Reusable Block: Enhancement Ideas

[zdenys]

What
A user shared the following feedback about Reusable Blocks in 3919787-zd-woothemes

it would be very helpful to us to have a template feature. That could either ⓵ be a reusable block that is converted to regular block by default, or ⓶ is locked to edits by most users. Even better would be ⓷ a reusable block with space for a non-reusable insert, such that we could keep the design the same and change the text each time we use it.

Initially posted here p1619080329205800-slack-C0160HSMDQV and got pointed here by @inaikem 🙌

How
Off the top of my head, to allow the implementation of ⓷ we could use Block Patterns. A block pattern could contain a Reusable Block and any simple block.

[kingsleyinfo]

The user responded to the ticket with more feedback and use case. Just adding this here to provide more context to the request.

I understand. However, for a news outlet it's quite common that we have a bit of design we wish to reuse with different words. The best way we've found to do this is to place a reusable block and "convert to regular block" every time. This, however, has the consequence that authors frequently forget to "convert" and simply edit the reusable block, causing trouble on other pages. The recent changes to the design of reusable blocks makes it even easier to make this mistake, as reusable blocks on page look identical to normal blocks.

As an example, please see these two pages:
https://technode.com/2021/04/21/silicon-loongson-promises-self-reliance-with-new-architecture/
https://technode.com/2021/04/08/silicon-what-the-new-arm-v9-architecture-means-for-china/

The grey box marking the piece as "Opinion" and including the author bio is stored in our system as a reusable block; however, the text in the other half of the columns box has to change for each article.

[mrfoxtalbot]

Thank you for the report @zdenys and the additional details @kingsleyinfo.

I totally see the merit of the suggestion to make reusable blocks partially editable only as the user suggests.

This would be something to discuss in Gutenberg core, though. I found an issue where this is already being discussed, so I am going to close this in favor WordPress/gutenberg#31163

Please feel free to comment there. Thanks again!