Hi, đđđ
I wish you a contemplative, peaceful and restful Holiday Season and a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year! 2025!
This newsletter and I will take a break, and we will be back on January 11, 2025. Be well,
Yours, đ
Birgit
PS: Voting in The WP Awards has been extended to December 20. If you haven’t yet, please consider voting for Gutenberg Times in the Blog category. Also, vote for the Gutenberg Changelog in the Podcast category. And for your favorite WordPress products at the same time.
Developing Gutenberg and WordPress
Catch up on whatâs coming next for Core, Gutenberg, and WordPress Playground in the last edition of Whatâs New for Developers? for 2024. Ryan Welcher summarized developer-related changes in WordPress for December 2024. Key updates include style book improvements in the Site Editor, new filters for block editor rendering mode, and enhancements to WordPress Playground. The post highlights updates to core blocks, bug fixes, and new features like setting featured images directly from Image blocks. It also mentions the release of WordPress 6.7, planning for version 6.8, and resources like Developer Hours sessions, YouTube content, and new tutorials on the Developer Blog.
The WordPress Meta and Design teams have been incredibly busy. They updated the Make WordPress Sites with all the team’s sites, the Rosetta sites, and the Photo Directory. This visual refresh is part of the continued effort to build a consistent design language across WordPress.org.
Read more about the effort and the before and after views in Make WordPress gets a refresh by Nick Diego. “The Make section of WordPress.org is vast, covering 32 contributor teams and 114 local teams, each with its own blog, handbooks, and component pages.” he wrote. After many years, the sites are now converted to a block first layout. It’s a newfound pleasure to publish on the Make Blogs again! The handbooks follow the developer documentation sites and it’s reading pleasure.
In The Photos Directory gets a refresh and is now powered by blocks, Nick Diego also shares details on the revamp for the popular picture site. Besides the reorganized homepage that now shows many more photos at first glance, I am quite intrigued by the new search filter by format: landscape, portrait or square.
đŁ Don’t miss it! The annual State of the Word is Matt Mullenweg’s keynote presentation of the year. It will take place on December 16, 2024, in Tokyo, Japan. The livestream will start at 9 am UTC on WordPress YouTube channel.
WordPress developer Riad Benguella recently sparked a lively community discussion on improving the Gutenberg block editor, on Bluesky. Developers provided several suggestions, many linked to existing GitHub issues. They focused on practical enhancements like border radius presets, link CSS classes, and table block improvements. The conversation highlighted the community’s wish for more granular design controls and better pattern organization. Some suggestions led to immediate action with pull requests in progress. Others need further exploration due to technical complexities or the need to balance functionality with user-friendliness. Martin Dubovic posted a recap of the conversation with links and opinions. Whatâs Next for Gutenberg? A Community Chat With WordPress Developer Riad Benguella.
Gutenberg 19.9 RC1 is ready for testing. It includes a style book for classic themes. There are improvements to the experimental feature of inline commenting. Additionally, there is a new block for post counts and other updates to existing blocks. The changelog should be your guide until the final release on December 18, 2024. It will be the last release of 2024. The next Gutenberg Changelog episode will be recorded on January 10th, and we will cover not only 19.9 but also Gutenberg 20.0 – the 200th release of the project.
đď¸ The latest episode is Gutenberg Changelog #129 Artificial Intelligence, WordPress 7.0 and Gutenberg 22.8 with Beth Soderberg, of BeThink Studio
Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners
Explore the insights of WooCommerce in 2025. It’s about building a platform for the future. This is presented by Beau Lebens, the Head of Engineering at WooCommerce. In 2025, the organization will concentrate on three significant objectives. They will enhance performance. They will improve the online shopping experience. They will deploy essential tools that meet the actual needs of merchants. The strategy streamlines operations for merchants. It integrates an increased number of features directly into the core platform. This integration reduces complications linked with extensions. The overarching goal is to develop a robust, flexible platform that effectively addresses the requirements of contemporary online merchants.
In Remkus de Vries newsletter, Within WordPress, I learned about âDynamic Template Partsâ by Matt Watson. It allows you to replace headers, footers, and other template parts dynamically based on the content youâre editing.
Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks
Brian Coords new Webmaster podcast latest episode is: Building a Block Theme for 1 Million Users. In this conversation, Jessica Lyschik shares her journey as a WordPress developer and core contributor. She discusses her experiences in the WordPress community. She also talks about the evolution of WordPress themes and the unique features of the Greyd Suite. She emphasizes the importance of full site editing, the challenges of the block editor, and the future of Gutenberg. The discussion also touches on the impact of social media on blogging and concludes with where to find Jessica online.
In his latest video, Elliot Richmond walks you through how he created a sticky nav bar with Block Variations, CSS, and JavaScript. “This WordPress block theme technique will enhance your visitorsâ browsing experience by adding a creative sliding navigation bar that appears as they scroll down the page.” Richmond wrote.
In his latest newsletter, Remkus de Vries alert me to a little script by Luc Princen that turns Block patterns into loadable template files, so they can then easily be added to Git. This could save you from having to go through a lot of database hassle. The script is available in a Gist.
Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor.
In his blog post, Snippet: How to lock WordPress blocks and prevent unlocking, Nick Diego explains the Block Locking API. He also discusses how to use it. It also details how to prevent unlocking blocks as well as disabling the Code Editor.
Did you miss the Man vs Machine Speed Build Challenge? The recording is available on YouTube: AI Takes On HUMAN in WordPress Speed Build Showdown. “In this thrilling face-off, two WordPress powerhouses go head-to-head in an epic coding battle with a twist. Nick Diego and Ryan Welcher, both seasoned WordPress developers, are pitted against each other in a race against time. But there’s a catch â one developer has the advantage of AI assistance, while the other relies solely on traditional coding methods.” Jamie Marsland wrote. After watching the show, I wasn’t the only one wh checked out the Cursor AI and played around with it.
This week in Playground
If you missed last week’s Hallway Hangout, Adam ZieliĹski has the recording. He also has a summary and the transcript for you: Recap of Hallway Hangout: Playground for Agencies and Product Demos. As an agency, you can use WordPress Playground to streamline your workflows. You can test your products and share interactive demos. You can show and do so much more. In this recent Hallway Hangout sparked by Tammie Lister, attendees from various agencies and product teams shared their experiences. They also expressed curiosity about applying WordPress Playground in their work.
Uros Tasic, co-lead organizer of WordCamp Europe, talked about Code, Test, Repeat: Accelerating Development with WordPress Playground at WordCamp Larissa last month. The recording is now available on WordPress TV. Tasic discussed how Playground can enhance your development cycle, enabling quicker iterations without the need for complex setups.
đŁ Upcoming Developer Hours: Everything you need to know about WordPress Playground will take place on December 17th at 16:00 UTC. “Beyond spinning up WordPress sites, Playground offers powerful capabilities, from testing plugins and themes to running demos and even supporting app development. No matter how you engage with WordPress, Playground has something valuable to offer.” reads the description.
Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg’s master branch?
Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review.
Now also available via WordPress Playground. There is no need for a test site locally or on a server. Have you been using it? Email me with your experience
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