Howdy,
I am getting really excited about the WordPress 5.8 release. It’s still about eight weeks away, but there is a lot of work in front of us. We are coming up to Feature Freeze on May 25, 2021. The Gutenberg team has a release candidate for 10.7, the last version of the plugin, that will make it into WordPress Core.
How can you help? Test, test test!
- Set up a test site. Pantheon offers developer 2 sites for free.
- Use the Beta Tester plugin – set it to channel = Bleeding Edge and stream = Nightlies, that means you have the lasted WordPress version on your site.
- Report any bugs you find
On the team working on the block-editor end user documentation, we have a preliminary list of relevant user-facing changes in Google Doc. We are looking for more contributors to not only get through the latest task list but also update some documentation pages with 5.6 and 5.7 changes. If you have a few hours, and want to take a deep dive into the block-editor features, let me know by joining the #docs channel or DM me on the Make Slack.
Wishing everyone lots of patience. We are still in a pandemic, and all good things take time.
Yours 💕,
Birgit
PS: Did a deep dive into the wp.data package to learn more about state management for the block-editor. Do you know of any resources that helped you get the hang of it? The usual metaphors don’t seem to help much.
Anne McCarthy posted about Hallway Hangout: Discussion on Full Site Editing Issues/PRs/Designs (20 May). This was the fourth Hallway Hangout, a series of information meetings, that started in April. They are all available on YouTube. Sometimes it is much easier to talk through a feature, an interface, or bugs, when you can ask questions and screen share. If you missed them, they are available on YouTube and summary posts are available on the Make block of the Test Team.
Although, I long for in-person WordCamps, they are still not safe in many regions. For now, connections to my WordPress friends are still virtual: pick-up Hallway Hangouts, Meetups meetings and WordCamps and conferences.
Speaking of which: Next week WordSesh is taking place May 24 – May 27, with Workshops starting on May 28. Well, depending on where you are in the world, it will start tomorrow night.
On the schedule a five session around Gutenberg:
- Blazing Fast Block Development w/ Lee Shadle
- Building Custom Blocks w/ Rob Stinson
- Block-Based Themes – The Future Of Full Site Editing In WordPress w/ Imran Sayed
- How the Block Editor Makes It Easier to Build Custom Websites w/ Danielle Zarcaro
- Build your own Block-Based Theme w/ Daisy Olsen (Workshop)
Find a list of more upcoming WordPress events further below.
Eight Gutenberg Tips and Tricks in eight minutes – Learn how to start developing WordPress sites with Gutenberg blocks with Bill Erickson and Gabriel A. Mays from GoDaddy. Take a look at the YouTube video and the links resources, if you are just starting out working with the block-editor in your WordPress development.
Edward Bock shared how to Properly add modern JavaScript to Gutenberg. In his article, he helps you transition from the conventional programming on PHP to adding JavaScript to your tools set
Full-Site Editing for Theme Developers
Herb Miller shared recording from his presentation: Guide to WordPress Full Site Editing, blocks and themes at the Meetup in Portsmouth. Now the Herb went beyond the template editor bits that are coming to WordPress 5.8. He demonstrated the full Site Editor, which isn’t slated to come to WordPress until 5.9 or even 6.0. To follow along you would need a block-based theme and the latest Gutenberg version (for now 10.6.2). After a tour around the Site Editor, Herb Miller, shared with the audience how he built a block-based theme.
Carolina Nymark published here full-site editing theme “Armando” in the theme directory on WordPress.org. Carolina also is a contributor to the Gutenberg repository and published a Full Site Editing course for developers. Recently, she also published a VS Code extension WordPress Block Markup with autocomplete snippets to add blocks to your templates faster.
Fränk Klein of WPDevelopment Courses is getting ready to open his Building Block-Based Themes course. He already shared quite a few insights in his learnings with the articles: What I Learned Building a Full-Site Editing Theme and Implementing Global Styles in Block-Based Bosco. The Block-based Bosco Theme is also available in the WordPress.org repo.
The theme.json settings structure is now finalized and is not experimental anymore. The Documentation is available in the Gutenberg Handbook. Riad Benguella wrote an Introduction to WordPress’s Global Styles and Global Settings to get you started on the new era of Theme development in WordPress. (Yes, I shared this before. I just want to make sure you find it again )
A few days ago, Ari Stathopoulos started working on a Theme.JSON parser to make it possible for conventional themes to take advantage of the settings file as well.
Ana Segota, Ariel Design, an early adopter of Gutenberg blocks in her themes she published in 2018 and 2019, came out with her first theme embracing full-site editing, and global styles with here new Theme “Naledi”. Justin Tadlock took the theme for a spin. Once the theme is available at WordPress.org, it will be the sixth theme for full-site editing.
When will we see yours?
Sarah Gooding has the story of Blocksy Theme Expands Free Starter Site Collection, Plans to Create New Suite of Blocks. Blocksy embraced the block-editor wholeheartedly and grew it’s business rapidly, it seems. They also integrate well with the blocks by Stackable.
Plugins for the Block Editor
Benjamin Intal, of Stackable was this week’s guest of the WP Tavern Jukebox podcast, and he discussed with Nathan Wrigley the Why He’s Betting His Business on Blocks. Intal and his team were an early adopter of the Block-editor and publish their plugin already in 2018 before the block-editor made it into WordPress Core. Since them Stackable has been an often recommended plugin for content creators, and it has grown quite a bit in features and reach. It’s certainly worth a listening, considering another wave of creativity and opportunities is coming to WordPress. This time for themes.
Alexandra Yap of Stackable recently posted the Introducing Dynamic Content. They wrote: “We’ve received a huge number of requests to display content from ACF’s custom fields in Stackable blocks, and now you can! Most ACF field types are supported as well as ACF Options Pages.”. They also integrate with Toolset.
Justin Tadlock reviewed a newly published pricing block and found You Might Not Need That Block. “With WordPress’s base blocks and a decent theme, many custom solutions are possible via patterns.”, he wrote, and he went ahead and recreated a three column pricing table with the core blocks and different themes, Twenty-Twenty, Eksell, and a full-site editing theme, too. I strongly agree with Tadlock that block patterns would provide an easier path. I can see that plugins like Easy-digital downloads, Woo Commerce and other ecommerce plugins would offer such patterns together with their Gutenberg blocks extensions to get store owners up and running quickly.
Jamie Marsland shared the 10 Big Updates to PootlePress WooCommerce Gutenberg plugins Storefront Blocks and WooBuilder Blocks.
Upcoming WordPress Events
June 7 – 9th, 2021
WordCamp Europe
A virtual event and contributor day. Call for sponsors is open.
🎉 Gutenberg Times is a media partner of WordCamp Europe 2021
June 20 – 26
WordCamp Japan
The schedule has been posted. Most sessions will be in Japanese, with exceptions, I think…
July 17 + 18th, 2021
WordCamp Santa Clarita
Calls for speakers (May 30th), sponsors, volunteers and organizers are open.
June 24 – 26, 2021
WordCamp Cochabama (Colombia)
July 23, 2021
WordFest Live – The festival of WordPress
Call for Speakers is now open and submissions are due on May 24th, 2021
September 21 + 22, 2021
WPCampus 2021 Online
“A free online conference for web accessibility and WordPress in higher education.” Call for Proposal is up and proposal are due May 26, 2021
On the Calendar for WordPress Online Events you can browse a list of the upcoming WordPress Meetups, around the world, including WooCommerce, Elementor, Divi Builder and Beaver Builder meetups.
