I Built a Canva-Like Page Builder for WordPress with Fable

Time to read:

1–2 minutes

Over the weekend, Fable and I built a working MVP of a new WordPress page builder called Gogh.

The idea is simple: make building WordPress pages feel as easy as Canva. Instead of wrestling with rows, columns, and nested blocks, you edit directly on the live page. Elements can be dragged, resized, rotated, reordered, and snapped into place with alignment guides, all through a visual front end experience.

Want to try Gogh? Click here to launch a live demo.

The main ideas behind Gogh (working title) are:

• Make WordPress page building as easy to use as Canva.
• Save everything as native Gutenberg blocks, with no lock-in.
• Build on the block theme architecture, so it inherits theme styles, patterns and design settings.
• Load existing patterns and instantly turn them into a freeform drag and drop canvas.
• Use the new HTML Canvas under the hood.
• Generate responsive CSS Grid layouts automatically for mobile.
• Combine the flexibility and openness of WordPress core with the simplicity of Canva.

Under the hood, Gogh publishes real Gutenberg blocks. It works with block themes, inherits styles from theme.json, and converts freeform layouts into responsive CSS Grid when you publish. The result is clean, native WordPress content with no lock-in and zero JavaScript on the front end.

Along the way we added features like undo and redo, responsive typography, shape dividers, Media Library integration, section reordering, and a growing collection of editing tools designed to make page building approachable for complete beginners.

A number of people have already taken it for a spin, and the feedback so far has been incredibly helpful. If you’ve tried Gogh, I’d love to hear what worked, what didn’t, and what you’d change. Every comment is helping shape where it goes next, especially if I’m going to release it on the WordPress plugin repository.

And one final question: if you’d like me to release Gogh for free on WordPress.org, drop a “yes please” in the comments below. It’ll help me gauge whether there’s enough interest to take it the final step.


Comments

31 responses to “I Built a Canva-Like Page Builder for WordPress with Fable”

  1. Charlie Watson Avatar
    Charlie Watson

    I haven’t tried Gogh, but your description makes it soind like a realy valuable addition to the WordPress world. So it’s “Yes, please” from me!

    1. Jamie Marsland Avatar
      Jamie Marsland

      Thanks Charlie 🙂

    1. Jamie Marsland Avatar
      Jamie Marsland

      Thanks Craig 🙂

  2. Jeffrey J. Price Avatar
    Jeffrey J. Price

    I love it. Does it work with woo commerce? I’d charge for it, it is well worth it.

    1. Jamie Marsland Avatar
      Jamie Marsland

      Hi Jeffrey, thank you 🙂 Not yet, but it’s on my list.

  3. Yes – this is amazing.

    Main MIA for me is mobile first design / breakpoint controls.

    Also for my design approach – would love a configurable modular grid with baseline based gutters… if that doesn’t sound too old fashioned 🙂 – and I’m essentially retired at this point so what do i know?

    Thanks Jamie this is a super cool picture of where WP core itself could/should go

    1. Jamie Marsland Avatar
      Jamie Marsland

      Thanks Tim, really appreciate that.

      I completely agree on mobile. Right now Gogh converts everything into responsive CSS Grid when you publish, but giving people a great mobile workflow and intuitive breakpoint controls is one of the biggest areas to explore.

      And I don’t think a configurable modular grid sounds old fashioned at all. Good layout systems never really go out of style. One of the things I’m trying to figure out is how to expose that kind of power without making the experience intimidating for beginners.

      Really appreciate the thoughtful feedback.

  4. Tina Thaw Avatar
    Tina Thaw

    Yes, please.

  5. Redwan Avatar

    Yes please

  6. Lachlan Black Avatar
    Lachlan Black

    Dude this is bloody brilliant. Everything every client has ever asked for. Everything every freelancer or agency has ever dreamt of.

    1. Jamie Marsland Avatar
      Jamie Marsland

      Thanks Lachlan – that’s great to hear 🙂

  7. Ron Lane Avatar
    Ron Lane

    Yes please.

  8. Rugilė Penno Avatar
    Rugilė Penno

    Yes please

  9. Jonathan Avatar
    Jonathan

    A ‘yes’ Assuming:

    AI did not chuck out code and you said ‘yeah that’ll do’! e.g. you checked security, uninstall options, structured so that it’s future proof, not completely AI created (heaven help with maintaining…), commented and conforming to modern WP standards, etc etc. Otherwise it’s just another VIBE coded ‘thing’ to play with…

    1. Jamie Marsland Avatar
      Jamie Marsland

      Thanks Jonathan. I completely agree, those things matter.

      With Gogh, Fable and I didn’t just generate some code and hit publish. There was a lot of back and forth, testing, fixing bugs, improving the architecture, and adding regression tests as we went. Before I ship anything, I also run it through Pressship, which I’d highly recommend if you’re building WordPress plugins with AI: https://pressship.org/

      I think AI makes it possible to build software much faster, but it doesn’t remove the need for proper review and quality checks.

      1. Jonathan Avatar
        Jonathan

        Yes agreed, looks like an interesting project Jamie.

  10. Ruhel Ali Avatar
    Ruhel Ali

    Yes please.

  11. Rickey Williams Avatar
    Rickey Williams

    Yes, for sure!

    1. Julien Leroy Avatar
      Julien Leroy

      That’s great, and yes please, and more than happy to donate a few bucks if it is a time saver product. Thanks

  12. Yes please

  13. Anthony Netherclift Avatar
    Anthony Netherclift

    Oh yes indeed

  14. David McCan Avatar
    David McCan

    Cool tool. I’m not a fan of the name though.

    1. Jamie Marsland Avatar
      Jamie Marsland

      Thanks David, yea it’s a WIP title 🙂 Any better suggestions?

  15. Chuck G. Avatar
    Chuck G.

    Yes! So good for clients to make simple sites so I don’t need to deal with them.

  16. It’s a YES from me!

  17. Trevor Lewis Avatar
    Trevor Lewis

    Yes, release it into the wild, (when it’s ready) for free.

  18. Hi Jamie, I think this is going to be a game-changer, because it really is the missing link in the latest iteration of WordPress.

    The reason why page builders were popular was because they made editing pages and posts very easy, but most were resource hungry or expensive or both and some crashed websites.

    From what I have seen this is going to add flexibility, creativity and speed to building websites.

    A free version would be great, but if there was a pro version that could cover, say, 10 sites, then I would also opt for that (but, ideally a one-off payment, not an annual fee).

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