David Smith

Hi @poimiroo

I took a look and I can’t see a usage of isset() at that line in the codebase

https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/blob/c3bf2f51a7d42860379e3cc8c54b8575c78e93e8/lib/class-wp-theme-json-gutenberg.php#L602

Therefore I assume that this may have been a bug which is subsequently been resolved.

Please can you advise on the versions of:

* Gutenberg Plugin
* WordPress

…that you are using?

Many thanks

Hi @metaflix,

I can appreciate that must be frustrating.

Let me respond to a few points:

I am using the latest version of WordPress (5.8.1) which I presume includes the latest version of Gutenberg.

WordPress does not include the latest version of Gutenberg. To enable that you need to install the Gutenberg Plugin.

The Plugin is released every two weeks from work happening the Github repo. Much of what is contained in the Plugin will end up in WordPress Core at some point, but that only happens when a new version of WordPress is released (such as the forthcoming WP 5.9 release).

We maintain a list of which versions of the Gutenberg Plugin are merged into WordPress Core.

In short, if you don’t have the Gutenberg Plugin installed then you aren’t on the latest version of Gutenberg. That’s absolutely fine. The Plugin is less stable than the version that’s merged into Core.

I suspect you will have Gutenberg versions 10.0-10.7 running on your site, whereas the fix to the paste issue was only resolved in Gutenberg 11.4.0. Therefore I’m afraid the fix won’t be on your site.

You have two options:

1. Wait for WordPress 5.9 to be released on the 14th December at which point you will get the fix bundled as part of the update.
2. Install the Gutenberg Plugin. I would however caution that the Plugin moves very quickly and thus you would need to be a lot more proactive about testing and checking your site inline with the 2 week release cycle to ensure it won’t have any problems.

Whilst it’s probably not the solution you were hoping for I trust that clears things up and provides you with some options?

I’ll go ahead and close this one out now, but feel free to respond again if you have any questions.

All the very best

• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by David Smith.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by David Smith.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by David Smith.

Looks like there is an Issue already tracking this request which is good.

Also, somewhat related Issue

https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/33288

• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by David Smith.

Hi @prmyapps

Let me try and help out here.

My website is on WP 5.8.1 and I wanted to try the new blocks that come with FSE, but I am confused.

It’s great that you are trying this out!

I have been using top, sidebar and footer menus forever, but it seems like those will be going away?

These aren’t going away but the way WordPress handles the concept of “navigations” will evolve over time.

WordPress will continue to support the concept of “menus”, but the paradigm will ultimately be block based. So you will create them via the Navigation block.

However, this isn’t ready yet so you can continue to create Menus using the existing screen and the wp_nav_menu() function.

Is there any overview documentation to tell a non-developer what elements in the user interface that they need to migrate to the block and widget structure?

As you know Widgets have been a feature of WordPress for a long time. The change that happened in 5.8 was that Widgets became “block based”. You now create and manage Widgets using blocks which provides a lot more flexibility due to the composability of blocks.

You can still use register_sidebar() in your Theme to register Widgetised areas and these will then show up in the Widgets screen in WPAdmin.

Am I supposed to migrate my old Footer menu to these new Footer Widgets? Why aren’t there Header Widgets? I feel like I am missing a simple concept here…

You don’t need to migrate your menus to Widgets or anything like that unless you choose to do so.

The Navigation block may land in WordPress 5.9 (no guarantees!) but that will not change the way you build menus in classic Themes (ie: any Theme that is not a full block based Theme).

So basically you don’t need to worry for now unless you are using the Site Editor and block based themes which I don’t think you are (feel free to correct me).

Am I supposed to install the Gutenberg plug-in…

The Gutenberg Plugin can be installed to provide you access to features of Gutenberg that are not yet merged into WordPress core. However it comes with some risk of instability and so you should be prepared to be quite “hands on” if you want to run this on a Production website. Feel free to experiment with it in a safe environment however – it provides a great insight into the power you can expect in WordPress very soon.

…[in] order to see other widgets besides the footers

No – Widgets are not determined by the Gutenberg Plugin. Widget areas are created via calling register_sidebar in your Theme’s PHP code.

Can the Gutenberg plug-in be used on a production site or is it just for beta testing?

See my response above. If you are still getting familiar with Gutenberg and FSE then I’d suggest perhaps only using it for testing and not on a Production site.

Thank you for your help and sorry for the stupid questions.

Not at all. All great questions and perfectly reasonable. I hope I was able to help?

If not, feel free to drop some more questions and I’ll respond when I can.

All the very best

Hi @smile77,

Sorry to hear you’re having trouble.

For such a technical problem I would recommend raising an Issue at:

https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/new?assignees=&labels=&template=Bug_report.yml

This will ask you for steps to replicate the issue which will allow someone to address any problem that exists.

We look forward to helping you to resolve any issues.

All the very best

Hi @audioboon,

Sorry to hear you’ve been having trouble.

It looks like you’ve taken some good debugging steps which is great.

I looked at the code and I found the following string which appears to be similar to that which you mention:

The response is not a valid JSON response.

https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/blob/6b8ba0d8965a83eb15697526ba23f893956401b3/packages/api-fetch/src/utils/response.js#L36

Is that what you are seeing? If so it’s part of the apiFetch package which underlies almost all the API requests made by Gutenberg to WP REST API endpoints. The response coming back is either invalid JSON or doesn’t contain a JSON property at all.

Error code 500 indicates an Internal Server Error. Therefore it seems likely this is something server related.

As much as it is a pain, have you tried using this website on a completely fresh server? If it works there then you know it’s something to do with your unique server configuration.

You could do this locally using something like Local By Flywheel (other options are available) which uses some standard setups.

Also please

1. Install a fresh copy of WordPress.
2. Deactivate all Plugins.

…to see if that has any bearing.

I look forward to hearing back from you.

All the very best

Hi @blclda,

Out of the box none of the Core blocks will allow you to achieve this. You can use the Columns block to create a 4 column layout, but slideshow/carousels require a 3rd party Plugin at this time.

I can imagine that’s frustrating but it’s also the beauty of the WordPress ecosystem. There’s a Plugin for everything!

You’ll be please to know you don’t even need to leave the editor to find your block Plugin. Simply:

1. Open the inserter.
2. Search for “Carousel”.
3. See results for Block Plugins you can install right from the editor.

This screenshot shows this in action.

I hope you find the block you are looking for.

All the very best with the site build.