Howdy,
Next week will be an exciting week, and somehow, I have quite a few events on my calendar. Most exciting is, of course, our next Live Q & A with the team from Pew Research Center! If you registered, I am excited to see you online.
This week brought a few Themes related news, new themes and also new tutorials on WordPressTV.
Gutenberg 13.7 will be released next week. As release lead, I made the RC 1 version available for testing. The Gutenberg Nightly version gives you a daily trunk version of the plugin, and it has now crossed the 120k download threshold.
Enjoy! Be safe over the summer!
Yours, 💕
Birgit
Full-site editing and Themes building
Alfredo Navas of WebDevStudios invites you: Let’s Create an FSE Theme In his tutorial he walks you through all the parts that make a theme ready for Full-site Editing: theme.json, styling blocks, block patterns, and the query loop block. In the second part of the post, you learn how to create a template and how to export the theme.
Anne McCarthy posted the outcome from the Pattern and Template Part Usability Testing., for which Designers were paired with folks from the outreach program. Together they recorded a 15-minute Zoom call going through one of two tasks: creating & applying a new header or using and customizing patterns. In the summary post, McCarthy lists the takeaways, the bugs reported and Feature requests. You then can watch the eight videos recorded by teams working on the header and five videos people customizing patterns.
🎙️ Latest episode: Gutenberg Changelog #98 – WordPress 6.5, Gutenberg 18.0 Community Theme Project and the Contributor Mentorship Program with special guest Maggie Cabrera
Themes for Site owners and site builders.
Anne McCarthy has published the 15th call for testing coming out of the FSE-outreach experiments. FSE Program Testing Call #15: Category Customization
If you want to know what’s to come next in the WordPress 6.1 release, participating in these calls for testing is the fastest way to learn about the new features and how to use them. This one is especially intriguing as it cuts through the process of setting up a testing environment thanks to the InstaWP tool. Added bonus, experiencing InstaWP in a live scenario 🙂 Big Thank you to Vikas Singhal for providing the space for this call.
The first WooCommerce Full-Site Editing theme arrived at the marketplace. It’s call Bonum by ThemesKingdom, a long-time independent theme author. It’s one of three Block Themes. The other two are Noctua and Aspicio. These are Premium Themes built with ecommerce first in mind.
On their blog, ThemesKingdom published WordPress block patterns: What they are and why we use them in our themes.
If you are interested in WooCommerce and ecommerce with WordPress, a shout-out to Bob Dunn and his team at DoTheWoo – a Community of WooCommerce Builders and the eight different Podcast series.
- Woo Builders Building
- WooCommerce & WordPress
- Woo Visions
- Woo BizChat
- Woo BuilderBytes
- Woo Roundtable
- Woo Builder Stories
- Woo DevChat
Check them all out from the Podcast Series page
Speaking of the WordPress Theme Directory: Any minute how the number of Block themes supporting full-site editing will cross over into three digits, 99 are available at the time of writing this post. Earlier this week the Meta and the Theme teams collaborated to add new link to the header of the list of themes.
When you click on the Block Themes link next to Popular and Latest, you come directly jump to the list of themes which work with all Full-site Editing features.
Sarah Gooding at WPTavern has more about the new link: WordPress Themes Directory Adds Block Themes to Filter Menu
Anders Noren published his third Block theme in the WordPress Theme directory: Poe, honoring the author Edgar Allen Poe. In his post, Introducing Poe, Noren wrote: “Part of the larger footprint in Poe are the 30+ block patterns, which make it easier for users to quickly create complex site and page layouts. That includes seven different designs for the site header, and five for the footer. Poe also comes with ten different Global Styles variations – a feature introduced in WordPress 6.0 that allow you to change between different theme styles (colors, fonts, spacing) with the click of a button in the Global Styles panel.” It is Noren’s third block theme and the 96th Block theme in the directory.
Another new theme in that list is Axton by the theme shop Catch Themes. Sarah Gooding reviewed the theme for the WPTavern in the article: Axton: A Free Block-based Portfolio Theme with Full-Site Editing Support. “The theme boasts more than 15 block patterns, 17 full-site editing (FSE) templates, and nine template parts. Users can showcase their work with Header media, Hero Content, and Featured Content patterns anywhere on the site.” Gooding wrote.
It’s also not the first FSE theme by Catch Theme. Last month, they also released Catch FSE into the directory. Sakin Shrestha posted about its update Catch FSE 1.2 Now comes with Light Color Style
Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg’s master branch?
Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review.
Have you been using it? Hit reply and let me know.
Block building for Developers
On the newly opened Builder Resources site by WPEngine, Nick Diego wrote an Introduction to Block Templates. No, that’s not a theme term, but for plugin developers, who provide Block templates to populate a Custom Post Type by default, every time. Block Templates help to standardize content creation. To teach you how to create those Block Templates is the purpose of this post. For a deep dive, consult the WordPress documentation.
Other posts on Builder Resources site cover:
- Colors, Gradients, and Duotones in Themes by Brian Gardner
- Self-Hosting Google Fonts in a Block Theme by Damon Cook
- Exploring Per-Block Stylesheets in Block Themes by Nick Diego
New videos on WordPress TV
WordCamp Europe talks and workshops
The organizers at WordCamp Europe are chipping away on the long list of talks to be uploaded to WordPressTV. FOMO reducer for sure. Although I was right there in Porto, I missed quite a few talks.
