Howdy,
It’s been an interesting week, sorting through all trac and GitHub issues and PRs, and collect all the necessary information to compile the Field Guide for WordPress 6.0.
I certainly learned a lot. It takes quite a few contributors, many steps, and a plenty of reading to make sure nothing falls through the cracks. I am not entirely sure, that is actually an achievable goal.
So much from the WordPress release front, and this week’s inside baseball reporting, haha. This week WordPress Beta 3 arrived, and next week WordPress 6.0 Beta 4 will be released, followed shortly by the Release Candidate 1 version.
To get a quick overview of the Gutenberg features coming to WordPress 6.0 you can either watch the 4 minute video by Dave Smith, or if you have a need for more detail, the 22 min video by Anne McCarthy
Let’s see what else is new in the Guten-verse
Have a wonderful weekend!
Yours, đź’ž
Birgit.
Gutenberg Plugin 13.1 release
Glen Davies led the release of Gutenberg 13.1. In his release post What’s new in Gutenberg 13.1? (27 April) he highlighted the following:
Mary Job and I had the great pleasure of talking to Glen Davies on our latest Episode of the Gutenberg Changelog podcast. The episode will be published over the weekend.
Justin Tadlock checked out the new Gutenberg plugin version and shared his insights in this article: Gutenberg 13.1 Ships a Batch of Improvements and Implements a New Border Design Component.
The best way to learn some new features in 13.1, is to heed the latest call for testing from the FSE Program: Rallying Recipe Reviewers. It “focuses on taking a few blocks for a practical spin to create a fun, interactive recipe focused site that has a customized commenting experience to rally your recipe reviewers.” wrote Anne McCarthy. You get to test the experimental new version of the List and Quote blocks and the new set of granular comment blocks.
In this week’s WordPress Design Share, Channing Ritter shared visuals of some great work in progres across various teams:
- New Duotone Icon,
- Element state explorations (hover, active etc)
- WordCamp block patterns
- Global Styles panel revisions
- Designs for Documentation & Handbook pages
- About Page > header artwork curated by
I am loving all the designs, especially for Documentation and Handbook pages. They are beautiful: Typography gives a pleasant reading experience and your eyes find quiet through great use of empty space. The designs are based on the new News Theme by Beatriz Fialho, and are augmented by Estela Rueda
Gutenberg for Content Creators
Carolina Nymark posted a indepth tutorial and checklist on How to switch your website to full site editing. She listed her recommendations of what you need to think about before you switch your website to full site editing. These are lessons learned from the first months after WordPress 5.9. Nymark also wrote about what precautions and steps you need to take and how to set up your full site editing theme after the installation. She also provides a list of popular plugins that work with full site editing.
Coming in Gutenberg 13.2 and WordPress 6.1: Users’ Editor Preferences will be stored in the database, improving persistence across sessions – We all have been waiting for this! Sarah Gooding has the scoop for you. Now more, annoying pop-up of the Welcome Screens. It will now remember. Gutenberg 13.2 will be released May 11, 2022, WordPress 6.1 is schedule to be released in October 2022.
Building with Blocks on WPTavern: Building a “Polaroid” Image Block Style with Justin Tadlock
69 Block Themes in the WordPress Theme Directory
There are now 69 Themes in the WordPress Theme Directory.
The 7 newcomers are:
- Xidea by xideathemes
- mcms Lite by Roland Farkas
- Sampler By uxl
- Gutenify Store by Gutenify Dev
- Photology By Jegstudio
- Blockpress by MotionBlocks
- Charta By ThemeZee
Justin Tadlock took A Look at Twenty Twenty-Two’s Upcoming Global Style Variations “If I am being honest, I feel like I have been waiting for this my entire career in the WordPress space. I think I have always known I have wanted it without always being able to verbalize it.” he wrote.
How to disable theme features and Lock Block Templates for Full-Site Editing in WordPress on Gutenberg Times
Block Builders and Gutenberg tools
Corina Schedler, front-end developer at the European agency Required, shared how they use of WordPress full site editing in a customer project. Learn more about their processes and how the various parts of Full-Site Editing enhance the customer experience. As a side note, I also learned from Schedler’s post that the newest version of the multi-language plugin, Polylang Pro, is now compatible with Full-site editing and provides a language switcher for the navigation block.
Our fellow WordPress podcaster, Nathan Wrigley over at WPTavern Jukebox podcast, talked to Aki Hamano, a plugin and freelance developer from Japan. Hamano has some great blocks in the repository: 3 years ago he created the RichText extension plugin, when Gutenberg only had rudimentary color, spacing or border controls. Another of Hamano’s plugins is the Flexible Table Block.
The most amazing block is his Piano block, that adds a musical instrument to your editor screen and you can take a break from dense content creation and make some music in between. It doesn’t save anything or show up on the front end. It’s just really a fun project.
Wrigley and Hamano, also talked about the developer journey of learning and building blocks. I found it quite entertaining to listen to them.
Justin Tadlock wrote about the piano block in detail: Play the Piano and Other Instruments via the WordPress Block Editor
Munir Kamal built a great tool for site builders: Build Full Page using WP Patterns by GutenbergHub. It’s a separate web app that allows the user to assemble a page layout from WordPress Directory Patterns, rearrange things and then copy code to use on a site. It’s a simple utility, that streamlines the flow of creating page layouts with just a few clicks.
