Gutenberg corner: Steps to replace a Content Blocks page

Changing a page from using Content Blocks to Gutenberg can be as simple as clicking the “Disable content blocks” button in the page editor. However, this change is immediate and affects the published page. In most situations, content managers will want to create a new page using the Gutenberg editor, as working with a draft page will allow more time to take advantage of Gutenberg features.

Step 1: Create the new page

Create a new page on your site (via the Add Page link in the Pages dashboard, for example.) Avoid publishing the draft page until ready to replace the old page.

Step 2: Check for children

By default pages you create are considered “top level” pages on your site, such as the President’s Cabinet page on the Office of the President website, umaine.edu/president/cabinet/. If you have created pages that are sub-sections of that page, those may be set up as “child pages” (for example, Robert Dana’s biography is a child page of the president’s cabinet page, umaine.edu/president/cabinet/robert-dana/). A child page will include it’s parent page in its path (/cabinet/ in our example).

Child pages will be seen in the pages dashboard listed underneath the parent page with a dash before the page name.

Review the child pages to see if they use content blocks as well. If so, create replacements for them as well before publishing the parent page.

Step 3: Use “quick edit” in the dashboard to manage the switchover

Part 1: Using the quick edit feature, change the “slug” of the old page (adding “-old” to the slug for example), and set its status to Draft.

Part 2: Using the “quick edit” feature, change the “slug” of the new page to match the slug of the page it is replacing, and set its status to Published.

Part 3: If the old page has children (see above), use the “quick edit” feature to select the “Parent” as the new Gutenberg page. 

(NOTE: if a child page was also using Content Blocks, use the “quick edit” feature for the new Gutenberg page and not the old Content Blocks page)

Step 4: Move the old page(s) to trash

Once the old page has been updated to change it’s URL (by changing the “slug” value), move it to the trash by clicking the “Trash” link underneath the page name in the dashboard.

Step 5: Review navigation menus and update as needed

The menu editor will indicate if a menu item has been deleted— replace that menu item with a new link to your Gutenberg page.