How do I add a block?
In this post, we’ll concentrate on adding a block using two methods the Insertor and the Slash Command. If you want to learn about other methods, go HERE.
The Inserter is a good way to make yourself familiar with blocks and guides you through searching, selecting and adding them. The Slash Command is a shortcut that you may find helpful once you’re familiar with blocks and how to use them.
What is the Inserter?
The inserter is a way of searching and adding blocks to a post The inserter icon is a cross in a circle. Whenever you see the symbol ⊕ you can click on it and get a list of blocks, in a little modal window.
On top you see the ‘Most Used’ blocks. You can scroll down and open up other categories, like Layout, or Common and find more blocks.
How do I find the block I want with the Inserter?
From the inserter you can use the search box to search blocks by typing the beginning of a block name or a keyword for example, "image" or "heading", then a list of blocks that fit the search will show. Select the desired block.
Where do I find the Inserter?
There are three places where you can use the inserter to add a search for, choose and add a block:
- Inserter ⊕ in the center between blocks
- Inserter ⊕ right of an empty block
- Inserter ⊕ in the Top Tool Bar
We’ll go through each of them in turn
Inserter ⊕ in the center between blocks
When you are writing or editing a post and hover your cursor between two existing blocks, the
Click on the Inserter icon to search for a block to insert.
Inserter ⊕ right of an empty block
Click on the Inserter ⊕ to search for a block to insert.
Inserter ⊕ from the Top Toolbar
Click on the Inserter icon ⊕ at the top left of the editor. (Top Toolbar)
The Inserter from the Top Toolbar also shows additional information per block and you can see a small preview of the block.
The Slash Command
When you’re writing a post and press Enter one or more times, a block will open and you’ll see one of two prompts:
or
When you type / a window like the one below will appear. You can select your block from the list in the window.
If you type / followed by a letter, for example /i, then the window will sort the blocks starting with the letter you typed. So /i produces:
The Block Editor thing has become a fairly long post.
I’m tempted to shorten it by removing these two questions:
How do I check what my post looks like?
What do I do to publish a post?
I don’t think the answers vary significantly between Classic Editor and Block Editor.
I’m also wondering how/if we respond to questions about the content.
Do we want to have, probably in addition to this, an FAQ section for The Secret Reading Room?
We’ll have a fairly extensive FAQ section — one main page and a whole boatload of tutorials in addition, linked from the main page and also from a dedicated menu.
Having looked through your post — which I think is great and exactly the kind of guidance people are going to need — what may make the most sense in this particular instance might be to break it up into several chapters, each of them going into a separate post. This is probably also going to be the approach we’ll be taking to other, equally long / “involved” tutorials.
Also, one of the tutorials we’re planning will be a very basic “how to get started” one, literally from “I’m here — now what?” to “this is how you publish a post” and “here’s where you find xyz item(s)”. So I would suggest that anything not specifically relating to the block editor could go there, unless the block editor has specific publishing settings beyond the “save draft / edit / schedule / publish” modes.
Tutorials such as this should be formatted as “projects”; that will
(1) keep them out of the general feed and move them into the dedicated feed we’re reserving for admin issues (general site announcements, tutorials, etc.) and
(2) auto-enable a “Comments” section where questions can be asked.
Incidentally, we’re (provisionally, but I think we’ve agreed to settle on this one) working with a theme that has a very clear setup for the “comments” section, with each “original” comment (or question) creating a new box of its own, and all subsequent responses nested within that same box. Christine, MbD and I all like that a lot; particularly when it comes to explaining things and following up on questions in the early days of the community, that should help a lot.
In that case, it might makes sense to put a post with a short overview with lego bricks explanation of blocks and then links to each of the different questions as post somewhere else and have the post independently searchable.
I don’t know how that’s done in Projects. I haven’t been able to find any tutorials on Projects on wordpress.org.
I think the best that I can do is complete the segments and add the links and then ask you to move it into an appropriate project format.
Will that work`?
Absolutely!
“Projects”, for our purposes, are really just glorified posts, though, which we’re using to keep the admin stuff out of the main “posts” feed, for everything that
(a) calls for comments / responses, e.g. tutorials and the “Questions?” posts in connection with reading games, and
(b) is most easily made accessible in a comprehensive but dedicated feed (as pages don’t go into any feed, so you necessarily have to link to those from a site menu somewhere; which in turn means that pages are basically something we’re just using as static one-off things).
So, to tie several “projects” together, e.g. for your “block editor” tutorial, we’d basically do just what you propose: Present the basic explanation what is a block in a general intro “project” (= post filed as “project” in the site’s “portfolio” section rather than in the “posts” section), then create separate “projects” for each of the follow-up questions and link to those from the intro page. Eh voilà tout!
OK. I can do that. Let me try it with the sections that are already done.
Great, and thank you!
This looks great, Mike!
This is amazing Mike, thank you so much. As someone who has been head down writing Classic editor tutorials, I know how much work you’ve put into this and just … thank you.