What makes it so intriguing is that it keeps track of the Patterns as a whole when moving them around or deleting them on the canvas.
Handling Patterns as a whole in the editor is on the roadmap for WordPress, one is coming to WordPress 6.0 with loading patterns when creating a new page for easy access, and also for a later new features that allows users to transform content in one pattern to another pattern.
Justin Tadlock also took it for a spin. Here is his article: Gutenberg Hub Launches an Online Page Builder App Using WordPress Patterns
JuanMa Garrido posted a call for comments on the Make core block and invites you to an Exploration to enable better developer and visitor Experiences with blocks. Garrido aims to get more developer involved in find to collect ideas on adding more Interactivity to websites with blocks, and brainstorm path ways to arrive at a standard or best practices to implement those ideas with modern block development.
This discussion is a continuation of the conversation from last Fall, that started with a tweet by Mark Jaquith and a Live Q & A with Helen Hou-SandĂ, Riad Benguella and Mark Jaquith on “Live Q & A: How can we make building custom blocks easier?”. Michal Czaplinski also shared in the comments his research into Universal blocks and block hydration.
Your opinion is important and can make a difference for many people by getting involved and contribute to the discussion.
Upcoming WordPress Events
Gutenberg related session on the WordCamp Europe schedule
Four tracks for sessions at the same time, it will be hard to decide for each single hour which session to attend. The range of topics is fantastic and there will be session for any particular user. BTW I do not sure the view that there are not enough backend or advanced developer sessions to make a trip feasible. Check it out for yourself.
Below is the curated list of sessions, workshops and lightning talks on the Block editor. Times are display in local time in Porto, Portugal (UTC+1)
June 3rd, 2022
- Noon – Sean Blakeley: The block pattern revolution
- 14:00 – 16:00 Workshop:Build your first block theme Daisy Olsen
- 14:00 – 15:00 Lightning Talks on Gutenberg.
- Creating interactive blocks: old, new, and good ways, JuanMa Garrido
- Blockity McBlock Blocks, Oh My! w/ Evan Mullins
- Delivering Personalised Experiences using WordPress, Paul Halfpenny
- Block Themes – The Future of FSE, Imran Sayed
- Extending Gutenberg with SlotFill, Ryan Welcher
- 16:00 Level Up Block Building Skills , Greg Ziolkowski
June 4th, 2022
- 9:00 Workshop: Creating a pre-publish checklist for Gutenberg, Ryan Welcher
- 11:00 The future of commerce in WordPress with Full Site Editing, Darren Ethier
- 14:00 A glimpse into the future of WordPress from a frontend point of view Pablo Postigo
- 15:00 Growing the WordPress design system Tammie Lister
- 16:00 Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress and CEO of Automattic
Social Learning Meetups
May 2, 2022 3pm EDT / 19:00 UTC
Testing WordPress Together: New Interactivity Features for Recipe Websites w/ Anne McCarthy
May 4, 2022 -11am EDT / 15:00 UTC
Creating a Restaurant Website with the Block Editor w/ Wes Theron
May 5, 2022 – 2pm EDT / 18:00 UTC
Builder Basics: Working with Templates in Full Site Editing (Part 1) with Nick Diego
May 9, 2022 3am EDT/ 7am UTC
Showcasing Content with Query Loops w/ Wes Theron
May 12, 2022 – 2pm EDT / 18:00 UTC
Builder Basics: Working with Templates in Full Site Editing (Part 2) w/ Nick Diego
May 19, 2022 5pm EDT / 21:00 UTC
Using the Navigation Block w/ Wes Theron
May 19, 2022 – 2pm EDT / 18:00 UTC
Builder Basics: Working with Templates in Full Site Editing (Part 3) w/ Nick Diego
WordCamps and other events
More and more WordCamps are being scheduled! On WordCamp Central you can view the whole calendar.
May 16-20, 2022
WordSesh
A virtual conference. The schedule is fantastic. Among the awesome sessions by brilliant speakers you can find
- Daisy Olsen with her session “Block Theme Adoption: A Gradual Approach” and
- Rich Tabor with his talk Bodacious Block Themes: An in-depth Look at this New Era of Theming
June 2 – 4th, 2022
WordCamp Europe
You can start planning, the schedule is now available
June 25, 2022
WordCamp Montclair, NJ
June 20 – 24, 2022
Page Builder Summit will take place June 20th to June 24, 2022. The call for sponsors is still open. Sign-up for the VIP list to learn first when tickets are available and the schedule is published. The first sessions and speakers are confirmed. Many talks are more about the business of building sites for others and their tools, then about a specific page builder product. So much good topics and not enough time 🙂
June 25, 2022
WordCamp Montclair, NJ
The call for speakers is open only until April 15th, 2022
September 9 – 11, 2022
WordCamp US, San Diego, California
in-person conference in San Diego.
February 17-19 2023Â (tent)
WordCamp Asia, Bangkok, Thailand
Naoko Takano posted a call for organizers
Featured Image: “Mega Blocks Monsters” by sammynetbook is marked with CC BY 2.0. found on Openverse
