Asteris Blocks vs No Gutenberg? – Choose Where to Use the Block Editor or the Classic Editor

50 free Gutenberg blocks. Full-featured, and free forever. Asteris Blocks gives you a polished, alphabetised block library covering everything you need to build landing pages, blog posts, and product pages. Every block is complete — nothing is locked behind a paywall, and the plugin never nags you to upgrade. What you get 50 blocks — Hero, Pricing Table, FAQ Accordion (with schema), Recipe Card (with rich results), Comparison Table, Countdown, Cookie Notice, Code Block with syntax highlighter, Image Hotspots, Map (OpenStreetMap), QR Code, Before/After Slider, Table of Contents, and 37 more. 12 pre-built patterns — Hero + Stats, Pricing 3-tier, Full landing page, and more — one-click insert. 60 block style variations — Hero (minimal / split / gradient), Feature Grid (cards / icons-only / bordered / numbered), Pricing (classic / minimal / bordered / highlighted), and dozens more. Newsletter integrations — Mailchimp, MailerLite, ConvertKit, Brevo. API keys encrypted at rest (AES-256-CBC). See “External services” below. Schema.org markup — FAQ + Recipe + AggregateRating JSON-LD validates on Google Rich Results Test. HTML anchor IDs on every block — link anywhere, jump anywhere. Native typography + colour controls on every text-bearing block. 100/100 Lighthouse accessibility on Kadence, GeneratePress, Twenty Twenty-Five. What you do NOT get No email-gated features — every one of the 50 blocks is fully functional, free. No nag screens, no pop-ups, no “your trial expires” timers in your editor. No tracking. No cookies. No analytics. The only outbound connections are the optional third-party services listed under “External services” below, and they run only when you add the relevant block to a page or configure a newsletter provider. Asteris Blocks is full-featured and free forever — funded by our other products, not by upselling you. If you ever want premium section patterns and pro-level design controls, there’s an optional Asteris Blocks Pro — but the free plugin is complete on its own and never pushes you toward it. Why Asteris Blocks? Built lean on purpose. Here’s what you actually get: Tiny footprint — about 215 KB zipped, and it loads zero front-end CSS or JavaScript on pages that don’t use an Asteris block. Only loads where it’s used — the shared stylesheet and script enqueue only on pages where one of your Asteris blocks actually renders. No site-wide weight. No JavaScript framework — blocks render in PHP with tiny vanilla-JS view scripts; no React or jQuery dependency dragged onto your front end. 50 blocks, 12 patterns, 60 style variations — all free — nothing gated, no “premium” lock icons cluttering the inserter. Schema built in — FAQ, Recipe and AggregateRating JSON-LD that validates on Google’s Rich Results Test, no separate SEO plugin required. No phone-home — no tracking, no cookies, no analytics on you. The only outbound calls are blocks you choose to add (Map, Video, embeds) — each documented below. Accessibility-minded — 100/100 Lighthouse accessibility on Kadence, GeneratePress and Twenty Twenty-Five. GPL-2.0 — audit it, fork it, keep it forever. No nag screens — Pro is mentioned once, never a pop-up or a disabled button. Asteris Blocks Pro Asteris Blocks is full-featured and free forever. If you want to go further, the optional Asteris Blocks Pro adds: 73 premium section patterns — niche page templates (photographer, music artist, conference, salon, fitness), video + audio sections, premium e-commerce layouts. The control layer — fine-tune any block’s spacing, responsive visibility, hover states, animations and custom CSS, no code required. AI Section Generator — describe a section and get a ready-to-edit block layout. Cloud pattern library — one-click insert from a growing hosted collection. Same lightweight, no-bloat build. See everything included at asterisblocks.com/blocks-pro. External services This plugin can connect to the following third-party services. None of them are contacted unless you add the block that uses them to a page, or configure a newsletter provider. No data is sent to us. Newsletter providers (optional). When you configure a provider and a visitor submits the Newsletter block, the visitor’s email address (and name, if entered) is sent from your server to that provider’s API to create or subscribe the contact. You choose the provider and supply the API key. Mailchimp — terms: https://mailchimp.com/legal/terms/ — privacy: https://www.intuit.com/privacy/statement/ MailerLite — terms: https://www.mailerlite.com/terms-of-service — privacy: https://www.mailerlite.com/legal/privacy-policy ConvertKit (Kit) — terms: https://kit.com/terms — privacy: https://kit.com/privacy Brevo — terms: https://www.brevo.com/legal/termsofuse/ — privacy: https://www.brevo.com/legal/privacypolicy/ OpenStreetMap (Map block). Adding the Map block embeds a map from openstreetmap.org. When a visitor loads the page, their browser requests map tiles from OpenStreetMap. Terms: https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use — privacy: https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_Policy YouTube / Vimeo (Video block). Adding a video embeds a player from youtube-nocookie.com or player.vimeo.com when a visitor plays it. YouTube terms: https://www.youtube.com/t/terms — Google privacy: https://policies.google.com/privacy — Vimeo terms: https://vimeo.com/terms — Vimeo privacy: https://vimeo.com/privacy Spotify / SoundCloud (Embed block). Adding the Embed block with a Spotify or SoundCloud URL embeds that provider’s player. When a visitor loads the page, their browser requests the player and the track/episode you embedded from open.spotify.com or w.soundcloud.com. Only the public URL you paste into the block is sent. Spotify terms: https://www.spotify.com/legal/end-user-agreement/ — Spotify privacy: https://www.spotify.com/legal/privacy-policy/ — SoundCloud terms: https://soundcloud.com/terms-of-use — SoundCloud privacy: https://soundcloud.com/pages/privacy

