Howdy,
It’s astonishing how the WordPress community comes together to support people in need and despair. You do what you can with the means you have. The article by Sarah Gooding lists many initiatives you can support to help people in Ukraine and its refugees. Don’t overlook the comments either.
I hope you can pull yourself away from the doom scrolling on Twitter and other sites, and distract yourself from the horrifying updates by reading through this newsletter. There is also wonderful work being done on Gutenberg and the block editor. And don’t forget to check out the upcoming events in WordPress Social Learning Space below.
Yours, 💕
Birgit
PS: If you are a developer, I hope to see you at the next Gutenberg Developer Hours on March 8th 11:00 ET / 16:00 UTC withe fabulous Tammie Lister, Fabian Kägy, and Grzegorz Ziolkowski as expert panelists.

Gutenberg 12.7 release
Carlos Bravo spearheaded the plugin release and in his notes What’s new in Gutenberg 12.7? (2 March) he highlighted:
- Improving the Patterns experience
- List View Improvements
- Changes to frontend HTML when using layouts and image blocks
There are also some change to data-align and div tags from blocks that might need adjustments from Theme developers (again)
Justin Tadlock put it out for a spin Gutenberg 12.7 Adds Multi-Block Selection in List View and Brings Margin Support to Group Blocks
🎙️ New episode: Gutenberg Changelog #62 – Gutenberg 12.7, a New Call for Testing, the Web Fonts API Arrival with co-hosts Birgit Pauli-Haack and Mary Job
Block Editor for content creators and #nocode site builders
Eric Karkovack shared in his interview with Bob Dunn on the Do-the-Woo Podcast, the story of his 12-year-old daughter getting acquainted with WordPress. After a couple of minutes of instructions, the dad was sent away: “Dad, you can go now. I’m fine.” When Eric came back an hour later, and she’s already got it figured out. The Block Editor: Kid Tested
Earlier this year, Google updated the Material Design plugin, to enabled Using Block Patterns with Material Design for WordPress. It’s the accompanying plugin with blocks for the Material Design Theme, a classic theme.
In this post, Eric Karkovack takes you with him Exploring the WordPress Block Pattern Directory. Learn how do you navigate the directory, how do you preview patterns and how to add them to you website.
53 Block Themes in WordPress Directory
Today’s count of Block Themes for Full-site Editing is 53.
A new theme by Brian Gardner, called Avant-Garde is now available in the WordPress repository. “An experimental block theme for those who love simplicity”
Vikas Singhal, builder of themes at announced the update for their Gutena Block Theme, with additional block patterns.
Block and Theme Building
In this week’s Twitch Stream, Ryan Welcher covered Integrating a custom post type into Gutenberg and Full Site Editing.
In her post Core Editor Improvement: Choose your Style, Anne McCarthy introduces us to the new feature of having multiple set of Global Styles with your theme. Now site owners can switch out color schemes and overall font styles without having to change themes or worry about losing content. McCarthy also shared links to documentation and examples.
Learn how to add a Color Palette with ACF custom blocks with Bill Erickson with code examples and variation for different use cases. “When registering a new block with acf_register_block_type()
, you can use the ‘supports’ array to specify which block editor features this block supports.” Erickson wrote.
Ben Dwyer, theme wrangler on the Themes team, shared a few Block Theme Building Tips on ThemeShaper. They range from avoiding using CSS, to reusing patterns, and theme.json over block settings.
In her post, WordPress Design Share, Channing Ritter shared what the design team has been working on
🎛️ Site Editor navigation –
🖼️ Cover block and how to place layers options
🔓 User-level Block Locking
📒 Documentation and more
Most is still work in progress and could use your review and input. Check ’em out!
Jason Bahl, founder and maintainer of WPGraphQL plugin succeeded in Adding End 2 End Tests to WordPress plugins using wp-env and wp-scripts and shared how he did it. It’s an in depth look at configuration and execution of e2e testing with WordPress native tools. Bahl also posted an accompanying video on YouTube
Andrew Serong, published on BuildBetterBlock.com the article Block supports, global styles, and work to consolidate style generation in Gutenberg. It’s an in-depth look into the Gutenberg codebase and the discussions happening around Styles, themes and user options. Serong has been working actively on the new Style Engine project, and this is a great report on the current stage of the work.
Last year, Helen Hou-Sandí wrote a tutorial on “Updating a WordPress plugin with a publish metabox field for the block editor”. It a great real life use case on adopting development for the block editor one metabox at a time.
WordPress Social Learning Events
March 8, 2022, at 11:00 AM ET / 16:00 UTC
Gutenberg Developer Hours with Fabian Kägy, Tammie Lister and Grzegorz Ziolkowski
March 10, 2022 at 10:30 am ET / 15:30 UTC
Honey, I Broke My Website! What To Do When Site Editing Goes Wrong with Sarah Snow
March 10, 2022 at 12 pm ET / 17:00 UTC
Builder Basics: Designing with Columns, Group, and Row Blocks with Nick Diego
March 15, 2022 at 9:30 am ET / 14:30 UTC
Beginner’s Guide to Full Site Editing with Sarah Snow
March 22, 2022 at 3 am ET / 8:00 UTC
Intro to Theme Blocks with Wes Theron
March 23, 2022 at 1pm ET / 18:00 UTC
Builder Basics: Exploring Block Layout, Alignment, Dimensions, and Spacing with Nick Diego
March 28, 2022 at 11 am ET / 16:00 UTC
Hello Blocks! Coding a custom block with Wes Theron and Ryan Welcher
March 29, 2022 at 3 pm ET / 20:00 UTC
Beginner’s Guide to Full Site Editing with Sarah Snow
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