Premium Content Block is a Gutenberg-first plugin that stores gating inside the block markup in wp_posts.post_content rather than as separate meta. A typical gated block looks like <!-- wp:premium-content-block/container {"tier":"pro"} --> with its protected children inside. There's no custom table; the source of truth is the block JSON in post content.

The default admin shows you the block in the editor and renders the gate on the front end. There's no catalogue view of all posts that contain a gated block, no quick way to find which tier each block is on, and no audit query for posts that were gated then accidentally unwrapped. For a publication with hundreds of articles that gate selectively, this is a real gap.

SleekView scans wp_posts.post_content for the premium-content-block/ block marker, parses the block attributes, and surfaces a row per gated block with post title, tier, and last modified. Writes update the post content with parsed block JSON, which means inline tier changes round-trip through the standard wp_insert_post path and fire save_post hooks.

Storing gating inside the block markup keeps the editor experience simple, which is why Gutenberg-first plugins like Premium Content Block tend toward this design. The trade-off is that the data isn't indexed anywhere; there's no postmeta, no separate table, just block JSON embedded in post_content. For one post or ten, that's fine.

For a catalogue with hundreds of articles and several tiers, it becomes invisible. Editors don't know which articles are gated, revenue ops can't audit tier coverage without scripting, and compliance can't certify that every premium asset is actually behind a gate. SleekView solves this by scanning post_content for the block marker, caching the parse per post, and treating each gated block as a row.

Migrations become bulk operations, audits become saved views, and the catalogue gets the operational workspace that block-stored gating doesn't ship with.