Now that you’ve gotten a feel for creating posts, it’s time to properly meet the tool that makes it all happen: the Gutenberg editor.

If you’re new to WordPress or haven’t used it in a few years, Gutenberg might feel a bit different from what you’d expect. Gone are the days of the old-school text editor that looked a lot like Microsoft Word. In its place, WordPress now uses what’s called a block editor, and that’s exactly what Gutenberg is.

So what does that mean?

Instead of typing everything out in one big text box, you build your content one piece—or block—at a time. A paragraph is a block. An image is a block. A heading, a quote, a list, a button, a video—each of those is its own block. You can move them around, delete them, duplicate them, or insert new ones wherever you like. It’s kind of like playing with LEGO pieces, except you’re building pages and posts instead of spaceships.

When you first open the editor, you’ll see a clean, white canvas. At the top, there’s space for your post or page title. Below that, when you click into the writing area, you’ll start with a paragraph block by default. As soon as you hit enter or click the little plus (+) button, you’ll be able to add something new.

The block system gives you a lot of flexibility. Want to add a quote with a different style? There’s a block for that. Want to show two columns of content side by side? There’s a block for that too. Gutenberg even includes blocks for things like social media embeds, buttons, image galleries, and more.

On the right side of the screen, you’ll see a sidebar that lets you adjust settings—either for the entire post (like setting a featured image or changing the post date), or for the specific block you’re working on (like changing the font size of a heading or the alignment of an image). Just click on a block and its options will appear in that sidebar.

At first, it might feel like a lot. But once you play around with it a bit, Gutenberg becomes very intuitive. You’re no longer locked into a single layout or forced to wrestle with shortcodes or widgets. You just add blocks, arrange them how you want, and focus on your content.

The best part? What you see in the editor is usually very close to what your visitors will see when they visit your site. It makes creating content feel a lot more visual and a lot less technical.