Videos: Zero to Block Theme Parts 1 - 5

Daisy Olsen and Sarah Snow conducted a series of Social Learning discussions on building a block theme.

This is an intermediate-level series geared toward beginning developers designed to take you from setting up your first development environment to “Hello World” across the entire span of the series. If you’ve ever wanted to learn how to develop a WordPress theme, this learn-up will provide a strong basis to get you started developing themes of your very own.

Part 1 Foundations

Set up your first development sandbox
Install Gutenberg plugin (not needed after 5.9 release)
Install the Twenty-Twenty-Two theme
Understand the purpose of style.css, index.php, functions.php, theme.json, templates directory, and parts directory
Create a child theme you can experiment with
Dabble in your child theme’s theme.json to change your website’s colors from the backend

Part 2: Theme.json

It starts with a discussion at a high level the primary parts of a block theme, including index.php, style.css, functions.php, parts, templates, and, most excitingly, theme.json.

Part 3: Theme.json continued – Styles

In this session, the exploration of Theme.json continues, specifically its ‘Styles’ section and how they are influenced by/related to the ‘Settings’ section.

Part 4: Templates and Template Parts

This fourth session explored Templates and Template Parts from a developer’s perspective.

Part 5: From Site Editor to Theme

Let’s learn how to export! In this video, they created the html files that can take the place of the standard hierarchy templates, then take those as the basis for our own theme.

Block Themes in WordPress Directory

Latest count Block themes for full-site editing in the WordPress directory 6️⃣2️⃣https://t.co/oU6neI8BUR pic.twitter.com/hgljb2QYbE
— Birgit Pauli-Haack – next #WCEU (@bph) April 6, 2022