Enable page & post creation via the "Add Link" interface

[mrfoxtalbot]

When setting up a site from scratch, users will update the links in their homepage and will often need to add links to pages or posts that do not exist yet. Wrapping one's head around how this works can be a source confusion and, even if you understand how it works, it will break your workflow.

My suggestion would be to let users create a new page or post the moment they are adding the link, here:

This follows the same logic of the feature we have on Homepage Settings and Menus to create a new page "on the fly".

[mtias]

This is already supported in the Link UI, but it's not enabled for inline links. It works in the navigation block, for example.

[mtias]

@shaunandrews noticed that we don't show the "create page" suggestion until the searching is finished, which seems backwards. Do you remember if that was an oversight or intended to function that way?

[pauljacobson]

@mtias I didn't see that option pop-up for a Buttons Block in testing with a user recently. I just tried this on a WordPress.com site, and I don't see the prompt to create a page:

So we don't seem to have a consistent option for this where there are opportunities to add links.

[mtias]

@pauljacobson that's what I meant with "but it's not enabled for inline links". It's only toggled on for the navigation block.

[mrfoxtalbot]

Thank you for clarifying @mtias, I am looking forward to seeing this feature added to inline links :)

[mtias]

I agree, the Button is an excellent use case as well :)

[shaunandrews]

I don't recall why an "new page" options was exposed by default. We definitely explored the design for it. I guess I'd label it as an oversight. I see #26351 was recently created to address the visuals of the Link UI, which has lagged behind the rest of the editor and the G2 updates.

[mrfoxtalbot]

Given that the Nav Block is now much more mature, I'm wondering if we could revisit this to enable this option on inline links too.

Thank you :)

[javierarce]

I'd like to point out some things I've seen in this component. I can move this list to a new issue if that's more useful:

• The minimum amount of characters we require to create a new page or link is two, which means users can't create pages with just one letter. I'm not sure if there's a reason for that or it's an oversight.
• We always show the interface to create links even if users don't provide a TLD or begin their strings with http or www. The only exception is when they introduce spaces in the string. Maybe we should try to improve the URL matcher, so we don't show the prompt to create a new URL if the text is not clearly a URL.
• Small detail: if a user writes down an anchor, we label the item as internal but keep saying Press ENTER to add this link. I think it would be nicer to also say Press ENTER to add this anchor.
• The plus sign and the "Create draft page" text are not vertically aligned:

• I also think we could increase the size of the icons and adjust their left alignment:

• There's a funny bug: the icons shrink when the user types a very long string.

[mtias]

We should also probably use a document icon for the new page, not the + which in the context of all the pluses used for inserters can get confusing.

[javierarce]

True.

We should also probably use a document icon for the new page, not the + which in the context of all the pluses used for inserters can get confusing.

PS: Even though it's tangentially related to this issue, the design for the UI of this component can be found in this Figma file. I'll probably rename the file to include future design explorations.

[getdave]

Ok so I took a quick look into the complexities of achieving this.

Unfortunately the inline links are handled by the @wordpress/format-library package. This is WordPress Core agnostic so it cannot have dependencies on things like @wordpress/core-data which is what we use in the Nav Link block to create posts/pages on the fly.

Therefore, we're going to have to do some juggling and allow block editors to expose their own "create entity" function on the editor settings (much as we do with fetchLinkSuggestions). That way the edit post package can provide a function to allow creation of links which utilises the Core Data APIs without forcing the format library to have a dependency on the Core Data package itself.

So basically....it's more complex than I first thought...

[mrfoxtalbot]

I wanted to note that it is now possible to create a new page while editing a post or page…

...but that this functionality does not seem to be available in the site editor on FSE: