, create a new template for this page or preview the template.
This is a pretty neat new feature that can help make the editing of templates and the creation of pages smoother and quicker for the user. Just make sure you know when you’re editing pages and when you’re editing templates.