Hi there!
Greetings from WordCamp Karlsruhe! A great new WordCamp in Germany, with talks in German. I am writing this from the Karlsruhe venue. The video team is busy uploading the recordings to WordPress TV and has already published the sessions almost in real time. When you read this, all talks will be online.
It has been a great way to get grounded after the last two weeks and talk with with long-time friends and make new ones. in the WordPress Community. Huge Thank you to the organizers, volunteers, speakers, sponsors, and attendees for a wonderful event.
And now we continue with our usual programming. Enjoy the updates and have a great weekend!
Yours, 💕
Birgit
Developing Gutenberg and WordPress
The WordPress 6.7 Beta 2 ready for testing! The final release is scheduled for November 12, 2024. The WordPress Test team has some instructions on what and how you can assist in testing the new version. Help Test WordPress 6.7.
Anne McCarthy continued their series of Core Editor Improvement post with New features and flows for Font Management. They highlighted enhanced flows for typography, including better font selection, more intuitive settings, and improved accessibility features. The updates aim to streamline the user experience, making it easier for users to customize text styles and sizes. Overall, these enhancements focus on providing greater control over typography in block-based layouts, aligning with user feedback and needs.
Gutenberg 19.4 is now live. It’s stoke full of bug fixes from the first two weeks of WordPress 6.7 beta testing. Besides those, release lead Carlos Bravo highlighted in his post What’s new in Gutenberg 19.4? (9 Oct)
Anne Katzeff, theme developer from Boston, and I caught up on the Gutenberg Changelog episode 109. Besides covering the Gutenberg 19.4 changelog and other announcements, and we talked through Katzeff’s experience on building a block theme. As always, the episode will arrive at your favorite podcast app over the weekend.
🎙️ The latest episode is Gutenberg Changelog #125 – WordPress 6.9, Gutenberg 22.1 and Gutenberg 22.2 with JC Palmes, WebDev Studios
Joen Asmussen listed in his Design Share #65 (Sep 23-Oct 4) the various projects the WordPress design team has been working on:
- Using Data Views to manage navigation menus
- Exploring different treatments for the Featured image control
- Favorites in Data views
- Reorganizing the block transform menu
- Contextual ordering controls in data views
- ListboxControl component
- Component Audit
Nick Diego published What’s new for developers? (October 2024). With WordPress 6.7 just around the corner, stay up-to-date on the latest developer news from the past month, including major updates to WordPress Playground.
Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners
Fränk Klein published a Case Study in How My Peak Challenge boosted conversion rates and engagement with a block-based website and share the approach of converting a site to a block-based theme. “When it came to WordPress, the agency relied on Elementor in the past. However, the poor performance and user experience led PerezCarreno & Coindreau to rethink their approach. And give Full-Site Editing a try.” he wrote.
Dave Smith, core-contributor, released a stand-alone plugin, Responsive Navigation Block. It comes with two variations of the Navigation block for desktop and mobile you can style using the styles controls. of the block editor. Via the plugin’s settings page you and update breakpoint size and unit. Dave also published a video about his new plugin.
On YouTube, Jamie Marsland published a little tutorial on how to use this new plugin: WordPress Mobile Menus Fixed in 3 Minutes!
On October 22 at 20:00 UTC, Wes Theron invites you to join him for the online tutorial: Creating a portfolio site with a block theme and patterns. “This will show you how to leverage an extensive patterns library to save time and build your site from a solid foundation.”
There are now 993 Block Themes listed in the WordPress Theme Directory. The latest additions are:
- Podbase and Adonay by Automattic
- Coach Mentor by Superb Themes
- Creazione FSE by Grace Themes
- Photolancer by CozyThemes
- Drweb by Real Time Themes
- Kids Learning Toys by Ovation Themes
- Alpha Brunch Cafe by Abu Turab
- MaxiBlocks Go by Christiaan Pieterse
Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor
In a webinar for Cloudways, I shared How to use Create-Block scaffolding tool for creating blocks and demo’s the basic examples of building a copyright block. I followed the example of the Block Editor Handbook: Tutorial: Build your first block. The slidedeck also provides a ton of resources on block development with articles from the WordPress Developer Blog.
If you depend on WPGraphQL for your headless WordPress instance, rejoice as Jason Bahl has joined Automattic and is back full-time working on it as a canonical plugin for WordPress.
Jyolsna JE at WPTavern picked up the story: WPGraphQL to Become a Canonical Plugin as its Creator Joins Automattic
The Developer Hours are now live-streaming on YouTube. On October 15, 2024, at 15:00 UTC you can discuss How to Simplify Client Editing in WordPress with Jamie Marsland and Nick Diego. “You’ll learn practical techniques like using locked patterns, enabling content-only editing, disabling specific blocks, configuring theme.json, adjusting Editor settings, and restricting block functionality. We’ll also discuss the current limitations and how you can contribute to the future of WordPress to better support your clients and non-technical users.” They wrote in their description.
In his latest live stream, Ryan Welcher was looking at the Block Bindings API coming in WordPress 6.7, exploring the now public APIs stable editor APIs. A dev note is in the works and will come out with the Fieldguide later this month. For a preview, you can consult the PR Block Bindings: Open the stable editor APIs #65713 for some insights, too.
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