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.
• Drag, drop, resize, rotate and reorder elements with snap-to-grid, smart guides, auto-fit layouts and precision controls.
• Save everything as native Gutenberg blocks, with no lock-in.
• Create HTML with AI and instantly turn it into a fully editable drag-and-drop layout.
• Load existing patterns and instantly turn them into a freeform drag-and-drop canvas.
• Build on the block theme architecture, so it inherits theme styles, patterns and design settings.
• 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
65 responses to “I Built a Canva-Like Page Builder for WordPress with Fable”
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!
Thanks Charlie 🙂
yes please
Thanks Craig 🙂
I love it. Does it work with woo commerce? I’d charge for it, it is well worth it.
Hi Jeffrey, thank you 🙂 Not yet, but it’s on my list.
Intrigued! Im assuming manual tweaks need to be made for responsive breakpoints?
Yes, please!
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
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.
Yes, please.
Yes please
Dude this is bloody brilliant. Everything every client has ever asked for. Everything every freelancer or agency has ever dreamt of.
Thanks Lachlan – that’s great to hear 🙂
Yes please.
Yes please
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…
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.
Yes agreed, looks like an interesting project Jamie.
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Yes please.
Yes, for sure!
That’s great, and yes please, and more than happy to donate a few bucks if it is a time saver product. Thanks
Yes, please
Yes please
Oh yes indeed
Cool tool. I’m not a fan of the name though.
Thanks David, yea it’s a WIP title 🙂 Any better suggestions?
Dare I suggest “Vincent” ?
Yes! So good for clients to make simple sites so I don’t need to deal with them.
It’s a YES from me!
Yes, release it into the wild, (when it’s ready) for free.
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).
That’s a YES, Jamie. Thank you for your work!
Yes please!
Yes please 🙂
yes please
Yes
Interesting concept making things simpler. I’ve struggled so far with WP and the different ‘modes’ you seem to have to be in to do stuff. Anything that makes it like a page in Word (or Canva which I have not used) is for a novice like me a good thing. That said I feel I should still know what is happening under the hood so to speak. SO, yes – I’d push this out on .org where I am sure more feedback will be positive
[…] Style Builder… Jamie Marsland shared preview of Gogh, a Canva-Like Page Builder for WordPress made with Fable. “The idea is simple: make building […]
Just tried, amazing experience 🫨.
Cool, that’s great to hear!
Great work. Would love to know more.
Ooops, I commented on someone else’s comment. 🙃
Intrigued! Im assuming manual tweaks need to be made for responsive breakpoints? Yes, please!
Hi Kim,
It uses CSS grid under the hood so it’s responsive out of the box.
Yes, please.
Another great plugin, Jamie!
This looks awesome. I think my wife will love editing in wordpress again with this editor. This looks very easy 🙂
in deliberate all-caps – YES PLEASE!
Yes, Please
Really well done yes please make it available
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Yes, please.
I’m looking forward to it.
Hi!
Promising idea.
However this MVP seems very far from production-ready plugin. I played some with it, and it’s a bit “clunky” … I did push it a bit to extreme
– why CSS grid – because of tablet/mobile views (free editing doesn’t work on that views_?).
– did you (Fable) use any JS/React (…) library?
– are you planning to push development further, or is it just an experiment, like, showcase what can be done using agentic development?
Thanks
Thanks for taking the time to try it, especially pushing it to the extremes. That’s exactly the kind of feedback I was hoping for.
It’s definitely not production-ready yet. It’s an early MVP, so there are still rough edges. I’d be interested to hear which parts felt clunky, as that’s useful feedback.
CSS Grid is there because it gives us responsive layouts. The editing experience is freeform, but on publish everything is compiled into responsive CSS Grid, so it works well across different screen sizes.
I didn’t use React or a third-party drag-and-drop library. The editor is built with a lightweight custom approach, which has made it much easier to experiment and iterate quickly.
It actually started as an experiment, but the more I’ve worked on it, the more I think there’s something worth exploring. The aim isn’t to replace Gutenberg. It’s to make page building much easier for beginners while still saving everything as native Gutenberg blocks.
I love the Gogh idea. I’ve been thinking for a while now that while developers are obsessed with the next uber complex class based, flex box and grid builder, what WordPress needed was a Squarespace like building experience. I see that you note it is based in CSS grid under the hood. (I think Squarespace uses some sort of absolute positioning in “Fluid Engine” but I am not sure).
Also as sort of a side note on the designer side there are a lot more women in the Squarespace realm, whereas it seems like WordPress “purity” contest sometimes (not always) has a kind of gendered component.
I imagined building something that could allow real drag-drop editing since that really is what gets DIYers hung up. I haven’t had the courage to try to vibe code something like that and I have basic coding but not enough to build a real building tool.
I like that this is Canva like but also gives you spacing. I’d love to be able to turn on/turn off grid lines (almost like a Word document), that you could snap to that work with the lines that are in the builder as it is.
I have been building in Kadence, but have been trying to move away from it after the drama. I have invested been learning FSE (like Ollie) but there are some real issues with needing to nest things in groups and columns and it kind of drives me a little nutty.
Everyone says AI will put people out of business but under that I think really at the lower level people want something easy. At the higher level they want something bespoke.
I really like the idea that this will then load natively in Gutenberg because after the Kadence thing I am more focused on native tools (why I chose WP in the first place is because of OS but then I feel pulled by all these other building tools).
Thanks so much for taking the time to write this. You’ve pretty much summed up why I started building Gogh.
The goal isn’t to create another builder for power users. It’s to make WordPress feel approachable for people who just want to build a beautiful page without thinking about groups, columns, patterns, or layout architecture. Then save everything back as native Gutenberg blocks so you’re never locked in.
You’ll be pleased to know we’ve already added optional grid lines and snap to grid. 🙂 It makes positioning elements so much more intuitive.
Yes, please!
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Yes please, very much yes please!
I love that you use only Gutenberg Blocks, so that no seperate page builder with lock-in effects is needed. Good stuff, like it a lot.
[…] been experimenting with what a Canva-like editing experience might look like in WordPress. The hard part is not the dragging. It is turning what you dragged […]
Yes, absolutely!
It looks like a viable alternative to Elementor—and even surpasses it.
Of course, it would be great if no more code than absolutely necessary were generated, so as not to compromise website performance.