blocks blank after gutenberg 23.3

Marta

Hello,

Yesterday my Gutenberg Plugi updated automatically to 23.3 and since then i noticed that my third-party block collection doesn't work in the block editor. All blocks are just rendered empty on a blank box. I found some React errors in the browser console, but those look like minified errors with numbers that I do not understand.

Everything seems fine in frontend (so visitors won't notice). But I can't edit any post that uses those blocks.

My site is in WordPress 7.0 with PHP 8.3

I made a backup and copied the site to staging to look at it there.

Is this a known problem with 23.3 or should I wait for the collection to update?

Atif

This is the first Gutenberg release with React 19, which means any React 18 internally "built" block plugins will now have problems in the editor and may cause empty blocks + console errors, even though the front end won't.

Seems like it matches your problem, as it shouldn't affect the frontend at all.

Marta

I'm hoping to learn which way to go: downgrading Gutenberg plugin or keep it as is and hope block author gets the chance to release fix for it? Any clue what I should do? 😉

Atif

If you want to go back then the best is to use the zip for gutenberg 23.2 as found in the plugins advanced view.

Otherwise deactivate the Gutenberg plugin as WP 7.0 comes with a built in editor and gutenberg plugin is basically a preview for upcoming features.

Andrew

Deactivating as default is of course the right choice on a live shop.

The description of gutenberg plugin says this plugin is for testing future core features, which certainly wasn't a good idea to do on a live shop, hence the problems.

ioan

We also get blank blocks with another block collection, since the 23.3 update.

Marta

I deactived Gutenberg plugin and everything went back to normal.

Another thing I noticed since the update: the core blog says the React 19 change has been temporarily reverted in Gutenberg since lots of plugins have stopped working with it.

Atif

It seems thats just a temporary change so it looks like the plan is to use React 19 for 7.1. I recommend checking with the author of the block collection whether they're testing it for compatibility in that case.

Marta

Agreed. I will email them and won't use the plugin anymore.