The most configurable way to leave the block editor behind. Activate it and everything block related is gone: the block editor, Global Styles, patterns, block widgets, the Site Editor and the block CSS and JavaScript that every page loads. From there you decide the scope: everywhere, or only for the post types, roles, templates and entries you choose. What this plugin removes: Core Gutenberg Features Gutenberg Block Editor (completely disabled) Full Site Editing (FSE) Global Styles and inline CSS Block-based Widget Editor (reverts to Classic Widgets) Block Patterns and Pattern Directory Theme.json support and processing Block Directory integration Site Editor functionality Performance Optimizations The block library CSS and JavaScript that every page loads The Global Styles inline CSS, which dequeuing the handle never reaches The block assets of any other plugin that registers blocks, on pages where no block appears The block editor assets in the admin, wherever the Classic Editor is the one opening WooCommerce Integration The block based product editor, which follows the same rules as any other post type The WooCommerce block styles and scripts, removed along with the rest of the block assets Nothing else: leave blocks on for products and the block product editor keeps working Admin Experience Removes the welcome panel that promotes the block editor Removes the Patterns submenu from the Appearance menu (WP 6.5+) Removes the Fonts submenu from the Appearance menu (WP 7.0+) Blocks access to Site Editor pages Shows activation success notice Warns you when a block theme is active Adds settings and support links to plugin actions A default that asks nothing, and a settings page for everything else – Activating the plugin disables the block editor and every block feature across the site, which is what most people install it for. The rest of this page is about wanting less than that. Full control when you need it – The settings page lives under Settings > No Gutenberg?, built around one master switch. Leave it on and the whole site keeps the complete disable. Turn it off and you decide where the block editor goes away: by post type, by user role, by page template or by individual entry. The site wide pieces (classic widgets, block patterns, frontend block assets, theme.json and the Site Editor) are then yours to keep or remove one by one. Every checkbox means the same thing, so no setting ever undoes another one. Switch editors entry by entry, where it makes sense – Editor switching is chosen per post type, right next to the rule that disables the block editor. Enable it for pages, for instance, and every page gets “Edit (Classic)” and “Edit (Blocks)” links in the list plus a switch inside both editors, while your posts stay untouched. Each entry remembers the editor chosen for it, and that choice beats the rules in both directions: one landing page can stay on the Classic Editor while the rest keep blocks, or the other way around. It tells you what it is doing – The settings screen opens with a status panel for your particular site: how many block patterns are being blocked, how much weight is off every page, whether your theme is a block theme, and how much of your published content is really built with blocks. That last number is the one that should decide whether you strip the block styles from the frontend or not, and no other plugin tells you. Built for agencies and managed sites – The whole configuration can be fixed from wp-config.php, and the settings screen locked as read only or hidden altogether, so a site you deliver keeps the setup you left behind. A whole network configured in one file – This is where the plugin stands alone. Every single setting it has, and not just which editor opens, can be written in wp-config.php, the same file every site of a multisite network reads. A network of a hundred sites is set up once, all of them with the same rules, all of them with the same block CSS gone, and none of them able to drift away from it. The plugin can also be network activated and left alone, because settings are stored per site, so a network can equally let each site decide for itself. Same mechanism as the locking above, and this is how it is written. One configuration for a whole network, or for a site you deliver Everything the settings screen does can also be written in wp-config.php, where nobody changes it by accident, and what you write there wins over whatever is stored in the database. It is the same file for every site of a multisite network, so it is also how you set up a network without repeating the configuration site by site. Add the lines you need above the comment that says “That’s all, stop editing! Happy publishing.” To disable Gutenberg everywhere and leave no settings screen for anyone to touch, which is the usual setup both for a network and for a site you hand over to a client: define( 'NO_GUTENBERG_OPTIONS', array( 'complete' => true ) ); define( 'NO_GUTENBERG_HIDE_SETTINGS', true ); Drop that second line and the settings page is still there, showing the configuration the site is really running, but read only. And if all you want is to lock the screen, leaving the configuration as each site has it stored: define( 'NO_GUTENBERG_LOCK_SETTINGS', true ); NO_GUTENBERG_OPTIONS takes any of the settings on the screen, so a selective setup is written the same way: define( 'NO_GUTENBERG_OPTIONS', array( 'complete' => false, 'disable_post_types' => array( 'post', 'page' ), 'disable_roles' => array( 'editor', 'author' ), 'frontend_css' => false, ) ); The keys are the settings on the screen. complete, widgets, patterns, frontend_css, theme_json, site_editor and fse_notices take true or false, while disable_post_types, disable_roles, disable_templates and switch_post_types take an array of slugs, and disable_ids an array of entry IDs. Any key you leave out keeps the value stored on the site. Note that defining NO_GUTENBERG_OPTIONS already turns the whole screen read only, so NO_GUTENBERG_LOCK_SETTINGS is not needed on top of it. It fits sites that: – Work better in the Classic Editor and want it back – Run classic themes and plugins that were never built around blocks – Are paying for block CSS and JavaScript on pages with no blocks in them – Need the Classic Editor for everyone except a few post types, roles or people – Are a multisite network that wants the same editing experience on every site Support Need private support or custom development? Do you need one-on-one help, priority troubleshooting, or a custom feature, integration, or tweak built specifically for your site? I offer private support and custom development. Just contact me and tell me what you need. Need help or have suggestions? Official website WordPress support forum YouTube channel Documentation and tutorials Love the plugin? Please leave us a 5-star review and help spread the word! About AyudaWP We are specialists in WordPress security, SEO, and performance optimization plugins. We create tools that solve real problems for WordPress site owners while maintaining the highest coding standards and accessibility requirements.