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Gutenberg Phase 3: Turning WordPress into an editorial hub

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Over the past year, WordPress has been steadily moving into Gutenberg Phase 3 –
the collaboration phase. For universities, this is the moment when WordPress starts to look and feel less like a solo publishing tool and more like the editorial hub your marketing, faculty and alumni teams have wanted for years.

Recent updates in WordPress 6.9 and ongoing work in the Gutenberg project are laying the foundations for real-time collaboration, improved content workflows and richer revision tools. These changes won’t replace your governance model, but they can make it much easier to implement in practice – especially across the distributed teams that are typical in higher education.

What is Gutenberg Phase 3, in practical terms?

Gutenberg is the multi-year project to modernise WordPress around the block editor. Phases 1 and 2 focused on creating the block editor and then extending it to site design. Phase 3 is all about collaboration and workflows to help teams work together directly inside WordPress rather than relying entirely on email, shared documents or external tools.

The Phase 3 work includes features such as:

  1. Real-time collaboration with multiple people working on the same post or page at once, seeing each other’s presence and changes as they happen.
  2. Improved revision history with clearer overviews of what changed, when, and by whom, so approvals and sign-off are easier to track.
  3. Better editorial tools in the block editor – from more intuitive commenting to improved media handling and cropping, so content teams can work faster without leaving the editor.
  4. Richer content management flows for more structured approval paths, task assignment and status tracking.

Not all of these are finished or available in every install yet, but the direction of travel is clear: WordPress is being reshaped around team workflows, not just individual authors.

Why this matters for universities

Higher education websites rarely belong to a single team. A single university page might involve:

  • Central marketing and communications
  • Faculty or school-based content editors
  • Alumni and advancement teams
  • Events or recruitment staff
  • Occasional contributions from academics or research centres

In practice, this can mean long email trails, tracked Word documents, last-minute changes and nervousness about “who has the latest version”. Phase 3 changes give universities a realistic path to bringing more of that collaboration into WordPress itself, where:

  • Everyone is working on a single source of truth for each page or article.
  • Editorial intent is captured in comments, not buried in email threads.
  • Approvals can be grounded in a clear revision history.

For institutions with strict compliance requirements – accessibility, brand, regulatory content, or public statements – this traceability is particularly valuable. It becomes easier to see who approved what, and when, without having to reconstruct the story from multiple systems.

Practical opportunities for HE teams

1. Rethink your content workflows around the block editor

Many universities still treat WordPress as a publishing end-point for content that starts life elsewhere. Phase 3 features create space to reverse that: to draft, review and refine directly in the block editor.

Over the next few months, it’s worth asking:

  • Which content types (news, events, research highlights, alumni stories) could safely move to an in-WordPress drafting and review process?
  • Where are reviewers currently asked to approve PDFs or documents instead of the actual web content?
  • Could content guidelines be embedded as reusable block patterns, checklists or inline notes instead of separate documents?

Starting with a small slice – for example, alumni stories or student profiles – lets you pilot new collaboration features without disrupting high-risk pages like policies or admissions information.

2. Strengthen governance with transparent revision history

Governance in higher education is often about proving that a sensible process was followed, not just having the process on paper. Enhanced revision tools and collaboration logs give you a practical way to demonstrate that.

Consider creating a simple checklist for key content types that includes:

  • Accessibility for headings, link text, alt text and colour contrast.
  • Accuracy of dates, entry requirements, contact details and fees.
  • Brand and tone – does this align with current messaging and style?

With collaboration tools in place, those checks can happen directly in the editor, with comments and revisions forming part of the record. Over time, this supports a culture of shared responsibility across marketing, departments and support teams.

3. Use collaboration to bridge central and faculty teams

One of the hardest challenges in university web teams is balancing central standards with local autonomy. Phase 3 tools do not solve that on their own, but they do give you better ways to work together.

For example:

  • Central teams can prepare block-based templates for common pages – course descriptions, staff profiles, event listings – and collaborate with faculties inside those templates rather than rebuilding pages from scratch.
  • Faculty editors can draft content in WordPress, then invite central marketing to review and refine copy, imagery and calls to action before publishing.
  • Alumni and events teams can work together on event pages, combining logistical details with compelling storytelling in a single, shared workspace.

The aim is not to centralise everything, but to reduce the friction of cross-team collaboration so that the web presence feels more coherent to prospective students, partners and alumni.

How we’re approaching Phase 3 with HE clients

We think of Phase 3 as an opportunity to refine governance and workflows rather than just switch on new features. For higher-education clients, that typically means:

  • Reviewing current content processes and identifying where collaboration is already happening – often in email, chat or shared documents.
  • Mapping those steps into WordPress, using the block editor, roles and permissions, and (where appropriate) workflow plugins to support approvals.
  • Creating repeatable patterns for key pages so that collaboration happens within a consistent structure instead of on one-off layouts.
  • Planning for the long term by recognising that staff change, but your WordPress platform and governance model may be in place for many years.

The underlying goal is stewardship: helping universities treat WordPress as a durable, shared asset rather than a series of isolated projects. Phase 3 collaboration features are one more step in that direction, giving your teams better tools to manage content together over time.

Questions to ask in your next planning meeting

If you’re responsible for a university WordPress site, consider bringing these questions to your next planning or governance meeting:

  • Where do our most important content decisions currently happen and could more of that happen directly in WordPress?
  • Which teams need to collaborate more closely on web content this year, and what would “good” look like for them?
  • Are our roles, permissions and training materials ready for more collaborative editing?
  • Which pages or content types are safest to pilot real-time collaboration and new workflow features on?

Phase 3 is still unfolding, so there is no single “correct” setup. But universities that start aligning their workflows with these new capabilities now will be better placed to take advantage of future improvements in WordPress core.

If you’d like a conversation about how to adapt your existing WordPress installation and governance model for more collaborative workflows, we can help you design an approach that fits your structures, not just the software.