Core Blocks Enhancer is a free WordPress plugin that adds accessibility, SEO and performance options to the Gutenberg blocks you already use. No new blocks to learn, nothing changes until you turn an option on.
Each option lives in the sidebar of the block it applies to.
Image and Media & Text blocks, "SEO & Performance" panel
Use for ranking adds aria-hidden="true" to an illustrative image, so its alt text can be written for search engines without being read by assistive technologies.
Lazy load, on the Image block, forces loading="lazy" and removes any fetchpriority attribute.
Button and Paragraph blocks, "SEO Options" panel
Removes the links from the markup served to robots. Each href is replaced with a base64 encoded attribute, and a small front script opens the URL on click or on Enter.
<a is="obf-link" role="link" tabindex="0"
encoded-url="aHR0cHM6Ly9leGFtcGxlLmNvbQ==">Link</a>robots.txt.
Button block, "Button icon" and "Accessibility" panels
Pick any image from the media library and place it left or right of the button text.
--button-gap custom property, 8px by default.Button label adds an aria-label to the button link.
Heading block, "Accessibility Options" panel
Overrides the level announced to assistive technologies with role="heading" and aria-level, so a heading can look like an h2 and be announced as an h4.
"None" sets role="presentation" to take the heading out of the document outline.
Every <th> of the Table block gets scope="col".
The YouTube iframe is replaced with a link showing the video thumbnail. The player is only loaded when the visitor clicks it, so nothing from the YouTube player is downloaded on page load.
youtu.be/ID, youtube.com/watch?v=ID, /embed/ID, /shorts/ID and /live/ID URLs.To run something before the player loads, such as asking for consent, define window.onYoutubePlaceholderClick. It receives the click event and must return a promise. The player loads when it resolves, and nothing happens if it rejects.
window.onYoutubePlaceholderClick = (event) => new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
hasConsent('youtube') ? resolve() : askConsent('youtube').then(resolve, reject);
});Setting the lang and dir of a text selection is handled by the core "Language" format since 1.9.0. Content created with the plugin's previous toolbar button keeps its attributes when edited.
Requires PHP 7.4 or later. The built files are in the repository, so there is no build step.
With Composer. The package is not on Packagist, so declare the GitHub repository first.
composer config repositories.core-blocks-enhancer vcs https://github.com/corentin-gautier/core-blocks-enhancer
composer require cgsoft/core-blocks-enhancerThe package type is wordpress-plugin. It lands in your plugins folder if the project uses composer/installers, as Bedrock does, and in vendor/ otherwise.
Or with Git. Clone the plugin into your plugins folder.
cd wp-content/plugins
git clone https://github.com/corentin-gautier/core-blocks-enhancer.gitActivate Core Blocks Enhancer in the Plugins screen.
Open a post and select an image, button, paragraph or heading. The new panels are in the block sidebar.
The robots.txt rule that hides the front script from robots targets /wp-content/plugins/core-blocks-enhancer/. If the plugin is installed elsewhere, as with Bedrock's app/plugins, add your own rule for build/front.min.js.