Weekend Edition #156
Howdy, howdy,
There was a lot of Gutenberg in my week! How is your week going?
Monday, I was with Nathan Wrigley and Paul Lacey of This Week in WordPress #147 for an early podcast recording. We discussed Block Editor and Page Builders, Gutenberg contributions and then, of course, other WordPress News. It was an utter delight to be on the show. Big Thanks to Nathan and Paul! 💕
Thank you to all, who attended Friday’s Live Q & A. The shared links are in the YouTube description for now. You had some awesome questions, and Anne McCarthy will take some of them back to the team to get you ‘official’ answers. Big Thank you also to WPTavern, and other newsletter publishers for sharing the announcement with their audiences and spread the word.
Wishing you all a great weekend!
Yours, 💕
Birgit
Table of Contents
WordPress Releases
It was WordPress release candidates week. Read their release notes for details.
Both final versions are scheduled for Wednesday, Feb 3rd, 2021. There is always a big need for people testing those versions, to catch the last-minute boo boos.
With the latest Gutenberg release, it’s a wrap on block-editor goodness for WordPress 5.7. Feature Freeze is coming with Beta 1 on Tuesday Feb 2nd, 2021. The first release candidate is scheduled for Feb. 23, 2021. Final release coming to a WordPress instance near you on March 9th, 2021.
Beta Testing WordPress beta versions and releases candidates is a great way to contribute to WordPress! There a Beta-Tester plugin waiting for you in the WordPress repo! Ping me on WP Slack (@bph) if you need help with it.
There is a lot more coming to WordPress 5.7. It’s a bit early for DevNotes, though. Jean Baptiste (JB) Audras and Francesca Marano started a new series of blogs post called “A Week in Core”. You can follow along on all that is happening on the team, which tickets are committed and what is discussed in the Dev Chats. They close their post with a Kudos/Props section and give thanks to all contributors.
Site Building with Blocks
The big story of this week was the buzz around the WhiteHouse.gov site, built with WordPress. If you have not read the article on Fast Company on the making of WhiteHouse.gov, give yourself a break, grab a cup of your favorite beverage and read it. I’ll wait…. 🐱👓
- Editors of The Repository also scouted out a the core committers who were involved, besides Andrew Nacin, Helen Hou-Sandi, Jeff Paul, Tung Du, and Aaron Jorbin.
- Andrew Nacin revealed some background information in his Twitter thread
- So did Ben Ostrower of the design company WideEyeCo in his.
What a great reference project for the WordPress open-source project, powering almost 40% on W3techs.com
In his post “Endangering Ecosystem Flexibility“, Chris Lema is bemoaning how the Theme builders require him to select their corresponding block collections, for instance Genesis Themes with Genesis Blocks, or Kadence Themes with Kadence Blocks. He fears such work would close down an open system harming end users.
At WordCamp San Antonio, AJ Morris presented his talk “Learn to Build Your Site with the New Block Editor – A Preview of Current Block Plugins”. It is now available on WordPressTV. “Together we’ll be covering specific free and paid plugins that provide additional blocks or enhance your experience with the block editor, to create a truly no-code experience with WordPress.” AJ wrote in the session description.
Block-Based Themes
Kjell Reigstad gave the WordPress Meetup NYC an Introduction into block-based Themes. In this 27-minute video he explained the components of a block-based theme. Template tags become blocks, and how Global Styles fit in. Then, Kjell took the audience through the development: theme hierarchy, with new folders for templates and template parts and the new file: exerimpental-theme.json the Global Styles configuration and settings. He touched also on the style.css, that wouldn’t go away, but will have less default styles, just those that are custom for its theme and not changeable via the Site Editor. The Q & A was extensive and probably answer some of your questions as well.
Automattic Launches the Blank Canvas WordPress Theme for Building Single-Page Websites. Justin Tadlock took a look at the latest Theme released on WordPress.com.
The original blog post at Automattic was also written by Kjell Reigstad.
The Blank Canvas theme is also available for self-hosted sites. You can download it as a zip file here. If you use it, for now, you need to double-check for updates, they won’t come automatically.
Eileen Violini presented “Themes of the Future – The New Frontier of Gutenberg Block-Based Themes and Theme Development” at WordCamp San Antonio. She gives theme developers a walk-through on block-based settings, custom color palettes, block patterns and shares her tips from real-life experiences. Her talk is now on WordPress TV. I learned quite a bit from Eileen. ☺️
Full-Site Editing picks up steam
You know a new feature is getting ready for mainstream, when Adam Preiser at WPCrafters makes a YouTube show about it: In Full Site Editing! It’s Coming, But Will Change How We Use WordPress? you can learn more about the Site Editor from a non-technical perspective. I also found reading through the comments quite interesting.
Live Q & A: Updates on WordPress Site-Editor (FSE) and Themes
The recording of yesterday’s Live Q & A is now online. Big Thank you to Carolina Nymark, Ari Stathopoulos and Anne McCarthy for sharing their wealth of knowledge with us and answer a ton of questions. Transcript and resources will be published next month.
Gutenberg For Developers
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.
In his post “Add visible Duplicate and Delete buttons above block”, Ben Broide shared the steps on creating a plugin to add two buttons to the block toolbar. It’s great tutorial.
Jon Quach, aka Q, has been working on the G2 project for a while. This week, Q took a live audience on a Twitch walk-through of the process of Moving Components to Gutenberg (Walkthrough). The post has the recording and an outline of the show. It’s fascinating for me, although I probably only understand 5% of it.
Misha Rudrastyh posted his methods of “Removing Default Gutenberg Blocks” with code and with the Block Manager.
Plugins for the block editor
Ronald Huereca tested various plugins offering a Syntax Highlighting Code Block and shared his experiences with code examples for testing and use cases.
Justin Tadlock discovered “Custom Layouts Plugin“ which creates a posts display system for both the Classic and Block Editors. Read his review on the WPTavern.
WP Events
January 30–February 14, 2021
WordCamp India
Yes! You read those dates right. The Organizers plan to have our WordCamp over three weekends! It will be a fully online event
- January 30 – 31 – Workshop Days
- February 6 – 7 – Contributor Days
- February 13 – 14 – Speaker Talks
February 27th, 2021
WordCamp Prague (Praha) (online)
March 4th, 2021 11 am – 3:30 pm ET (16:00 – 20:30 UTC)
WPEngine DE{CODE} 2021
A live-streamed event, it will feature 15 expert-led sessions on how to leverage WordPress for easy setups, fast builds, smooth launches, and effortless maintenance. Learn from peers, industry experts, and WordPress community leaders how to find your strategic angle to move at the new speed of digital. Perfect your development workflow and learn how to craft even better digital experiences.
16 – 18 April 2021
WordCamp Greece
