Customize Posts vs Spectra Legacy – Gutenberg Blocks

This is a feature plugin intended to implement #34923: Introduce basic content authorship in the Customizer. The goal for this plugin is to be able to expose the editing of posts and pages in the Customizer, allowing you to edit post data and postmeta for any number of posts, and preview the changes before saving them for others to see. This plugin was birthed out of the Widget Customizer feature-as-plugin project which was merged into WordPress Core: as widgets (in 3.9) and nav menus (4.3) can now be managed in the Customizer, so too should posts and pages be editable in the Customizer as well. Did you know that changing the featured image actually makes the change live even before you save the post? This is very surprising/unexpected behavior. The only way to truly preview a change to a featured image is to use something like Customize Posts. Likewise, did you know that changing a page template cannot be previewed from the post editor? When you change the selected page template, the change will not show up when you preview the page (see #11049). However, in Customize Posts you can preview changes to the page template just by changing the dropdown selection, and then you can see what your page would look like with the new template after the preview refreshes. Most other changes to metaboxes containing data that gets saved to custom fields (postmeta) also get written when clicking the Preview button. The Customize Posts plugin provides a framework to edit postmeta in the Customizer with a live preview of the changes. (Fixing this underlying issue of incorrectly persisting postmeta when doing a preview is captured in #20299.) As much as possible, the previewing of changes in Customize Posts utilizes the selective refresh capabilities introduced in WordPress 4.5. Not only does this mean it is faster to preview changes to posts and postmeta, but it also allows you to shift-click on an element to focus on the corresponding control in the Customizer pane. For example you can shift-click on the post title in the preview to focus on the post title control’s input field, or shift-click on a featured image to focus on the control’s button to open the media library. Development of this plugin is done on GitHub. Pull requests welcome. Please see issues reported there before going to the plugin forum. (This Customize Posts plugin is not to be confused with 10up’s Post Customizer.) Demo Videos The following are listed in reverse chronological order. The first, more recent videos, show more polish. [2016-04-28] New features in 0.5.0. [2016-03-28] Previewing post from Post Edit screen. [2016-03-05] Opening a draft post in the Customizer to preview title wrapping. [2016-03-04] Demo featuring the WP visual rich text editor (TinyMCE), including the insertion of images from the media library. Post content can be edited in the Customizer and previewed in multiple contexts. For example, this allows you to preview how a Read More tag will appear when the post appears on a post list page, and you can navigate to the single post to continue previewing subsequent paragraphs. You can expand the editor into a full-screen mode to focus on writing and then quickly preview the changes on the site by toggling the editor. You can make changes to as many posts as you want, but none of the changes will go live until you hit Save & Publish: everything is previewed so there is no “save and surprise”. [2016-03-03] Demonstration of integration with Customize Setting Validation (#34893) to gracefully handle failures to save due to post locking and concurrent user editing: [2016-03-01] Demonstration of hooking into edit post links so that they actually work in the Customizer and expand the section to edit the given post (as opposed to the link doing nothing at all when clicked), as well as shift-clicking on the title and content (needs better discovery UI, see #27403):

This plugin was previously called Spectra. It’s now Spectra Legacy. Nothing on your website has changed. Your blocks, pages, settings, and content all continue to work exactly as they did before. There’s nothing to migrate and nothing to configure. Spectra Legacy vs. Spectra Blocks We’ve split Spectra into two products. Spectra Legacy is this plugin — built for existing Spectra users. It receives security and compatibility updates and full support, but no new features. Spectra Blocks is a new, separate plugin where all new feature development happens, aimed at new installs and anyone who wants ongoing additions. If you’re already using this plugin, no action is needed; installing Spectra Blocks is entirely optional whenever you’re ready. If you’re already using this plugin, you don’t need to do anything. If you want new features as they’re released, you can install Spectra Blocks separately, whenever you’re ready. There’s no deadline and no required migration. What’s included Spectra Legacy includes the full block library your site is already built on: layout tools, content and post blocks, form and SEO blocks, social blocks, and site tools like Popup Builder and Coming Soon mode. Blocks included Core — Container, Heading, Image, Icon, Buttons, Info Box, Call To Action, Countdown Content — Sliders, Content Timeline, Google Maps, Inline Notices, Tabs, Taxonomy List, Price List (Loop Builder in Spectra Pro Legacy) Post — Counter, Modal Popup, Post Carousel, Post Grid, Post Timeline Social — Instagram Feed, Blockquote, Social Share, Team, Testimonials Forms — Contact form, newsletter signup, suggestion form, reCAPTCHA (registration/login forms in Spectra Pro Legacy) SEO — FAQ, How-To, Review, Table of Contents Dynamic content — Archive feed filtering by date, author, category, and post type Site tools — Popup Builder, Coming Soon mode, block animations, local Google Fonts, global styling defaults About the AI block The AI block previously included in this plugin is now called ZipAI. It still works in Spectra Legacy for compatibility. New AI features are being built in Spectra Blocks going forward. Compatibility Works with most standard WordPress themes, including Spectra One, Astra, Blocksy, and GeneratePress. Compatible with common plugins including WooCommerce, SureCart, Gravity Forms, LearnDash, MemberPress, and Yoast SEO. See our documentation for the full compatibility list. Support & community Spectra Legacy is actively maintained — security patches, compatibility updates, and support all continue. This plugin is not deprecated. Support forum: use the Support tab on this page Documentation: wpspectra.com/docs Facebook Group: Web Creators by Astra Facebook: Spectra X (Twitter): @wpspectra Contribute Spectra is open source. Browse the code or contribute on GitHub: brainstormforce/wp-spectra Credits Our external packages use Rating Star Component that are distributed under the terms of the ISC. While Slick, Lottie and Striptags is distributed under the terms of the MIT. Additionally, we incorporate FontAwesome v6 under the CC BY 4.0 License, and dnd kit licensed under the MIT License.