Howdy,
Thank you for the check-ins after Hurricane Ian aimed for Southwest Florida, and made landfall on Wednesday. Some areas of Florida experienced major destruction, via the storm surge and flash floods. My husband and I were lucky. We have no damage to our house, and we were only without power and internet for 28 hrs. We are both back at our desks working.
And bringing you the news on block theme building, custom blocks and more.
Enjoy and have a great weekend.
Yours, đź’•
Birgit
PS: If you want us to share your block-theme, your latest block plugin or your tutorial, feel free to email pauli@gutenbergtimes.com. If you have questions about any of the topics, comment below and I answer within a day or two.
PPS: On Monday, I will be a guest on Nathan Wrigley’s This Week in WordPress together with Kathy Zant and Bob Dunn. Join us via YouTube at 9 am EDT / 13:00 UTC
Developing Gutenberg and WordPress
Gutenberg 14.2 was released. Release lead Michal Czaplinski, posted about What’s new in Gutenberg 14.2? (28 September). He highlighted the following features:
- Smarter suggestions for Query Loop block variations
- Improvements to the writing flow
- Letter spacing in headings
- A more polished Calendar block
- New “Banners” and “Footers” block pattern categories
- Autocompletion for links
Anne McCarthy published another post in the series of Core Editor Improvements, titled Catalyst for creativity and control. “This post goes through each category of design tools, what blocks they are available in, the progress made, and some fun examples showing off what you can now do. The result is a catalyst for creativity, with more to come on the horizon. ” she wrote. The design tools listed are:
- Typography Controls
- Dimensions and Spacing
- Color Controls
- Layout Support
- Border Controls

Joen Asmussen posted an update from the WordPress design team: Design Share: Sep 12 – Sep 23. The team explored how it would look if the Documentation Outline would be integrated into the List View. There is quite some overlap between the two features that could be simplified. There is ongoing work done on the placeholder designs for the Site editor. New inserter preview and features are explored and many more updates. They could all user your input on how things could be improved for the content creator and site builder. Check out a proposed refresh of the patterns that come bundled with the Query Loop block.

🎙️ Latest episode: Gutenberg Changelog #90 – New Testing Call for the FSE Program, Gutenberg 16.7 and WordPress 6.4 with Tammie Lister as special guest, hosted by Birgit Pauli-Haack
Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners
Nick Diego built his Slidedeck for WCUS entirely out of blocks. He now wrote a post about the Why and the How Diego also mentioned he used 724 blocks in his slide deck.
Jamie Marsland explains that Custom Post Designs are easy with WordPress Block Themes – no plugins needed! in his latest YouTube Video. In this 9 min-video, you’ll learn
- How to create a custom post design
- How to create a custom post category page
- How to use the Custom Post Type UI plugin
- Use Custom Post Type UI plugin with a WordPress Block Theme
- How to create a custom archive with Custom Post Type UI plugin
Kevin Batdorf published his new plugin Code Block Pro. It provides you with an editor that runs your code directly through the same rendering engine that is used by the popular VS Code editor.
Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks
Nick Diego’s WCUS talk is now available on WordPressTV: Let’s Build a Custom Block in 15 Minutes
Carolina Nymark posted a tutorial on Creating templates for custom post types, as “several theme developers have reached out asking how to create full site editing templates for custom post types.” In this lesson, Nymark explains:
- How to create templates for custom post types in the Site Editor
- How to add file-based templates in your theme
- How to add default blocks to the post type templates
WordPress 6.1 will allow classic theme authors to begin using block-based template parts. It is one of the most exciting features of the release and one that has long been… Read more. |
Rich Tabor wrote a guide on How to simplify WordPress patterns with content-only block editing, coming to WordPress via the version 6.1. “When applied to a block pattern, all content blocks nested within continue to be editable, but moving and removing is disabled, and all design controls are hidden” Tabor explained.
Jacob Martella continues his series of Creating a block Theme with this week’s Creating the Archive and 404 Templates. And you can learn it in less than 8 minutes.
Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor.
New Course to Learn.WordPress: Using the WordPress Data Layer – This course by Adam Zielinski provides a step-by-step introduction to all the data layer concepts, a JavaScript library used throughout the WordPress editor to read and write data. Whenever you save a post, insert a page list block, or select the post author – it’s all powered by the WordPress data layer.
Ryan Welcher explored three new features for developers coming in WordPress 6.1 release. He covered
- Query Loop block variations
- Using the render property in a block.json file
- Block-based template parts in Classic themes
The author team Lindsey Bell, Lax Mariappan and Ximena Kilroe of Webdev Studios published Optimizing the WordPress Block Editor Experience in which they outline how to make it easier for editors to perform their jobs, using ACF, ACF blocks, and other tools.
Upcoming WordPress events
Oct 11 – 13, 2022
WooSesh  A virtual conference for WooCommerce
The schedule is now available. I am looking forward to Darren Ethier’s The Future of Personalizing Your Storefront and what WooCommerce is doing in the era of WordPress Full Site Editing (FSE) on October 12 at 1pm EDT / 17:00 UTC.
Have a look at the schedule of upcoming WordCamps.
Learn WordPress Online Meetups
October 17, 2022, at 4:00 PM EDT / 20:00 UTC
Part 1: Re-Creating Block Designs
Recorded and available on WordPressTV
- Let’s code: creating your primary templates in the Editor
- Adding a pattern from the pattern directory to your theme
- Personalizing your 404Â Template
- Block and theme global styles customization