Howdy,
It’s another month, until we know if the Full-site editing experience is good enough for the merge into core. It still has many moving parts that need to fit neatly together to make it a good user experience and allow site owners to design their site within the boundaries of their block-based theme.
Discover two plugins to build forms with the editor and read two articles on how to work with blocks in decoupled (also called headless) WordPress via GraphQL. Some developers might find it as exciting as I do.
Enjoy the plugins shared and check out the upcoming WordPress events.
Yours 💕
Birgit
Gutenberg team released version 10.2 of the plugin.
Release notes by Bernhard Reiter
WPTavern post: Gutenberg 10.2 Adds Spacers To Navigation Lists, Lets Users Categorize Template Parts, and Introduces Scoped Patterns
Anne McCarthy shared high level feedback from the FSE Program.
The 3rd Call for Testing is only open until March 23, 2021. If you have about 20 minutes, build a fun 404 page via the new Site Editor in WordPress. Anne McCarthy has some very details instructions. Please share your experience as a comment on the post.
Monday started with This Week in WordPress live show #154, a podcast by Nathan Wrigley and Paul Lacey. This week Anne McCarthy and Joe Casabona were on the show as guests, and they covered the new features in WordPress 5.7 and more Full-Site Editing. Head on over to YouTube!
Plugins for the Block Editor
Formality is an all-in-one WordPress form plugin for the block editor. Michele Giorgi, who built it for fun and “because he hates the gym.” I definitely can relate to the sentiment, although, I get cranky when I skip our lunch runs for too many days. The plugin comes with 12 blocks that include usual form elements, multi-steps layout, and ratings. You’ll also find 24 templates with backgrounds from Unsplash and corresponding color palettes. For developers, there are hooks and filter to extend it for your needs. Ben Townsend of LayerWP reviewed it on YouTube.
🌐 Website | GitHub | Gist | WPRepo
Gutenberg Forms is another block editor only plugin to create forms for your page and post. The author, Munir Kamal, also created add-ons for Mailchimp, Mailpoet and Akismet. All his code it open-source, and maybe he inspires you to create your special integration as well. You can also read Justin Tadlock’s review from last summer
🌐 Docs | WPRepo | Website | GitHub
The plugin Full Screen Galleries by Nick Halsey creates an automatic full-screen slideshow mode for images on your page or post. It works on both, block editor and classic editor. It’s designed to work with any theme out of the box. See the plugin page for code snippets to add custom styling and a launch button. It’s a focused way to showcase travel photos or art work. This week, Justin Tadlock of WPTavern published a review.
K2 Blocks is one of the Block collections extending the core block editor with additional blocks. The most interesting to me would be the Counter and Time blocks as well as the Magic Image block. The PookiDevs team from Islamabad posted screenshots and more details.
Gutenberg for Developers
Ryan McCue, director of product at the agency HumanMade, shared some experimentation with the navigation components in Gutenberg and created a new WP-Admin navigation bar outside the editor. He “based this stand-along plugin on existing work in WooCommerce.” You can follow the discussion on Twitter.. The code is available on GitHub for your perusal.
Justin Ferriman of LearnDash shared how they leveraged Gutenberg to make a Certificate Builder in LearnDash. You can see short demos on how it works.
As an alternative to Jason Bahl‘s work with Gutenberg and WordPress decoupled sites a couple of weeks ago, Leo Losoviz published his proposal on how to handle blocks with a decoupled WordPress and GraphQL site. The two different approaches are a deep dive into both plugins that provide GraphQL APIs for WordPress.
WPGraphQL and GraphQL API for WordPress
Speaking of Headless or Decoupled: Michal Trykoszko started a three-part series of blog posts: Headless WordPress Gutenberg & NextJS with Creating a block with React.
WordPress Events
March 23 – 26th, 2021
Atarim Web Agency Summit
March 24, 2021 – 10 AM EDT / 14:00 UTC
Intro to Publishing with the Block Editor (Demo + Discussion group) with contributors of Learn. WordPress program
March 26, 2021 – 10 AM EDT / 15:00 UTC
Creating and Registering Block Patterns (Demo + Discussion group) with Daisy Olsen from via Learn WordPress program
If you want to come prepared with questions, watch the workshops Intro to Block Patterns and Registering Block Patterns
April 6, 2021 9 am EDT / 14:00 UTC
WPCafe: Building the Twenty Twenty-One with Caroline Nymark and Mel Dwan-Choyce, live on YouTube
April 15, 2021 6:30 pm EDT / 23:30 UTC
South Florida Mega Meetup “New Site Builder Edition”
April 15 – 17, 2021
WordCamp Centroamérica 2021
April 27 and 28th
Expand 2021 – a virtual event hosted by GoDaddy that brings the web design and developer community together to share ideas and experiences, make connections and support each other.
May 24 – 27. 2021
WordSesh 2021
Speaker submissions are due on March 29!
On the Calendar for WordPress Online Events you’ll find a list of the upcoming WordPress Meetups, around the world, including WooCommerce, Elementor, Divi Builder and Beaver Builder meetups.