Howdy,
With the WordPress 5.7 out of the way, the next couple of month are all about Full-site Editing testing and planing for 5.8.
I love it when a plan comes together! The WordPress team responsible for the release of the 5.7 version delivered on time. Meet “Esperanza”, the first WordPress release of 2021. Marvel again at the numbers: Contributors (457), Trac tickets (250) and Pull Requests on GitHub(950).
Jean-Baptist Audras, team rep of the core team, documentation release lead and data wizard compiled additional information about contributors, by country and employers. Have a sneak peek on his material, JB will soon share in a blog post.
If it’s been a while since you checked on the Gutenberg state of affairs, there are plenty of resources in today’s edition. Let me get out of your way now.
Yours, 💕
Birgit
PS: 🎙️ The new episode, number #39 of the Changelog is now available with show notes and transcript.
Full Site Editing Updates
Josepha Haden Chomphosy published in her full-site editing pre-merge overview an updated time line of decision-making on the prototype/MVP and communication roll-out for the merge of Full-Site Editing (FSE) into the core software. As far as I understood it, the team will decide on April 13 or 27, if a successful merge can be achieved for the 5.8 release in July (Yes, it was moved a month) or if it will be pushed to 5.9 in December 2021.
Josepha wrote: “The following is an outline of the communication work needed in the pre-merge period for Phase 2 of the Gutenberg project. This will put us in a position to merge Full Site Editing later this year while raising awareness and increasing the skills of our community as we go.” She lists in bullet points, the who, what, why, of the various teams to work together on this feature’s roll-out.
In a follow-up post, Josepha shared the core team’s early thoughts on 5.8 Planning and elaborated on the changes, depending on if FSE will be merged or not in assembling the release team.
Geoff Graham discussed The WordPress Evolution Toward Full-Site Editing at CSS-Tricks. He wrote: “I’m personally all-in on this direction. I’d even go so far as to say (peeking over my shoulder at Chris) that CSS-Tricks is all-in on this as well. We made the switch to blocks last year, and it has reinvigorated our love for writing blog posts just like this one.”
Calls for Testing Full-Site Editing
Are you as excited about Full-Site Editing as I am? Well, I can’t wait to follow Anne McCarthy’s third call for FSE testing. This time she envisions you to create a fun 404 page, something you normally couldn’t do without touching a php file and look at code. It’s called 404 because that’s the error code from web servers when they receive a browser request for a URL that doesn’t exist. If you need some inspiration the people at CreativeBloq have a great collection of 404 pages.
Sarah Gooding walked the path before you, and shared her experience on the WPTavern, calling it the Full Site Editing Testing Challenge.
The results of the second testing call are in. Anne McCarthy published the summary overall comments: FSE Program Build a Homepage Testing. The team gained invaluable information from those tests reports. 29 GitHub Issues were either confirmed, commented on or newly filed.
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 Editor for Content Creators
Channing Ritter, a new contributor on the design team she designed a site with large type, Dark Mode detection, and other accessibility-friendly styling such as visible underlines and focus states on links with the block editor. In her article Accessibility in the Block Editor: A Beginners Guide. She wrote about the “many useful accessibility features available and provide some context about how recent improvements are helping take accessibility and usability to the next level.” She elaborates on recent Keyboard Navigation, Keyboard Shortcuts, and other Usability updates of the block-editor.
To learn about keyboard shortcuts the block-editor the documentation team just published a comprehensive list of shortcuts and what they do, for both, Windows and Mac Operating Systems.
Will Morris, staff writer at WordCandy, published an in-depth article on the Torque Magazine: What Is Gutenberg Full-Site Editing (And How to Access It Today). He wrote: “The upcoming Full-Site Editing (FSE) feature promises to be the next major step in WordPress design and development. By getting some hands-on experience now, you can ensure your site is prepared for the changes ahead.”
