Gutenberg: Renaming the new "Section" block to "Group"

[mtias]

Coming a bit late to the conversation around the new Section block (#13964). I don't like to resurface things that have already reached a consensus, however, I think the name for this block needs to change for a few reasons:

• I agree with the concerns raised before about the confusion with the semantic nature of the HTML5 element. Even without that potential confusion, “creating a section” carries a bit more weight than "creating a group" for stylistic purposes, and I think this block conflates the two.
• Once actual page sections start to appear to power other areas of the site/theme (headers, navigation, featured stories, sidebars, footers, and so on) it might lead to yet more semantic overlap.
• People might not know when it is appropriate to add a section or not, and what implications it might have for their content structure. It should be fine to add a group within a _Column_ and so on without hesitating as to whether a section is called for.

I'd propose calling this block Group instead, which seems more straightforward and less loaded as a term. (In the future, there'd be space for supporting specific HTML tags for the containing element, and converting a Group to a proper Section seems like a meaningful path.)

---

Finally, I'd strongly suggest incorporating a way to select multiple blocks and grouping them by using the block transformation tool — select a few blocks → open transformations → choose the "Group" block.

I believe it can be a more natural pattern for people to first create their content, then group it, rather than start with an empty container first.

[youknowriad]

Thanks for raising this. The arguments here make sense to me, especially if we add the "Group/Ungroup" actions.

[mapk]

I'm also good with "Group" as the name.

Finally, I'd strongly suggest incorporating a way to select multiple blocks and grouping them by using the block transformation tool

Would love to see a PR for this!

[getdave]

I agree with your logic here and wish I'd been as articulate in my responses when I was pushing back on "Section" in the original PR.

a way to select multiple blocks and grouping them by using the block transformation tool

Definitely a great feature and one which was requested during the work on the Block but felt to be out of scope. I would love to see this happen.

Also note if the name is updated we need to update the Github label (see below)

[marekhrabe]

add the "Group/Ungroup" actions

Raises a question whether this would be a single block feature of Group or if we can build this on a framework level so all blocks with InnerBlocks can be used for wrapping. Either opt-in (like supports: { wrapping: true }) or maybe just the presence of InnerBlocks could be enough signal.

[talldan]

Raises a question whether this would be a single block feature of Group or if we can build this on a framework level so all blocks with InnerBlocks can be used for wrapping. Either opt-in (like supports: { wrapping: true }) or maybe just the presence of InnerBlocks could be enough signal.

I was thinking about that as well. There were a few constraints I could think of. Firstly, I'm not sure if it is possible to determine that a block supports inner blocks from its blockType. Also, there are some blocks using a templated inner blocks with a locked template, or there's columns which only accepts a column as a child.

It seems like a supports option might be the only way to go.

Alternatively a mapping function like transforms use.

[talldan]

PR here 👉 #14920

[torounit]

The block is s no longer section. Need support anchor ?

[talldan]

The block is s no longer section. Need support anchor ?

It should still support the anchor after the rename 👍

[aduth]

Also note if the name is updated we need to update the Github label (see below)

I updated the label name.