In late August, Matias Ventura, Lead architect of Gutenberg, started a debate on GitHub on renaming Reusable Blocks.
Reusable blocks have a long history now. The started as “saved blocks” and went through some renaming iterations until we settled on “reusable blocks”. This worked alright at the beginning, but with the introduction of patterns its meaning has started to become more fuzzy and confusing (see related comment). In the end, patterns are also reusable pieces of design.
Given the nature of these blocks is to have content in sync wherever it’s displayed — edit once; update everywhere — I propose we change the name in the UI to “Synced Blocks” and adjust the block description a little bit to clarify that.
Matias Ventura
In recent days, the debate has ramped up to include a good amount of feedback. Initially, I understand the concept of reusable blocks. But as mentioned in the conversation, that term can be applied to many other blocks. The suggestion of Synced Blocks doesn’t appeal to me and offhand, I don’t understand what that means.
My suggestion and one that is shared by a few others is to rename these blocks to Global Blocks. Since updating this type of block updates it across the entire site, calling it a Global Block makes more sense. Also, by having Global in the name, it indicates to me that the block goes above and beyond the editor. There’s also the suggestion of Site-Wide Blocks which is also a decent idea.
Everyone is encouraged to weigh in on the debate. The more ideas that are suggested from a diverse set of users will help the team come up with a good solution. By the way, if you are wondering what some of the popular page builders call these blocks, check out this comment by Zebulan Stanphill.