Howdy,
Yes, it’s been a while that you received a fully curated Weekend edition. After the move it took a while to get my office operational again. We still have too many boxes to unpack, though.
Nevertheless, let’s catch up on Gutenberg news together!
All the best,
Birgit š
Gutenberg 10.4 Released (and 10.4.1)
The Gutenberg Changelog episode 42 is now available. Grzegorz (“Greg”) Ziolkowski and I discuss Full-site Editing Scope for WordPress 5.8, Gutenbergās 10.4, Gallery Block Refactor and Block-Based Theme updates.
Sarah Gooding of the WP Tavern wrote about the Gutenberg 10.4 release: Gutenberg 10.4 Introduces Block Widgets in the Customizer
Full-Site Editing and WordPress 5.8
If you now find yourself in the position to learn more about the extent of Full-Site Editing experience, I have a real treat for you: A 30-min video Full-Site Editing Overview by, Anne McCarthy, Developer Relations for the Gutenberg project.
On April 14, 2021, the Gutenberg and 5.8 release leads held a meeting, with Matias Venture giving a tour of the current state of the Phase 2 of Gutenberg development. The outcome of the meeting was a decision on Go/NoGo for component that make it into core for WordPress 5.8.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy provide in her follow-up post a list of the detailed scope, the video of the meeting and a transcript of the recording.
The block editor scope
- Improvements from Gutenberg 9.9 to 10.7 plugin version.
- Introduce 25 new blocks (Query, Site Logo, Navigation,Posts, Comments, Archives etc. ), the most valuable among them will be the Query Block.
theme.jsonĀ Mechanism for Theme builders (see developer documentation)- Template Editor for Pages/Blank Template. (see demo by Marcus Kazmierczak)
- Widgets Screen &Ā BlockĀ widgets inĀ Customizer.
- Design tools: Duotone, Layout controls, padding, etc.
There is the caution stated in the post: “Not all the above are currently ready, but thereās some level of confidence that they can be by the time of 5.8.”
For the Template Editor for Pages/Blank Template you can see it in action in a demo by Marcus Kazmierczak, he gave at the Mega Meetup last week.
Bud Kraus of JoyofWP showed us in his video, how the Widget screen will look like in the future. It does not show the Widget handling in the Customizer yet, but that is to come to WordPress 5.8. You could see a short piece of it in Matias Ventura’s demo video from the release leads meeting. It is now already available in the latest Gutenberg plugin release.
Justin Tadlock summarized last week’s announcements in Full Site Editing Is Partly a āGoā for WordPress 5.8
Testing Full-Site Editing
As the latest Full-Site Editing Call of Testing, Anne McCarthy has a Query Quest for you. Again with a great set of test instruction, you are guided towards usage and various features of the Query Block and its accompanying new post blocks for title, content, comments, feature image and pagination.
Justin Tadlock discussed this task a bit further in his article: FSE Outreach Round #5: Venturing out a Query Quest. “Testing never has to be boring. I encourage participants to grab inspiration from their lives as they venture out on their Query Quest.” he wrote.
Apropos Testing: Sarah Gooding wrote about our Gutenberg Nightly plugin to get the latest development of the block-editor in an easy to handle plugin. Set Up a Gutenberg Test Site in 2 Minutes with the Gutenberg Nightly Plugin.
Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg’s main (trunk) branch?
Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review.
Have you been using it? Hit reply and let me know.
Anne McCarthy curated all the feedback from the fourth testing call: FSE Program Custom 404 Page Testing Summary
Block-Based Themes
Helen Hou-Sandi streamed on Twitch her exploration session to create a block-based theme for the Full-Site Editing.
Kjell Reigstad opened an issue for Query Block Pattern inspirations. There are great examples posted that could be converted to pattern, that could be bundled with WordPress 5.8
Marcus Kazmierczak also used Twitch to stream his Lunch & Learn series on Block-based themes.
Keep abreast on specific Theme related development and discussions with the weekly round-up from the Themes Team. Kjell Reigstad posted this week’s edition. Gutenberg + Themes: Week of Apr 12, 2021
A couple of PRs that should help with transitioning existing themes to be block-based:
- Add do_block_template_part function
New gutenberg_block_template_part(), gutenberg_block_header_area(), and gutenberg_block_footer_area() functions to help pull block-based template parts into existing PHP templates: - Allow creating custom block templates in classic themes Allowing people to create and use block-based page template for certain pages on their site, even while using a non-block-based theme.
In their latest episode of WPCafe co-hosts Mark Wilkinson and Keith Devon talked about Building Twenty-Twenty-One with Caroline Nymark and Mel Choyce-Dwan.
Plugins for the Block Editor
Gutentor published a collection of 70+ Blocks and layouts for Gutenberg Editor.
If you are working on your set of Blocks for the editor, Justin Tadlock has some thoughts to consider: Yet Another WordPress Block Library Plugin. He is making a well though through case to suggest more unique blocks to fill the gap to the core blocks. It seems to me that, two years of seeing block collections being acquired by big companies like Atom Blocks, Co Blocks and latest Kadence Blocks, might tempt a small developer team to come up with another set of blocks matching a specific theme and hope for an acquisition by another big company in the space. There might be space for a few more, indeed.
Tadlock’s longs for something new, a unique extension of core or a missing tool:
- Display Digital Sheet Music With the WordPress Block Editor
- Block-a-saurus Embeds a Side-Scrolling T-Rex Game via the Block Editor
- Emoji Conbini and the Case for a Block Enhancements Directory
- Insert Font Awesome Icons Into the Block Editor via the JVM Gutenberg Rich Text Icons Plugin
- Writers Rejoice! Iceberg Delivers Distraction-free Writing for WordPress
Conditional Blocks by Morgan Hvidt allows you to create block that are displayed when certain conditions apply.Ā We saw other plugins that offer that, like Block Visibility by Nick Diego. This one is a bit different. It allows you to change content depending on HTTP referrer, so if someone comes from Twitter, they could see a different message than someone coming from a Google Search or a link in a newsletter or an affiliate link.Ā The plugin is also available as a pro version with premium features at conditionalblocks.com.Ā
Episode #42 is now available, with new co-host Grzegorz Ziolkowski
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People and Community
It’s been already a year that Anne McCarthy joined the Gutenberg team as a developer relations wrangler. It has been a great pleasure meeting Anne and collaborating with her has been quite inspiring, and I learned a lot from her wisdom and her wealth of ideas. She has also become a good friend. She is som much better and being a remote friend that I ever will be. On her personal block Anne published One year in DevRel
Anne’s pioneer work with WordPress open-source project has been so successful that Automattic wants to sponsor another person for developer relations.
Developing with ReactJS and Gutenberg Blocks.
Rob Stinson wrote a tutorial on how to building custom Collections in Genesis Blocks. Now Collections in this context are Layout templates, that extend existing Genesis blocks.
Mark Howells-Mead uses ReactJS to build interactive single page applications with WordPress and wrote a tutorial. It’s not at all about Blocks and Gutenberg, but it’s related to the skill set of learning ReactJS and hopefully inspired developer to gradually make the transition.