Here, I continue the series of Block editor related talks that started in Weekend Edition 221
Darren Ethier: The future of commerce in WordPress with Full Site Editing This talk focused on the future of commerce and what it could look like with Full Site Editing (FSE). Ethier gave an overview of the commerce landscape as it stands today and explored the impact that FSE could have on commerce in WordPress. The talk included the importance of personalization and customization, what is unlocked by FSE, how the approach to developing solutions for stores changed with the advent of FSE, and the great transition (the road from here to there).
Daisy Olsen: Build your first block theme
In this 2-hour hands-on workshop you will learn about the files used in a block theme and even create a simple but fully functional theme. Olsen walks you through the theme.json, Templates, Template Parts and more as you build a simple Block Theme that can be developed further after the conclusion of the Workshop.
Whether you are a seasoned theme developer, a designer, or a WordPress enthusiast that would like to build a theme in a guided environment this workshop will get you started.
BTW And if you want rather learn more about Theme Development Workflows for Different Types of Developers, Olsen is scheduled for an online workshop on Wednesday evening (6pm EDT / 22:00 UTC)
Learn WordPress videos
Nick Diego: Builder Basics – Designing Advanced Layouts with Core Blocks WordPress is changing rapidly and with each release of Core and Gutenberg, blocks become more and more powerful. Many of the layouts that you can design today were not even possible a few months ago!
Writing content with the 10 Text blocks Come join Ben Evans as he walks you through the 10 Text blocks in WordPress, and explains why it is important to use different blocks for different types of content.
Explore the Block Directory with Wes Theron. The WordPress Block Directory is a category of free WordPress plugins that provide third-party WordPress blocks for use within the WordPress block editor.
Upcoming WordPress Events
Don’t miss it! A Block-First Approach at Pew Research Center with lead developer Seth Rubenstein, head of digital strategy, Michael Piccorossi and co-host Anne McCarthy on July 22, at 11am EDT / 15:00 UTC
November 2 + 3, 2022
WordPress Accessibility Day – a free, 24-hour virtual conference focused on building accessible websites in WordPress.
Call for Speakers opened this week. Deadline August 8, 2022
October 10 – 14, 2022
WooSesh is a ‘virtual conference for WooCommerce store builders that will help grow your business.’ Event host, Brain Richards, is currently looking for speakers for pre-recorded 25-minutes sessions.
WordCamps around the World
September 2 + 3, 2022
WordCamp Jinja 2022, about 2 hrs West of Kampala, Uganda. Calls for sponsors, speakers, and volunteers are open now.
September 3 + 4, 2022
WordCamp Kathmandu, Nepal
September 9 – 11, 2022
WordCamp US in San Diego
September 15 + 16, 2022
WordCamp Netherlands at the Royal Burger’s Zoo in Arnhem
September 24 + 25, 2022
WordCamp Pontevedra
February 17 – 19, 2022
WordCamp Asia, Bangkok, Thailand
Call for speaker was just published. Deadline: September 15th, 2022 (UTC +7)
Contributor Day is planned for February 17, 2023 (Day 1)
Learn WordPress Online Workshops
📢 This week, on Meetup.com the group WordPress Social Learning was renamed to Learn WordPress Online Workshops. That’s such an improvement.
However, Meetup doesn’t do any redirects to all links to upcoming events go stale. So if you followed older links from this site and landed nowhere, I am sorry about it. The list below is updated.
July 18, 2022 4pm EDT / 20:00 UTC
Building With Free Wireframe Templates And Advanced Blocks with Kadence blocks and Maestro Stevens
July 19, 2022 – 12 pm EDT 16:00 UTC
The ABCs of Blogging: Basic Blogging (Part One) with Bud Kraus
July 19, 2022 5pm EDT / 21:00 UTC
Explore the Template Editor with Wes Theron
July 20, 2022 – 6pm EDT / 22:00 UTC
Theme Development Workflows for Different Types of Developers with Daisy Olsen
July 21, 2022 – 9 am EDT / 13:00 UTC
Let’s code! Creating your first WordPress Plugin with Jonathan Bossenger
July 21, 2022 – 3 pm EDT / 19:00 UTC
Curating the Editor Experience with Nick Diego – a walk through the Block Editor Handbook article Curating the Editor Experience in a live environment.
July 26, 2022 – 12 pm EDT / 16:00 UTC
The ABCs of Blogging: Advanced Blogging (Part Two) with Bud Kraus
July 26, 2022 5pm EDT / 21:00 UTC
Styling your site with global styles with Wes Theron and Alycia
Virtual WordPress Meetups
July 20, 2022 7pm EDT / 23:00 UTC
Gutenberg Blocks for Devs – Part 2 with Rick Radko Ottawa Meetup
July 21, 2022 6 pm EDT / 22:00
What’s in WordPress 6.0 and in the works for WordPress 6.1 with Birgit Pauli-Haack at West Orlando WordPress meetup
July 26 at 6:00 PM EDT / 22:00 UTC
“Mega Meetup” – Block Intro & Project Frameworks with Vito Peleg showing off Atarim.io and with Anne Katzeff providing a Beginner’s Guide to Gutenberg Blocks.
