Bordered Blocks – Add subtle borders or outlines and labels to Blocks in the Editor

FAQ

What does this plugin do, really?

By default, the WordPress editor is relatively clean and minimalistic. This is by design, but it can also be slightly confusing when you only the content itself (text & images) but not which Blocks are being used on the page, or how they’re laid out.
Bordered Blocks attempts to solve that by adding borders and labels to every Block in the editor, so you can get a better sense of the layout of your content.
Bonus: you can fully customize the size/color/type of the borders/labels to your needs.

Doesn’t that make the editor a lot more messy?

Although you can leave the “bordered” view on when you create/edit pages, it is not recommended, as it will indeed add a lot more information to the editor which may be distracting. It will also have some impact on the performance (although I’m working on that). The recommended use is to keep using the default editor view, and only sparingly flip the switch to show the borders and labels of the Blocks on the page.

So wait, can borders be turned on and off instantly?

Pretty much, yes. In the plugin’s settings, you can choose to have the editor show the standard view by default, or the bordered view. If you have the standard view, then flipping the switch at the top of the page will quickly show all borders/labels. If you have the bordered view, flipping the switch will quickly remove all borders/labels and go back to the standard view.

Some of my blocks don’t have a label, look weird, etc.

Bordered Blocks currently only supports the default Blocks that come with WordPress (support for WooCommerce and Jetpack is planned). If you have additional blocks added with plugins (or custom code), and they are not coded exactly following WordPress standards, they may not look as intended with borders and/or labels. If that’s the case, please reach out to the plugin developer and have them check if all their Blocks have the proper naming with “data-title” attributes.
Also note that the way things look in your editor can also depend on your site’s theme. If that’s the case, try switching to a default theme temporarily (such as Twenty Twenty, Twenty Twenty-One or Twenty Twenty-Two).
If that resolves the issue, it’s likely that your theme and Bordered Blocks are not compatible with eachother, and it’s best to reach out to your theme’s support team.
If you see that the issue still appears when your site is on a default theme, let me know at https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/bordered-blocks and I can look into it a bit more.

What’s next for Bordered Blocks?

The following items are currently not supported, but are on the roadmap:

• Support for Jetpack Blocks
• Performance: have the main checkBlocks() JS function run only when a Block is being added/edited (currently it runs every second)
• Full multi-language support

What’s with all the “!important” things in the code? That’s bad CSS.

Nerd alert! It’s not overly clean, I know. However, this is really needed to ensure that the styles you choose for the borders/labels override any inline styles coming from the editor itself and/or the theme.

I have some ideas for this plugin. Where can I submit them?

Bordered Blocks’ community support forum at https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/bordered-blocks is a good place, though if you want to add all sorts of technical details, it’s best to report it on the plugin’s Github page at https://github.com/senff/bordered-blocks/issues . This is also where I accept code contributions.

My question isn’t listed here.

Please go to the plugin’s community support forum at https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/bordered-blocks and post a message. Note that support is provided on a voluntary basis and that it is always difficult to troubleshoot, as it will require access to your admin area (needless to say, NEVER include any passwords of your site on a public forum!