Howdy, my friends,
So, I made it back into the US! It’s good to be home and be again united with my dear husband. Today is our 29th Wedding Anniversary. Wow. Time passes fast. Don’t wait!
Next week the main event will be WordCamp US. The fantastic team of organizers published the schedule. I am eagerly awaiting to listen to Tammie Lister, Helen Hou-Sandi, Kjell Reigstad and my dear friend from Singapore, Lesley Sim, first time WordCamp Speaker. Big shout-out to all the 23 Sponsors who made the event possible! If you haven’t obtained your ticket yet, don’t wait!
See you all there!
Yours, đź’•
Birgit
PS: To prepare for my Page Builder Summit presentation, I had to look up and use quite a few features of the block editor again, and I am deeply grateful to all the developers who shared their knowledge so widely. I also am glad, I have been curating the information on the Gutenberg Times. This site’s search feature got quite the workout!
Upcoming Live Q & As
October 7th, 2021 at 16:00 UTC: Going from Classic to Block-based Themes with Carolina Nymark, Ellen Bauer and Anders Noren.
Note: It’s at noon (12pm) EDT, not at 11am.
October 28th, 2021 at 16:00 UTC: Case Study: Converting Classic Widgets to Blocks for BuddyPress. I am thrilled to talk team members Mathieu Viet, David Cavins, Varun Dubey and discuss how the team did such a remarkable and fast job transforming a dozen classic widgets into blocks before the WordPress 5.8 release. If you haven’t made the transition yet, this will be the place to get all your questions answered.
Gutenberg Development
In another article in the series Core Editor Improvements, Anne McCarthy introduces you to the Widget Group Block, which replicates a familiar experience of widgets by adding a title. It’s still a two step process. This also makes it easier to move widgets from one area to another. More details and videos you’ll find in the post.
The core-editor team released Gutenberg 11.6 Release Candidate. If you got some time, download it to a test site and check it out. Any bugs you find will make it a much better final release, and your help will be greatly appreciated. Final release is scheduled for September 29th, 2021.
Timothy Jacobs presented to the Meetup group in New York City, “Gutenberg Blocks CPTified”. He wrote: “We’ll go over how we can create blocks that save their data to Custom Post Types instead of block attributes. After a block has been CPTified, we can then access its data in all sorts of structured ways to build features like custom archives.”. This is the video recording. In it, Jacobs mentioned he would share his code on GitHub next week.
Last week, Ryan Welcher started weekly live-coding sessions on Twitch. The first two sessions are now also available on YouTube, where they will survive the Twitch purge after two weeks.
Start Exploring the Query Loop block with Anne McCarthy. You learn what’s possible now and what will come in WordPress 5.9.
In Gutenberg Changelog #52 Grzegorz Ziolkowski and I talk about Planning, Scope and Team for WordPress 5.9, Roadmap for WooCommerce Blocks and Gutenberg 11.5.
Subscribe to the Gutenberg Changelog podcast
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Theme Building for Full-site Editing
Sarah Norris compiled the Gutenberg + Themes Round-up and collected all theme-related discussions, fixes, and development for the block editor. Among dozens of links,
- You can follow along with the development of the Post Comment Block, or
- read the proposal for a public API to obtain data from the theme.json file or
- learn that the basic support for child themes has been merged and is ready to be tested with the Gutenberg 11.6 RC
✨ 4 days left to share thoughts on block theme switching ✨
Help with the future of Block Theme Switching is the latest FSE community outreach call by Anne McCarthy. Deadline is September 29th, 2021 to share your feedback. If you haven’t yet, spare 30 minutes of your time and influence the future of themes.
Ellen Bauer posted an Introduction to Block Themes. It this part 1, you learn first the difference between block-ready and block-based themes. Bauer also explains in detail the folder structure for the HTML files, and how Global Styles and Theme.json play a big role in the full-site editing experience to come to WordPress in 5.9 and 6.0.
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.
Site building and Content Creation with the block-editor
Marcus Kazmierczak shows us a way to create block patterns with our code. In his article, Using Block Patterns as content templates, he explained the concept and then introduced a new plugin Templets, available in the WordPress.org repository. Using it helps you create a custom type and register your patterns with the block editor.
It’s surprisingly lightweight. It speeds up site building considerably, and hopefully the feature makes it into the core editor.
What I missed:
- Have the patterns show up in the search for the slash command
- A preview in the inserter
- To save modifications to save it as a new pattern. “Save as…”
Justin Tadlock found another gem among the block plugins. In his article Adding Blocks With Animated Backgrounds Using WebArea’s Latest Plugin, he reviewed the Background Animation Blocks for us. After spending close to two hours in an immersive VanGogh Exhibition in Munich, I can tell you, animating backgrounds can liven up some even the riches still images.
Anthony Hortin published a brand-new version of the Easy WP Guide, including the WordPress 5.8 updates to the block editor. If you are searching for a source, to share with your clients, meetup attendees or friends, it’s an excellent resource for block-editor tutorials and documentation.
Nick Schäferhoff published on Torque Magazine, his article: Gutenberg Ecommerce: Using the New Editor for Online Shops. After a short introduction into what the block editor is or isn’t, Schäferhoff has a great list of plugins and extension that will help site builders to assemble an optimized ecommerce site for clients or themselves.
WordPress Events
October 1st, 202WordCamp US
- Demystifying Gutenberg Blocks – Understanding First Steps to Becoming a Gutenberg Developer with Cory Webb
- Building Modern WordPress Sites: The Interplay of Blocks, Patterns & Theme.json with Rich Tabor
- Let Themes Be Themes with Tammie Lister
- A Voice for the New White House Administration with the Block Editor with Helen Hou-Sandi
- Creative Use of Block Styles with Kjell Reigstad
Check the schedule for times in your Timezone.
WooSesh 2021 is scheduled for October 12-15, 2021. It’s a live, virtual conference for WooCommerce store builders organized by Brian Richards.
Page Builder Summit
Page Builder Summit is coming back and will be happening October 18 – 22, 2021. Nathan Wrigley and Anchen Le Roux are at it again! Sign-up for the VIP list and learn first about the details of the event.
Gutenberg / Block-editor presentations (date/times are preliminariy)
- Forging the Future with Full Site Editing with Anne McCarthy (10/18 – 9am EDT)
- What does Full Site Editing Mean for Page Builders? with Joe Casabona (10/19/ 9am EDT)
- The Future of Building WordPress Websites with Brian Gardner (10/18 – 12pm EDT)
- How to Build Any Page Layout Using Kadence Blocks with Jake Pfohl (10/20/ – 12pm EDT)
- Customizing WordPress Block Editor for Client Projects with Birgit Pauli-Haack (10/19/ – 10 am EDT)
- Mastering modern WordPress with Full-site Editing & Custom Blocks with Rob Stinson (10/20/ – 5am EDT)
- RIP Page Builders with Chris Lubkert (10/19 – 1pm EDT)
- Building a Custom Blog Archive with Blocks with Mike Oliver (10/21/ 11am EDT)
The schedule is not out yet. Sign-up for the waitlist to receive notifications.
