As developers we have an opportunity to start working with the new Gutenberg editor and bring it into projects where it can positively impact the editorial workflow. In this talk I’ll be sharing our team’s experience in extending Gutenberg core blocks with our work on the AMP for WordPress plugin.
In working with Gutenberg, often block functionality needs to be customized. We’ve found that it makes more sense to reuse and extend existing editor blocks as opposed to creating new ones. From a user experience perspective it’s important to avoid confusing users by just duplicating blocks and cluttering up the block inserter.
Through real examples I will showcase our experience extending core blocks as we added custom features to the AMP plugin. I’ll also address some issues and pain-points we ran into during the process and share the workarounds used.
Since Gutenberg is still a work in progress, this presentation is not intended as the absolute truth for extending core blocks, however it is a practical example of how we were able to add AMP features to a plugin by extending the core editor blocks. If you’re interested in developing for Gutenberg you’ll be able to learn from our experience and pick up practical tips for moving forward.