Fantastic Blocks and Where To Find Them is the title of Laura Byrne‘s talk at the WordPress NYC Meetup group on Tuesday, March 16th, 2021 at 7:00 pm. She wrote:“With so many blocks to choose from (both native and 3rd party blocks) and more being added every day, which are the most vital ones to have in your content creation arsenal? Pick up indispensable tips and tricks for yourself and your clients.” It’ll be a fast-paced presentation and Laura has a wealth of knowledge. Come for the blocks and stay for the second talk: The Three Layers of WP Maintenance with Mervin Hernandez. I definitely try to make it. Will we see you there, too?
Block Editor for Themes builders
Given the above mentioned timeline for the merge of Full Site Editing, it’s no surprise that Hector Pietro grouped the focus projects for March around that feature and the possible adoption path for conventional Themes. He covers: Widget Screen, Navigation Screen, and Full-Site Editing. You might appreciate the section “Areas to be aware of” for block and plugin developers, theme builders, contributors and designers.
Jeffrey Pears again keeps everyone updated on the specific discussions and issues around Themes in the Gutenberg + Themes: Week of March 11, 2021 for this week.
In Recreating the Music Artist WordPress Theme Homepage With the Block Editor, Justin Tadlock walks us through his experience to replicate the theme’s design sections with the block editor and patterns starting with a theme already supporting the block editor. It’s a great example, how theme developers and site builders could embrace the Block editor and create new designs fast and support their users. Not all the modifications are yet available in Gutenberg. Justin use the EditorPlus plugin by Munir Kamal to add additional styling.
Developers and Block Building
Justin Ahinon updated the WordPress community on the block editor handbook restructuring project. “The idea is to build technical documentation around four parts: tutorials, how-to guides, technical reference and explanation.” he wrote.
Jason Bahl, creator of the WPGraphQL plugin, tackled the topic Gutenberg and Decoupled Applications. He walks you through three different approaches to use Gutenberg in a decouple application environment and lists the trade-offs for each.
Greg Ziolkowski shared on the core blog what it takes to Publishing WordPress packages to npm, the NodeJS package manager registry. As of today, there are nearly 80 actively maintained packages under the WordPress organization available. Greg shared some details about the latest addition to the process and summarize the overall strategy for publishing.
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Plugins for the Block Editor
Meet Oliver Campion and his plugin Options for Twenty-Twenty One. This plugin adds a ton, over 70 modification options to the default WordPress theme. James Huff, calls Oliver “the most active helper in the Twenty-Twenty-one support forum”
He also created the plugin Display Remote Posts Block, used to display recent posts from a WordPress or Blogger sites, bringing back the blog roll.
Speaking of Blog roll, Michael Beckwith released the Blogroll Block plugin. Justin Tadlock wrote about it for the WPTavern.
The Newspack team at Automattic published their Newspack-Newsletter plugin in the WordPress repository. Similar to the Newsletter Glue plugin, that I use here, this plugin also enables you to use the block-editor design your newsletters, store them on your site and send them through Mailchimp or Constant Contact. Besides an account at one of the offered providers you also to apply for a free API key at MJML.org
GeneratePress offers their future GP Theme Builder plugin in public beta. It brings you theme building using the core block editor and the GenerateBlocks plugin.
The Gutenberg Block Manager Plugin by Darren Cooney helps you organize the hundreds of blocks on your site on various screens. It definitely will help you get organized. Sarah Gooding reviewed it for the WPTavern.
WordPress Events
March 16, 2021, 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM EDT
WordPress NYC Meetup Group
Fantastic Blocks and Where To Find Them with Laura Byrne
The Three Layers of WP Maintenance with Mervin Hernandez
March 18, 2021 6:30 – 8:30 PM EDT
Mega-Meetup South Florida
April 15 – 17, 2021
WordCamp Centroamérica 2021
April 16th – 18th, 2021.
WordCamp Greece 2021 Online.
The organizer published the call for speakers.
April 16th – 18th, 2021
WordCamp Northeast Ohio
Take a look at the Call for Sponsors
May 24 – 27. 2021
WordSesh 2021
On the Calendar for WordPress Online Events you’ll find a list of the upcoming WordPress Meetups, around the world, including WooCommerce, Elementor, Divi Builder and Beaver Builder meetups.
