Howdy,
This week three major things happened: The movers packed up our household into boxes and a big truck, the WordPress Developer Blog came out of beta and is now considered officially launched, and Matias Ventura published a post about what Phase 3 of the Gutenberg project could look like, more about the latter further below.
Have a wonderful weekend!
Yours, đź’•
Birgit
Developing Gutenberg and WordPress
Next week, WordPress 6.2 is coming to a WordPress instance near you. Are you prepared? You could use the WordPress 6.2 Release Candidate 4 for your testing and make sure.
If you want to follow along, Hector Prieto posted the WordPress 6.2 Release Day Process, with the schedule for the Dry Run, 24-hour Code Freeze and the Release party on March 28, 2023, which is tentatively set for 2 pm EDT / 6 pm UTC.
Dan Knauss, iThemes published What to Expect in WordPress 6.2, and highlights all the improvements of Blocks, Site Editor and new tools. He goes into details on the various new Header and Footer Patterns that will be available via WordPress 6.2.
Carlo Daniele, wrote on the Kinsta blog: What’s New In WordPress 6.2: Browse Mode, Style Book, Improved Navigation Menus, New APIs, and Much More. In his post Daniele covers the update coming to 6.2 in four categories:
- Improved Editing Experience
- Extended Block Capabilities
- Enhanced Design Tools
- Changes for Developers
🎙️ Latest episode: Gutenberg Changelog #98 – WordPress 6.5, Gutenberg 18.0 Community Theme Project and the Contributor Mentorship Program with special guest Maggie Cabrera
Justin Tadlock and Ryan Welcher co-led the Gutenberg 15.4 plugin release. In the release post, What’s new in Gutenberg 15.4 (22 March), Tadlock wrote: “The latest release of the plugin is lighter on user-facing features than normal and focuses heavily on bug fixes, testing, and other much-needed improvements.” The highlights included:
Personally, I like the new textColumns property that allows me to split text-based blocks into self-adjusting columns.
Matias Ventura, lead developer of the Gutenberg projects, posted Phase 3: Collaboration and explored briefly, what the next phase of the Gutenberg project would encompass. He identified seven areas:
- Real-time collaboration – more than one person can edit a post at the same time.
- Asynchronous collaboration. Writers and editors share drafts and discuss via a comments assignments, topics etc. This part is all about workflow among a team of editors.
- Publishing flows. Publishing checklists, managing requirements and allowing for customization as every site has different needs.
- Post revisions interface. A way to coordinate updates and add new content in a scheduled manner. There will be overlap with Theme switching and applying styles, for instance for Christmas, or other occasions.
- Admin design. Ventura wrote about this last year in Thinking Through the WordPress Admin Experience. Notifications, list views updated UI to include new features.
- Library – A space where users manage Patterns, Blocks, Styles, and Fonts.
- Develop a global search & command component
I just briefly touched on the seven areas, and might not do it full justice. Ventura provided in his post many more details. It’s worth a read. Give it time to digest, too. Then, see if there is something you are missing, that would fit into the third phase and share it in the comments on the post.
Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners
Anne McCarthy organized again a Hallway Hangout and invited Automattic-sponsored design developers, Isabel Brison and Saxon Fletcher to Chat about All Things Layout. The recording is available as well as summary of the demos and topics covered. It was a continuation of Brison’s WordCamp Asia talk “Layout, Layout, Layout”.
Nick Diego just released version 3.0.0. Learn more in his post Block Visibility 3.0.0: A New Chapter Begins, in which he announces that he makes most Pro features available for free. With the plugin, you can control show or hide blocks depending on, for instance, a date, a user role, a location, or referral source. It extends the core block editor with additional settings.
Wes Theron posted a new tutorial on WordPressTV Intro to Templates (Block Theme). A template provides the structure or design for how a page is displayed. That usually includes a header template part, a content area and a footer template part. In this beginner session, we will look closer at the various templates available, the template layout, and how to assign a template to a post or page.
Sarah Snow posted What kind of WordPress theme do I have: classic, block, or something else? Learn in 2 minutes to quickly identify what kind of theme you are using on your existing WordPress website.
Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks
In this week’s post on the WordPress Developer Blog, Everything you need to know about spacing in block themes, Justin Tadlock took a deep dive into all the ways, theme developers can control spacing for their block themes, and their users in the Site editor. In addition to description of the conceptual implementation, you’ll find real life practical code examples paired with screenshots.
Daisy Olsen uploaded the recording of her livestream Speed Building a Block Theme to YouTube. In this session, she “created a completely functional Block Theme based on the templates and parts included in the Underscores Starter theme in just about one hour.” Olsen used the Create Block Theme plugin and the Site Editor for this project. Part Two covering Styles and theme.json is available on Twitch.tv.
Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor.
Don’t miss Monday’s Developer Hours: Migrate a plugin to blocks with Michael Burridge and Jonathan Bossenger, who will provide provide WordPress plugin developers with the opportunity to connect with, and learn from, one another. It’s a great AMA and you can get your burning questions answered! Monday 27, 2023 at 4 am EDT / 8 am UTC / 3 pm Indonesia Time – Yeah it’s a bit early for the US. This is scheduled for the Asia-Pacific developers 🙂
Ryan Welcher posted last week’s Twich stream session to YouTube: Reviewing Gutenberg 15.3 features. Live stream: March 16, 2023. He went over the features of the Gutenberg 15.3 plugin. He discussed the new time to read block and showed how it works and also highlighted the improvements made to the duotone design tool. Welcher also elaborated on the fast release cycle of Gutenberg and how it can sometimes result in smaller updates. Another topic was the process of creating custom duotones and Welcher suggested that it would be great if the editor could save custom duotones for future use.
WordCamps
WordCamp Phoenix livestreams talks from two tracks (schedule). There are quite a few talks about blocks, the block, and site editor.
You can catch ’em all on the re-runs!
- Building Custom Blocks. No JS Required! with John Hawkins works with ACF
- You’re invited to a Block Party! with Alicia St. Rose
- Shooting Hoops with WordPress’ New Site Editor: Tips and Tricks for Elevating Your Site-Building Game with James Tryon
- The Block Editor and Full Site Editing Crash Course for Freelancers and Agencies with Keanan Koppenhaver
- Using Blocks (and Block-Based Forms) to Build Applications with Robert Richardson
- Breaking Down The Block Editor’s Layout System with Al Ani
WordCamp Asia – I just finished collecting all the links for the block related talks.
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.
Questions? Suggestions? Ideas? Don’t hesitate to send them via email or send me a message on WordPress Slack or Twitter @bph.
For questions to be answered on the Gutenberg Changelog, send them to changelog@gutenbergtimes.com
